A minute later, Bullseye came around the other side of the Peace Pagoda with a weird look on his face. “Hey,” he said. “How do you get inside?”
“The door,” said Trina. She was sitting on Jimmy’s lap and they were sharing a sandwich.
“No door, babe,” said Jimmy as he munched away.
“What?” I said. “What do you mean there’s no door? It’s a building. There has to be a door.”
“Not necessarily,” said Jimmy as the dogs continued barking off in the distance.
“What do you mean, not necessarily?”
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
We all put down our food and watched as Jimmy gently plucked Trina off his lap and deposited her on one of the long, wide stairs. Then he tilted the wheels back on his wheelchair and bounced himself up the stairs like we had seen him do before.
He really was a pretty amazing dude. I was happy for my sister. I totally approved.
At the top of the stairs, where Bullseye stood under the shadow of Ganesha, Jimmy said, “Pick a direction, any direction.” Sanjay immediately pointed right. Jimmy nodded his head and put his hands on his wheels. Slowly we started walking around the Peace Pagoda, our palms running along the smooth white surface of the dome, punctuated with large indentations and golden statues very much like the ones that lined the pathway that we had followed up from the parking lot.
Halfway around, Jimmy stopped and looked out over the part of the meadow behind the Peace Pagoda. There was a huge lily pond, a little greener than it probably should have been, and a wooden bridge crossing over the water. On the other side of the pond was a series of stacked rocks littering the ground, along with a fire pit and more colored flags.
“That’s probably where they hold peace rallies,” said Prianka.
“You’re right,” nodded Jimmy. “I came up here once with my foster mom. It was at night, which was sort of cool, and there was a big bonfire there. You probably could see it from as far away as the University. So much fun. The energy was amazing.”
I didn’t know about peace rallies and I didn’t know about amazing energy, but I did know that a bonfire might not be such a bad idea if we wanted to draw attention to ourselves. I stuffed that idea in my back pocket and continued following around the dome with everybody else.
All told, there were about a dozen statues circling the building, and like Bullseye had said, there wasn’t a single door to be found.
“What gives?” he asked.
“The Peace Pagoda wasn’t built to have a door,” Jimmy explained. “It’s a shrine, you know? A monument. It’s here for people to reflect on. Not in.”
I shrugged and sat back down on the steps, then closed my eyes and tilted my chin up to the sky. Without even knowing it, I was probably reflecting on a million things at once, and in a place that was built for just that purpose. As I pondered a building without doors while trying to ignore our whole purpose for being here in the first place, Whitby ran up the steps past me and practically knocked me over.
“What’s with her?” I turned around to see her standing on her hind legs, licking Bullseye’s face and whining.
“Is she hungry?” Prianka asked, but Whitby didn’t look like she wanted food. If anything, she had a strange look on her pointed face that was half excitement and half alarm.
Oh no.
“Where’s Newfie?” asked Trina. Immediately I heard him barking in the distance. I had heard that kind of bark from him before. It was the same kind of bark he let out before he tore a troop of dead girl scouts apart to the horror of at least a few llamas back on Aunt Ella’s farm.
“Crap,” I said as I stood, wiped my knees, and started down the wide stairs toward the source of his barking.
“What’s the matter?” Prianka asked.
“At least we had a peaceful lunch in front of a giant golden elephant,” I said as I kept walking. “That’s got to count for something, right?”
21
THE SMALLER BUILDING we noticed when we walked up the path was featured in the brochure. It was a new monastery that had just enjoyed a ceremonial dedication.
The building had a funny-looking entrance and was tucked in the woods at the edge of the meadow. It partially hung over the side of a cliff that faced the valley. The back of the building must have commanded the entire view beyond. There were big wooden doors in the front, but they weren’t shaped like normal doors. They sort of had the same bulbous shape as the Peace Pagoda with little peaks on the top.
The whole place was about the size of a church. From what I remembered from the brochure description, people came to the New England Peace Pagoda for weeks or even months to meditate. This is where they stayed—them, and the monks who took care of this place.
Great. Lovely. And here I was thinking that the Peace Pagoda, the beautiful meadow, the lily pond, and all the pretty golden statues were totally and completely poxer-free.
It never occurred to me that people might actually live up here.
This wasn’t Tibet. Who lives with monks in Massachusetts? Who even knew there were monks in Massachusetts?
People like Jimmy, who eat tofu and know exactly how many arms an elephant-headed god named Ganesha might have—that’s who.
I let out a long, drawn-out sigh. I was so over dead people and poxers.
The entryway to the monastery only had a few steps. There was a black sign out front with plastic lettering on it that said, ‘Meditation from 5:30—7:00 morning and evening.’ It didn’t take a giant brain to figure out that right about the time I was nuking leftovers in my parents’ kitchen and Trina was upstairs with Chuck Peterson doing whatever Trina always did with Chuck Peterson, things probably went bad behind those doors.
Whoever was inside, meditating about the meaning of life or why devil dogs were called devil dogs when they were neither satanic nor canine, had first row seats to oblivion.
