The Broken Rules of Ten Read online

  Praise for The Broken Rules of Ten

  “If you like adventure and mystery flavored with spiritual wisdom, you’ll like the new book in the Tenzing Norbu series! It’s a prequel set in the monastery when Ten was just turning thirteen. Through his struggles to understand women, sex, and the complications of relationships, you get to see the formative events that made Ten the detective he became. Enjoy!”

  —John Gray, Ph.D., author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

  “Adventure, enlightenment, and love—all taking place in a hidden monastery in the foothills of the Himalayas! If you like mindful mysteries—the kind where spiritual wisdom and adventure are woven together—this one is for you.”

  —Marci Shimoff, author of New York Times best-sellers Happy for No Reason and Love for No Reason

  “Tenzing Norbu is one of the most original sleuths to come along in the last few years, but the authors have outdone themselves this time! A detective who’s an ex–Tibetan monk is juicy enough, but a mystery about a pubescent lama grappling all at once with hormones, his controlling dad, crime, betrayal, and not just girls, but Women—not to mention the Dharma—is just so yummy you’ll want to eat it. Download and devour.”

  —Julie Smith, Edgar-winning author of the Skip Langdon series

  “Ten at 13 is just as fascinating and likeable as he is in adulthood—and the mystery he solves here is touchingly close to home. Exciting, enlightening and loads of fun, The Broken Rules of Ten is not to be missed.”

  —Alison Gaylin, Edgar nominee and best-selling author of the Brenna Spector detective series

  “The Broken Rules of Ten is a 10! I read it in one sitting and loved every page. What an original, engaging and intriguing story!”

  —Arielle Ford, author of Wabi Sabi Love

  The Broken Rules of Ten

  Also by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay

  The First Rule of Ten

  The Second Rule of Ten

  All of the above are available at your local bookstore, or may be ordered by visiting:

  Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com®

  Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au

  Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk

  Hay House South Africa: www.hayhouse.co.za

  Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in

  Copyright © 2013 by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay

  Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com® • Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au • Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk • Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za • Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast: www.raincoast.com • Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

  Cover design: Charles McStravick

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, or persons living or deceased, is strictly coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-4019-4306-6

  Somewhere Between Delhi and Paris

  April 27, 1994

  I press my nose against the icy glass. The plane has penetrated a thick bank of clouds. There’s nothing to see. Nothing.

  India and a beautiful girl called Pema lie far behind me. France is still a long way ahead. I have no idea where I am right now.

  How perfect is that.

  Because of me, one boy is dead, another has vanished into thin air, and Dharamshala is in flames. No wonder they’re shipping me back to my mother a month early. I’ve been suspended from the monastery, maybe permanently. I should be relieved, but mostly I just feel empty. Cut off, like the view outside.

  Yeshe thinks if I chant the Confession Sutra enough times things will turn out fine. “Please, Tenzing,” he begged as I left. “Just do it. It will clear everything away.” I’m not so sure, but I guess it’s worth a try.

  I lean back in my seat. The steady hum of the engine is oddly soothing. I close my eyes . . .

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  CHAPTER 1

  Five Days Earlier

  Dorje Yidam Monastery, Dharamshala, India

  A girl dances with abandon . . . her arms and hands a blur . . . her legs gracefully extending . . . light streaming from her fingers and toes. I am being drawn into the dance but I don’t know how and I’m not sure I should and . . . oh!

  My eyes popped open and in my first moment of awakening I felt a wave of shame mingled with the welcome release.

  It’s happened again. The third time this month. I’m running out of hiding places.

  My mind switched over to English. The ancient sage Vasubhandu may have given Tibetan Buddhists detailed definitions for the 51 different mind states, but he somehow forgot to include anything close to what I was feeling right now. I happen to know this, because I am in the process of memorizing all 51 for Lama Gamden’s introductory class on Root Texts. Ask Lama Gamden about the difference between “resolution” and “aspiration,” or “subtle discernment as it relates to intention,” or “clear-minded tranquility,” and he’ll talk for hours, his thick black eyebrows rising and falling with each emphatic statement.

  Ask him about hot-faced shame? I don’t think so.

  The room was black as pitch, the night air thick and heavy. I could just make out Lobsang’s comforting form curled up on a thin mattress right next to mine. Fourteen other pallets just like it, filled with fourteen other sleeping boys, lay in two neat rows along the wooden dormitory floor. The soft ruffle of Lobsang’s out-breath sounded funny, like dry pages turned by a stiff wind. I tried to make out my other best friend, Yeshe, but he was too far away. He got moved last week to the other end of our sleeping quarters, no explanation given. Someone must have heard us whispering. Told on us. We came back from debating to find his bed dragged to the opposite wall, making it tricky if I need him to cover for me again.

  I guess that’s the point.

  I pulled the bunched fabric of my shemdap away from my thighs and felt around with my hand to determine the extent of the damage.

  Why does this keep happening to me?

