by Kaleb Nation
“Mistress,” I replied, swinging into the bathroom.
“It’s not a mistress if you don’t already have a girlfriend!” she hollered at me through the door. I pulled the shower knob to wash her voice away.
The water stung the gash on my arm but the pain was becoming easier to ignore. I hadn’t noticed the rolls of sweat pouring down my back until the cloud of steam hit me from the shower. I choked at the door, struggling for air that didn’t reek of old and damp metal. Even under the shower, I sweat faster than the water washed me off.
“This heat is killing me!” I shouted through the wall. Arleta is in the San Fernando Valley, which by some measurements is the hottest place in all of California. But my mom was on an electrical bill craze. Her patients never showed until 11 AM, so the air stayed off until 30 minutes to the hour—long after I’d left.
Mrs. Milo had effectively distracted me from my nightmare, but for some reason it hadn’t departed entirely. I tried to scrub it out of my mind with fervent scratches of shampoo onto my scalp, realizing that I hadn’t showered the night before and there were still bits of leaves attached to me. I happily washed it all down the drain.
I dried my hair, a mess of brown that was just a shade lighter than my eyes, but the room’s humidity made it fall flat again.
“This is all very attractive,” I grumbled, trying to brush it in the mirror. My hand stopped.
The mirror reflected my single birthmark: a circle of black going around the third finger from my thumb on my right hand, almost like a ring tattoo. In fact, as I thought back to the dream, it was far too much like a ring for my comfort. The doctor had said years ago that the pigment in that part of my finger was different for some reason, but not to worry. I never thought much about it before. It was strange how my dream had changed it into something else entirely.
I decided not to think about it. I’d been hung up on the previous night for far too long already.
In my haste, the shirt I had grabbed was a stomach-turning cacophony of orange and red. But it masked my tall and skinny frame, so I pulled it on and hurried down the stairs.
“Humans have invented devices that reduce the sun’s effects upon temperature,” I told my mom irritably, falling to sit across from Alli at the table—it was cheap and old, like almost everything else in the house, and the whole town. Downstairs stank of my mom’s herbal concoctions, some liquefied in plastic bottles on shelves, some dangling as plants from string in the window. Each threw off its own prickly smell, and these mixed together into an odor more sickening than whatever they supposedly cured.
“You’ll be out of here in five minutes,” my mom said, dropping one of her organic toaster pastries in front of me. “I’ll turn it on later. Nobody’s in here all morning. It’s a money sucker.”
“Funny how the patients get the mercy of air and your own family doesn’t,” I grumbled. My mom was officially known as a homeopath, which despite phonetic similarities is not a gay serial killer. It meant she worked with some type of natural medicine and herbs—I didn’t understand it, but whatever it was, people with far too much money drove in to see her.
I bit down on my food. It scalded my tongue so I spit it out. My mom smirked in a you-deserved-it way. Revenge for crashing the car… I actually hoped it was that. If she got it out now there was less chance of her blowing up again later, and all of the night before might gently fade away.
“I’m going to Meg’s birthday on Saturday,” my sister proclaimed. She stuffed her mouth with toast.
“Is that the costume party?” my mom asked. “I don’t have anything for you.”
“I’ve still got stuff from Halloween.” Alli shrugged.
“Zombie again? Aren’t you sick of zombies?” I said.
“You’ll be the only zombie in a house of mermaids and princesses,” my mom agreed.
“Then I’ll be a zombie, and eat the princesses for snacks,” Alli ended it.
There was no arguing with that. I dropped my dishes into the sink as I left for school.
* * *
Every house on Hogan Lane was built of wood and brick in shanty designs entrenched in the 1980s, unmowed square yards protected by iron fences. Towering mountains partially encircled the city like a wall hidden behind treetops. Our house had a white metal gate around it with brick supports and decorative spikes at the top, which was a very polite and middle-class-American way of telling burglars they were unwelcome. I had to click the lock to get through, and then stopped in my tracks when I reached the curb.
