The Karma Club (6 page)

But from the moment I walk through the door, I can tell that skipping dinner is not going to be an option.

“Sit down, Maddy,” my mom says sternly as I attempt to pass by the kitchen and head upstairs to my room. “We need to talk.”

I know right away that my parents are pissed about something.

“I already ate,” I protest as I slump into the chair next to my little sister, Emily, who is shoveling pasta into her mouth.

“I think you’re in trouble.” She states the obvious with a mouth full of red sauce.

“The school called this afternoon,” my mom begins. “They said you didn’t show up to any of your classes and wanted to know if I would excuse your absence.”

“And?” I reply blankly. “Did you?”

My mom looks to my dad and then back at me. “Yes, but only because I trust you had a good reason for skipping school.”

“I did,” I assure them. “Now can I go upstairs and study?”

But I can tell from the look on my father’s face that the answer is a very firm (and slightly annoyed) no.

I sigh and slump further down in my seat. “Do I really have to tell you?”

My parents exchange a glance before replying “Yes” in absolute perfect synchronicity. Sometimes I swear they practice that kind of stuff before they go to bed at night.

“I want to know too!” Emily chimes in, but my mom quickly shushes her.

“Fine,” I sputter, feeling the tears already starting to well up in my eyes. “Mason kissed another girl on Saturday night and then they showed up together at school today. So now we’re probably over. As is my life. That’s why I left early.”

There’s a loud
clank
as my sister’s pasta fork hits the plate and she stares at me in astonishment. I quickly look to the floor.

“Who’d he kiss?” Emily asks eagerly, and I’m fully expecting my parents to shush her again and inform me with sympathetic eyes that I don’t have to answer that, but they don’t. Instead they
both continue to stare at me, and I soon realize that they’re just as curious as she is.

But I’m really not in the mood to satisfy anyone’s drama-hungry curiosity, so I simply scoot my chair away from the table and mumble, “I don’t really want to talk about it. Can I be excused now? I have to study.”

My mom quickly nods, and I stand up and walk away, leaving everyone in a stunned silence.

As soon I reach my room, I shut the door behind me. I do actually have homework to finish, but I can’t possibly imagine doing it. Instead, I prepare for a long night of what is commonly referred to as “wallowing.” And it makes perfect sense. For about forty-five minutes straight I do nothing but stare at the wall. Eventually, I even become convinced that it might possibly be a wall-staring world record. But because I don’t have the energy or the will-power to get up from the spot that I’ve decided to occupy for the rest of the night and check the Internet to see if it really is a world record, I suppose I will never know.

For the rest
of the week I did my best to avoid both Mason and Heather at all costs. And after four days of making myself completely invisible at school, you would think that Mason, being the good class president that he is, would have taken notice of my extended absence and picked up the phone to see how the person in his previous relationship was doing after walking in on the shock of her life.

But no. There were no phone calls. No text messages. No e-mails. Mason had gone radio silent.

That is until he showed up on the other side of my front door on Friday afternoon to exchange all of the “stuff” that we’d left at each other’s houses over the past two years. No, I’m not kidding. Those were the first words he had the nerve to say to me after what happened at the Loft: “I came by to pick up my stuff.”

You really can’t blame me for slamming the door in his face. Although, honestly, I didn’t have much control over that part. It
was just what my muscles did. Like a knee-jerk reaction or something.

I stood there for a few seconds on the other side of the slammed door, trying to catch my breath and make some sort of sense of what had just happened. But when I came up short on both accounts, I turned, took the stairs two at a time, and then, upon reaching the top, sprinted into my bedroom.

“Who was that?” I heard my mom call from her reading chair in the den.

“No one,” I shouted back coldly and then turned and slammed my second door in under a minute.

I seriously thought that I could hide out in the safe confines of my own bedroom for the entire weekend and be left relatively alone. But it becomes painfully clear that this is wishful thinking when my mom enters my room at seven thirty in the morning on Saturday and proceeds to kidnap me.

