The Glare

by Margot Harrison

  Mireya steps out from behind a porch pillar, raising her sunglasses. Her hair is gorgeous, glossy black, falling well below her broad shoulders. “Hey, Hedda.”

  Behind me Erika says in a low voice, “I asked her to come by one of these afternoons; I meant to tell you. Hope it’s okay.”

  I nod a little too hard. “Of course, but how did you…?”

  “How’d she know about me?” Mireya says. “I watch Clint sometimes. Erika said you were coming, and I told her how tight we were in kindergarten and first grade. How I gave you the rock candy you lost your first baby tooth on.”

  Warmth floods my chest as I remember a little girl with satin ribbons streaming from her barrettes, laughing wildly and dominating every conversation. I always hoped she’d remember me, too, but I’m not sure I believed it. I had a real life here. I was real.

  Erika unlocks the door and shoos Clint upstairs to take a shower. “I’ll let you girls reconnect,” she says. “Can I get you iced tea or something?”

  “I’m good.” Mireya has a forthright, forceful way of talking—nothing like Shannon at the fair, who made every sentence into a question. It scares me a little, because forceful people make quick judgments. What if she decides I’m a freak?

  We sit down awkwardly in the living room, Mireya stretching out her legs, which are athletic with no shaving scars. Her T-shirt is faded and ripped, but everything else about her—eyeliner, earrings, even her brand-name flip-flops—makes me feel sloppy. She’s holding a phone.

  “So,” she says. “Your dad and Erika told me you were out in Arizona, but not much else.”

  That’s an invitation, I know, but all I can do is laugh nervously. “There isn’t much else. I mean…” What can I possibly say about the ranch? “We’re off the grid. We make cheese. And preserves to sell. We raise goats.”

  This is not going well. She’s staring like I just told her I live in New Genesis. She wants to know what regular things I did in Arizona, like dates or parties or high school debate team, and the answer is zero regular things. “I’m homeschooled,” I add.

  “That’s so cool.” She nods like she’s trying to think so, fidgeting with her phone like she might abandon the conversation at any minute for something more interesting.

  I take a deep breath; this has to be faced head-on. “Did, um, Dad tell you about my mom and her rules?”

  Mireya’s hand closes over the phone protectively. “Erika did. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I—”

  “No!” It comes out too loud, and I modulate my voice. “I mean, I don’t mind, I’m totally fine. My mom has the issues with technology, not me.”

  “Oh!” Mireya seems to take a moment to absorb this before flipping her hair back, eyes wide in her light brown face, her posture relaxing. “That makes more sense. Erika told me you don’t go online, and I was trying to imagine it, but I couldn’t. When we were little, you never went anywhere without your tablet. It was like a third arm.”

  I visualize myself with a third arm—a monster. If Mireya remembers me going off-kilter, she’s giving no sign of it. “I barely know what a tablet is now,” I admit. “Or what you do with one. I haven’t used a computer in years.”

  “No? Really?” Her frown is back. “Well, maybe you’re better off. Anyway, you used your tablet to game—hard-core, racking up levels. You always had the best games ’cause of your parents.”

  “I played Dad’s games?” I wish I could remember; it would give Dad and me more to talk about.

  “Your mom’s, too—she was an awesome designer. My friend Rory says she designed phone games that were, like, cutting edge back then. It’s too weird that she gave it all up.” A wistful look softens Mireya’s face. “That’s actually how I started designing games myself—I saw your mom doing her work, and I figured, hey, this stuff isn’t just for boys; maybe I can do it.”

  Mom’s energy can be inspiring when there’s a project to do, but the thought of her inspiring Mireya or anyone to design Glare-games sends a shudder down my spine. The old memory comes back: the babysitter sitting in blue light, telling me to look away from something that wasn’t for children.

  To hide my reaction, I stand up. “Want to see my old room?”

  Upstairs, Mireya’s voice echoes stridently off my walls. “This place totally takes me back.” She picks up a sparkly-horned unicorn from the bookcase. “We used to fight over this one—who got to do his voice. Remember?”