For a moment, I thought about the carnage back in Littleham next to Chuck’s Hummer and my stomach began to sour. I swallowed a thick wad of indifference and chased the sour away.
Meanwhile, Newfie stood with his back to us, slowly wagging his tail and barking at the entrance with the weird doors. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t wagging his tail because he was happy. He was wagging his tail as a warning because there was something beyond those doors, and that something probably wasn’t high on my list of things I wanted to deal with at the moment.
“Let’s go meditate by the pond,” I suggested. That was one idea that went over like a lead balloon.
“I want to see what’s inside that building,” said Trina.
“Really?” I said. “Do you really?”
“Yeah, really,” she snapped as she pulled out some paper and a lighter. “If you didn’t notice, the Peace Pagoda doesn’t have any doors. If we want a roof over our heads tonight, this place seems as good as any.”
“We have a bus,” I offered, but I’m not so sure she cared. Besides, if all of us together in a confined vehicle taught us anything, it’s that a bunch of kids, two dogs, a crow and a Poopy Puppy could collectively make quite the stench.
“I’m not sleeping in the bus,” she said.
“The monastery is new,” Jimmy offered. “It was just dedicated last year. I bet there are sleeping quarters inside, and probably even a kitchen.”
“There are also dead things walking in there,” I said. “I’m tired.”
“Poor you,” Trina growled.
Bullseye stepped forward. He was holding a small gun in his hands. He probably had it tucked in the back of his shirt this whole time. Having a gun on the grounds of the Peace Pagoda was so uncool, even to me. “Open the doors,” he said.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snapped. “Why does it always have to be guns with you
?”
He whirled around, quick as a whip and snapped back. “So I can shoot the poxers in the legs, to slow them down enough so you can burn them,” he said.
I opened my mouth to continue telling him off, but I stopped. He was right. I didn’t have to be happy about the fact that guns were his thing. As long as he didn’t have an itchy trigger finger while pointing the barrel of a gun at anyone of the non-poxer variety, I was just going to have to suck it up.
He had to protect himself with something, right?
Meanwhile, Whitby silently padded up to the gun in Bullseye’s hand, took one look at it and backed away. She lowered her head and began growling. The white hair on her back stood on end.
Sanjay pulled Poopy Puppy to his ear, nodded a few times, then said, “Some service dogs are trained to protect people against guns,” he explained. “Poopy Puppy says so.”
“Hey, Sanjay,” I said as I grabbed hold of Newfie’s collar and pulled him back from the door. “Do you think you can do me a favor and take the dogs and Andrew back to the big elephant over there?”
He turned and stared across the meadow at golden Ganesha sitting on his couch. “Uh huh,” he said. He put two fingers to his mouth again, and whistled the way he had before when Whitby came running. She immediately stopped growling at the gun in Bullseye’s hand and trotted dutifully over to Sanjay’s side. “Newfie, come,” he said, and Newfie immediately dropped his tail, pulled free of my grasp, and joined Whitby with Sanjay.
Then Prianka’s brother looked up into the trees and called out like I’ve heard Jimmy do before. “Andrew, to me,” he cried and a black shape swept down from the gray skies and landed on Newfie’s back.
“Poxer,” Andrew chirped.
“Probably more than one,” said Prianka who already had paper in her hands and another lighter ready.
“Go back to the elephant,” I told Sanjay again, and he nodded and left.
I wish I could have followed him.
22
HERE’S THE DEAL.
When we opened the big wooden doors in front of us, we fully expected to find poxers inside. I guess we theoretically expected to find Buddhist poxers, all happy and peaceful because, hey, we were at the Peace Pagoda.
But, expecting to find pacifist poxers and meeting them dead in the flesh are two very different things.
There were five of them inside, in a big bright room without any furniture, except for a scattering of purple pillows and a couple benches that were so low to the ground that they looked like they were meant for children or hobbits, or hobbit children.
The five of them were dead, but that didn’t stop them from twirling their heads around and staring at us with their blank, gray eyes. They were all bald, because I guess that’s the fashion du jour if you’re a monk, and all of them were wearing long, orange robes.
One of the poxers, taller than the rest, took a step toward the front doors, all the while foaming at the mouth. It tripped, and fell over a mushy mass riddled with flies that may or may not have been a meditating visitor.
There were a few more of those mushy masses gooped about the room. None of us really took time to count them. What was the point?
Instead, me and my sister, Jimmy, Prianka and Bullseye, slowly backed out of the huge wooden doors and closed them again.
The five of us stood breathless and a little stunned.
“Can’t do it,” said Jimmy. “I mean, you got to draw a line somewhere, so I’m drawing it here.” He reached over the side of his chair, and with one finger, scratched a line in the dust in front of the weird wooden doors leading into the monastery.
“Me, too,” said Bullseye. “There’s wrong and there’s wrong and this is wrong.”
I was in shock. I was more than in shock. I was in lobotomy-level shock.
“Nope,” said Prianka. “Me neither.”
My mouth fell open because Trina backed away from the monastery entrance, too. “Even you?” I gasped.
Trina wouldn’t look at me. Instead she shoved her hand in her mouth and started chewing on her nails because there weren’t any bags of potato chips lying around.
