The Glare

by Margot Harrison

  She stubs out the red ember. “I shouldn’t be doing this—it’s a nasty habit left over from college. Mike would kill me.”

  I flop down beside her. “My lips are sealed. Light another.”

  “Oh, no! I only do it when I’m stressed.”

  “Just sitting here’s nice.” I dig my toes into the dirt, smelling the cedars that separate our house from the next one, knowing that if I close my eyes I’ll see that ghostly forest again. Maybe hear it, too. Stay here.

  “It’s weird how I feel like I need an excuse,” Erika says.

  I remember how Mom and I used to sit for hours on the screened porch or the ridge watching the stars. “Did your parents do that? Sit outside and smoke, I mean?”

  Her laughter is soft in the dark. “My dad would with his friends sometimes. I’d smell it through the screen door. But Mom didn’t even like me to hang out with girls who lit up. Well… forbidden fruit, right?”

  “So you tried it, and then you quit?”

  “Mostly.” She shrugs. “Having a kid gave me the push I needed.”

  I wonder what she’ll tell Clint about smoking when he’s old enough, if people are still smoking then. Maybe new kinds of forbidden fruit will be invented. “Thanks for helping me tonight. I won’t overdo it with the laptop—I know how to control myself.”

  “I can tell that about you,” Erika says.

  I wiggle my toes in the cool earth. I don’t close my eyes. I promise myself the first thing I’ll do when I go back to my room is snap the laptop closed, without looking.

  But for now, the dizziness has receded; the ground is solid. We stay there for a while, side by side, finding the constellations through pale ribbons of haze.

  From the top of our front steps, I watch the block barbecue. Smoke rises through the cottonwoods from grills manned by dads with gleaming white teeth. Skinny moms in gauzy tops flit from yard to yard carrying casserole dishes. Kids shoot hoops and ride bikes in wild circles.

  I’ve spent my second full day in California making potato salad, two kinds of cookies, and brownies. The sparkling-clean, well-equipped kitchen is now my spot in the house, while Clint plays his game upstairs and Erika types on her big Glare-box in the guest bedroom she uses to “telecommute.” Dad came back late last night and disappeared again before I got up, but Erika insists he’ll have a day off soon.

  The laptop has stayed closed, the phone dark. If Mireya is sending me messages, I don’t know about it, but she said she’d be here.

  Clint appears beside me, downcast without his game and hugging the plate of brownies. “Mom says we have to take these over to the Moretons’.”

  “I’ll go with you.” I dash inside for the potato salad.

  Back outside, the hum of the barbecue closes around us, classic rock blasting from invisible speakers. A football whizzes inches over my head. A shirtless young guy catches it and yells an apology. I scan each group for Mireya, but don’t find her.

  Five houses down, we deposit our food on a communal buffet and share a sterile smile with the hostess. She tries to hug Clint, who turns to a statue till she releases him.

  So he’s not just shy around me. I trail him as he trudges back toward our house, his whole body a homing system for his precious game.

  “Check it out!” I point out an ancient cottonwood whose trunk cants toward the sidewalk, begging someone to climb it. “Wouldn’t you like to sit up in that fork and look down on everybody?”

  Clint gives the tree a glance. “That’s dangerous.”

  “Your game’s dangerous, too, I bet. Just not the same way.” All games are dangerous, right? Because you can lose. A shiver grips my shoulders.

  Clint keeps considering the tree. “Maybe it would work. With a belay harness like we use at the climbing wall.”

  Something sizzles on a nearby grill, the urgent fragrance of browning beef chasing nightmares back to the realm of sleep. A deep voice calls, “Hey, Clint, you hit level nine of Infinity Hatch yet?”

  “I’m almost on eleven.”

  “You’re a freakin’ ace. Just like your dad.”

  The boy playing chef is tall and strong-jawed, wearing an apron printed with cartoons. One hand holds a can, covering the label, while the other flips a burger. Lank coppery hair tumbles in his bloodshot blue eyes.

  He notices me and grins. “Those are sweet boots.”

  “Thanks.” I step closer in my red cowboy boots, a little wary. The boy stinks like the beer tent at the fair.

