The Karma Club (24 page)

Rajiv almost appears amused upon hearing this. “No?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No.”

He looks at me with kind, paternal eyes, and I can tell that he’s taking pity on me. Because, more likely than not, he knows I had nowhere else to go.

And the truth is, I didn’t.

He points to a door and says, “Why don’t we step into the meditation room and you can tell me about it?”

When we enter
the small room, Rajiv motions to a padded mat on the floor, and I take a seat. He sits across from me with his legs folded in front of him and stares at me expectantly until I get super uncomfortable. I soon realize that he’s simply waiting for me to talk.

This guy really doesn’t beat around the bush, does he? Small talk is apparently not something he’s familiar with.

So I skip the usual warm-up questions pertaining to the weather and how he came to work here at the Napa Valley Spiritual Center for Inner Growth and get right to the heart of it. “You see, I did everything you said. I worked hard to balance out my life and erase all the negative things that have happened to me over the past few months, but it didn’t work.”

I look at him with the same expectancy that he held for me, but he just stares calmly back. Almost like he knows there’s more to the story.

I fidget slightly with my fingers and say, “I mean, at first it worked. A little. At least, I thought it was working. But then everything came crashing down on my head and I ended up worse off than I started. And I want to know why. Why didn’t it work for me? You said that life is a balancing act. And that’s exactly what I did. I balanced. And then just like that, everything got all out of whack again.”

As soon as the term comes out of my mouth, I immediately realize that it’s quite possible he doesn’t even know what “out of whack” means. Because obviously this guy is like some sort of Gandhi or something. And here I am throwing out sentences that one usually only hears on MTV. So I clarify. “You know, like out of balance.”

He nods, but still says nothing. I sit there and wait for him to ask me something. Anything! But he doesn’t. Not for what feels like hours. And then finally, he goes, “If we told every story from the middle, we would never appreciate happy endings.”

I stare at him with my mouth open until I manage to get out a very eloquent “Huh?”

His eyes are extremely patient as he replies, “What I mean is, you are telling me your story from the middle. I cannot help you figure out why everything is so ‘out of whack,’ as you put it, unless I hear it from the beginning. And I fear it is a beginning that you are not quite comfortable sharing.” His rich, soothing voice flows out of him like some sort of exotic song with a haunting melody that makes me feel both on edge and somewhat comforted at the same time.

He’s right. I am afraid of telling him how this all started. I’m afraid of telling anyone about it. Because up until now, I haven’t
uttered a single word about the Karma Club to anyone. And the only existing public record of it is now in the hands of Jenna LeRoux. So you can see how I’m not exactly keen on the idea of divulging any additional information.

I realize after sitting here on this mat in the middle of a room where people come to seek answers within themselves that the answer I’m looking for won’t become apparent to me unless I tell him everything. Unless I say it aloud, from the very beginning. Because it’s quite possible that I need to hear it for myself as well.

So I take a deep breath and speak.

I start from the beginning and I don’t stop until I get to the end. I don’t spare him anything. I just let it all out. When I finish, I feel very relieved. Like a weight has been lifted. Somehow telling the whole story in one sitting is like therapy. Because it’s then that I realize that the story
can
be told in one sitting. In a matter of minutes. And if that’s the case, then it can’t be
that
bad. I hope it means that a solution can be found in the same amount of time.

I wait for Rajiv to speak. I know he’s got something good. Something that he’s been holding inside for the past ten minutes. But after about thirty seconds go by, he’s still just sitting there staring at me with this dopey half grin on his face. I finally say, “So?”

And then he goes “So” right back at me, but with this really definitive tone. Like he’s stating something that’s super obvious and he’s astonished I don’t see it.

I’m not sure what to do with that, so I ask, “Aren’t you going to tell me what to do? How to fix this? How to make everything good again?”

Rajiv simply raises his eyebrows and says, “No. I’m sorry, I cannot tell you that.”

“What?”
I practically screech. “Then why on earth did I come all the way here and spill this out to you?”

