The Glare

by Margot Harrison

  The girl is me. Someone whistles, and she turns to find a boy with freckled cheeks—my friend Ellis. “They’re coming,” he says.

  Fear rockets down the girl’s spine; she hears them slithering through the leaves. “Let’s go!”

  The boy runs, and she runs after him as the wind rises. A sickly blue light bleeds through the trees. Together they wriggle inside the tower, where a stink of old burning sears their nostrils. The tower is a smokestack rising to a ring of bright sky, and that brightness is the Glare. A good Glare, a light that will never hurt them.

  But now clouds film over the sky, forming a shape like a grinning skull. The girl shivers.

  The boy releases her hand. “You have to leave, Hedda. You’re already dead—did you forget?”

  How can he say that? How can he abandon her? “I’m not!” she yells.

  A wind swirls up from nowhere and drags the girl outside, away from the boy. She screams, but his back is turned.

  The storm rips leaves from trees as the girl runs helter-skelter, looking for a tree with a safety rune on the trunk. Stray twigs sting her cheeks. A massive branch falls in her path, and she staggers backward. A high keening splits the air. They’re here.

  All the trees are one tree, the leaves thrashing above and the deadfall crackling ominously below. Something stirs under those leaves, slithering toward the girl, and she tries to run, but her legs won’t work. Something perches on a branch above her, crouched to spring, and she screams and screams—

  And I cry out and wake to my room, starting to lighten with the new day.

  My heart’s racing, my body drenched in sweat. I throw off the blanket and breathe deeply until everything slows down to normal. The nightmare is as familiar to me as the lines on my palm. Ellis always deserts me in it, though in real life I was the one who left him behind.

  Dawn creeps over the creek and the cottonwoods, the sky violet again from mesa to flat horizon, and I need Mom.

  When I think of how we fought yesterday, a ragged void opens inside me. The two or three months we plan to be apart might as well be forever.

  I tiptoe down the hall and ease the door of her room open. She doesn’t stir, a dark lump under the covers, her jaw swollen with the mouthguard that keeps her from grinding her teeth all night.

  Part of me wants to creep into bed with her like I did when I was six and had the black tower nightmare, and part of me is pretty sure she’d scream bloody murder. She solves the dilemma by opening her eyes. At first they widen with panic, but then she wakes for real, her face becoming the calm, patient one she always had when she bandaged my scrapes and reassured me there were no monsters under the bed.

  As she yanks the mouthguard out, I say, “I’m sorry.”

  She holds out her arms, and I sink onto the bed and into the hug. Her breath is soft and even, raising fine hairs on the back of my neck as she says, “It’s a big change for us both.”

  And I can handle it, something whispers deep inside me, still rebellious, but I stay still and let the warm cliff of her body protect me one last time, knowing that tonight I won’t sleep in the bed I woke in.

  I’m going home. And when—if—I come back here, I won’t be the same.

  The airport has acres of stainless steel and mirrors and clanking conveyor belts. Boxes of bluish Glare flicker everywhere—bolted to posts, on people’s laps, in people’s hands, on people’s wrists. Even children have them.

  Is California like this? My experiences at Walmart, the feed store, and the county fair haven’t prepared me for this level of Glare.

  It’s not the Glare that really fascinates me, though; it’s the girls my age. I’ve read every book in the town library about them: Carrie and The Runaway’s Diary and Go Ask Alice and newer books when I could find them. I know never to go anywhere with a stranger you meet at a bus station, never to assume a cute guy is also nice, and never to trust popular girls. I even know what texting and friending are, in a vague way, and how to hold a phone.

  But these girls—they’re real. They wear ponytails and pin-striped shorts and frilly blouses and leggings and headwraps. They stretch out their long, tanned legs and yawn as if everything bores them. They tap on their phones like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  I know how to avert my eyes from the Glare so Mom won’t think it’s sucking me in. But how can I be friends with girls like this without using the Glare?

  Mom must be noticing my furtive eyes, because she says, “You’re okay, Hedda. You know you’re okay.”

  “I know.” I try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. She’s already scrutinizing me for signs of losing control.