  He winks and indicates a cooler sitting in the manicured grass. “My folks are doing a benefit in the city, so they left me manning the grill. Got some hoppy IPA—help yourself.”

  “Um, thanks. I mean, no thanks. But thanks.” No older than me, he doesn’t seem worried about anyone catching him drinking.

  “Hedda,” Clint says behind me, “I’m going back now.”

  The boy’s grin melts like a mask, and his hand freezes, the burger on the spatula left unturned. “Hedda? That’s you?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes are shiny as fish scales, long-lashed and oddly naked. “Wait, are you Ellis?”

  Grease pops on the grill, catching him in the face, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Yeah. You probably don’t remember.”

  “No, I do!” There are too many things I want to say. Does he have freckles? In the shade, I can’t tell.

  “Been out in Arizona, right? Back for a visit?”

  “Staying for a couple months.” The Ellis I remember hides his eyes during scary movies and has to be reassured that zombies aren’t real. This boy drinks beer and has fancy names for it. I feel about twelve. “We, um, played together a lot, right?”

  “Yeah.” Ellis picks up the spatula. “When my parents were dealing with the Caroline situation, I was over at your house all the time.”

  Caroline—the babysitter. His sister. Somehow I’d forgotten her name, and my head is suddenly full of grisly images. “I’m so sorry about what happened to her.”

  The grill spits grease again. Ellis winces. “Yeah. Well. She got most of her vision back in one eye eventually. You were my lifeline back then, Hedda.”

  Was I? “I’m glad I helped,” I say around the lump in my throat.

  “Me too. I missed you when you left. Sorry for laying the heavy shit on you when we haven’t seen each other in ten years.” He gives me another look—brief this time, but blowtorch blue, with a ghost of a grin that weakens my knees a little.

  Beneath the grin, though, in the unsmiling eyes, I see remnants of my shy, scared Ellis. Ellis running to the black tower; Ellis saying, You’re already dead. Does he know about the Glare game, too—or if not, why’s he in my nightmares?

  “You gonna give me a burger, Westover, or just keep throwing your eyeballs out of joint?”

  It’s Mireya, wearing a sundress printed with cherries with cherry-red lips to match, scowling at us both. Guilt clutches at my throat—has she been sending me messages all day that I ignored?

  Ellis scowls back. “You didn’t put in an order, Rios.”

  “Not entirely sure I want my cheeseburger with a side of beer breath.” Mireya takes my elbow. “Hey, Hedda, wanna go check out the desserts?”

  Wanting to stay with him but not wanting to let her slip away, I smile apologetically. “Hey, Ellis, it was nice to see you again.”

  “Same here. Hey, Hedda—” He leans forward, tossing his bangs out of his eyes. I step closer, my heart suddenly thumping.

  “Can I follow you?”

  Follow me? Why would he ask that when he could just ask to come with us? My face goes hot, my hands cold as he looks at me as if his request were completely normal—and then I get it. He doesn’t mean now. Erika mentioned something about how you can “follow” people online.

  “Um—yes!” But now I’ve waited too long, and it’s clear I’m the off-kilter one. I’ll have to go home and figure out how to become someone people can follow, assuming he ever wants to have anything to do with me again.

  �
�Cool!” Ellis raises his beer, sloshing it, as I back away. “I’ll see ya, Heady Hedda!”

  When we’re clear of the Westovers’ lawn, Mireya releases my arm. “Oh my God, was he hitting on you?”

  “I don’t think so.” At least she doesn’t seem to have noticed how weird I was just now. “We were just catching up.”

  “I’m not saying he’s a date rapist or anything, but ever since he grew six inches in six months and joined the track team and started going to keggers every weekend, he kind of acts like his old friends don’t exist. So be careful with him, that’s all.”

  “I understand.” I brace myself, then dive in. “You know about his sister, right?”

  “Oh God.” Mireya shudders. “It was horrible. They say she did it in her dad’s basement workroom. Ellis found her and called the EMTs.”

  This whole time Caroline’s been more of a cautionary tale for me than a person. I can’t begin to imagine what finding her did to Ellis. “I didn’t know.”