  A sharp ache twisted in the center of my chest, right under the breastbone, as if an actual fist was squeezing all the blood out of my heart. Palden Lhamo, Protectress who performs all pacifying deeds, pacify my illnesses, hindrances, and ghosts.

  I checked in on my breath.

  What breath?

  And now the other thing started, the nameless cramping, not in my muscles exactly, but more in between them, if that even makes sense. I bit down on the inside of my cheeks until the sensation passed.

  Maybe I’m dying. Actually dying.

  Well, so what if I am? Death wouldn’t be so bad. Better than this sticky mess I keep finding myself in. />
  My breath eased a little. Funny how that works—sometimes thinking about the worst thing that could happen actually makes me feel better. So I kept going: If I were to die, before I even made it to 13, how would they both feel? My mother, back in Paris, would be heartbroken, of course. Especially if she was sober. But she wouldn’t be able to resist temptation for long. Soon my death would be just another excuse for her to swallow more pills, guzzle more wine. “I’m so bummed about this,” she’d say, in a sloppy drawl. Would Valerie, as she insists I call her, feel even the smallest speck of guilt that she forced me to join my Tibetan father in his Dharamshala monastery months ahead of schedule this year, so she and her new husband could drink and argue in peace? Missing Christmas. Missing the school play. Missing the human sexuality class that might have warned me about stains on my shemdap, might have explained why almost overnight there’s a small patch of fuzz under my arms and stray sprouts of wiry hair, down there. Why lately every sit, every walk, every chant, every meal, let’s face it, every moment of every day, I catch myself thinking about Pema.

  I should be in Paris right now. School there isn’t great—a kid who disappears late every spring, and reappears, bald, every autumn, isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity—but at least I get to sit in class with actual girls, and without getting yelled at for noticing them.

  Pema. Rose. I don’t even know her last name, so I call her Pema-from-Lhasa. She looks about my age, 12 or 13. She and her older sister Dawa are part of the flood of displaced Tibetans living below our monastery, in the village of Macleod-Ganj.

  Every few days Pema and Dawa climb the steep path from the village to deliver supplies and help out around the monastery kitchen. I’d seen them around when I was on kitchen duty last summer, right before I was sent back to Paris, but never paid much attention to either girl. Pema was scrawny and awkward, like me, and Dawa was thick-bodied and kind of plain-looking. Then, maybe a month ago, Pema paused in the doorway after dropping off a basket of green bananas. Sunlight framed her glossy black hair and slender form. My body responded before my eyes could fully register what they were seeing. She had swells and contours on her chest—had they been there all the time? The hint of softness under the rough wool of her blouse was mesmerizing. Pema caught me staring and I ducked my head as heat exploded in my cheeks, but not before I noticed a slight smile on her perfect face. Then Dawa grabbed her by the arm and hustled her off.

  Maybe this damp spot on my underskirt, this loose ache in my kneecaps and hipbones, as if they’ve been forced apart to create extra space between the joints, maybe this dark twist in my chest is what happens when someone’s sick with love. Or maybe I’ll be dead before I ever get to kiss Pema, or let’s face it, get to kiss anyone, ever, period, end of discussion.

  The ache sharpened, and I almost groaned out loud.

  As for Apa’s reaction, that’s easy. My father would just retreat to his Disciplinarian’s quarters and emerge four days later clutching some lecture or other on how death happens to everyone, even fathers. How grief is of no use on the path of freedom from the wheel of samsara. He’d probably pull out that mustard seed story about the young orphan girl, Kita Gotami, whose kid suddenly up and died on her. Lama Gamden used it for his Dharma lesson last week. Kita Gotami begged Shakyamuni (also called Transcended-Accomplished, Gone-to-Thusness, Destroyer-of-Inner-Foes, Completely-Perfectly-Awakened, All-Victorious, Shakya Sage, but mainly known as “the Buddha”) to tell her how to bring her little boy back to life. He told her, no problem, he could help her. All she had to do was borrow some mustard seeds from a neighbor. But this being the Buddha, naturally there was a catch. “Kita Gotami,” he said, “you can only borrow the mustard seeds from a household that has never experienced a death in their lives, whether it be a child or a parent or a friend or a husband.” And guess what? She not only came up empty, she made a lot of people mad, because it turns out every single household was touched by death, but no one wanted to think about it. “The living are few, but the dead are many,” they supposedly said. “Do not remind us of our deepest grief.”

  Then, of course, Kita Gotami saw the light, and ran back into the forest, and took refuge in the Buddha. “As must we all!” urged Lama Gamden, pinning us with his glare, eyes blazing under a hedge of eyebrows. “For all mortals are subject to birth, old age, sickness, and death! All!”

  The Buddha was constantly talking about death. I’m thinking this is probably because it made his followers more willing to go along with his 20-gazillion life-rules for how to be a good monk. Okay, more like 223, but still.

  Yeshe and Lobsang loved that lesson. Lobsang said it was really inspiring. Yeshe confided he thought Kita Gotami was very lucky to have found the Buddha when she did. But I kept thinking about that dead little boy. What about his luck?