Finally, she threw up her hands and shook her head. “They’re priests,” she said flatly. “Just like Father McKenna back home. It doesn’t matter if they’re wearing black or orange or all covered in polka dots. They’re still priests and I’m not going to torch a priest. Talk about some bad juju. That’s really, really bad juju.”
“They’re dead,” I cried. “They’re monsters.”
“Gotta take my girl’s side on this one,” said Jimmy. “Trina’s right. I’m not touching that nest of bees with a ten-foot pole. You never know what kind of karma is going to come back and bite you in the patootie. The way I see it, we’ve been lucky so far. Really lucky. I don’t want to jinx our vibe. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
I wish I could have said that they were wrong, but a little bit of me, way down deep, sort of felt the same way. I mean, honestly, what did I expect a monk to look like? I don’t know. I never had to think about it before. But seeing five of them in the flesh, or gray flesh, put a lot of things in perspective for me.
We torched a lot of people already, but burning monks seemed like taking a step too far, and none of us was ready to take that step.
Bullseye literally took his gun and tucked it back into his pants. “Yeah. No,” he said.
Only Prianka remained quiet. Finally, she dropped the crumpled paper in her hands to the ground and put the lighter back in her pocket. “My family’s not really religious,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen holy men like the ones inside before. I don’t care if I believe in what they believe in or not. The important thing is that they believed it. That should be good enough.”
“I guess there go those nice, warm beds, and maybe cooking on a real kitchen stove,” said Trina.
Jimmy reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close to him. “You got me to keep you warm,” he said. “Who needs to hang inside a stupid monastery anyway?”
“You,” I said, before I could stop the word from leaping off of my tongue.
“True, that,” Jimmy sighed. “Well, so much for wanting a little down time before the main event.”
We all looked at him. We knew what he was talking about. The whole reason we came up to the Peace Pagoda to begin with was to call attention to ourselves and hopefully be seen by the right, but very wrong, person.
Diana Radcliffe.
We needed to tell her that she didn’t need us anymore—not me or Trina.
I looked up at the gray skies, fat with clouds, and silently made a prayer that they would give us the cover we needed until we were ready. We didn’t want helicopter people crisscrossing the valley, searching for us—not until it was time for us to be seen.
After all, we had a crap-ton of things to do.
23
WE SPLIT UP.
Trina and Prianka took shovels and a couple saws from the potter’s shed at the top of the trail and headed off to the lily pond and the fire pit beyond. They were going to build a signal for Diana. Sanjay went with them. The dogs stayed by the entrance to the monastery, guarding the doors from the outside. Andrew took to the sky. I assumed he found a nice branch way up high to keep a lookout.
As for me, Jimmy, and Bullseye, we had serious work to do. Next to the entrance to the monastery was a large wooden box that had the words ‘pick-up’ and ‘drop-off’ painted on it. The words were in the same sloping penmanship that was featured on the sign down at the Peace Pagoda parking lot.
Inside the box we found bags of laundry that were unfortunately of the ‘pick-up’ variety. I suppose it didn’t matter much, although fresh laundry would have been preferable to dirty laundry that had been fermenting for a while.
>
Hey—we were lucky to find the stuff at all. Beggars can’t be choosers.
With big laundry bags in hand we went back to the potter’s shed and stepped into the gloom.
Yeesh. It was a mess inside.
“I bet this place is filled with mice,” Jimmy said as he sat in the doorway, leaning forward in his chair.
“Mice?” exclaimed Bullseye. “Cool.”
“Yeah, not so much,” I said and wrinkled my nose. I didn’t know where to start. Finally, I took my hands from my hips, shrugged, and reached into the pile of pots, tools, and moldy boxes and handed a jumble to Bullseye. “Here,” I said. “Give it to Jimmy. We need to scour this place.”
For the next half hour, our human chain dug through the shed. I handed whatever my hands could grab to Bullseye and he, in turn, gave it to Jimmy.
“Nope,” Jimmy kept saying in a running commentary as he examined each thing Bullseye handed to him before discarding it in a pile next to his wheels.
Once or twice I thought I hit pay dirt. The first time was when my hand landed on a bunch of colorful bungee cords all wrapped together. “What about these?” I asked as I handed them to Bullseye. He shrugged and gave them over to the man in the chair.
“Possibly,” said Jimmy as he examined them. “They’re a little short. I’ll put them in the ‘maybe’ pile.” Since we didn’t have a ‘maybe’ pile yet, he tossed the wad of bungee cords over to where we had dropped the laundry bags.
Ten minutes later I found what we needed.
I held a small box that was threatening to fall apart in my hands. One side was so white with mold that it almost peeled away when I picked it up.
“Ta da,” I exclaimed as I pulled the contents free. Bullseye grinned and held out his hands.
Delicately, as though I were handing him dynamite or maybe even nitroglycerin, he gingerly plucked the handful from me and handed it to Jimmy, who literally gave us both two thumbs up like a weird politician on TV with way too much of the wrong color makeup caked on his face to make him look extra bizarre on screen.
Dead End Page 9
