I watch the buddy behind the wheel of the cart. He’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a guard in this place. I was starting to think that security was considered anti-wellness or un-whole or whatever.
I stay hidden until the vehicle putt-putts along the path and disappears into the trees. Then I scamper across the road and up onto the wooden porch of the welcome center. From there, it’s easy to lift a window and ease myself inside.
I vault the counter and head straight for the storage closet where Ivory stashed my electronics when we first checked in. I try the knob. Locked.
Figures. The pathfinders talk a good game about being honest and trusting and whole, but what’s the first thing you run into? A locked door.
It’s no problem for me, though. I grew up in a place with a lot more security than this dump because, believe me, Vlad is not the trusting type when it comes to anybody else getting their grubby hands on his hard-earned stuff. Our place in California is full of locked storerooms, safes, secret compartments, and trapdoors, guarded by every high-tech gizmo money can buy or Vlad can invent. What do you think my hobby has been these past twelve years? I can get into any one of them in sixty seconds. My own mother doesn’t know that there’s a false back in her walk-in closet and the hermetically sealed space behind it holds a canvas bag of solid gold South African Krugerrands and an actual Rembrandt her husband hasn’t gotten around to hanging up yet.
It’s not like TV, where the hero knows how to pick a lock with a paper clip. But give me two paper clips and I could bust into Fort Knox.
I’m inside in a heartbeat, and what I see nearly stops my heart. Do you know how much technology eighty-five Oasis guests have to surrender for the privilege of boiling their butts and subsisting on a plant-based diet? The San Francisco Fuego Store would die of jealousy if they saw all this stock. The urge to throw it on the floor and roll around in it is almost overwhelming.
No, Jett. Down, boy!
I find my own phone, lock the closet again, and climb back out the window. It’s tough to leave my laptop, tablet, and watch in tech jail, but I have to stick to the plan. The less I take, the smaller the chance that anybody’s going to notice something’s missing.
The golf cart is just emerging from the woods, so I flatten myself to the ground until the coast is clear. Turns out there are even more bugs in the grass than there are in the air, and most of them think the inside of my pant leg is a happening place to hang out. Eventually, after some high-energy dancing, I’m as bug-free as I’m ever going to be, and I slink back into the guest compound.
I don’t go back to the cottage—not yet. I don’t want anybody in any other cottage to hear me. I steal all the way over to the lake and sit down at a picnic table. It’s two thirty in the morning, but that’s only half past midnight in California.
I’ve got about a millionth of a bar of cell service, but my F-phone’s special chip ties into the satellite network, so I’m good to go. No point in calling Mom—she’s totally wrapped up in her charity work for Orthodontists Without Borders, fixing overbites in the Third World. It’s the big cheese or nobody.
I punch in my father’s private number. He answers on the sixth ring in a sleepy voice.
“Jett? You okay?”
“Hi, Dad. Sorry to wake you.” Despite my fearless exterior, I don’t have the guts to call my father Vlad. Nobody does. “How’s everything at home?”
My father is so smart that I can almost hear him making the connections two thousand miles away: me calling in the middle of the night, from No-Phone-Land, where he exiled me for a six-week sentence . . .
“Forget it, Jett. You’re not coming home.”
“If you could see this place, you wouldn’t say that,” I wheedle. “At least you wouldn’t mean it.”
“I mean everything I say.” He’s fully awake now, and that’s not so good for me. Vlad has this confidence that’s really frustrating. He knows he’s right. Even when he’s wrong he’s right. And you know where that leaves me: always wrong.
“How are you calling me?” he demands. “You’re not supposed to have a phone.”
Just as I suspected. Not only did he banish me here; he knew exactly how bad it was going to be. That was probably the number one selling point.
I try the taking-responsibility approach. “I get that I screwed up and I have to go someplace. Just not this place! I don’t care so much for myself, but it’s not fair to Matt. He’ll starve! Plus he could be making a breakthrough right now if he was at work. Think of the company!”
“I’m the company.”
It’s classic Vlad. He speaks in declarative sentences, short and to the point. The next one is: “You’re staying put.” Then: “This conversation is over.”
“But, Dad—”
“Don’t even think of bothering your mother with this. She’s in Honduras. I’ll see you in a month and a half.”
Click.
By the time I take the phone from my ear and set it down on the picnic table, I’ll bet he’s fast asleep again, with a completely clear conscience.
I sit there for a full ten minutes, waiting for the roaring in my ears to go down. I know I’m no angel, and there are times I feel bad for my folks. It can’t be easy to parent me. Then there are moments like this, when it’s pretty obvious that Vlad is getting exactly what he deserves in the son department.
Anyway, tonight hasn’t been a total loss. I had no phone before, and now I have one. After all, a phone is more than just a toy. Now I’m connected. Maybe Vlad won’t let me rejoin the world, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of options. I can bring the world here, thanks to the best thing any kid could possibly have—a credit card with the name Baranov on it.
Fertilizer, meet fan.
5
Grace Atwater
“When-I-breathe-in-I-breathe-in . . . when-I-breathe-out-I-breathe-out . . .”
Ivory’s voice is melted butter as she guides our meditation. That’s what beginners have to do—concentrate on deep breathing. Otherwise, our minds go all over the place. The breathing part isn’t that important. The main goal is to empty the mind, and that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Have you ever tried to go even a minute without thinking about anything? It’s almost impossible. So Ivory gets us to concentrate on breathing to lock everything else out of our brains.
“When-I-breathe-in-I-breathe-in . . .”
I’m a little more advanced, since Mom and I come here every summer. I don’t need to recite the words in my head anymore. I just focus on my breathing, and pretty soon the outside world melts away. I can hear my heart beating and feel the blood pumping through my veins and arteries. I’m in perfect touch with not just my body, but my entire being. I’m whole.
Meditation is one of the three pillars of Magnus’s philosophy at the Oasis, along with good nutrition and physical exercise. I love it. But—oops, I’m not supposed to be thinking about anything right now.
“. . . when-I-breathe-out-I-breathe-out . . .”
The only time I’m more relaxed than during meditation is when I’m on the back of my dad’s motorcycle. He has this 3000cc Harley and he sometimes takes me riding, since Mom refuses to go anywhere near it. It’s the main compromise in our family. Dad has his bike, Mom and I have the Oasis, and Benito has the heating vent in the downstairs bathroom, where he’s allowed to nap in winter, even though it blocks the heat to the point where the toilet seat feels like a ring of solid ice.