  It hurt saying goodbye to the goats and the chickens. It hurt driving away, smelling the familiar blend of moist clay and gritty sand and animal dung. And it hurts as we stand at the gate and she folds me in her arms.

  “Maybe you’ll find Raggedy Ann,” she says as we come apart.

  She’s told me the story a hundred times: When we were halfway to Arizona, I wailed because I’d forgotten to pack my favorite doll. Dad promised to bring her to our first birthday dinner, then claimed he couldn’t find her.

  “Maybe.” I think of those girls again, how they’d roll their eyes and maybe call me a freak. I’m not a child. Stop wishing I were.

  “Your dad understands everything. He promised he won’t give you culture shock.”

  “Okay.”

  Mom’s crying, her eyes too bright in her wind-burnt face, the ranch’s scent clinging to her fleece. As her arms wrap tight around me, I feel cold, like she’s already gone, and I whisper, “I love you.”

  It’s harder to ignore the Glare on the plane, where it’s right in my face. The back of each seat has a tiny screen embedded in it, and the instant the lights blink on, so do the screens. Their sharp-edged jewel brightness draws me in: winking, twitching, flashing. Like they’re trying to send me signals.

  Did Mom know about this? Presumably not.

  If my senses reached out into the desert and found only emptiness, here they’re overloaded. My stomach flips over, and for an instant I forget the Glare is no more dangerous than secondhand tobacco smoke. Probably less. Mom’s books disagree on what exactly glowing screens do to people’s brains, but lung cancer isn’t involved.

  Mom gave me a pill to take in case my first flight made me nervous. I didn’t mean to use it, but now I reach into the front pocket of my backpack, pull out the dusty-rose tablet, and swallow it dry.

  Once I get to California, every conversation with Dad will be crucial. For the past ten years, he’s obeyed Mom’s rules around me, never even openly questioning them. If I want to go to school, if I want to avoid a future of New Genesis or growing old with Mom on the ranch, I need to show him I can control myself, too.

  Two rows ahead of me, a girl with a purple streak in her hair taps on a book-sized Glare-box. She looks calm and confident, like she’s flown hundreds of times.

  I close my eyes, waiting for the pill to kick in. The plane rolls, the engines whining, the oil stink making my stomach shrivel. Cheerful, tinny voices from everywhere yell about seat belts, exit rows, and oxygen masks.

  Not real voices; they’re in the Glare. I think we’re supposed to look.

  Control yourself. My head’s starting to feel fuzzy, my ears refocusing on the vibrations beyond the cabin. The engines roar. The plane shivers with eagerness to fly, then wheezes and rockets across the tarmac.

  When we leave the ground, my stomach drops away. I open my eyes, hoping to see Phoenix shrinking below us, but my seatmate has lowered the shade.

  The Glare-screens have gone mute, but their shimmer still draws me, and I let myself drink in some of the moving pictures. A tanned, toned couple in bathing suits perch above the ocean, toasting each other with glasses full of fruit and flowers. The colors sear my eyes, the shivery-precise images like winter and spring at once.

  I close my eyes again. Think goals. I need to be nice, to show Dad and his new family how ada
ptable and grounded I am. I need to talk about the Glare as little as possible, making it clear I’m not greedy for their shiny devices but I’m not judging them, either. Instead, I’ll talk about school and how much I love learning.

  Kids pick on kids who are different. Girls might give you a hard time, even call you a freak. That’s what Mom’s been saying ever since I turned thirteen and started begging to try out real school. I tell myself that if I can face down rattlesnakes, I can face down meanness, but it’s hard to be sure what you can do when you’ve never been tested.

  At least my stepmother doesn’t seem mean—in Dad’s Polaroids, she’s young, pretty, and smiling. I imagine her taking me out to buy stylish clothes, then hugging me as we drink those elaborate whipped-cream coffees together. Dad will listen intently as I tell him about my latest read (Richard Feynman on quantum theory), and then he’ll say, I don’t care what Jane thinks. You need a real education.