  “He was in therapy for, like, ever. We all used to tiptoe and whisper around him. Ugh.” Mireya sighs. “I feel bad now for saying what I did about him.”

  “It’s okay.” Remembering Mireya’s face when I told her about my life in the desert, I wonder if Ellis rejected his old friends because they pitied him. Pity is only a step up from contempt. “Why’d he call me Heady Hedda?”

  Mireya snorts back a laugh, more embarrassed than amused. “Back when we were kids, you were intense. My friend Lily Chen and I used to call you that ’cause you were always off in your head somewhere. Guess Ellis picked it up.” She cuts her eyes to the pavement.

  The name Lily Chen brings up an image of Mireya whispering and giggling with a girl in a purple coat, but I don’t remember them calling me anything.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your message last night,” I say, hoping there weren’t too many of them.

  “That screenshot? Dude, it was late. I went to bed right after that.” I hear her draw in her breath, a studied pause. “But did it look familiar or anything?”

  Light bounces off picture windows, car roofs, wind chimes, making me dizzy again as I try to match up past and present. I don’t answer yet, though, only say, “Mireya, do you remember me when I left back then? Was I acting weird?”

  “Weird like what?”

  “Mom always said I was freaking out about the Gl—about screens. Because of Caroline Westover, I guess.”

  When Mireya looks at me again, there’s a guilty pinch to her eyes. “Something happened before Caroline—you must remember this. Lily and me, we got tight, and there was some silly birthday party fight, and then—oh God, it was so stupid. I’m sorry. Kids can be such little jerks.”

  “What happened?” My fists tighten, nails biting my palm.

  “We just… we made a couple of posts about you. With pictures. Using filters to give you a huge head and horns and bulging eyes, calling you a snob and a bitch, which was the worst word we knew, and oh God, it was pathetic, and your mom saw them and came over to our house and screamed at my mom, saying you were doing crazy things, all because Lily and I cyberbullied you. I felt so bad that day, Hedda, I wanted to curl up and die.”

  The fuzzy fingers of a larch shade our faces. She looks miserable, but I feel oddly… not bad. I feel in control.

  The Glare is real. The Glare is a game. Just a game, something I must have turned to after my friend rejected me. It all feels so much smaller now than it did in the desert, when imagination molded my fractured memories into monsters.

  “You really don’t remember,” Mireya says.

  I shake my head, not wanting her to feel bad. “I mostly remember the good things about living here. Or maybe I just don’t remember… screens. Anything connected with them.”

  “That’s so weird. I know people selectively remember things, but I’ve never heard of anybody forgetting the whole internet.”

  I laugh, because I’ve just admitted to something off-kilter, and Mireya hasn’t run off in terror. She thinks I’m weird, which is… good?

  “Hey,” she says, “so you want to come over tonight and try it? Play this Glare thing? I’m hella curious.”

  No, says a deep part of me, but those are night thoughts, and the sun is so bright, glinting on the leaves and her gleaming smile, and before I know it, I’m saying, “Sure.”

  At my desk again as the twilight creeps in, using Erika’s laptop, I stare at the image of the forest and the black tower till it turns to a meaningless swirl of colors. I don’t hear any noises this time. Satisfied that I overreacted last night, I make the window tiny and search Ellis Westover’s name, looking for places where we can “follow” each other.

  Within a few seconds, I’m reading an encyclopedia of Ellis: his life documented in words and pictures. It starts in the present: Here he is on the beach, shirtless. Balanced high in the girders of a suspension bridge over a raging river. Leaping off a cliff into the ocean. Half passed out and draped over a laughing blond girl. And—is that just an American flag he’s wearing, posed in front of a brick building with a beer in his hand? The comments mention an “epic prank” and “suspension.”

  In most of these pictures, he has the sloppy, indolent grin I remember from the barbecue, when he drew it over his face like a mask. But as I keep scrolling, the pictures take me back to Ellis’s childhood, and the grin disappears, along with the height and broad shoulders. At twelve, he’s a small boy with a tentative smile. Here he is with his dad. With his mom. Even younger, he wheels his bike up our street, his coppery hair catching the sunlight.

