Sunblind

by Michael Griffo

  That fact grabs hold of my mind and, involuntarily, I gasp for breath. I’m sure Jess’s mother thinks I’m trying to prevent myself from weeping again, not that I’m trying to shake the truth from my soul, separate my current self from my past actions. But whatever she’s thinking and whatever she sees when she looks at me mustn’t be the truth because she smiles.

  “Jess always said you were the most beautiful girl at school,” she says quietly. “More beautiful than any girl in those celebrity magazines she loved so much.”

  The comment doesn’t surprise me. Jess often told me the same thing when we would be alone in our rooms experimenting with makeup and trying out new ways to wear our hair. It was never a remark based in jealousy, but a casual observation from one friend to another.

  “And I see that Vernita’s magic potion has worked wonders on you,” she comments.

  She holds my chin in between her fingers and turns my head from left to right to inspect my skin. “Not an unsightly hair ruining your beautiful complexion,” she observes.

  Nope, now that the wolf has been released, the girl shows no physical signs of being a hairy beast.

  “Promise me one thing though, Dominy,” Mrs. Wyatt says, her fingers moving from my chin to my hair. “You’ll never try to change the color of your hair the way Jess did. The color of fire suits you.”

  Wild flames are appropriate for a wild animal I guess.

  “I won’t,” I promise. “I’m actually growing quite fond of my wild red mane.”

  “I wish Jess had been happy with her hair,” Mrs. Wyatt says, sighing and smiling at the same time. “Most girls would kill to be blond, but Jess hated it. Always dyeing her hair, straightening it, trying to look like she was Japanese. Oh she never learned to be happy with how she was born.”

  I’m struck by this comment because it makes me realize there’s something I never knew Jess and I shared. We both struggled with our birthright. My tears return and so does Mrs. Wyatt’s hug or perhaps it’s the other way around. Doesn’t matter. I knew I came here for a reason. I thought I was coming here to comfort Mrs. Wyatt and, in some small way, for her to comfort me. But the truth is, Jess is comforting us both.

  I’m sitting across the kitchen table from Mrs. Wyatt, a glass of lemon-drenched iced tea in front of me. She looks over my shoulder and out the window over the sink. Her face is bathed in a mixture of sunlight and her daughter’s glow. I don’t know where the natural light ends and Jess’s sunshine begins, and this time specifics don’t matter. It doesn’t make any difference where the line is drawn that separates natural from supernatural; what matters is that Mrs. Wyatt and her daughter are still connected. Whether Mrs. Wyatt knows it or not.

  “I know this is going to sound bizarre, like I’m some crazy hick,” she starts. “But whenever I feel the sunshine like this, like its rays are settling right into my heart, I feel like my little girl is saying hello.”

  Reaching out to grab her hand, I want to tell her she’s right. I want to tell her that her daughter is right next to her and that she’s made up of all the sunshine a mother’s heart could hold, but I can’t. She’ll think I’m the crazy one, and, besides, she’ll never truly understand. Better to let her just imagine the impossible. And tell her something that’ll remind her how wonderful her daughter truly was.

  “Jess loved you so much, Mrs. Wyatt,” I tell her. “That’s why she agreed to share you with us.”

  “Share me?”

  A puzzled look slides across her face that I need to wipe away by sharing a memory. I can feel Jess’s glow behind me, warming my back like I’m sunbathing near Weeping Water River on a hot August day, lying facedown on the grass. She isn’t saying a word, but she’s communicating; she’s giving me her blessing to tell her mother about our secret.

  “Neither Arla nor I really know our mothers,” I continue. “Mine’s been in a coma forever and Arla’s . . . Well, when Mrs. Bergeron stopped being a wife, she also kind of stopped being a mother.”

  The actions of Louis’s wayward ex-wife aren’t news to Mrs. Wyatt, but they’re still unfathomable and unsettling to someone like her who considers motherhood a lifelong commitment. Except for a slight pursing of her lips and shake of her head though, she doesn’t let the complete disgust I know she’s feeling for Louis’s ex escape her body.

  “So Jess told us years ago that whenever we wanted, we could share you,” I inform her. “As sort of a substitute mom.”