  Light keeps moving behind my eyelids, and before I know it, I’m looking at the Glare again. Without the sound, it’s a jumble of images telling a story I can only guess at. Each time the scene shifts, the screen flashes, and I blink. Woman in bikini laughing. Fingers intertwined. Man and woman kissing. Pineapple. Cocktail shaker. Waves on sand. DIRECT WEEKDAY SERVICE TO ISLAND DESTINATIONS. Then, after only a slightly harder blink: Ship on dark water. Rocket blazing across sky. People running. Buildings exploding. THE WARTIME EPIC OF THE DECADE—

  Next comes something about weight loss, and then something about a family living in space, and my head pounds, pounds, too many questions, and I return to my private imaginings, but they’ve become wilder now, brilliant and exciting.

  I’m at a party with an older version of Mireya, dancing in an off-the-shoulder top, checking a phone and laughing. I’m back with Mom, only I’m taller and tanner with amazing silky hair, and she’s frowning and saying words I can’t understand because my new life is a train taking me away from her, faster and faster.

  An amplified voice mutters in the distance. I float in grayness, soft and peaceful, all the images swept away.

  Wind rises in the forest, and with it come a slide and rustle like a snake in gritty sand. The sound caresses each of my vertebrae, pricking my spine like a high-voltage station.

  You’re dreaming. Wake up.

  Ping. My eyes open on the Glare. Cold, chalky fingers snake themselves around my left wrist and hold on tight.

  I scream and rear up, my other hand reaching across my body to thrust the attacker away. The seat belt yanks me back down, but there’s nothing to fight anyway. No one there but my seatmate, whose hands are busy knitting.

  I try to catch my breath, but there’s nowhere to look but into the Glare, and every single screen shows me the same thing:

  A jagged white face made of sky and clouds. A skull.

  A skull grinning down at me.

  Warm hands press my shoulders against the seat—a flight attendant with a blond ponytail and navy pantsuit. “Deep breaths,” she says.

  I’m on a plane. I’m safe. I take deep breaths. The colors of the world, the air in my lungs—nothing feels real. Was the skull a dream, too?

  “You’re all right,” the flight attendant tells me, but she doesn’t let go. I crane my neck around her restraining arms, trying to catch a glimpse of the nearest screen.

  A family on vacation, riding a roller coaster and eating cotton candy. All sun and happiness and rollicking adventure. It wasn’t real. Not real, not real, not real—

  “She was just having a bad dream,” says the grandmotherly woman beside me. “Weren’t you, honey?”

  I nod, my cheeks burning as I return to reality—canned air, someone’s perfume, the rumbling engine. The girl with purple-streaked hair has turned to look at me, white cords dangling from her ears. She stares the way you do at someone who’s off-kilter in public. I want to die.

  The two other flight attendants bustle around, coaxing people back down with maternal whispers. The one who’s taken charge of me brings me water and asks if I take any calming medications, if I need something now.

  “No thanks.” Please let this be over soon. Please don’t let me mess up again. “Just a bad dream.”

  “Well, we’re about to start our descent. Buckle your seat belt. I’ll check on you when we’re on the ground.”

  My grandmotherly seatmate promises to keep an eye on me. More deep breaths.

  Less than two hours away from Mom, and I’ve already called dangerous attention to myself. The memory of her skeptical voice, her steady stare, makes my fists clench.

  Control yourself. But that doesn’t mean avoiding screens, it just means not letting them freak me out. If I want to be normal, I need to get used to normal things. I need to get used to the Glare.

  The flight attendant follows me up the Jetway and past the ticket counters. “I’m really okay,” I promise over and over. Please don’t talk to Dad. Please go away.

  When we reach the arrivals lounge, she says, “Stay safe, hon,” and strides briskly on. I look frantically for a restroom where I can calm my wild hair and dab my raccooned, red-rimmed eyes, but it’s too late—here’s Dad.

  How does my face look? Is my smile normal, or crooked? Do I seem off-kilter?