Okay, not in like a bag-over-my-head-, gag-in-my-mouth-, hands-tied-behind-my-back-type scenario. But I think waking me up before ten on a weekend, forcing me into the car, and not telling me where we’re going definitely constitutes some form of kidnapping.

And when I notice an overnight bag sitting on the backseat, I can pretty much surmise that this is not going to be a simple day trip.

“I don’t understand why you can’t tell me where we’re going,” I plead for the fifth time as we drive north along the 101 freeway and all evidence of civilization slowly fades into the background.

“Well,” my mom says aloofly, taking a sip from her stainless steel travel coffee mug filled with herbal tea, “since you don’t have a choice, it doesn’t really matter where we’re going, does it?”

I groan and push my head back into the headrest, silently cursing the gods for sticking me with such proactive parents. Why couldn’t my mom and dad just be normal, self-absorbed California parents? Obsessed with country club memberships and Botox. One absence from school and a few nights of wallowing alone in my room and suddenly I’m being sent away to what I can only imagine will be some sort of boot camp for heartbroken teens.

I mean, come on! One (very justified) ditch does not a rebel make. Next thing I know I’ll be sitting on a couch across from some shrink on television being asked to explain why I
choose
to make such bad choices with my life. I think it’s safe to say that there’s just the slightest bit of overreacting going on around here.

And not to mention, this is completely unfair. How am I ever supposed to learn to deal with life’s problems on my own if my parents insist on intervening the minute there’s a glitch in my perfect attendance record? How am I supposed to become a responsible, self-sufficient adult when I’m not allowed just the tiniest harmless meltdown every once in a while?

My mom navigates through the countryside, occasionally referring to a printed-out map that she keeps folded up and out of my reach in a compartment in the driver’s-side door.

After what feels like hours, we finally pull into the driveway of a huge, landscaped complex with, from what I can see from my obstructed view out the passenger-side window, gardens, fountains, a gazebo, and several white buildings that look similar to the one we’re currently parked in front of.

Yep, definitely a boot camp of some kind. It looks like one of those ritzy, overpriced celebrity rehab centers that you see pictures of in the tabloids. It’s not until we get out of the car and my
mom hands the keys to a waiting valet attendant that I notice a sign in front of the building’s entrance. And that’s when I know that my life is officially over.

It’s even worse than I thought.

Worse than boot camp for heartbroken teens. Worse than an upscale rehab center. Worse than going on TV to talk about my problems.

“Napa Valley Spiritual Center for Inner Growth?” I ask incredulously.

I’m not kidding. Those are the exact words on the sign. Trust me, I could not have come up with that combination of letters on my own.

My mom opens the back door and grabs the black overnight bag off of the seat as she flashes me an exuberant smile. Ironically, it’s the exact same smile I used to get when she’d take me to the water park or the McDonald’s Playland when I was a kid. It’s that look parents give you when they’re excited because they think they’re hip and “with it” and know “what the kids are into these days.”

“It’s the perfect place for us to relax, make peace with our pasts, and let go of negative energy,” she explains.

I start to roll my eyes until I realize what she has just said. And my eyes stop dead in their tracks, somewhere between the corner of my right eyebrow and my forehead. “Wait a minute?” I ask in disbelief. “
Us?
As in me
and
you?”

Her face lights up with excitement. “I thought it would be fun. You know, a mother-daughter bonding experience. Plus, I think a retreat away from everything and every
one
will help you deal with some of your feelings about Mason.”

I groan loudly. “I don’t need a spiritual retreat to do that! I need a punching bag and a carton of ice cream.”

My mom frowns at me with disappointment sprawled across her face. “Now, you see, Maddy. That is not a healthy way to deal with this. You can’t just lock yourself in your room all week and hope to feel better when you get out.”

“It’s a breakup, Mom. There is no healthy way to deal with it.”

She takes a deep, patient breath and rests her hand on my shoulder. “If you’ll give this a chance, I think you’ll find that the opposite is true. Besides, you could probably benefit from some exposure to new cultures and ideas. You can’t find everything you need to know in the pages of
Contempo Girl
magazine.”

