During announcements in Spanish class, Jesse finally heard about the science fair, now that he was actually listening. Plus, it helped that Racha was late again -- or ditched -- and wasn’t distracting Jesse. Maria was also not there, since she was now helping out with morning announcements every once in a while.
“Yes, that’s right, Caballeros and future scientists, you can get a free special VIP package for Winter Bash on Valentine’s Day -- that’s right, free! -- for winning the Portola High School 64th Annual Science Fair. This VIP package includes a free photo package, two song requests from the DJ and a personalized shoutout, AND reserved seating for you and your special date.
“You will also get an exclusive interview featured on the front page of our wonderful newsletter, The Expedition, and a featured section in the yearbook -- which you will also receive a free copy of -- and of course advancement to the district-wide science fair competition, where you could possibly go on to state! Hey, not to mention you get everything that we Caballeros crave -- that’s right, Portola -- Honor, Pride, Achievement!”
The announcements went on, but Jesse tuned out as he began to think about all of that weird pressure and attention that would come with winning. Who the fuck wants that? But that VIP is snatched.
Someone nearby got mildly excited about it and mentioned a volcano experiment they had done back in 4th grade. But he soon forgot all about the contest as he had too much fun describing to his friend the mess of the baking soda, pebbles, and red food coloring when it foamed all over his teacher’s carpet. He had said it looked like period blood and had asked his teacher if it was hers. They laughed hard about it shamelessly.
Jesse dragged himself to the rest of his classes and was only late to one of them. Seeing Maria was beginning to grow stale, since he continued to be ignored and failed to find common ground with her. He even tried ignoring her back, which only proved to be incredibly useless and might even have made his adoration of her more intense despite his attempts to suppress it.
The effort to attend his classes came from the agreement he had made with Yusef. He was a little interested to see what his first training session would be like later that day, right after school. He imagined that the old man had a few weights laying around and he’d also do some sit ups and push ups. Probably some weird-ass meditation shit, too.
Yusef told Jesse to meet him at Davidson Park after school, which was near Portola and only a little bit out of his way home. Jesse got there and saw Yusef waiting by picnic tables.
“By all means, you should go change so we can begin,” Yusef announced. He must have come straight from school because he was wearing his white buttoned shirt and a green necktie under a gray buttoned vest, along with matching gray slacks and brown leather Oxford shoes.
“Huh?”
“I am assuming that you brought other clothes and shoes… somewhere… ?” Yusef trailed off as his eyes searched for a backpack or something that Jesse might have used to stow away his actual work out gear. Jesse was wearing jeans, a white pair of sneakers that may or may not have had shoelaces buried under his pant legs, and a baggy black tee.
“Nah,” Jesse said with a quick shake of his head. “This is it. Whatchu got, man?”
Yusef’s eyebrows raised and a slight smirk snuck in the corner of his mouth. “Well, we are certainly going to see. I will be impressed if those fancy sneakers actually stay on. I hope they are actually worth their ridiculous price tag.”
Jesse spat on the ground. “Vámonos.”
After the first hour, Jesse’s pride was still holding out against his stamina. Yusef led Jesse running around a pavement walkway that circled a soccer field. It was supposed to be roughly the equivalent of a running track. After each lap, he had Jesse complete a set of either sit-ups, pushups, squats, trunk lifts, or superman lifts right along with him. Jesse trudged along his laps getting noticeably more tired, sweatier, slower, and more red in the face. After lap number eight Yusef finally raised his hand and signaled Jesse to stop. “Get yourself some water.”
Jesse didn’t say anything and huffed straight away to a nearby water fountain. After he finished slurping, he slowly walked back, still breathing heavily. The autumn sun was beginning to retire for the day and was getting low.
“Now we can begin.” Yusef said.
“What!”
“Well, yes. Now that you are properly warmed up. It was also nice to see that your shoes actually stayed on that entire time. Impressive, actually.”
Jesse was too tired to start yelling and cursing at Yusef, but he did debate walking away at that moment. Then he remembered what waited for him out there if he left. Absolutely nothing.
“A’ight, viejo. A’ight.”
“I am your mirror. Do as I do.” Yusef began to lead Jesse through various stretches and cool downs. Some of the stances were very awkward for Jesse. They seemed almost like ballerina movements and Yusef also had him freeze in place at weird angles. He had to look around a few times to make sure no one was around that would recognize him, but this wasn’t really near his hood, anyway. Yusef also coached Jesse on his breathing and his posture while he ran. After the warm up, Yusef told Jesse to go run one more lap, but to do it in his mind first.
“What?”
“Visualize yourself running that lap inside your mind. Go through each motion, each step, and picture your posture and plan your breathing into each step. Push your stomach out and breath in, pull your stomach in and exhale. Imagine this all the way around the lap. When you have done that, you may get up and actually do it.”
Jesse nodded without saying anything and had his eyes focused somewhere else past Yusef; perhaps nowhere physically at all. His eyes began to wander a bit, and Yusef told him to refocus. After rolling his shoulders and neck, Jesse closed his eyes and remained still for a moment. He opened his eyes and Yusef, with his arms crossed, lifted a hand and pointed to the track.
As Jesse took off, Yusef noticed an almost immediate difference in how Jesse carried himself, and saw his stomach push out from under his shirt as he inhaled, and his stomach sucked in when he exhaled. His arms and hands had more control and intention in their swing. When he returned from his lap, Jesse looked more assured of himself, like he had just won at something. He looked right into Yusef’s eyes and nodded.
