Go Touch Some Grass and Your Thumb Wheel

A short story

my best friend, my dog, and our own version of a Mindfulness Garden

The French accent isn’t cute; in fact, it sounds stupid, she thought when Julien asked her: 

“Doo you noe ow many deugriz is the fire?”

Now, she had to admit she’d never really thought about it. How hot were we talking? How hot would it have to be to melt flesh and incinerate it? She’d never experienced it herself. Never been in direct contact with fire. Well, that was not entirely true. There were these occasional accidents when someone’s cigarette would brush her arm or leg at a party, temporarily filling the air with the smell of hair barbecue. Surely, that counted. 

“I don’t know.”

“Guéss,” said Julien. 

“Like, a hundred?”

“That’s for wateur to boil, dummy. Ha ha ha (and turning to the rest of the group) Everyone, Lola iz a dummy. A big-ass demi.”

“Please, Julien, we don’t use those kinds of words here,” said Cocorico.

Cocorico wore a long-sleeve, baby-blue linen shirt, a thin covering where a body couldn’t hide. The sunlight revealed lean muscle lines and asceticism — graphic, for a place where you’re supposed to leave all temptations at the door. He hovered in the room, his lips stretched tight like an “I”. That is, unless he noticed people going off track; then he seized the moment to remind them why they were here.

“You all need to play along. Every one of you. Remember: the Calculator doesn’t act on chance. And anyway, as long as you’re breathing and will die one day, you all have something to say to each other.”

A girl with chipped nail polish placed her hand in front of her face, fingers pressed together, as she adjusted her hair. She stared into her fingers for a while, as though expecting her reflection to appear. Cocorico turned his head toward her, and a soft smile crept onto his face. He glided over to her; no one made a sound—they were either lost in their Thumb Wheels or their own thoughts. Tenderly, Cocorico began stroking the girl’s oily hair and, with his other hand, he took her mirror-hand and slowly, gradually, lowered it.

“Beauty isn’t there, Lizzie. It’s elsewhere. It’s here, he said, opening his arms toward the room. 

Dazed, Lizzie’s face filled with shame, as if silently admitting how silly of me, mistaking my hand for that thing from my old life, or something like that. 

The air was damp, heavy with a spicy smell, like rotten onion. Lola kept absentmindedly reaching for her pocket, fingers brushing empty fabric, searching for something she couldn’t quite remember. 

The next day, the Calculator paired Lizzie with Julien. Her hair no longer oily, she seemed reinvigorated. The room still smelled faintly of onions. Julien asked her a range of questions, like how many hearts does an octopus have, how long it takes for the brain to go kaput after you die, how fast is the universe expanding, like, right now? Lizzie giggled loudly. When he’d first introduced himself to the group, Julien hadn’t specified what it was he did in the past that brought him here. He’d simply said, ‘hello, my name iz Julien, and do you noe ow many French households gave that name diz year?’

Today, Lola was lucky. She sat across from a guy with a gigantic mouth that she wouldn’t mind welcoming between her legs. 

No. 

Focus. 

Be present. 

She let her hand drift into the disarray of Conversation Cards scattered across the box on the table. 

“How old are you ?” She read. 

The guy had eyes bright with wit. He didn’t look much older than her and unlike most of them, he didn’t have a Thumb Wheel. She wondered what it would feel like if he lay on top of her. 

Stop. 

Focus. 

Be present. 

“Twenty-one. You?” His voice was not what she expected—she’d imagined something more detached, something far, like the rest of him. Instead, it sounded like water flowing over rocks, like he could whisper a lullaby. 

“Nineteen.” Lola replied. 

He reached for a Conversation Card in the box. Lola noticed his long fingers and let herself imagine what they could do. And just as she was doing that, she felt a firm grip on her shoulders and Cocorico’s whisper caressing her ears: 

“Lola, just be present, can you do that for me?”

She suspected Cocorico had some kind of hidden device that connected him to the Calculator, feeding him every detail. Otherwise, how could he possibly know? It had been gnawing at her ever since she arrived. She almost considered filing an inquiry with Helpdesk, about how unethical to the Process it seemed for Cocorico to have some kind of device when they were not allowed any. But she could already picture the answer: a bunch of nonsense about his experience giving him some sort of special insight, enabling him to find the perfect balance. The same balance that had brought her here — the one they had promised her parents they could help her reach.  

“How long have you been here?” The guy read. 

“Two days. You?” Lola replied. 

“Third month since yesterday.” He looked inside his jeans pocket, and with his long, very long fingers, handed her a small wooden chip that read « #3 months off the WWW ». Lola’s hands instinctively searched her pockets too, uneasy. Remembering it wasn’t there, she let her thumb slide on her Thumb Wheel and tried to observe that soothing feeling within herself.

