Page 79 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
This, I thought.This we can work with. I breathed a sigh of relief. If we could come back from the craziness of the past thirty minutes, we could find a way to make this work. Right?
Chaos, the only one on the move, shifted closer to Goldie. He’d been eying her headband since she walked in. I was certain of it now. The way his eyes tracked it during warm-up. Each sparkle calling like a homing beacon to him. The way he’d circled her mat twice during this latest pose, each pass slightly tighter than the last, like a very small, very deliberate planet establishing its orbiting pattern.
He made his move while she was deepest in her stretch.
One smooth dip. A single, surgical motion. The headband—green, enormous, rhinestones—lifted cleanly from her head without disturbing a single hair.
Goldie didn’t even break her stretch. “He has excellent taste.”
Chaos trotted away with it hanging from his mouth like a trophy. I watched him go, and decided not to intervene, knowing if I had he’d think we were playing a game of Keep Away.
Martha decided this was a good time to open up her enormous tote bag. She produced a thermos of tea, two granola bars, a paperback novel, a neck pillow, and a small framed photo that she propped against her water bottle without explanation. A closer look revealed a photo of her late husband Thomas, whom she had clearly decided was participating.
“Martha,” I said, a warning in my tone, not sure what else she’d pull out from her bag next that Chaos might decide to collect for his trophy collection.
“Thomas loves yoga,” she said firmly.
I had no response to that.
Gladys, having lost the kitten earlier to Theo, had decided to cultivate a personal relationship with the golden retriever, who was now lying fully across her lap.
“I can’t get up,” she announced in a tone that I couldn’t tell if she was amused or concerned.
“I’ll help—” Adam began to rise.
“Don’t wake Biscuit,” Gladys told him, frowning.
“That’s not his name,” a volunteer said.
“It is now,” Gladys replied.
Adam stayed put. Biscuit slept on. The volunteer let it go, which was probably the correct choice.
Chaos, having now thoroughly completed his investigation of the headband and found it wanting, dropped it where he stood and moved on. He had other business to attend to. Next, he attempted to climb onto my father’s lap. Dad, to his credit, simply held his forward fold, and pretended this was not happening. Chaos reassessed the difficulty and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Then the furry beast chewed on Adam’s shoe. Until he was distracted by Logan’s suit jacket, which was folded on a chair in the corner, and dragged it a full three feet before Logan noticed.
“That’s a good jacket,” Logan groaned.
Chaos stared at him.
“Please don’t,” Logan pleaded.
Chaos, in a shocking turn of events, dropped the jacket. Just like that. No negotiation. No incentive, no escalation. He just chose to stop, the way he’d chosen to start trouble, for reasons entirely his own.
What must it be like to live that way? To simply do things and stop doing things based purely on internal desire, with no plan, no awareness of how it affected anyone around you.
It looked exhausting. And also a bit freeing.
“Let’s sit up and stretch out onto our backs,” Cheryl quietly suggested.
The room had taken a more mellow tone, and the majority of the animals had stretched out beside participants.
“How is everyone feeling?” Delaney asked, walking through the room as everyone complied. Several animals followed, as if she’d been generating a low-frequency only they could detect. Even the beagle had given up his mat and trotted quietly behind her.
“Wonderful,” Gladys said from under the dog.
“Limber,” Glamma said, which for some reason made me cringe.
