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 adaptable 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.