  “Of course!” I’ve basically admitted I don’t remember the Glare, but I don’t want her to think I have full-blown amnesia. “Remember that time your dad was away, and you were sad, and Mom made us a tea party?”

  “Yeah, my dad was away a lot. Now he’s away permanently.” Mireya plunks herself down on the bed and grabs Raggedy Ann. “She was at the tea party, too. You stained her poor mouth.”

  My hand darts out before I can stop it, as if to grab Ann back. I let it drop quickly, hoping Mireya won’t notice, but how could she not?

  “Wait, wait, what happened here? Who de-eyed her?”

  I shake my head helplessly, but before I can come up with an explanation, Mireya flips Ann over, rucking up her pinafore. “And what’s this?”

  She peels off the pinafore, revealing writing on Ann’s cloth chest. Sitting down beside her, I see a childish ballpoint scrawl, a string of disconnected letters and numbers followed by a period and the word “onion.” Beside it is a crude drawing I recognize instantly: a square black tower.

  I can’t breathe. The tower has to be the one from my dream. The writing is mine, too, but why? It’s pure nonsense, like someone speaking in tongues.

  “I don’t remember doing any of that,” I admit. “But it must have been me.”

  I’m so sure suddenly that Mireya’s discovered evidence of something hideous I did, something forbidden, that it takes me a few seconds to absorb the words coming out of her mouth:

  “Why were you on the Dark Web?”

  “The dark what?” The words evoke oily black strands strung between gnarled trees, a giant spider waiting for unwary travelers.

  Mireya smooths Ann’s pinafore and sets her back on the bed. “Onion addresses are on the Dark Web, the part of the internet where innocent little children aren’t supposed to go.” She whips out her phone. “But I’m not an innocent little child, and I have Tor, and I’m going to find this address for you—if you want me to. If you’re curious.”

  Address? Foreboding sneaks up my spine, but I am curious, and a little excited. “You could do that? It won’t be dangerous?”

  “You’re so intense!” She gives me a teasing shove. “Just like old times. Trust me, whatever’s out there, I can handle. When I do find it, I’ll text you—wait, can you get texts?”

  “I have a phone.” But I don’t know how to text, or even my own phone number. How can I admit that? Heat rises to my cheeks, and for a moment I want nothing but my mother, want to throw my arms around her and say, I need you, I was wrong.

  The moment passes. I stiffen my spine. “It’s new, so I haven’t memorized my number yet. Can you give me yours?”

  “How’s it been?” Mom asks when she’s done telling me about the prodigious flowers and spiders at her friend’s house in Melbourne, and I’ve told her about Erika and Clint and the home renovations—but not about Mireya, the phone, or the doll.

  “Fine.” I curl up on a kitchen chair with the cordless receiver that Dad and Erika call a “landline” against my ear. “There was way more Glare flashing in my face on the plane than there is in this house.”

  “It’s not making you anxious?”

  Mom’s voice, wispy and tentative with distance, brings it all back—the trickle of the creek, the stink of red clay. I try to think about that instead of the phone in my backpack, or the conundrum of how to receive messages from Mireya, which is a little anxiety-making.

  “No. It’s kind of funny, actually, to see Clint walking around the house with his nose in a Glare-box. This morning he bumped into th
e kitchen island and changed direction without looking up.”

  Mom chuckles. Feeling encouraged, I say, “And Dad—it’s on his wrist, in his ear, in his car. He keeps twitching like he’s getting these invisible signals, and out of the blue he’ll say stuff that doesn’t mean anything.”

  She outright laughs now. “He sounds like a secret agent.”

  We go on that way, making fun of the behavior of Glare-mesmerized people, me silently reassuring her I won’t get sucked in.

  But through it all I hear Mireya saying, Maybe you’re better off, and I hear the doubt in her voice, and I’d rather be laughing with her. I’m the girl defined by the things she wasn’t allowed to have, the girl being smug about the things she wasn’t allowed to have, and who wants to be friends with that girl?

  My chili is a hit, and Dad asks for seconds. I jump up to fill his bowl, my cheeks flushing, while Clint and Erika argue about whether Clint’s too young to watch a movie that combines Frankenstein’s monster and vampires.

