Mireya’s instantly on her feet, a protective arm around me. “What happened?”
She’s looking at me. They’re all looking at me. My eyes sweep the room, my cheeks flooding with blood.
“Are you all right?” the teacher asks, her blinks coming faster now. “Are you all right, uh…?”
“Hedda,” Mireya says at the same time that a pair of long, blue-jeaned legs slide over the empty desk beside me, and a pair of Converse slap the floor.
It’s Ellis, holding out a bottle of water. He doesn’t seem winded from clambering over the desks. “Are you okay, Hedda?”
“Fine.” Not thirsty, I gulp the water anyway, trying to think of an excuse. “I had a leg cramp. I’m so sorry.”
The teacher sighs long-sufferingly. “Mr. Westover, please return to your seat. I don’t think your medical services are required. No, not on the desks this time.”
As Mireya and I sit down, and Ellis trudges into the aisle and back to his seat, people recoil and titter. People turn to look. I smell Sharpie ink and disinfectant and somebody’s mint gum.
When I turn to face the front, the arm is still there.
It’s retreated to the edge of the glowing board, no longer showing me its palm, but I see the shifting and pulsing of its strange, flexible, shiny skin.
I barely breathe, but I don’t look away. What did Rory say about facing it head-on? Is this what Rory saw? Maybe we’re not just confirming each other’s bias, after all.
Minutes crawl. Bit by bit, the roundness of the Earth is proved. I remember Mom telling me the Glare would get inside my brain and reprogram me, and I remember the goats butting against my hand, and I smell the mud of our creek bed, and I watch the second hand move until, at last, the bell rings and the room explodes with commotion.
Mireya waits, with none of her usual impatience, as I stand up—carefully, no sudden moves, because it is still there. “What did I say?” I ask.
“What?” She turns to scowl at Ellis, who’s come to hover on my other side. “Show’s over, Westover. No need for a white knight.”
Ellis ignores her, perched on the desk. “When you stood up? It wasn’t that loud, but I think you said—”
“‘Go away,’” Mireya finishes. “Which is probably what you should do, Ellis, because ever since you started feeding Hedda that bullshit about a killer game, she’s been on edge. She was raised to be scared of screens. You should know better.”
I try to protest, but right now I’m grateful for Mireya’s firm hand guiding me past the SMART Board (don’t look again) and out into the hall. As we head for fifth period, Mireya says, “Just ignore him. He’s got some kind of weirdness about you.”
“I’m the weird one. I think I was half-asleep and dreaming back there.” I tug myself gently from her grip as we pass the restroom. “I’m going to wash the sweat off my face, okay?”
“I’ll go with you.”
So it’s not until I’m alone in the stall that I have a chance to pull out my phone and see the new skull text staring back at me.
Once when I was eleven, a rattler got inside the house and Mom had to shoot it. For months afterward, my gaze licked the edges of each room, checking for fluid flickers of scales. The fear was worse than the reality, and it only retreated after Mom showed me how to load and shoot the rifle myself.
I can’t shoot at every white thing I’ve seen in my peripheral vision since leaving physics class. So far, no ghostly arms. Everything has been 110 percent normal.
But I can’t go back to the time before I saw it. I can’t go back to the place where I felt safe. If I tell Mireya, she’ll think I’m ready to be committed. If I tell Ellis, he’ll think I’m on the brink of doing something like Caroline did. Rory’s most likely to understand and not freak out, but he’s not answering my texts.
I remind myself I belong in school—a real, enrolled student. If I can’t stay on-kilter, I’ll have no future. But if I try to focus on the homework we got today, I’ll end up staring at the wall waiting for white shapes to emerge. I need to do something.
Ellis has sent me a short e-mail: Hope you’re really ok. If I’m scaring you like Mireya said, just tell me and I’ll back off. But I searched Clelia Rosenbaum. Check it out.
A bunch of links follow. The top search result is a newspaper obituary: Clelia Rosenbaum died nearly two years ago in Richmond, California, at the age of seventy-two, survived by her three daughters and five grandchildren.
