Mirror in the Sky

by Aditi Khorana

  “How would you put it, Mrs. Treem? Would you ask anyone else? Would you ask Halle Lightfoot or Veronica Hartwicke or . . .” It came out like one of those sneezes, uncontrolled and harsh.

  “I asked you because—”

  “You asked me because of the color of my skin, Mrs. Treem,” I said, and I could feel the outrage welling up within me as I said it. “You want me to say yes to the shittiest job in the world, and you want me to be grateful you asked? You want me to ask people to volunteer to man the fire alarms? During their free periods? And you want me to be a snitch?”

  Treem crossed and uncrossed her legs uncomfortably. “That’s hardly what I’m asking of you, Tara.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re asking of me.” I raised my voice, looking away from the chalkboard scrawl to face Treem for the first time. Whatever hidden switch there was within me that needed to be flipped, she had found it, to her own detriment. I opened my mouth and realized, in that moment, what happens to buried rage. What will this do to Tara? my father had asked, and Treem was among the first to find out the answer.

  “First of all, your ‘Safety First’ committee,” I said, using air quotes, “is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Congratulations on being president of some completely moronic circle jerk. Second of all, why the hell would anyone volunteer to man the fire alarms? Man your own damn fire alarms. Or hire security. We’re not slave labor . . .”

  “Well, that’s why it’s voluntary . . . Tara, perhaps we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I thought you’d see this as an honor, and I . . .”

  But I cut her off before she could say more. “An honor?” I laughed aloud, a laugh that made Treem shrink in her chair. “You picked me, the quiet model minority, because you think it might make me happy to be your little pet. To sit at your feet, saying, ‘Oh, yes, pick me! Please, me! Let me do your dirty work. I can gather students together to do the shit job of manning your fire alarms! I can start a whisper campaign to find out who pulled the false alarm!’ And then you can pat me on the head and say, ‘Good Tara! Good model minority! You did the right thing!’ Seriously, fuck that!”

  Treem looked back at me, and something clicked within her, a shameful recognition of the truth in her eyes. “I can see you’re very angry, Tara, and what I don’t understand is . . .”

  “What you don’t understand is that I don’t want to be your bitch, Mrs. Treem. And I consider your asking me to be on your stupid-as-fuck committee racism. I seriously think that you’re a racist.” The word rang. It seemed to make the room vibrate, and Treem shifted uncomfortably in her chair again. “And given that you know nothing about my ‘culture,’ maybe I can teach you something. When the British came to India, they got a handful of rich Indians to do the kind of shit you’re asking me to do. And that was the start of colonialism.” I was going out on a limb now, and I knew it. “But I doubt you would know that, because you don’t teach anything but Western history at this school.”

  “Tara, I . . .”

  “If you want to switch me to a different counselor, go ahead, because the truth is, I don’t want to be reminded of your insulting question every time I walk into your office in the future. But let it be known,” I said, standing up and pointing a finger at her, “that as far as I’m concerned, you’re a bigot.” I threw my bag over my shoulder and opened the door to her office. “And by the way, it says ‘twat waffle’ on your chalkboard,” I said, pointing to it before I slammed the door shut behind me and walked out.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “HEY, Tara! What are you doing here? Don’t you have physics right now?” It was Alexa. She looked startled to see me.

  “Hey, Alexa. I just—I was feeling kind of ugh, needed to step out. And then I had this whole thing with Treem. Hey, do you know where Nick is? He wasn’t in physics this morning,” I said, all in one breath.

  “They’re probably late getting back from their trip,” she said.

  “You mean his family?” I asked, my heart beginning to race.

  “Halle didn’t tell you? They went away right after Christmas. Decided to spend a week at Halle’s parents’ house in Nantucket. Anyway, they were supposed to be back last night, but they must have gotten delayed. I’ll text her,” said Alexa, pulling out her phone.

  “Nick and Halle?” I asked, feeling the dread in my stomach before it filtered down to my arms and legs, leaving them numb. “A whole week?”

  “Yeah. I think they had some stuff to work out. Well, you know. It was Halle’s idea, which surprised me. She’s usually such an avoider.”