  “When I was your age, I wanted to read The Exorcist, but Mom wouldn’t let me, so I read Frankenstein,” I say, hoping to end their stalemate by suggesting an alternative. “The monster isn’t scary once you get inside his head.”

  Clint looks blank, like the book’s not on his radar, while Erika says, “You read the original Frankenstein? Pretty heavy, isn’t it?”

  “Hedda’s always read way above her grade level.” Dad digs into his chili. “What were we discussing on your last birthday—Crime and Punishment?”

  “I don’t have much to do on the ranch besides read.” I droop my head to hide the blush spreading from my face to my chest at my dad’s praise.

  “Maybe you’ll be a lit professor. I can just see that—you in an office lined with books.”

  His phone vibrates on the table, and he starts tapping it, while Erika says warningly, “Mike…”

  “I know, not at the table, but this is Verdon. Big game studio exec,” he says in my direction, and continues tapping. None of us speaks. Clint’s knee jiggles the table leg.

  Finally, Dad darkens the phone, finishes his chili in three gulps, and stands up. “Back to the salt mines. Can you folks hold down the fort? Erika, do you have a plan for that, uh, block barbecue thing? It’s potluck, right?”

  Erika nods too quickly. “On it.”

  “Awesome.” He pats her shoulder, blows a kiss at me and Clint, and grabs his briefcase from beside the door. Then, just as quickly as he arrived forty-five minutes ago, he’s gone.

  Clint immediately pulls out his tablet. Erika says in a tired voice, “We don’t use our devices at the table.”

  “He did.” Clint pushes his tablet away. “All I want is to get to the next level.”

  He’s playing games, just like I did. “Games are all about getting the players hooked, right?” I ask Erika. “Mom says she felt like a drug pusher when she worked at Dad’s company.”

  Erika ruffles Clint’s hair, looking a little uncomfortable. “Games give the players incentives to keep playing, yes. As you can see from Exhibit A here.”

  Too late, I remember that Erika herself works part-time marketing Dad’s games. I change the subject. “Do you know if a boy named Ellis still lives on our street?”

  “Ellis Westover? I see him out mowing the lawn. Was he a friend of yours?”

  “Yeah. His sister was…” I trail off, realizing I don’t know what became of the babysitter after she blinded herself with drain cleaner. It’s like asking what happened to Snow White after happily ever after—or, in this case, horribly ever after.

  “I didn’t know he had a sister.”

  Erika must not have been around then. “He did—does.” I’m not going to walk up to Ellis’s house and knock, but Mireya must know him. Maybe she can help—if I can figure out how to “message” her.

  “Erika,” I say, “I can cook stuff for the block barbecue. I like cooking. But I’m wondering, could you maybe help me with my phone?”

  Erika gets up and starts clearing. “What kind of help?”

  Dusk has fallen, and I smell grilling from the neighbors’ yard. While Clint runs upstairs to play his game, I hold out the palm where Mireya scrawled her contact info—a phone number, but also some kind of address. “Mireya says I can text her or reach her this way. She doesn’t like to ‘do voice.’”

  Erika examines the palm. Her expression is neutral, but I sense the tiniest opening and relaxing, as if she no longer sees me as such a frightening unknown.

  “Your mom would want you to call Mireya on the landline.” Her voice is neutral, too, not a hint of sarcasm, but I can tell she doesn’t think much of Mom’s rules.

  “Yeah.” There’s no point in lying. All of a sudden I feel a desperate need to get this over with so I don’t have to spend my life wondering what happens if I take a single puff of the metaphorical cigarette.

  I look straight at my stepmother. “Mom says the whole reason she let me come here is that I have to start taking control of my own life. Making my own choices.” It’s not a lie.

  “But…” Erika seems confused. “Mike said the phone was just for emergencies. He said you wouldn’t want to use it.”

  “A phone’s just a tool, right?” I remember what Dad said about the Glare. “I can use it a few times without getting hooked.” I lower my eyes. “And… Mireya wants to send me something tonight.” Something I need to know about.