  Upon hearing this revelation Mrs. Wyatt is unable to contain her true feelings; they’re simply too overwhelming. When the rays of Jess’s light hit her mother’s tears, it looks like she’s crying liquid gold. I’ve seen many wonders, many breathtaking images thanks to Jess, but this is a truly glorious sight.

  “My Jess . . .” Mrs. Wyatt whispers. “She never ceases to amaze me.”

  If she only knew.

  Even if she doesn’t, Misutakiti does.

  The moment Misu enters the room he starts barking maniacally. Not at Mrs. Wyatt or at me, but at Jess. I can tell from the direction in which he’s looking and the way his tail is wagging, like a metronome on speed, that he sees his beloved Jess. She knows it too. As she kneels down to greet her pet, Jess’s eyes turn a few shades brighter, but joy quickly turns to disappointment when Misu runs right through her.

  “Misu!” she cries.

  “Calm down, boy!” Mrs. Wyatt orders.

  Unable to control his glee at seeing Jess after such a long absence, Misu turns around and tries to make contact once again. This time when he leaps through her, Jess falters a bit; she actually stumbles, not at all like the poised goddess she’s become. I guess that’s because here in this house she isn’t some deity; she’s just a girl who misses her family very much.

  Grabbing hold of Misu by the collar, I pull him close to me so I can whisper in his ear. I have no idea if he’ll be able to hear me now that I’m not in wolf form, but it’s worth a try to prevent Mrs. Wyatt from putting the poor thing into his crate for a few hours as obedience training.

  “Misu, listen to me,” I instruct. “We have to act natural in front of Jess’s mommy.”

  Success! Instantly, Misu looks at me with eyes that contain more intelligence than most humans, and he immediately sits on his haunches and offers me his paw like a well-trained dog. He can hear me! Communicating with animals must be a carry-over trait just like enhanced vision and super speed. Sometimes this being half wolf thing actually comes in handy.

  “Oh my!” Mrs. Wyatt exclaims. “Jess was the only one who could get him to quiet down like that so quickly.”

  She kind of still is. As I hold Misu’s paw, Jess kneels next to us and looks right into her dog’s eyes. She’s looking at Misu the way her mother looks at pictures of Jess.

  “Oh, Misu, I think I miss you most of all,” Jess says.

  Even though I react a split second after Misu, there’s enough time for me to lean forward so it looks to Mrs. Wyatt like her dog is licking my cheek and not Jess’s. I’m not sure why they’re able to touch all of a sudden—perhaps the head Omikami had a pet dog too when he was human so he sprinkled some mercy into Jess’s sunlight—but for a fleeting moment they are connected once more. I suspect that their bond would have remained unbroken for a bit longer if her brother, Jeremy, hadn’t waltzed into the kitchen at that very moment with his latest girlfriend glued to his side.

  “My brother is dating Rayna Delgado!?” Jess shrieks so loudly she startles both Misu and me. I topple over onto the floor as Misu lunges toward Rayna, stopping a few inches in front of her, his body tense, his tail rigid as a spear. Slowly, his growl fills the room, deep and gravelly and a growl that cannot be mistaken for a friendly hello.

  “Misu, knock it off!” Jeremy growls back.

  “Dominy!” Jess screams even louder. “Why didn’t you tell me that my brother is dating that skank?!”

  “I didn’t know anything about this!” I scream in my defense. And of course I don’t scream silently.

&n
bsp; “I didn’t know I had to get your approval,” Rayna replies sarcastically.

  Clutching the leg of a kitchen chair, I begin the long, somewhat embarrassing, journey to stand vertical. “Um, sorry, I . . . It’s just a shock, you know, seeing the two of you as, um, well . . . the two of you.”

  Even if I had heard a rumor about their pairing, I would never have believed it. Jeremy is a college freshman at Big Red, reserved and studious, and, fashion-wise, very preppy. Like old-school eighties, bright-colored-polo-shirt-with-the-collar-up preppy. Rayna is a high school junior, like me, and the closest she’s ever gotten to preppy and studious was dressing up like a slutty Catholic schoolgirl in freshman year for Halloween. Their coupling is definitely mix ’n’ match, and even Misu is offended by the pairing.