  “So it was just . . . the two of them?” I asked, my heart sinking.

  “Yeah, I think so. Halle’s parents don’t care, obviously, and I think Nick told his mom he was going away with Hunter and company. They’re probably on their way back now. Halle hates missing school . . . here’s her response. They’re here! They just parked. They’ll be in the student center in a minute.”

  I got up abruptly, pulling my bag over my shoulder, clutching it tightly to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. He had been with Halle this entire time?

  “Are you okay, Tara? You look a little pale.”

  But before I had a chance to answer, I heard that all-too-familiar voice, that cheerful lilt that made my heart sink.

  “Look who it is! I was hoping we’d run into you both!” I looked up, feeling my face flush with heat as Halle approached our table. She was wearing her ivory coat and sunglasses, her hair up in an aristocratic bun. Nick was by her side, wearing a navy North Face, his hair disheveled as though he had just woken up. I could feel the blood draining from my face the moment I saw them.

  “Hey, you guys! How was Nantucket?” Alexa got up to hug them both, but I sank into the table, my feet frozen into the ground.

  “We completely lost track of time! You know when you’re just out in the middle of nowhere and you’re like, ‘We’re going to leave at six P.M.’ and then you look at the clock and it’s already past midnight. Total accident . . .”

  “No such thing as accidents!” Alexa said.

  “I’m pretty sure accidents exist, Alexa.” It was Veronica. I could tell from her tone that she was in an unusually good mood. “You are such a weirdo, but I still love you,” she said as she hugged Alexa. “I missed you guys,” she said, embracing Halle and Nick and then me. “How was vacation? What did you guys do over Christmas?” Veronica looked at us.

  I looked away, willing myself not to cry as I thought about my Christmas.

  “Good, awesome. Just hung around here. How was your New Year’s?” Nick asked Veronica. Just hung around here? I felt a wave of humiliation at his answer, followed by outrage.

  “Super boring. How was the trip?” Veronica asked.

  “Nantucket was awesome. It’s so empty this time of year. We went ice skating and just hung out and made a fire every night,” Halle said. “Anyway, what about you, Tara? How was your New Year’s?” she asked, and they all turned to look at me. I opened my mouth, but no sound emerged.

  Finally, it was Alexa who spoke. “She’s not feeling well, poor thing. Listen, do you want me to take you to the nurse? Or I can drive you home if you want.”

  “It’s okay, Alexa. I can just call my dad . . .”

  “You’re sure?”

  I nodded. Veronica sat down next to me as we watched Alexa saunter off.

  “She’s such an idiot savant,” Veronica whispered. “Sometimes I think she knows way more than she ever lets on, and sometimes I’m like, ‘Uh, what is going on in there? Is the malnutrition affecting her brain?’”

  Halle laughed. “I have no idea what’s going on in her brain, ever.” And Halle and Veronica began to gossip, about how Melanie Carter was apparently considering changing schools, about something Hunter had said to Veronica about junior prom.

  “And I was like really, Hunter? You’re asking me now? It’s January
!” Veronica exasperatedly exclaimed.

  I tuned it all out, running my fingers over the seam of my bag, wanting desperately to escape. When I looked up, Nick was watching me, a tentative expression on his face. I looked away and pulled my bag over my shoulder.

  “I think I’m just going to take off. I’ll see you guys later.”

  “You poor thing,” Halle turned to me. “Is it bronchitis? I heard it’s going around.”

  “I’m not sure what it is,” I said, trying not to cry.

  “I’ll call you later tonight,” Veronica said.

  “Yeah. Me too,” Halle said before she pulled me aside. “Oh, and Tara—I just wanted to tell you—you were right.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  She put an arm around me. “That thing you said? About people using Terra Nova as an excuse for bad behavior?”

  At first I thought it was an accusation, that she knew what had happened between Nick and me. But then I realized she was talking about herself. “Thank you. I had a good hard think about everything,” she whispered to me. “You were right. I was just being stupid . . . about the other guy. It was just a . . . a pointless fling,” she said, her arm still around my shoulders.