Outside, Cocorico led the way to the gardens, moving gracefully, so you couldn’t even hear his steps on the gravel.  

As the little group turned left and approached the sign that read “Mindfulness Gardens”, some people began breathing heavily, verging on hyperventilation. 

“Don’t feel pressured to sit on Nature or touch it,” Cocorico said without turning around. “I never want my students to feel any pressure. You can start by sitting on the benches and doing breathing exercises.” 

The group walked in unison, their steps anxious. They stopped at the base of an arched doorway entangled with vines. In front of them and beyond stretched a canopy of fresh green, scattered with small wildflowers here and there. The trees were budding, their delicate young leaves filtering sunlight into soft patterns on the ground. It buzzed with bees and the promise of new beginnings. Overwhelmed, Lola reached for her Thumb Wheel, as she tried to practice mindfulness. 

Suddenly, a scream. A tortured “GGGHHHHAAAAAAAH” came not from the gardens, not from the path, but from them. It was a girl Lola always saw biting on something, whether her Thumb Wheel or her nails. 

“Sarah, is something wrong?” Cocorico asked gently. 

“Is something wrong? Are you kidding me?” She threw her arms up, gesturing wildly. Pointing to a tree, she continued, “Here, it lacks Exposure!” Then, pointing to a bush, “There, it needs more Saturation. And over here, at the very least thirty percent more Contrast. And in general, at least fifty percent more Brightness! Please Cocorico, tell them to give it back to me. I need to make the edits. I can’t make any edits with this stupid wooden wheel, it can’t do anything, she cried, shaking her Thumb Wheel in frustration. Let me make the edits, and then I’ll go sit, I promise.”

Lola didn’t catch what Cocorico and that girl Sarah were discussing on the bench. Some kids had spread out across the gardens. She noticed Lizzie and Julien holding hands near a giant apple tree. The guy still stood beside her. She wanted to ask him something but couldn’t quite remember what, so instead she stared at him, her gaze restless and searching. He shifted, avoiding eye-contact, and in the silence, she reached for her Thumb Wheel, wishing she still had the deck of Conversation Cards to bridge the awkward emptiness between them. 

“So, you’re Lola, right? I’m Tim,” the guy said. 

Oh, right. That’s what she’d been meaning to ask. Come on, Lola. 

Focus. 

Be present. 

They walked between rows of shadowed trees. Occasionally, they passed through clouds of gnats, and Lola kept her mouth shut to avoid accidentally swallowing one. 

They found a patch of sunlight near a cherry tree. Lola layed down, the dampness seeping into her back and legs, making her shiver. Tim sat nearby, elbows on his knees, stroking the grass with his palm. 

“So, tell me”, she began, “is this place legit, like, for real? My folks heard great things about it; they wouldn’t let it go. But, like, does it actually…work?” 

“You mean, if I’ve become more present?” He asked. 

Lola nodded. A bee landed on her head. 

“I don’t know, you tell me,” he admitted. “I guess more than before, that’s for sure. I used to cling to my Thumb Wheel constantly, even in my sleep. I’d wake up in a panic, scroll for a bit, and it would calm me down. Now I barely even touch it anymore. With time, you find new things to cling to.” 

“That sounds promising to me,” Lola said. 

“On good days, yes. But sometimes, I start thinking about the rush I’ll get from all the notifications waiting for me when they give it back and I go nuts, like, so dizzy. Like a ticking bomb.” 

“It really is scary,” Lola said. “Like that girl who thought the gardens were a photo, or something? What was that all about?” she asked. 

“I get her. I was really obsessed with pictures too,” he said, cutting a blade of grass between his fingers.

She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, and she wasn’t going to ask. One of the first things they do is they give you a Thumb Wheel and tell you to never ask the others why they’re here. After all, they were all here for the same reason, in a way. 

Focus. 

Be present. 

She stared at the sky above and watched the clouds drift by. If she squinted, it almost looked like a fifteen second loop. 

In her mind, the clouds had names, each a character in its own fifteen second clip. She felt a soft tickle and realized the bee was still on her head. She didn’t mind; the bee was probably napping now, and Lola didn’t want to wake her up. 

Lola noticed a cloud racing left to right across the imagined loop, vanishing before she could fully take it in. She remembered what Julien had said about the universe constantly expanding, and realized that she, too, was like a cloud—a tiny, molecular cloud, that could disappear from its ever-expanding screen this very second, say, if she found out she was allergic to a bee sting. That thought burned inside her, like someone had spilled acid across her chest. But instead of reaching for her Thumb Wheel, she chose to welcome the sting of it. 

She turned to Tim, who was still playing with the grass, and asked: 

“So, how hot do you think fire is?”