ON MONDAY, SHAWN—JACK of Diamonds, perceptive, shrewd, original thinker—once again took the floor. I settled behind my desk to listen, which, I’d come to discover, beat trying to figure out everything on my own. He paused near the center of our power circle, the perimeter of which existed only in our minds. “The results of our experiments have so far been positive. No surprise, right? We pretty much knew all along how they’d turn out. Except for our prayers for Granny Max. Which shouldn’t be considered an experiment, anyway. As she said, her recovery depends on God’s will, not our good intentions. No matter how powerful.”
No one responded to what sounded like the prologue to a one-man discourse by an exceptionally intelligent and insightful thirteen-year-old. Shawn was opening up for the second time in a matter of days, as if the bedrock of his resistance to our united cause had loosened due to our talk about teamwork and using our God-given skills. Maybe his silent opposition had already been prone to dissolution, but my guess was that we’d worn him down with a stream of discussion too large to ignore, yet too insignificant until recently, to take firm hold in the riverbed of his conviction. By assuming center stage, he’d finally been dragged into the flow. The attack of wind-driven twigs and debris against the windows failed to distract us from what he had to say. “My vote is for no more experiments. We need to move on.”
Move on to what? was my first question. The second: Who’ll be in charge?
“We don’t know enough and will never know enough to figure out who we are and what makes us different,” Shawn said. Followed by a pause which the wind filled with distorted street sounds and its continued battering of the windowed wall, as if cautioning us to allow for the opposite of our desired understanding. “Why not just live life instead of trying to explain it? Admit that we all want the same thing. To be safe, to belong, and to matter. Right Ms. Veil?”
I nodded. That about summed it up, especially the part about wanting to matter.
“Maybe, someday, we’ll know what to do with our gifts,” Shawn continued, “but I doubt all these experiments will get us there. Let’s focus on our next step instead of trying to map the whole road.”
Not good enough, was my unvoiced response and, apparently, that of the rest of the students. Our silence was one of resistance as strong, if not stronger, than that of the single-paned windows battling the impact of the wind. Shawn’s sigh hardly registered compared to the tumultuous display outside, but on the Richter scale of inner turmoil, it probably measured a magnitude of six points or higher. “We might not like the way some people treat us,” he said. “But you know what? It depends on the stories they’ve been told. Our stories tell us they’re wrong, even evil, but we’d probably do the same in their shoes. How about we accept that their stories are different from ours and use that as a start in making the world a better place?”
“I don’t follow you,” Codi said, honesty one of her best, and most irritating, traits.
“How do we make the world a better place?” was Tessa’s gentler response.
Shawn glanced at Luke. “By using our combined intentions to actually do some good.”
“How do we know if our intentions are doing any good?” Tessa asked.
“We don’t. But we’ve done enough experiments to know we’re onto something. Guess, it’s just time to believe.”
Codi fingered the skull medallion hanging from the chain around her neck, a chunk of steel so large and heavy it could serve as a hood ornament. “Since we know we’re onto something, I agree, let’s give it a rest.”
“The experiments, but not our intentions,” Shawn said. “We still need lots of practice.”
The medallion slid from Codi’s hand and hit the table with a clang loud enough to make one’s teeth ache. “What for?”
Ethan popped in as if he knew something the rest of us didn’t. “In case we need it.”
For some reason, I shivered.
“We’re still not very good at what we do,” Tessa admitted.
“Actually, that might be for the best,” Luke said, not as upset about Shawn’s suggestion to drop the experiments as I thought he’d be. “It keeps us from accidently blowing something up.” He smiled at Tessa’s startled expression, acknowledging he’d hit his mark. “Like unleashing a genie from a bottle and not being able to put it back.”
“Or opening a pandora’s box,” Jason added.
Tessa’s intake of breath suggested dismay at Jason’s analogy. She glanced at the bracelet she’d worn on her right wrist since Angelina had tossed it to her during our trip to the Lick Observatory. “The box was filled with special gifts from the gods. Pandora got curious, and I don’t blame her. I would’ve opened it too. Then all kinds of nasty stuff came out, and when she shut it, hope got locked inside. It reminds me of us…”
“Pandora gets blamed for everything,” Codi snapped. “Why give her a box full of gifts and not let her open it?”
Luke frowned as if regretting his contribution to the conversation, opening his own Pandora’s box. “I’ve read that our intentions can warp the universe in some way.”
“Good God,” Codi said.
“That somewhere else a distortion appears and something…or someone…will push back to restore things to the way they were.”
“I swear, this discussion’s getting spookier and spookier.” Apparently, Codi was in no mood to go where Luke was leading. “How about an early dismissal, Ms. Veil?”
I, too, was having difficulty following the conversation, from no more experiments to practicing our good intentions to unwise interference causing warps in the universe.
“Like the Butterfly Effect,” Luke said, unwilling to let go of a subject once he got started, “the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a twister to touch down in Texas.”
“Like a punishment,” Tessa said, inserting more weirdness into the conversation.
Luke grinned as though delighted to have regained a prominent role in the workings of the classroom. “More like consequences, which can be good and bad. We need to decide once and for all if our gifts were meant to be used or kept hidden.
“Or you could call the Butterfly Effect a form of balancing,” Jason added. Good ol’ Jason. “And then there’s the theory of the Hundredth Monkey. Spread good and other people might start copying our behavior.”
Codi zipped up her backpack as if preparing for a quick escape. “Can we change the subject, puh-leeze? My head is spinning.”
“Why don’t we form a circle and use our intention for world peace?” Tessa suggested.
The skull medallion Codi had been twisting in her hands like a coping tool slammed against her chest with enough force to cause whiplash. “Oh Lord.”
Luke shot Tessa a look that wavered between compassion and exasperation. “How about we start on a smaller scale, like peace in our school?” He paused as if googling his mind for a way to put his suggestion into practice. “Remember, how back in January we had ‘School Violence Awareness Week,’ and no one seemed to be listening? A few assemblies and guest speakers and then all the talk of violence prevention stopped as if it never happened.”
“Okay, then we’ll set an intention to stop school violence,” Tessa said with a spark of determination I hadn’t noticed in her before.
And from that moment and throughout the next five class sessions, my six students had the motivational willpower to kick into what Luke called “Intention Training,” sensitizing themselves to undercurrents lying beyond language and external appearances.
As homework, they applied what they’d practiced in class to their daily lives, tuning into the thoughts and emotions of family and friends, and whenever possible, defusing explosive situations.
“Notice more and judge less” became their catchphrase as they continued to train their brains and supersize their powers. Day after day, their confidence grew.
Until, of course, disaster struck.