Rajiv sits quietly on his mat with his hands in his lap. “So you could help yourself figure out the answer.”

This is beyond frustrating to hear, because obviously I can’t figure it out for myself. I need help. That’s why I’m here. If I could figure it out for myself, everything would be back to normal by now.

“But I can’t!” I complain, throwing my hands up in the air. “I can’t figure it out for myself. I’ve tried. I’ve spent hours brainstorming solutions, and all of them just seem to end in disaster. I can’t do it. I don’t know why this is happening to me. I tried to achieve balance in my life, exactly like you told me to do, and I—”

“Ah,” Rajiv begins pensively. “But not only did you seek to achieve balance in your life but you also sought to achieve imbalance in someone else’s.”

“I’m sorry?”

Rajiv flashes another one of those patient smiles that I swear he must practice every morning in front of the mirror before he comes to work because he’s got the whole thing down pat. “You cannot obtain balance by also seeking imbalance.”

Okay, this makes absolutely no sense to me, and Rajiv clearly notices that because he continues. “We can only fix our own lives. We cannot play the role of the gods in someone else’s.”

“That’s what I was trying to do!” I argue defensively. “To fix my life. Mason hurt me. He betrayed me. He
used
me. And the
same with Ryan and Seth. They hurt my friends. The people that I care about most in the world. Don’t they deserve to be hurt back?”

“Unfortunately, it is not for us to decide the path of someone else.”

“I don’t get it,” I whine. “I can help myself as long as it doesn’t affect someone else?”

Rajiv points at his nose as if we’re playing a game of charades and I’ve correctly identified the clue he’s been trying to act out for the last fifteen minutes. Then he says, “We must follow our own path, and sometimes that path can be laden with bumps and curves and rivers to cross. But we cannot block the paths of our neighbors, for that is not our place. We can only seek to groom and shape our own.”

“But Mason and Heather affected
my
path. Why are they allowed to get away with it when I’m not?”

“The universe has a place and a purpose for everything and everyone. Sometimes we cannot know what that place is. Or what the purpose of everything that happens to us will be. That is why we must allow the natural order of things to occur.”

I shake my head and look at him with pleading eyes. “I still don’t get it.”

For a moment, he seems very deep in thought. Like he’s run out of explanations and is about to give up on me. But then he looks at me and says, “Did you see
Back to the Future Part Two
?”

I blink at him in disbelief. “Excuse me?”

“
Back to the Future
, the film,” he clarifies.

It’s not that I don’t know what he means, it’s just that I can’t believe this guy is actually referencing a movie. And a sequel
at that! For obvious reasons, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who hangs out at the local theater chomping on popcorn and candy.

I nod warily. Like I’m afraid of where this line of thought might be heading. “Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“Do you remember what happens when Marty and Doc come back to 1985 from the year 2015?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Everything is messed up and stuff because Biff stole the time machine in the future, went back to 1955, and gave himself the sports almanac, which screwed with the whole space-time-continuum thing.”

“Yes,” he says. “Or as the Doc so poignantly put it, ‘The time line skewed into a tangent creating an
alternate
1985.’ ”

I scrunch my face up in confusion. Rajiv notices and asks, “You don’t remember that line?”

I squint at him. “No, I do. I’m sorry, but I just find it hard to believe that you’ve actually seen
Back to the Future Part Two
.”

“Of course,” Rajiv says matter-of-factly in his thick accent. “It is a classic.”

I scratch my head at this and try to go with it. “So you’re telling me that I’ve created an alternate 1985?”

He chuckles softly. “In a sense, yes. You have skewed the natural path of the universe into the reality that you are now experiencing. If you want to use the concept of Karma to explain what’s happened to you then—”

“Then I’ve created a new chain of Karmic events.” I complete the sentence for him as the thoughts slowly start to become less fuzzy in my own head.

“Exactly,” he replies, satisfied.