  When I glance up again, Erika’s face is still quizzical, but it’s not a brick wall. “Learning might be tough on the phone. I have a spare laptop you can use. But don’t tell your dad just yet, okay?”

  I zip my lips.

  The laptop’s screen is harmless, glossy black. Erika presses a button, and something sizzles—the Glare springing to life.

  The humming glow makes me quiver, but I don’t look away, trying to make sense of the colored blotches on the now-blue screen. They’re tiny, dimensionless pictures that, like Mr. Toad’s driving goggles or Hugo Cabret’s clock, summon memories from deep, muddy parts of my brain. A slip of paper with a folded corner, a briefcase, a trash can, a black arrow.

  And I know what to do, my pointer finger sliding over the smooth panel below the keyboard. I move it, and the arrow moves.

  It’s magic, and at the same time it’s as natural and familiar as riding a bike. My eyes flick from the screen to the closet door to the bed to the window. The goal is not to get sucked in. I need to skim over the surface.

  I always imagined going online would be like taking the ramp to the freeway, everything speeding to a blur, but instead it’s like looking out a window with a view of a thousand places at once. Too many pictures, too many things to read, too many invitations to knowledge and adventure, and my eyes skittering to take it all in.

  “Want to search something?” Erika asks, and my stomach flips over. Too many choices.

  I gaze down at the old scars on my forearm, the ones that look like blurry letters if you squint: an N, a T, an E. I reach for my center, the place where I have control. Imagine my bedroom at the ranch with the paper scrolls on the walls.

  “I just want to know how to send Mireya a text or a message,” I say.

  As she shows me, I feel my inner antennae reaching out and out, just like they did in the desert—shy and sensitive and eager, seeking a connection. And this time they find it.

  Hey! You awake?

  The robotic boop wakes me from a light doze, the sound seeming to come from everywhere at once. It takes me a few minutes to trace it to the laptop. I used it to send a text before I went to sleep, but somehow I didn’t expect Mireya to respond till morning.

  Yes, I’m here. I mean, this is Hedda.

  You’re adorable. Anyway, so it worked! Your onion link. There’s a page with a file to download. I did a bunch of scans, but no viruses or malware, so I opened it.

  Viruses. Malware. Download. I sort through the mystery jargon, searching for the kernel that matters. What did you open?

  A game. Fi
rst-person shooter. It’s called the Glare.

  The darkness presses around me, suddenly too dense. My stomach clenches like it did the night I ate fried Oreos at the fair and rode the Scrambler and puked on the way home—my head out the car window, promising myself I’d never do anything that stupid again.

  Hello, still there?

  My mind is still struggling to fit itself around what she just said. How can a game be called the Glare when the Glare is the light on every screen? It’s like naming your boat The Ocean.

  You’re sure? That’s what it’s called?

  Why would I make that up?

  She can’t understand, because she doesn’t know the Glare is a word I invented when I was six to represent all my fears. At least, that’s what I thought until now.

  Is the name just a coincidence, or could the Glare be real? Something specific you can find, something you can play?

  Gotta sleep now—work in a.m. But if you come over tomorrow after the BBQ, we’ll play this thing. I’m rly freakin curious. Check this out.

  The next thing that pops up on the screen is a picture.

  I’m staring into a forest. The vibrant green trees are flecked with autumn yellows and reds. A black tower rises in the distance.

  The image is frozen, yet I hear the leaves shivering. I hear the insects keening—are they insects? Wind rises, ruffling my hair, and I hear Ellis saying, You’re already dead, and I jump up and shove my chair back and lurch away from the screen as if it could bite me, as if it could suck me in.

  Dizzy, I sink down on the floor and hold tight to the chair legs like I’m on a ship that’s pitching in a gale. I stay there for a while, trying not to think at all, before I realize I need to be outside.

  It’s real. I tiptoe downstairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door, wincing at each tick of the grandfather clock as if it might watch me and report to Mom. The dream is real. The Glare is real. And I used to know about it.

  On the lawn, with the grass cool on my bare soles, I almost trip over Erika. She’s sitting in the dark with a cigarette in her hand.