Page 5 of Your Echo
“Okay,” he surmises, “so now that we’ve established Ace is a dick, a fact we were all already aware of, let’s move on to the point of this intervention.”
I still can’t believe he’s actually calling this is an intervention. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a crumpled sheet of blue paper. I look over the black lettering and see that it’s an ad for something called the Société de Méditation de Montréal.
Free guided meditation session offered every Sunday in Parc Lafontaine,reads the title in both English and French.Free your mind, eliminate stress, and find your focus. Bilingual instructions. Donations accepted. All proceeds will go to support the Société.
I crunch the paper into a ball.
“Funny,” I say, letting the ad fall to the floor.
Matt’s already on his feet. “It’s not a joke. We’re going right now.”
“We’regoing?” I repeat.
“Yes, all of us. We’re going to support you and get you back on track. Meditation is supposed to be very helpful for”—he stops and gestures up and down my body to indicate my general existence—“things.”
Matt knows better than anyone what ‘things’ go on in my head. I’ve never told anybody about the dreams, about the way the images are pressed into my brain like scar tissue, forcing an indent into the channel of my thoughts. Matt knows enough about my past that I’m sure he guesses. Hiding from someone gets harder after six years of being friends.
“No way.” I shake my head. “That stuff is all bullshit. You want to sit in a park and say ‘om’ for an hour?”
Right on cue, JP pulls himself into a cross-legged position on the couch and closes his eyes, hands poised on his knees.
“Ommm. Ommm,” he chants. He draws a huge breath in and slowly lets it out before jumping to his feet and raising his arms in the air. “Holy shit, it’s a miracle! I’m a new man.”
“See!” I say to Matt. “Even JP is making fun of this, and he usually loves stupid shit. He uses your Facebook group all the time.”
Matt glares at me. “It is auseful tool,” he hisses. “Now come on. We’re going to be late.”
He opens the door to the stairwell and JP trots after him, still holding his arms up like he’s celebrating his spiritual rebirth.
“You too, Cole!” Matt shouts back from the top of the stairs.
“Yeah, about that,” Cole calls. “I think I’ll—”
“No fucking way!” Matt’s disembodied voice protests. “This is a Sherbrooke Stationgroup activity, and you don’t get that half bottle of Jameson I promised you unless you come to meditation.”
“You promised himJamesonif he helped me stop drinking?” I shout, giving in and following JP up the stairs. “You have to see how totally fucked up that is.”
Matt admits he does, and then hurries us the few blocks up to the park like we’re some kind of dog sledding team. The afternoon sun feels like it’s searing my retinas as the headache I didn’t manage to sleep off throbs in my temples. Just gorgeous. If nothing else, sitting in the park with a bunch of chanting freaks will be a good opportunity to catch a nap.
We reach the edge of Parc Lafontaine: a few sprawling, tree-filled acres with a huge pond and a network of twisting paths. Shirtless douchebags in shorts that are way too tight run laps around the edge with iPhones strapped to their biceps. College kids sit on blankets by the water, strumming guitars and covertly smoking weed. Someone’s throwing their kid a birthday party at a picnic table, balloons and streamers hanging from the tree above.
“Do we knowwherein Parc Lafontaine this thing is?” JP asks.
“We’ll find it,” Matt assures us, stepping forward to take the lead again.
We scope out the park for a solid ten minutes without any results.
“What are we even looking for?” Cole asks. “Do they like, sit on mats? Chairs? Are there...candles?”
“We’re probably looking for an old person surrounded by other old people,” I supply.
“That’s not it, is it?”
JP’s pointing to a group of about a dozen people, all of them sitting cross-legged on a variety of mats and cushions, facing a blonde chick under a tree.
We walk over and the blonde gives us a wave, motioning for us to sit down as she chatters to the group about something in French. I don’t bother tuning into what she’s saying as we settle onto the grass. I focus on her mouth moving, but the sounds don’t turn into words. I’m too busy processing those fucking lips of hers to have room for anything else in my brain.
This girl is stunning: creamy skin, wide-set pale eyes, impossibly blonde hair that turns gold in the shifting sun, all wrapped up with a pair of bow lips and a cute gap between her front teeth. She looks like the definition of a sunny disposition, the kind of girl who laughs easy and twirls her hair, but I see right through it all in an instant.
I see the screaming matches, the shattered glass, the trail of broken hearts. There’s no way this woman hasn’t brought men to their knees just by passing them on the sidewalk, and beauty like that never strays too far from suffering. Girls like her either hide sadness in their smiles or a thirst for blood and tears, because you can’t be that pretty and not fuck shit up wherever you go.
She’s the kind of girl people write songs about.