I can’t believe what I’m hearing right now. We were only trying to fix something that we thought was broken. But if Rajiv is right, then it didn’t need to be fixed in the first place. Or at least Karma didn’t seem to think so. When we interfered, by setting off a new chain of events that clearly weren’t supposed to happen, Karma had to step in and balance them out.

So in reality, this whole time, I’ve been searching for someone to blame for everything that’s happened. The men who robbed Angie’s store. The woman who poisoned the turkey chili. Ryan for running my sister over with his bike. But as it turns out, they weren’t the culprits at all.

Karma was.

The very force that we attempted to emulate. It came back around to show us exactly who was in charge.

Clearly, it didn’t want us messing around with its carefully laid out plan.

I sit there with my mouth hanging open. “But,” I begin, “you said that you
can
change your own path.”

“Of course,” he responds. “All human beings have control over their own destiny. That is, after all, our purpose on this planet. Not to interfere with the lives of others but to shape our own experiences.”

“But how do you do that without interfering with someone’s life?”

“Ah,” Rajiv utters again, this time with a certain air of mystery and suspense. As if he’s already got this part figured out and telling me is, without a doubt, going to change my life forever. Except the only thing he says is “Now,
that
is a very good question.”

“One that I’m guessing you’re not going to answer,” I speculate with a slight annoyance in my voice.

He doesn’t react to my irritation. He simply bows his head gracefully and says nothing at all.

And I know, at that moment, that I’ve already gotten all the information I’m going to get out of this guy today.

I drive home
in a fog.

Literally and figuratively. Because yes, there’s actually a dense fog outside the windshield of my car, which is not that unusual for Northern California in March. But there’s also a dense cloud of fog hanging around my head. And unfortunately, unlike my car, I’m not equipped with any high-power headlights to help me see through it.

I suppose what Rajiv said makes sense. I mean, we’re practically being punished for trying to interfere with Karma’s omniscient plan. But how on earth am I supposed to fix it? Well, that’s still a mystery.

Who knows what other surprises Karma has in store for us. I mean, yeah, there’s the whole Jenna LeRoux notebook thing, which pretty much sucks big time, but is that it? Will that be the end of it? Or is there still more punishment to come? And how will we even know when it’s over? How will I know when my
own universal imbalances have finally been wiped clean? Am I supposed to tiptoe around every corner for the rest of my life, never knowing when Karma is going to jump out and get me? Like some haunted member of the witness protection program hiding out from the mob. And yes, that
is
exactly how I think of Karma right now. Like a member of the Mafia. A gangster. An unforgiving, power-hungry, relentless mobster who will kill and destroy anyone who tries to cross it.

And the similarities are pretty clear. I mean, food poisoning, robberies, broken legs, stolen possessions. Sounds like the making of any mob movie that I’ve ever been forced to sit through.

So how do you make nice with the Mafia? I’m pretty sure that getting on their good side is no easy feat. They have tons of connections all over the world. If that’s any indication, then it doesn’t matter where I try to hide, Karma is going to find me.

By the time I get home, I am no closer to a solution. This is normally when I would call Angie or Jade and solicit their help, but they’re still not talking to me. So I’m pretty much left with nobody. Because my friends are the only people in my life (besides Rajiv, obviously) who know the entire story.

So I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling, as if I’m expecting a message from God himself to be sent down to me.

There’s a knock on my door, and I tell the person on the other side to come in. The door creaks open and my dad enters and sits down on the bed next to me.

At first he makes small talk. He asks if I’m enjoying having my
car back, and I tell him that I am. He asks how school is going, and I say, “Fine.”

I can tell he’s trying to get me to talk about what’s bothering me. Shed some light on my recent gloomy behavior. Unlike Rajiv’s more direct-to-the-point approach, my dad is employing chitchat tactics to get me to talk. But I’m not going along with it. Because he’s one of those people that would require an explanation before he’s able to help me. So I simply reply to his questions as politely as possible until he finally stops beating around the bush and says, “You know you can talk to Mom and me about anything.”