Yusef led him through light stretches and awkward poses again. “Now,” Jesse was about to get up from the grass when Yusef gestured for him to stay down. “Now, you will do burpees,” Yusef declared.
“The fuck?”
Yusef demonstrated for Jesse by dropping down to a push-up position nearly touching the ground, then pushed up and jumped onto his feet into a jumping jack and then dropped down into the push-up position again. From the ground he yelled out “One!” then shot up again into a standing position and gestured with his arms toward Jesse. “Now you. Five reps to start.”
“That shit’s easy.” But Jesse was sadly misinformed by the ease with which Yusef was able to complete his burpee. On the way back up during the first one, gravity felt like it was trying to pull Jesse’s guts right out of him. He actually felt the skin on his face droop down. “Oh, fuck!” Jesse squeaked out as he unevenly clapped his hands together for his poor excuse of a jumping jack.
“I suppose that counted as one,” Yusef spouted.
“Uh, I… I actually have to do all five?”
“Well, now you only have four more. Right?”
“Pinche narizone.” Jesse only got slower and sloppier with each attempt at going down and coming back up. On the fifth one, Jesse’s face began to shift from flushed to pale.
“Unless you want to be in even more pain tomorrow, you will continue to stretch right now.”
“What do I stretch?”
“What hurts?”
“Everything, pendejo.”
“Well, it sounds like you just answered your own question, my young mubtadi.”
“The fuck is that?”
“Apprentice. ‘Mubtadi’ means apprentice.”
Jesse still gave him a confused look.
“I am your trainer in a craft, and you are learning a craft from me.”
“A craft? Like to make something?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“Well, what the fuck am I crafting right now? Sweat and a sore ass?”
“Possibilities, Jesse. Endless possibilities. In time, you could craft whatever you wanted on the Plane.”
“Oh, shit! You got a jet? Where we going, homie? You didn’t tell me that before!”
“No, my young mubtadi. Not an airplane. The Plane is where you go after you have mastered lucid dreaming, where you control everything in your dreams. All of those who have the desire and are properly trained, can go to the Plane to become stronger, better, and more powerful. There, they shape our reality by reshaping other worlds.”
“So, we not going to Miami?”
Yusef rolled his eyes. “It is time for another lap.”
“Ah, shit.”
Now that Jesse was more focused and at a slower pace on the track, Yusef trailed behind him and continued to explain.
“When you dream, Jesse, your untrained mind is creating a world of its own. You are letting your mind throw yourself around in there and it is chaos, fueled by unfiltered emotion and random memory. I will train you to control that chaos, and show you how to create your own world.”
Jesse continued to huff as he jogged along. “Pl… Plane!”
“Ah, yes. Only after you have mastered your own dream world will you be ready to begin training in the common dream world. Imagine if you can, Jesse, that every night when you dream, you are watching a movie on a film screen. In time, you will be the actor, director, even the writer before the dream appears on screen. In other words, soon you will be able to dream whatever you want.
“Soon after that, you will learn how to find the door and walk out of that movie theater into the bigger movieplex, where your neighbor’s dreams are being screened in the theater right next to yours. You will be able to walk along the movieplex to the theaters of anyone you wanted. Once inside their theater, you could see their dreams, and assuming they are untrained, you could be an actor, director, and even a writer for their dream on the big screen.”
Jesse stopped running. “That… that night,” he huffed out, trying to catch his breath. He turned to face Yusef. “When you were... in my dream. That wasn’t... the first time, right? You had to… you had been in my head before… you wrote that dream, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Jesse. You can put it that way. I did.”
“Did you know I was going to kick you off the roof like that?”
“I anticipated that as one of a few possibilities.”
“But if you made that dream for me, then why did you let that happen?”
“Because choice and willpower are important. And incredibly powerful. You have to want this, Jesse. You have to want this so badly, as if your life depends on it. You need to want this like you were drowning and want to rush to the surface to breathe air. You have to want it that badly all of the time. Even in your sleep. Especially in your sleep.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Indeed, Jesse. But things will get harder. Every day, it’s going to get harder.”
“I guess that means I gotta want it more every day then, right, viejo?”
“That is right, Mubtadi. That is exactly right.”
“So? Tell me how to do it.”
“Oh, you are not quite ready for that yet. It requires a lot of mental training, and emotional preparation, as well. To control your dreams means you are in control of your mind and your own world. That means you must have an abundance of willpower. You must have confidence. And you must have imagination.”
“Mierda. I’m fucked.”
“Those things will come, Mubtadi, in time. With practice. But the Science Fair is a major step toward that goal. You need victories, and you need them in ways that you never really thought possible because then you will really start believing in the things you are capable of doing and even those things that you once thought were not possible for you. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yeh,” Jesse said as his head hung low.
“If you do not win the contest, it is fine, my mubtadi. We must always aim for greatness. Even in failure we can be proud. When we fall from great heights we learn how to fall on our feet, and when we do not, we learn that falling on our face is not the end of the world. We pick ourselves up as tougher, wiser versions of ourselves.”
Jesse shifted his weight as his hands rested on his hips. “You’re gonna help me, though, right? With the project?”
“Of course, mudtabi. But I will not do the work for you. I will guide you and help you plan. But you must see it through. It has to be your idea, your hands, and your voice.”
Jesse nodded sullenly. “So… when do I gotta do this by?”
“I was wondering when you were finally going to ask. Come along. We will go sit and we will make a plan. Then you will go home and do your homework before you do anything else.”
“¡No mames!”