Maybe that’s why I let him blindfold me. I liked his voice, and his vaguely European accent, and the rich warm sense of his presence beside me. His hands, as he fastened the blindfold, were gentle.
“The point of this,” he explained to me, “is to demonstrate that you already know everything you need to know. It’s all living there deep inside you. What you need to do is focus inward. You need to clear away all the distractions—all the things you
“Cool,” I said.
I mean, what else was there to say?
“I painted an X on the floor,” Haiden said, “and it’s your task to find it. I want you to use your inner sense of direction. I want you to feel your way toward it.”
I imagined how ridiculous this would look on a reality show: me stumbling around with a blindfold trying to find some secret X as this awesome-looking actor chattered on about unlearning. I pictured the kids at school howling laughter at me in the hallways. But I also remembered the way Paloma had gone right up to him, no hesitation, and the way his name had surfaced in my brain like that.
He was right. I had met him before. I didn’t understand it, but in that moment I didn’t have to. All I had to do was find the X. That was what mattered.
I could feel that gentle tug inside me, leading me across the room. I stepped slowly, the blindfold dark and silky on my eyes. When the sensation of tugging stopped, I stopped too. I lifted my hands to the blindfold and slipped it off and turned to look at Haiden. He was standing beside the table holding the apple that I had dropped. Paloma was on her haunches beside him, as if she was his dog, not mine.
“So?” I said.
“Look down,” Haiden said.
He crunched into the apple.
I was standing right on the middle of the X.
3
I wasn’t sure what that proved. My mind went into gymnastics trying to fit this into a rational explanation. Maybe I had agreed to do a reality show and then someone had put me under hypnosis? Maybe this was all some kind of subliminal programming? But that seemed just as nuts as Haiden’s talk about “another realm.”
For the rest of the “lesson” Haiden had me stare into a candle flame. “This is to help you develop your focus and concentration,” he said. “You need a clear mind in order to see clearly.” He gave me the candle to take home. He told me to practice meditating with it for half an hour every day. That was my homework.
And then the lesson was over, and Paloma and I were out on the street again. If it wasn’t for the candle in my hand I would have thought the whole thing some kind of hallucination, a waking dream. Especially when I checked my watch and saw that, from the time I entered the house until now, exactly two minutes had passed. In the presence of Haiden in the abandoned white house, time, it seemed, had stood still.
4
That night, my mother was rushing around to get ready for her date with this Silicon Valley mogul dude who was totally all wrong for her, except my mother hadn’t figured that out yet. Her instincts can be slow to kick in. “Have you seen my black Chanel clutch?” she asked, popping her head into my bedroom. “I can’t find it anywhere —”
I thought for a moment, then felt an image of it surface in my mind, much like Haiden’s name had done. “It’s in the top left-hand corner of the hall closet,” I said, “beneath a balled-up sweater.”
She looked at me for a moment and shook her blond head. “You’re amazing,” she said, and blew me a kiss. Then I heard her clatter down the stairs.
It hadn’t occurred to her to ask what I was doing, standing in the middle of my bedroom and looking around me. I felt like an alien dropped in from another planet trying to put together clues about the locals.
The candle in its little brass holder sat on my desk. The session with Haiden had left me with a calm settled feeling. My room felt different, like it belonged to someone who resembled me but wasn’t ... me. There were posters on the walls of bands I no longer listened to. The rhinestone-studded cover for my iPhone seemed childish and stupid. There were application forms on my desk from colleges that I realized, in a sudden blazing flash, I didn’t even want to go to. I had decided I was going to be a lawyer. Now I found myself wondering why. Because I was good at English lit, because I liked to read and write, because it was so much more practical than trying to be a writer, which was a crazy ambition anyway? Because I wanted to earn lots of money and wear cool power suits? Because it was a good answer to give people when they asked you what you were going to be when you grew up (assuming you ever did)?
Haiden’s words hummed through my brain.
My life was filled with a lot of noise, a lot of bright lights, a lot of daily drama that, in the end, didn’t add up to much. My grades were slipping because I found it harder and harder to keep still, to absorb what the teachers said in class or to complete my homework. Now, though, with my mother gone and the house quiet and lonely and the image of Haiden’s flame still bright in my mind, and the memory of Haiden’s voice still warm in my ear, I sat down at my desk and pulled out my textbooks and immersed myself in work. Hours slipped by and I barely noticed. Suddenly I was caught up. I pushed back my chair with a rich feeling of satisfaction. Then I noticed the candle....
I hadn’t done Haiden’s homework yet.
I found the silver lighter I used to sneak cigarettes on the back balcony, lit the candle, and stared into the flame for maybe half a minute. Except then I started feeling stupid. It was just a candle, for crying out loud. I could imagine my friend Ashley rolling her eyes at me. I blew it out and went to call her instead.
5
That week I found a lost cat I recognized from posters pinned on telephone poles around the neighborhood and returned her to her owner. Ashley lost her cell phone and I helped her remember that she had left it behind at King’s Cross Café, where the manager was waiting for her to reclaim it.
“I’m good at finding lost things,” I once said to Josh, “it’s like a talent or something.”
“No,” he told me, a little mischievously. “Lost things are good at finding
His condition was unchanging. His room filled with flowers and little stuffed animals and get-well cards. I visited him almost every day and pulled the chair up beside his hospital bed and talked about everything and nothing. I imagined that he could hear me, deep down in his slumber, and that any moment he might stir and open his eyes and say, where am I? like in the movies.
But it didn’t happen.
I told him—and only him—about the episode with Haiden in the abandoned white house on Bel Air Road. “It seems more and more surreal all the time,” I said. “Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe I went temporarily insane and imagined the whole thing. But I keep thinking about him.”
I didn’t mean to say this last bit, it just kind of slipped out. In class, or walking the hallways, or hanging out with Ashley and Steven and the others in the parking lot after final bell, I would flash on Haiden’s eyes, his light golden skin, the shape of his shoulders. I would imagine his breath in my ear or on my neck. I remembered what it