  To my relief, his hazel eyes are calm behind his rectangular glasses with thin wire rims. Then I’m being pressed against his sport coat, smelling his cologne, feeling the slight paunch that pushes out his crisp button-down. Often he wears cartoon-character T-shirts to my birthday dinners, and then Mom teases him: “When are you going to grow up, Mike?”

  His face is still serene as we come apart. “Flying sucks, doesn’t it? At least you had a short one.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It wasn’t bad at all.”

  Mom likes to say Dad’s ability not to notice things is practically a superpower. To me that never seemed like such a bad thing. He didn’t need to notice us, because he always won at chess and knew everything about everything. He was benign, distant, and self-possessed, like a wizard in a book.

  But there were things I didn’t notice about him, either. Without Mom here to counterbalance him, I spot the sweat glistening at his temples, the nick where he cut himself shaving. He’s life-sized now, and one of the things he’s no longer hiding from me is his connection to the Glare.

  As we wait for the baggage carousel, Dad excuses himself, takes three paces from me, and pulls out his phone. He doesn’t use it long, but as we step outside into the crisp, springlike air, it buzzes again.

  “I’m sorry, Hedda.” He ducks inside the concrete taxi shelter. “This won’t take a second.”

  “I don’t mind.” I have plenty of distractions, starting with the cars zooming everywhere. Already my feet ache from walking longer on pavement in a single day than I usually do in a year.

  Dad’s car is sleek, bone-white. When we’re buckled up, he touches something, and the interior comes to weird, quiet life, a Glare-screen flickering on the dashboard.

  My eyes dart away, and I feel a strange tingling at the back of my thighs, part queasiness and part yearning. I half expect to see that skull again, but there’s only a map.

  Queasy or not, I need to practice looking. According to Mom’s books, screen addiction comes from interaction, and I’m not doing that, am I?

  I wonder how Dad feels about being addicted as he accelerates onto an enormous freeway that groans with traffic. My eyes dart from the screen to his face. How long until I can start asking him about school? The rush of the wind gives me confidence; it’s not a question of wanting or wishing, but of willing, because now that I’m free, no one can put me back in the cage. Does he feel free in this life, too? I think he does.

  We rocket toward a clump of skyscrapers on the horizon, the engine whirring in ghostly quiet, our speed like an optical illusion. “This is a Tesla,” Dad explains. “Fully electric.”

  As the highway snakes through the city, I almost stop breathing. Western light gilds towers of glass and steel—are ther
e really enough people to fill them? From a distance, all I see are cars.

  I could live here. After college, I can live anywhere I want.

  As Dad points out Twin Peaks and Golden Gate Park, I wonder what he remembers about me, what he expects. For every birthday, he gives me a couple of fat books that serve as a conversation starter for next year. We hardly ever talk about my life on the ranch, Dad’s new family, or his job in the Glare.

  The arches of the Golden Gate Bridge, the color of dried blood, etch themselves in the sky. The air over the bay shimmers like a diaphanous veil.

  So beautiful. So unreal.

  On the other side of the bridge, in Marin, we exit the highway in a city where date palms frame adobe facades as clean and smooth as cake frosting. There’s an old-time movie marquee and a gleaming Mission-style church. Everything looks like set dressing for a dream, barring the occasional grimy basement window or mean-eyed seagull.

  “Is this San Rafael?”

  “You don’t recognize it?” He sounds disappointed.

  I thought I remembered my life here, but it looks different now. I’ve always known that Dad has money. But as the near-silent car floats up a street lined with graceful, glittering cottonwoods, I see what money can buy. Before the goats and the chickens and the rusty, airbag-less trucks, this was how we lived. This light-filled place is what I lost.

  We slow before a house that seems to tower in the tree branches, shielded from the street by a steep flight of stairs. The brown-shingled house. My first home.

  The watery forms of memory coalesce into solid things. The central gable. The three sets of cream-colored pillars that frame the door like piping on a uniform. The picture windows on either side.

  I climbed up on that roof once—so high! My room was in that front gable.

  “It’s the same.” My voice quavers, and abruptly tears bulldoze my composure, coming so fast and hot I can’t blink. For a few seconds, crying feels like vomiting, like drowning.