But there’s a second Clelia Rosenbaum. According to a site called People Lightning Check, she lives in Bolinas, California, twenty-six years old.
That’s less than an hour away, Ellis finishes. Gonna do some more digging and get her street address. He doesn’t need to tell me that Caroline would be twenty-six now.
My phone buzzes, and though I know it’s probably Rory, my first thought is Please just stop. Please.
It’s not a skull text, just one from a number I don’t recognize. Thought u should see this. And a link to something called Dish. I click automatically and read:
Did anyone see the freaky new girl in physics 1 today? She stood up in the middle of class and said go away and stared at us like she was tripping balls. My sources say she was raised in a cult and drank goat’s blood.
The poster is anonymous, but the thread is called “San Rafael HS.” I slam the phone down, my thudding pulse bringing heat to my cheeks. Again I have the itchy, unsavory sense of being watched by the dark screen.
Three days at school, and already people think I’m a freak. “Tripping,” like Emily. A cult girl from the desert. Anyone from physics could have made that posting, but who alerted me to it? Someone I know? Lily, Anil, Cheyenne, or someone closer to me? There are all kinds of ways to call and text anonymously, according to the research I’ve been doing on the skull texts.
This must be how it felt when I was six and Lily and Mireya posted those mocking pics of me. I remember the disappearing image, and what Rory said about the “epic fail circle of hell” starts to make a little more sense. Maybe the skull texts inspire us to relive those bad moments, whatever they were for us, germinating phantoms that bloom in our heads.
Ur pathetic.
Except what I got just now was a real text from a real person—not from a restricted number, not vanishing from my phone. I need to talk to Mireya before these dark thoughts stick to me; I need the reassurance of her confident voice. But her feed says she’s spending the evening in the city with her boyfriend—night on the town!
I message Rory again: Sorry to keep bugging you, but I’m kind of spooked now.
No reply.
Night creeps in earlier now it’s nearly Labor Day. I tug back a curtain to survey the street, trying to shake off the sensation of something filthy sticking to me, leaching into my skin. Freaky. Cult.
Fog has drifted in from the bay, haloing each lamppost and porch light. Our neighbors watch a game on their giant-screen TV, curtains wide open. Their tabby cat’s sinuous shadow hugs a fence.
My phone sits on my desk, a wafer-thin rectangle of concentrated fear and power, bad and good news, danger and safety. Silent.
I pad downstairs and find Dad in his study, the door open for once.
He turns to look at me, his face washed sapphire by the giant screen. “Hedda, it’s after midnight.”
“I can’t sleep.”
I almost expect him to read the look on my face, call up Mom on the spot, and arrange to have me sent back to the desert—or to an institution somewhere. Freak.
But he only says, “I just heard about that poor Emily Stoller—Erika says she’s a friend of a friend of yours. What a nightmare for the parents. Did you know she won a regional youth violin competition?”
“It sounds like she got through surgery okay.” If I tell him Emily had another freak-out, he’ll probably lament she’s missing violin practice. Because that’s who Dad is, I’m realizing: a person who values other people for their measurable achievements, not for the intangible whatever
that makes them who they are.
No wonder he doesn’t have time for me—but in a way, knowing him better is a relief. Given my current lack of achievements, I can stop worrying about his opinion.
“Dad, I’ve been thinking about Caroline Westover again. Was there any warning before she… you know? I mean, did she seem strange?” I remember Mom’s story about finding Caroline and me awake at midnight, both mesmerized by screens. Caroline was in here—was she looking at this computer?
Right now, Dad’s screen is covered with a dense fretwork of code, like hieroglyphics. “I’m not sure, honestly,” he says. “Jane usually handled things—paying Caroline for babysitting jobs, I mean. She was doing a lot of night work at Sinnestauschen, while I was at my company, so we came home at different times. And as your mother loves to remind me, I’m not the world’s most observant person.”