No car, I remembered. The car that had been parked outside my house for almost half a year was probably being pulped into a baby-food consistency at that very moment. I was like a king dethroned. So I walked.
Hunter High was a behemoth of beige and tan brick with rectangular blue windows and red and black flags hanging from the corners. It bore a sweeping glass entrance that made it look a little more like a space museum than a school. From the outside, it was one of those pleasant little places that old donors adored, with its own football team, a basketball team, a volleyball team, a wrestling team, and even a chess club.
But like peeling away at an onion, there were only a few layers between the outside and a more depressing core. Bars were behind the glass windows and metal detectors sat stoically inside the doorway, a groggy officer standing watch as I walked in. The only decoration on the white walls was a solid red stripe in the center, going all the way down, around the corner, and continuing on throughout the entire institution. If suddenly there were a shortage of students and funding, my school would make a fine prison.
I got to my first class and sat in my usual spot three chairs back and three from the wall. I could see everyone as they came in. I was accustomed to them avoiding my gaze—they didn’t know what I’d do if I got a good look. Could I read their secrets? Would I suck out their souls? The rumors about me had grown far from my actual intuition. In a way, I was both revered, and feared.
The reminders of how different I was came so constantly that I almost didn’t notice them anymore. A girl walked in to the classroom and, by accident, looked straight at me, and upon our eyes meeting she got enough shock to reveal a Glimpse. It was ironic how that worked. I read fear, disgust, and a little intrigue… but not in a good way, in the way that someone looked through the glass in a zoo at an anaconda.
Strangely enough, that didn’t bother me, nor did it bother me that the seats surrounding my chair were the last to be filled. This was all usual. Why should I care, really? They’d all end up coming to me one day or another, meeting in an abandoned hall or beside the school, eyes watching in case their friends saw them near me. Hands full of money. Desperation in their eyes. And I’d just smile and do my job for them anyway.
Mr. Candas wheeled in an ancient television, its black and brown case sporting dials so old that the dust wedged between them had probably been there since before I was born. He was a short man of Indian descent, from Chicago, always wearing a sporty blazer over his jeans, never a tie. He loathed the principal with all his heart, but that was between his Glimpse and me.
“Who followed the earthquake in Japan yesterday?” he asked loudly, positive hope lurking in his voice. A few people raised wearied hands, though half of them were probably lying to get on his good side. My hand stayed down; I’d been busy, as usual.
“Well that’s what we’re studying today,” he declared, searching for the end of the power cord. “I taped some of the news coverage and we’re going to watch.”
Watching a video...the day was getting slightly better already. Everyone’s collective sigh of relief could be heard across the walls. Mr. Candas lifted a hand.
“But you’ll take notes,” he added. Grumbling sounded throughout the room. I reluctantly retrieved the notebook I’d started to stow, plopping it open onto my desk.
“I’m not sure if what happened yesterday counts as history yet…” I said under my breath. Mr. Candas, ever vigilant, sent a glare my direction.
“It’s part of your worldviews. Some important people died in that,” he said. “I say it counts.”
That really didn’t make much difference to me but I wasn’t in the mood for fighting back. So Mr. Candas plugged the screen in amidst the shuffles of our papers and pens.
The tape began but there was no sound. A cable was unhooked somewhere, so Mr. Candas jumped behind the TV as the video continued to play. It was a newscast from the day before, showing a helicopter view of a wrecked city. Buildings were toppled like blocks, all the fancy windows and decorations now like the ruins of old Grecian temples. Earthquake rubble. Cars were knocked aside like a giant had played golf with them.
The report didn’t stick on that for long though, switching almost immediately to an older bit of footage showing a tall man in a navy blue suit, being pulled by the arm through a crowd of reporters. Under his face was the chyron: HAROLD WOLF, CEO of DREYCORP. The graininess of the footage betrayed how old the video was, likely sometime in the 1980s if I could gauge the hairstyles right. It switched to a photograph overlay on the screen.