I fold my arms across my chest and plant my feet firmly on the ground, attempting to give off a convincing display of resistance. “I’m not going in there.”

My mom pouts slightly and prods me with the tip of her index finger. “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. I signed us up for some really cool stuff. Yoga, guided meditations, and even a class on the philosophies of the Dalai Lama!”

I look at her as if she might actually be mentally unstable, and piercing sarcasm slowly drips into my voice. “The Dalai
who
?”

But my mom apparently is done arguing because she tosses the bag (which I now realize is packed with
both
of our essentials) over her shoulder, takes hold of my elbow, and says, “Can it, Maddy. You’re going inside.”

And after seventeen years of being privy to this woman’s array of vocal intonations and body language, I know at that moment that spiritual enlightenment is in my very immediate future, whether I like it or not.

The minute I walk through the door, I feel like I’ve stepped into a really weird dream. And for a moment, I secretly pray that that’s exactly what this is. And any minute now, I’ll wake up in my bed and this will all be a fleeting memory.

This place is a perfect example of one of those things that you have to see for yourself to truly appreciate just how wacko it is. (And of course, I say “wacko” with the very deepest respect for whatever culture is being represented here.)

The room we enter is white. And I mean the whitest white room you’ve ever seen. The walls are white, the ceiling is white, the couch in the middle of the room is white, the tile on the floor is white, even the picture frames on the walls are white. Given that this place is supposed to be somewhere people go to relax and escape their daily problems, I would assume the white is meant to put you at ease. But honestly, for me, it has the exact opposite effect. I suddenly feel extremely stressed out at the thought that I might accidentally touch something and the oil from my fingers would stand out like a fluorescent bloodstain under one of those special crime-scene lights.

My mom and I approach the reception desk, which is, of course, white, and she gives our names to the lady sitting behind it, who is dressed head to toe in what I can only describe as a full-body sarong-toga-looking thing. In white.

As my mom fills out a series of forms, I notice a medium-size statue sitting on top of the desk. It’s in the shape of a golden man. He’s wearing a tall, pointed hat, long, dangling earrings, and he’s sitting cross-legged with his hands on his knees and his eyes closed. Like he’s deep in thought. Or really pissed off.

I stare at the statue with serious skepticism. “Who is that?” I ask with just the slightest trace of rudeness in my voice.

The woman behind the desk seems pleased by my curiosity and speaks in a fluid, soothing tone. “That is the Buddha, my child.”

My child?
Please. Can they be any more cliché right now?

I nod, like I know exactly what she’s talking about even though I’m only faintly familiar with Buddha.

“Isn’t he supposed to be fat?” I reply.

My mom shoots me a warning look, but I simply smile back at her. Hey, it was her idea to come to this “enlightening” place to begin with; I might as well be “enlightened.”

The woman is completely unfazed by my sarcastic tone. “Yes, sometimes he is depicted as what Western society deems to be
fat
.” She pronounces the word as if it doesn’t really exist and the only reason she’s decided to acknowledge my choice of vocabulary is so she can attempt to relate to me on some level. Kind of like when adults try to use the word
dawg
or
homey
.

“But other depictions look like this,” she continues, patting the statue’s tall, pointed hat. “And if you rub his belly, it’s supposed to bring you good luck.”

I take one final look at the statue and mumble, “Maybe later.”

The next thing I know, my mom and I are following another sarong-toga-clad woman on a thirty-minute tour of the compound. Oh, sorry, I mean, “spiritual center.”

“Many people come to our center to deal with pain, loss, stress, or a death in the family,” the woman is explaining as we make our way through “Zen Garden 2,” which looks remarkably identical to “Zen Garden 1.”

“It’s a place where one can make peace with the world around them.”

“It’s simply beautiful,” my mom says, taking a deep breath and acting like she’s never experienced fresh air before. She turns to me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I shrug. “It’s all right.”

“Our goal here,” the woman continues, “is for everyone to leave feeling fresh and rejuvenated, having cleansed the dirt of everyday life from your soul. Like the earth feels after a purifying rainstorm.”