“Were Mom and Caroline… friends?” The newspaper article made Mom sound like Caroline’s mentor. But when she talked to me about “the babysitter,” it was always in a distant, disapproving way, without using details or even a name. As if she’d censored that part of her life out of existence.
Dad swings his chair toward me. The dark room and the screen glow turn his expression into a play of light: concerned, perturbed, calm. “Well, I know Jane thought Caroline was bright, and she encouraged her to develop that game concept of hers. Has Caroline’s brother been asking you about this?”
“No!” People need to stop blaming Ellis for whatever’s wrong with me. It comes in a rush: “Dad, I think Caroline did create that game. I think she posted it on the Dark Web, and I stole the link from her. And I think I played it.”
Dad has gone very still. “Where’s this coming from?”
“I’ve been remembering things.” I wonder if he’s even noticed Erika’s old laptop in my room. Probably not, though it’s right out on the desk. “Being in my room, talking to Ellis and Mireya—it brought things back.”
The light on his screen seethes, and I brace myself, but nothing emerges from it. There is no arm.
“Jane thought you were being bullied,” Dad says. “And now you’re saying you actually remember playing a… game?”
“I don’t exactly remember,” I admit. “It’s all pretty vague. But you said Caroline wanted to use fear to control people.”
“To suggest things to them.”
“So the game would have to be scary, right? And it would send messages to people. How? Does someone have to control it?”
Dad clears his throat. “Well, I can’t speak for this particular game—assuming it existed—but no, the controller would be AI. Players would probably connect to a central game server, which would obtain access to their phone numbers or social media accounts, and that server would monitor their gameplay and send out the—but I’m just confusing you.”
I fold my scarred arm tight to my chest, making a mental note to ask Ellis or Mireya what a server is. “I’m not as clueless as you think.” My mouth is open, ready to spill everything, when I realize I might be getting Erika in trouble.
She shouldn’t be punished for my choices. And despite my dread of another skull text, the thought of Dad taking my phone away makes my stomach twist. I need to stay connected, need to know what people are saying about me.
Dad rocks gently in his chair. “I still don’t quite understand. What makes you think you were playing Caroline’s game—if it even existed?”
My nails dig into my palm, my breath going shallow, but we can’t just never talk about it. I pull up my sleeve and thrust the scars in front of him, turning them to catch the screen’s light. “Remember how I got these?”
“Hedda.” His face has gone wobbly, helpless.
“Mom told me I fell in barbed wire, but on Saturday night, I remembered what really happened.”
He looks away. “I always told Jane she should tell you. She was afraid to.”
“I know. She admitted it. Now I want to know what you remember.”
Dad’s voice is studiously neutral. “I was on a business trip that night. Jane said she came into the kitchen and found your arm covered in blood. You screamed and thrashed as if she were attacking you. At first, the ER doctors thought she might really have hurt you, but the wound pattern indicated self-infliction.”
I let out my breath.
“Jane absolutely refused to try medication and therapy,” he goes on. “It wasn’t the first time you’d acted out, and she was convinced it was all because we’d allowed you—I’d allowed you—to have so many devices so young. She wanted to bring you to the ranch and start over, and I… well, we had some lively discussions about it, but in the end, I respected her choices.”
Standard Dad-speak translated: Mom’s unruly emotions bugged him, inconvenienced him, scared him. “If you thought something was wrong with me, and I needed medication, why’d you let her have me? Didn’t you care?” The last part comes out more pleading than I meant it to. Tell me you cared.
Dad wraps his arms tight around himself. “Of course I cared. But your mother made me feel like you’d be better off without me. And… it sounds like maybe now you’re agreeing with her, Hedda. Are you saying this game could’ve made you hurt yourself?”
