But to be honest, I don’t think there was ever a time when she didn’t just have a giant blob floating in water, which is how she became convinced that I always had the eye on me. For her, this just meant she had to be extra vigilant with prayers.
She had all the Saint Days memorized and we still followed all the regular Anglo superstitions about broken mirrors and open umbrellas, but she was very careful about weird Greek superstitions too. No cutting your fingernails at night or on Fridays because that’s bad luck. And no handing someone a pair of scissors or a bar of soap because it means you’ll have a fight with them.
Then she’d tell me and my dad that when our hands itched we’d be getting money or that when we spilled salt we needed to throw it over our shoulder to keep the devil away.
But Death came twice to our family already. Maybe he’s done with us for a while. Maybe our luck is due for a change.
Yia Yia would have said that unexpected kindness was the only way to strike back against bad luck. She used to say it confused the devil, who assumed people would just crumble when their lives went down the toilet.
Unexpected kindness, I thought.
I was walking out of yoga when I noticed that Evey had arrived and was sitting at the front desk alone. She had her legs crossed in her office chair and she was looking at her phone with a serious expression on her face. No doubt plotting whatever horrible thing she was going to ask me to help her with.
It was a little bit like approaching something potentially dangerous. Not a venomous snake or a bear or anything that’s just scary by nature. But like, maybe something that has the potential to be dangerous, so you keep your distance. Like a peacock maybe. Beautiful, obviously, but they can be pretty vicious and territorial.
I decided that I wasn’t going to be any weirder than usual, but I also wasn’t going to pretend to be invisible. I was going to be me. And if my luck was bad, then I was going to change it myself.
That’s when I remembered that I had tucked something into my bag a while back for a yarn project I hadn’t finished.
When I passed her desk, I set it on the AP English binder she’d left open, and walked away.
She held up the crocheted rose and called out, “What is this for?”
“For luck,” I said, shrugging.
And in reality, it probably won’t change anything. But a smile is generally a good sign, right?
Namaste,
Leo
8
Today’s Pose: Shavasana, or Corpse Pose
Do nothing.
Think of nothing.
Play dead.
This is the pose we end every class with, and it makes sense because death seems like a natural end to a class where you’re forced to sweat in an inferno with a bunch of strangers.
But I have to admit there’s actually something nice about it too.
It’s quiet. Your heart rate starts to shift back to normal, and you listen to all the gross squishy things in your body take a break from whatever they were just doing to keep you alive. Everything pauses and everyone is still. For a few minutes, you don’t feel like you’re sucking someone else’s sweat through your nose.
And then somewhere in the quiet Annabelle rings a tiny little gong and whispers:
“Death is just a pause.”
Which is some really deep shit.
Then everyone slowly peels themselves off their mats, and we stumble out of the room like zombies into the temperature-regulated gym. Trying to adjust to the light after our recent journey into death.
Dear Journal,
I am never late for anything. It’s one of those anxiety things that makes me feel like I have some degree of control. If I can get to a place when I say I’m going to be there, then I can check off that box. But if there’s a chance I will be late, I get anxious and I can feel my body counting down until I get to where I’m supposed to be.
My brain will say something like: I have seven minutes to leave and still get there in plenty of time. I have three minutes to leave and still get there in plenty of time. I have thirty seconds to leave and still get there in plenty of time.
Luckily, my dad and I have this in common. He’s never late for anything either. And since he is still driving me to what he believes is a class that is going to teach me some superhero-level fighting shit, at least I don’t have to worry about being late.
He doesn’t wait in the car anymore, though. He drops me off and comes back to get me. And on Wednesdays I still have no idea where he goes.
I just get text messages like this from him instead: Soup from Anna Papadalos in the fridge.
Mrs. Papadalos is one of the last holdouts of the church people who brought homemade stuff over after Yia Yia died. But she also has cats. And there is a high chance that the soup is half fur. So I sent him a thumbs-up and made a mental note to grab a sandwich from next door after class before heading to the front desk.
Today, Evey did that thing where she pretended she’d never seen me before when she scanned my card. I was like a ghost who’d slipped into the gym.
Not weird at all. Especially since we’d just had a full conversation via text the day before.
So I left a crocheted daisy on her keyboard and walked to yoga without looking back.
Okay, conversation might be a bit strong. She’d sent me a bunch of photos of yarn projects and asked if I could make them, and I’d told her yes.
They were small projects and fairly quick to finish, so it hadn’t seemed like a problem.
She’d responded with He won’t know what hit him.
And guilt pooled in the pit of my stomach like acid as I tugged at my new clothes.
I’d had to buy two pairs of men’s yoga pants. There were a few color options and some that clung a little bit more than the pants I was used to wearing, but I didn’t really want my balls on display. So I just opted for something I knew I could sweat in.
Ironically not sweatpants, as I’d discovered. Those aren’t for actual sweat. Those are for dads to do grocery shopping.
I also walked past Drake on my way into hot yoga, and he saw without saying a word, which was not like him at all. Especially since we’d had one of our meetings this afternoon and it was a sparkling success that went something like this:
Drake: So do you want to talk?
Me: No.
Drake: Dude, we’re supposed to talk.
Me: So talk to yourself.