  He looks bashful, almost sweet. Here he is with Caroline, back before she hurt herself. She has a squinty smile, piercing blue eyes. Now here they both are with a skinny, dark-haired little girl, and wait, that’s me.

  I click on my name, and then I’m reading the encyclopedia of the life I thought I remembered, the Glare filling in all the fuzzy details. Here I am with Mom on the beach, her holding the camera and beaming. Here I am riding a merry-go-round. At my fifth birthday party wearing orange—not pink, as I’d thought. Playing chess with Dad. There’s only one picture of my parents together: They stand arm in arm on the porch of a rustic cabin accented with spiny bark.

  Six years old, and now I’m making my own posts. These I don’t remember at all: a blurry photo of a Glare-screen to celebrate a high score on a game. Videos of fuzzy kittens and ducklings. Pictures of my own face with a silly mustache, of Ellis’s face with horns.

  Mireya said she and Lily posted pictures of me with horns and bulging eyes. I search for the offending posts, but they must have been deleted.

  This was my life. This was me. The desert severed me from it, a line drawn between six and seven, but the more I click, the more comes back. The sting of ocean spray. The rush of warmth and safety as Mom rubbed me in a towel. The shy way Ellis ducked his head in the days when I was louder and more confident than he was. The ache of my shoulders after hours of playing a game.

  Imagine if I’d had all this on the ranch. Instead of drawing pictures on a paper scroll, I could have been following Ellis’s and Mireya’s real lives on a screen. I could have been looking up books and recipes and the names of flowers and birds. Finding people who cared about the same things. Never feeling alone.

  I make accounts in the places where Ellis posts most often now. I follow him and Mireya. But then I feel stupid, sitting there and waiting for my clicks on the keyboard to mean something.

  The laptop pings with a text from Mireya. Wanna come over?

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” I tell Erika on my way out, hoisting my backpack over my shoulder.

  Mireya lives in a duplex just past the first cross street. Her room is way pinker than I expected, with a big mirror and gauzy scarves knotted around the bedposts, but her computer desk, with its huge Glare-eye, is all business.

  “I followed you,” I say like I’m confessing something.

  Mireya laughs, but not in an unfriendly way. “I noti
ced that,” she says, sitting down in the rolling chair. “I just followed you back. Don’t be so tense, okay?”

  Is it that obvious? I sink down on the edge of her bed. “I’m okay. A little weirded out, I guess. Whatever this game is, I feel like I should remember it.”

  “The mind’s a weird place, Hedda. But I’ve played some pretty twisted games, and this one’s just your basic survival horror. Probably still in dev—all the levels look the same. There are no cutscenes, the background graphics are crazy detailed, and the monsters are super rudimentary.” She touches her keyboard, and all the windows on the screen disappear except one.

  It’s the forest again, with the black tower in the background—over to the left this time. On the closest tree trunk, there’s a piece of graffiti, not words but a symbol I’ve never seen before. Its eerie blue radiance sends chills inching over my scalp.

  The window’s foreground is crowded with the cartoonish image of a metal cylinder in a human hand. It’s a gun from the shooter’s perspective, I think, but I can’t focus there. My eyes flit around the landscape, scanning the treetops and the carpet of fallen leaves for—what?

  Furrows. Broken branches. Signs of movement. They’re here. I know they are. The instant it unfreezes, they’ll start keening, and then they’ll come, and I can’t possibly make it to the tower—

  Fingers are being snapped in my face. “Hedda. Hedda!”

  I blink and recoil, the bedsprings creaking under me. The screen is just a screen again. The forest is just a picture made of tiny flecks of light.

  “Are you okay?” She kneels beside me, a pleading look in her eyes. “You don’t have to play, you know.”

  I blink again, hard. Control yourself.

  And the screen shrinks to manageable size. I’m not scared, just giddy, like someone standing on the ground and watching a roller coaster mount its highest loop. Feeling ready to ride.

  “I dreamed that.” If I tell her how often I’ve dreamed it, she’ll think I’m off-kilter. “I mean, I had a dream that was like that place. Once. Maybe I was remembering this. So, how do I play?”