When he wants to, he knows how to get right to the point. But I’m not ready to tell him I think I was hallucinating Randoms that night, so I say, “It scared me—the game. I know that. But I’m not agreeing with Mom. I don’t think running away was the answer. We were all alone on the ranch, and I can’t live my whole life that way, but now it’s like I don’t fit in anywhere. I want to belong at school, but…”
I expect him to ask what’s been happening at school, but he only nods as if he’s not surprised. “I had the same problem when I was your age. A terminal lack of belonging. My dad thought computers were for sissies—not that he could have afforded one anyway—so I learned to code in the school lab with a bunch of other misfits. My dad and granddad were constantly on my case. ‘Go outside, Mike! Nail a board, chop some wood, shoot something! Make yourself useful for once!’”
My gaze flits up to the family photos—my grandparents, with their hard eyes. The sliced-up image of the boy with a fishing pole.
“Is that you?” I ask, pointing at it. And when he nods, “Why did you cut it up?”
Dad gazes up at the photo. The shadows press on it, enfolding his child self.
“I’m not sure,” he says. “But you remember what I said about my grandpa Frank: He was a dark man. Sometimes we think that by cutting the worst things out of our lives, just severing them, we can get past them. It’s a sort of magical thinking.”
Is he talking about himself now, or Mom? She mentored and encouraged Caroline and then scissored the memories out of her life, turning her into a cardboard cautionary tale to scare me. And even me—my brain censored those memories of the Glare.
Dad’s still talking: “But it’s not that easy to leave our old selves behind. When I finally escaped and went to Berkeley on scholarship, people laughed at my polyester button-up shirts and my hick accent, and I was an outcast all over again.”
I press my lips together. So maybe he does understand. “You’re not an outcast now.”
“It took a while. Sometimes you have to turn your back on the old demons and rise above the bullshit, Hedda. Don’t let anyone make you question yourself.”
No wonder he hardly ever talks about his family, keeping them penned in those photos on his desk. But if Dad thinks Mom and the desert and my old life are my demons, he’s wrong. There’s so much more.
He darkens the screen, then stands and walks past me to turn on the hall light. “Come on. We both need our sleep.”
Freak. Cult, say the voices in my head.
“Just tell me one thing. Did you see me write on these walls?”
He looks ready to object, so I add, “I know it happened.”
Dad’s shoulders go limp. He points to a strip of wall behind the door, just above the baseboard.
&nbs
p; I drop to my knees. Beneath a thin layer of smooth white paint, dark streaks rise like veins under skin—crudely formed letters. A pulse thumps in my temple as I read:
Not real not real not real
“Hedda.” Dad raises me gently to my feet, and I realize in a dim way that my forehead has been resting against the wall. “That isn’t you anymore,” he says as he walks me out into the light. “Whatever happened back then, focus on what happens next. Look forward. That’s the key.”
I go without protest, because my brain is working—not forward, but back. Remembering.
In my room, by the light of the desk lamp, I kneel and run my fingers along the edge of the baseboard molding. Where it isn’t flush to the wall, I explore the cracks with a fingernail.
Kneeling by the baseboard in Dad’s study reminded me—There are cracks. You can hide things. Long ago, that’s what I did.
Under the desk, I find what I’m looking for: sharp edges of stiff paper. I tug the pieces out, five in all, and assemble them on the desk.
I’m looking at an old photograph cut with scissors. In the foreground stands a rustic cabin; in the background, the square-edged black tower. It’s the real thing, absolutely recognizable. My whole body tingles as I tape the pieces back together.
When I turn the photo over, I find the Dark Web address I know far too well, this time written in a neat, fluid hand. Not a child’s writing.
This is what I stole from Caroline. I remember the guilt I felt hiding the mutilated photo behind the baseboard, eager to be rid of the evidence but even more eager to play the Glare.
The tower is real, and if Caroline based the Glare on a real place she knew as a kid, maybe Ellis knows where it is, too. Maybe she’s there now. I grab my phone to text Ellis, but before I can touch it, it lights up and buzzes in my hand.
The skull again, the damn skull.
Next thing I know, the phone is lying on the bed—did I drop it? I’m shaking so hard everything blurs, feeling my head spin. Hearing the distant creaking rustle I heard on my first night here, like the wind in the treetops. And somewhere behind and beyond it, a high, silvery sound—a keening.
The Glare Page 14