  “Jeremy, get that mutt away from me!” Rayna cries.

  “He is not a mutt!” I yell back.

  “Well, he is a mixed breed,” Jess confesses. “But don’t tell Delslutto that!”

  “Misu, I said stop barking!” Jeremy shouts, pounding his foot on the floor, the toe of his penny loafer getting dangerously close to Misu’s face.

  “Don’t you dare!!” Mrs. Wyatt shouts.

  And for the moment anyway, her maternal instincts are revealed. She tenderly grabs Misu by the collar, while sternly pointing a finger at her son. I know that she loves Jeremy as much as she loves Jess, but right now if Mrs. Wyatt had to choose between parenting her dog or her son, Jeremy would need to dial 1-800-New-Mother.

  The shame that takes over Jeremy’s face, making his eyelids half-close, suggests he understands that he’s crossed the line and enraged his mother. His silence also suggests that he’s not going to push his luck. He knows that it’s only because Rayna and I are in the kitchen that his mother isn’t screaming, putting him in his place for trying to hurt Misu, even if he was only doing it as a way to shock him out of killer-dog mode. Rayna, however, has not taken the hint and is still in killer-girlfriend mode.

  “Jeremy,” she whiney-pouts. “You promised you would drive me home.”

  “Oh my God, her voice is worse than her dye job,” Jess snips.

  I have to agree with Jess on that one even though I have absolutely no idea what color Rayna’s hair is supposed to be. We don’t have any classes together this year, so I don’t see her every day, but even from across the hallway I would have noticed a change like this. Guaranteed she did not go to Vernita, the beauty-gician, because there is no way she would’ve let Rayna out in public with that crime scene on her head. Could be ash blond, could be mahogany brown. Maybe outside in the natural lighting I’d be able to figure it out. What’s unbelievable is that whatever the color, it’s not nearly as bad as the high-pitched nasal twang she’s adopted. I guess she’s trying to sound cultured and sophisticated around Jeremy since he’s a college boy. Instead, she sounds like a petulant hooker.

  “And I will not have a boyfriend who breaks his promises,” she pouty-whines.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jess leap into the air until she’s completely horizontal, facing the floor, and lying right above Rayna’s head. She shoves one golden finger down her throat and then opens her mouth wide so a stream of golden vomit pours out of her and onto her intended victim. A glob of yellowy liquid lands on top of Rayna’s head, splitting perfectly to pour, in even amounts, down the sides of her body.

  I open my own mouth, but I’m in such shock at the disgusting, yet mesmerizing, sight that no sound comes out, and luckily no one’s paying attention to me so my jaw-dropping remains unseen. Jess and her vomit also remain unseen, although Rayna does try to wipe something off of her arm and her chin, so I’m pretty sure she feels a presence around her. It’s doubtful that she knows she’s showering in Jess’s preternatural fluid.

  And clearly Jeremy has no idea he’s dating someone his sister and I consider an UGSWM—Unacceptable Girlfriend Slash Wife Material—because he’s as anxious to leave with her as we are for Rayna to disappear from the premises. Scooping up the car keys from a wooden basket on the kitchen counter with one hand, Jeremy reaches out with the other to grab Rayna’s elbow, and they start to leave.

  “Put those back,” Mrs. Wyatt says, stroking Misu’s fur.

  “I’m going to drive Rayna home,” Jeremy replies.

  “Not in my car you aren’t,” she replies. “Yours is right in the driveway.”

  Busted! Jeremy’s probably more furious at being embarrassed in front of his girlfriend than he is about getting caught trying to pull a fast one right underneath his mother’s eyes, but for whatever reason he slams the keys into the basket with such force that it flips over. So much for a quick getaway. Now he has to hunt and peck through the basket’s overturned contents to find his own car keys. Instead of being driven home like the princess she thinks she is in a new Nissan Xterra, Rayna will have to squeeze into a ten-year-old beat-up Ford Taurus like an ugly stepsister. The latter is a much better description of her anyway.

  “I hope she sits in the spot where I peed!” Jess cries just as the unhappy couple leaves the house.

  “You peed in Jeremy’s car?” I ask silently. “You never told me that.”

  “It was a long drive, I drank a lot of soda, and he was making me laugh,” she replies.