  I rolled off the hard mattress onto the hard floor and grabbed the folded pieces of my maroon monk’s uniform from the cubby in the wall behind my bed: dhonka, or wrap-around cap-sleeved shirt; backup shemdap, or underskirt, recently “borrowed” from the clothesline for just such situations; and a huge rectangle of cloth, the zhen robe, hardest of all to tie neatly and properly. Tonight, I didn’t even try, just kind of wrapped and rolled it around my waist and tossed one corner over my shoulder as quickly as possible. It’s not like anyone was going to see me.

  I bundled the messed-up shemdap into a ball, stuffed it in my yellow monk’s bag, picked up my sandals, and tiptoed between the two rows of sleeping boys. I wouldn’t bother waking Lobsang or Yeshe—the thick dark told me I’d only been asleep a few hours. Kitchen duty, followed by morning prayers and prostrations, was hours away. I’d be back long before then.

  I caught a small movement to my right, someone shifting under their blanket. Yeshe? No. The new guy, Lama Tanzen. I waited for silence to once again descend before moving on.

  I shoved my bare feet into my sandals once I reached the courtyard. My heels were starting to droop over the back of them. Soon I’d have to trade them in for a bigger pair. I thought longingly of the big black Nike Air Jordans, barely worn, size 9 ½, zipped away in my duffel bag in the monastery storeroom. Valerie brought them home last November, right before I left. She’d picked them up “for a song” at the Montreuil flea market near our apartment, along with a black hooded cardigan, men’s medium, a secondhand pair of jeans, boys’ size 16, and a blue baseball cap with the initials L.A. on the front, discarded by some American tourist—no Frenchman would be caught dead wearing one.

  “Look, aren’t they groovy?” she’d crowed. My mother was born in America. She likes to say she grew up in the ’60s, but if you ask me, she never grew up at all.

  Except for the hat, everything was huge on me, but Valerie brushed aside my protests. She said the way my feet were growing, the rest of me was sure to catch up, and everything would fit just fine by the time I returned to Paris in July.

  I hate having a monk for a father and a hippie for a mother.

  Actually, the Nikes were pretty great, and I told Valerie so, earning a warm smile and a hug. She tries, she really does. I just think some people aren’t cut out to be parents, and somehow I got two of them for mine.

  So my arrival at Dorje Yidam Monastery this year was even more awkward and embarrassing than usual, with skinny little me swimming in the clothes of a much bigger person, my feet sticking out like big black Nike canoes. For once, I changed into my robe and sandals with relief.

  Now the sandals and I slip-slopped along one side of the dormitory building. I stuck to the shadowed rectangular walkway and quietly let myself out the corner gate that led into the main monastery grounds. The outdoor water pump, my goal, was at the far end of the property, near the kitchen.

  The night was definitely a little warmer. It was late April, and I could smell the change in the air. Then I smelled something else—a sharp, tangy scent drifting my way from the direction of our brand new prayer hall. I knew that smell. I was on a field trip last year at my international école—our sixth-gr
ade class was visiting the famous cemetery, Pére Lachaise—when I snuck away from the group so I could find the tombstone of this rock star named Jim Morrison. Valerie had made me promise to put flowers on his headstone—I guess she heard him sing once or something, right before he died, and that was it for her. Thanks to him, when she left Dharamshala and my father, “big as a house” with me, she moved to Paris to be like him, a “free spirit.”

  Right. Free to wreck my life.

  Anyway, I came around the corner clutching the limp bouquet of daisies she’d given me, and spotted two men standing over Jim Morrison’s grave, staring at some writing. Long dreadlocks dangled like thick black snakes from beneath their knitted caps. They were passing a hand-rolled cigarette back and forth. One of the men caught my eye.

  He smiled. His teeth were crooked and stained yellow. “Ganja?” he asked, waving the cigarette in my direction. I stumbled backward, dropping the flowers. Their laughter only made it worse. I heard my teacher calling for me, and I turned and ran. But I never forgot the sharp odor, like burning leaves. I smelled it a few more times after that. Once, at the flea market. Once, from an alleyway off the Rue des Rigoles. And once, drifting like poison from underneath Valerie’s closed bedroom door.

  I just never in a million years expected to smell ganja here at Dorje Yidam.

  I followed the scent around the prayer hall to the construction area in the back. I stopped abruptly. Two shadowy figures stood close together next to a mounded pile of leftover dirt and lumber. A glowing tip passed back and forth between the two boys. One was Indian, older than me, maybe 15 or 16. He was wearing loose white cotton pants and a shiny powder-blue shirt with a yellow stripe across the chest—some sort of team uniform. I’d never seen him before, but his folded cap of embroidered cloth told me he was likely a shepherd boy, a Gaddi. Lower Macleod-Ganj was loaded with them. The other, taller boy wore a robe like mine; only his was perfectly wrapped and tied. He inhaled deeply, and above the glow I could make out black, flashing eyes, high cheekbones, and strong, curved lips.