Finally, something I found interesting. I could see his Glimpse as clear as the day outside our windows, lurking behind his youthful, overconfident smile and the still-outdated, slicked-back hair. Assurance. Absolute, total control over everything around him. Pride. These were signatures of people who had money, but even stronger in the super-wealthy: those who’d taken the leap from millionaire to billionaire. No matter what they did, no one could hurt or stop them. They could circumvent any law, cover up any crime, and have any misdeed go unseen. They were almost like gods that walked among us, unfettered by our lowly restrictions.
I enjoyed reading eyes of people like that: people who I didn’t see in the ordinary places. Their Glimpses were like exotic pets that I could mentally collect, rarities I could never find in a park with a bunch of ordinary people. Luckily, I didn’t need to get close to Harold Wolf to read his eyes because a photograph did the trick.
I’d never tried to figure out the full mechanics of my ability, even though I wondered sometimes. How was it that a camera could uncover the Glimpse for me, when I would never see Harold Wolf in my life? Was it the momentary click of the shutter that forced it from a subject’s eyes? Something else? Either way, a photograph brought down the mental walls, exposing the insides to me.
Mr. Candas found the cable. The volume exploded through the twin speakers, everyone jumping to cover their ears.
“… seen here in 1979, when he was named head of Dreycorp and began what could be the largest about-face in corporate history for a company on the brink of bankruptcy...” The TV anchor’s calm voice came out as a scream. Mr. Candas stumbled to turn it down, instead slamming the pause button with the photograph frozen on screen.
“This is Harold Wolf,” Mr. Candas said far too loudly, probably because he’d been deafened.
“Do you know who that is?” he said, pointing both hands at the screen.
“Harold…Wolf…?” the class stated the obvious in slow, disjointed unison. Mr. Candas looked ready to jump off a roof.
“Thank you, Captains Obvious,” he murmured. He turned his back to us while shaking his head, the marker squeaking against the white board.
“You’re right, but who is he,” Mr. Candas said with a sigh. “Why was Mr. Wolf so important in the world?”
No one raised a hand. The marker continued to scribble—Mr. Candas didn’t even check if anyone had tried to answer. He was familiar with our inherent laziness by now.
“Mr. Wolf,” he said, “was CEO of the company Dreycorp.”
He looked over his shoulder. Our faces were like a collection of mannequins.
“Do you buy sandwiches?” he asked. There was a bunch of nodding.
“Then you should know what Dreycorp is, because you’ve paid them lots of money,” he said. “Every piece of your sandwich was likely Dreycorp made or contains some Dreycorp ingredient. That makes him a billionaire.”
He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t have time to go into it. You’ll learn this in college. But basically…”
He scribbled a word onto the board: DREYCORP INDUSTRIES.
“Everything in the world boils down to which companies make the things we need to live and work,” he said, cupping his hands in insistence. “Energy, oil, technology. Food most of all.”
He shrugged. “And when a corporation controls a good part of one of those industries, they almost become a world power in themselves. It’s not like we can simply tell them we don’t want food.”
“We could grow it ourselves,” a girl in the front of class said.
“What if they own all the seeds?” Mr. Candas countered. “It’s all about who controls the supply. Food is essential to life. It’s how Harold Wolf became so wealthy. Because we all need what his company provides.”
Mr. Candas punched the play button, and immediately the tape began again. The reporter picked up where she’d been cut off, describing the business of Dreycorp, the camera panning across rows of crops swaying in the wind, farm animals and giant barns with the heads of cows sticking through while they were milked by machines underneath their fat stomachs. It switched to the snow-covered door of a giant vault buried in the ground—a vault of seeds, she said, to protect copies of every plant in the world. A seed bank.
Then it changed to another picture of Harold Wolf. He was much older than he’d appeared in the previous, hair beginning to lighten and lines now creasing around his eyes, which had begun to look sallower with age. He was pale, with eyes of green and a beard covering his chin.