  I guess there are some more things I still don’t know about Jess. Or her mother.

  “Thank you, Misutakiti,” Mrs. Wyatt says, kneeling down and rubbing her nose against his after Jeremy and his hopefully soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend leave. “I know I shouldn’t admit it, but I can’t stand that girl either.”

  I collapse onto the floor, and the three of us become a mass of fur and laughter and hugs. Jess watches us from a distance, golden tendrils of sunlight curling around her face and her body, and she smiles wistfully. She’s nearby, but she’ll never be anything more than a visitor to this world again.

  In many ways, I feel exactly the same way.

  Chapter 15

  Today may be my birthday, but thanks to Luba, it’s definitely not a day for a celebration.

  Luckily, Louis and my friends agreed with me, and they all promised that they’d ignore the calendar and we’d have a little party next week. If next week we find any reason to celebrate. Jess, however, would like the party to start early.

  “Happy birthday to you!” she sings. “Happy birthday to you!”

  Just because Mr. Dice is also the choir director doesn’t mean he approves of singing in his algebra class, and anyway I’m not in the mood for it.

  “Jess, I’m scared,” I silently confess.

  “Which is normal,” she replies.

  Jess is floating in the air to my left and looks as if she’s lounging on my bed. Horizontal, hair dangling off the edge of the mattress, one leg bent, the other crossed so her left ankle is resting on top of her right knee. All she needs is nail polish or a trashy magazine to complete the picture. She looks so much more normal than I’ve felt in ages.

  “Even for the unnormal?”

  As she rolls her head to face me, a golden arch flies through the air and then melts away.

  “This is now your normal,” she says. “It’s really time you get used to it so you can begin to trust your power.”

  I do have a lot of powers, that’s true, but I would trade them all if Jess could shed her sunshiny persona and return to me as a regular human girl. But I have to stop wishing for that because it’s not going to happen. It’s time to wish wisely.

  “I wish that tonight reveals answers,” I declare. “And that I know what to do when there are no more questions.”

  What was that noise? Startled, I snap my head to the front of the room, but only see the back of Mr. Dice as he scribbles some numbers and symbols on the blackboard. Glancing around the class, I see that Gwen and the rest of them are either paying attention or frantically trying to copy down Dice’s writings in their notebooks. No, the sound I heard isn’t human; it’s Omikami. Worse than that, it’s laughter.

  “What’s so funny?”
I ask.

  “You so funny little grasshopper,” Jess replies in her best politically incorrect Japanese accent. “Dominysan, there are never ‘no more questions.’ ”

  Great! “I get to be stupid for the rest of my life,” I complain.

  “Stupid is thinking you have to answer every question on your own.”

  Jess’s voice is back to normal; gone is any pretense of humor even though she’s smiling.

  “Remember to follow your guts. You have two sets of them now, you know,” she says. “And if all else fails, just follow the light.”

  I follow Jess’s light as it disappears from the room, and I’m amazed at how quickly my surroundings turn to darkness without her. It’s as if I’m in the belly of a forest standing underneath century-old trees that act like a natural canopy through which no light can penetrate. When I look up I find my situation is even worse. Mr. Dice is standing over me, and I’m consumed by his shadow.

  “Dominy,” he says. “Did you do your homework?”

  Did I? Think! “Yes!”

  He smiles, ignoring the snorts and snickers that launch all around us.

  “Excellent,” he replies. “Then would you mind handing it in?”

  For a moment I don’t respond; all I do is stare at his hands, one of which is holding the piece of chalk that never seems to leave his fingers, as they slowly descend into his pants pockets. My gut swivels, and I feel like I’m watching a clue; his movement means something, but what? The seam of the pocket on his right pants leg is smeared with chalk. Maybe it’s a letter: maybe it’s actually a symbol that I’m supposed to decipher. But even with my super-enhanced vision I can’t see anything. It’s just a smudge.

  “Homework,” he nudges.

  Fumbling through my notebook, I rip out the pages containing last night’s assignment and hand them to him. Mildly surprised that I’m actually able to produce my homework, he pulls his chalk-less hand out of his pocket and takes the papers from me. When he turns to walk back to the front of the class, something drops onto my desk.