The Glimpse had changed. Harold Wolf was working hard to hide his emotions, but not even that could get past me. Behind the oh-so-well disguised smile, I saw that fear had entered into his gaze. At first I thought it was fear of death, which I would have expected for a man of his age. But when I studied it deeper, I saw that Harold Wolf was actually terrified of something different, something that loomed in his future. I detected a fear of a secret being found out, like a debt that he owed or a misstep he’d made and couldn’t remedy.
Crime money? I wondered. I was already almost sure of it. Somehow he’d gotten in debt to someone even bigger, and he knew that they were coming after him. A man who feared nothing had learned the meaning of terror.
“Everyone watch and take notes. Concentrate on how this affects industries!” Mr. Candas commanded. Inside, I wanted to shake my head. Harold Wolf had probably felt relieved in that crumbling building, knowing that the earthquake was quicker than the death he’d have faced at the hands of whomever he was afraid of. How many years before some so-called investigation would uncover what he’d been hiding?
I suppose I could have made a good living in government work. But that was only if they could match my current hourly rate.
My classes continued, slithering by in minutes that felt like weeks. As the lessons became tedious, disturbing reminders of the night before distracted me. Someone’s chair slid against the wall and the metallic cry brought me back to the screeching of my car against trees. The edge of someone’s shirt got caught on the metal end of the desk and ripped, a sound far too much like the tear of Mr. Sharpe’s jacket. It became a struggle just to keep the memories away.
I escaped into the cafeteria for lunch, simultaneously catching up on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and eating the abysmal food that only appeared worse under the fluorescent lights. In this babbling crowd of people, habit demanded I get my camera out and take pictures. High schools were wrought with drama and students’ faces were always showing emotions I loved to pick apart. But the principal and I had been through this before: no photos of students on school property. Being prohibited from my usual occupation left me in a restless state.
“Don’t dress in that bright color,” a familiar voice interrupted my thoughts. “Drunk people will think you’re a piñata and hit you with sticks.”
“Hello to you too, Spud,” I said without looking up.
�
��I mean it,” he insisted. “Big sticks and bats. It’s happened to me twice. They think ‘cause I’m fat I’m full of candy.”
“Or did they do it because you hacked their passwords?” I mused. He grunted—guiltily enough for me to know I was right—and heaved his backpack onto the table. Spud looked much like his vegetable namesake: not overly obese but with bits of pudge sticking out in his cheeks and in odd places up and down his short, lightly brown stature. His damp mess of curly spaghetti hair was as deep black as his Polo shirt, face already showing the beginnings of a moustache like a smudge of charcoal above his lip, even though he’d likely shaved that morning.
“So you crashed your car?” he said. He had his laptop open already, typing in a password as he unrolled the aluminum foil that held his lunch: cold scrambled eggs, three sausage patties, and a dried piece of toast.
“Word got around fast.” I grunted.
“People talk,” he said. “Actually—” he took a bite, “my aunt’s an officer, and—”
He didn’t even try finishing, his mouth so full his tongue couldn’t move up or down anymore. I hoped his aunt wasn’t the policewoman I’d forced to chase me down. That’d be awkward if we both showed up at Spud’s family Christmas party that year.
“I don’t understand how you can eat that,” I tried to change the subject.
“You want me to be a normal Mexican and eat a taco and some guacamole?” he accused, diving into an exaggerated Spanish accent. “Don’t try to get me off topic, man. I want to hear about your big fiery crash everyone’s talking about.”
“Are they really talking about it?” I asked, surprised. My eyes swept over the room, unexpectedly elated at the idea I’d turned into a topic of conversation. Spud shook his head.
“Actually, no,” he corrected. “Not even a car crash can make us popular, man. I mean for a little bit this morning it was buzzing around, but that was when the rumor went that you were dead.”
“I feel so loved,” I said, clearing my throat.