  I could see Nick watching us, his jaw tensing for a moment as he strained to listen to our conversation. I turned to him, and he held my gaze for a moment. Why was he subjecting me to this? What did he want from me? I couldn’t tell, but the moment he averted his eyes, I knew it in the deepest part of me. Nick wasn’t going to be my boyfriend. He loved Halle. Halle didn’t know what had happened between us. She didn’t know any of it, my feelings for him, whatever feelings he might have for me.

  “Thank you,” Halle whispered to me. “For keeping my secret. You’re a really good friend.”

  I swallowed hard. “You too,” I said as calmly as I could muster. “But listen, I really have to go. I feel . . . terrible.”

  And then I turned and saw her. She was sitting alone in an empty section of the student center wearing jeans and a fitted jacket. She was pretending to read, but I could see her watching me. Our eyes met for a moment before I broke the gaze. I had never responded to Meg’s e-mail. Or her multiple calls. Or her multiple texts. And the truth was, I didn’t even want to think about that right now.

  Here I was, in uncharted territory, floating through space, no Earth beneath my feet. I wanted to be rescued—like Moira had been rescued by Sarah Hoffstedt, like Virginia Wool had been rescued by Leonard, like my mother had been rescued by the Church of the New Earth. Could a belief rescue you? Because all I had was a belief in someone I had never met, someone who couldn’t come and take me away from the mess I had made.

  I didn’t start crying till I got home. Till I had walked through the threshold of my crappy little house, till I had made my way to my crappy little bed in my crappy little room. I couldn’t even blame Terra Nova for what had happened. I did it all myself, and now I was paying the price for it. But the worst part of it, the part that makes me cringe, the part that I’m still ashamed of, even today, is that the reason I hated myself most of all was because Nick Osterman didn’t love me.

  THIRTY

  IT was late in the evening when the news broke. They played the footage on loop, again and again and again. Riots had broken out all over Tokyo. Buildings burned. People ran through the streets screaming. Overnight, a peaceful city had turned into a war zone. Who could have thought that an innocent woman, now dead, would be at the center of it all?

  They said she knew something was coming. She could sense that her world had become dangerous. For weeks, she had been reaching out to authorities, bureaucrats, the local police, asking for help. She asked for a bodyguard, relocation, a temporary safe house. She felt unsafe. People were leaving strange messages on her phone. People were following her wherever she went. She couldn’t sleep. She was a nervous wreck.

  I wonder how she felt when an angry mob knocked down the door of her house in the middle of the night, dragging her out of her bed, still in her pajamas, and into the streets of Tokyo. She must have been terrified as they pulled her through those avenues, when they threw her into the middle of the road and doused her with lighter fluid. I have to close my eyes when I think about that moment when someone lit the match.

  Bystanders watched, horrified, screaming. She was screaming too. They said it happened so fast, they couldn’t help her.

  The news commentators called it a tragedy, but a tragedy is when someone dies of cancer. A tragedy is Halle’s dog accidentally getting hit by a car. Michiko Natori’s death wasn’t a tragedy. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t like some evil wind swept through her home, breaking windows, overturning chairs. It’s easier to think of her death as sad and inevitable. But it wasn’t.

  Those responsible for the act called her “a symbol of Terra Nova,” a symbol of everything wrong with the world. They called her a false prophet, an imposter, something that needed to be destroyed.

  Some even called it a “Terra Nova–related crime.” But Terra Nova didn’t make people kill Michiko Natori.

  And those people who called her a symbol? You have to wonder about that too. Because Michiko Natori was a person well before she became a symbol. Not a person I knew, but she could have been. She could have been anyone.

  Michiko Natori was killed because people were afraid. Not of her, but of what she meant, what she symbolized. And what she symbolized was that there were things about the world we didn’t fully understand, couldn’t fully make sense of. But getting rid of her couldn’t change that fact.

  THIRTY-ONE

  On Wed, January 5, 2016, at 12:04 PM, Jennifer Krishnan wrote:

  Here’s the big news I was telling you about! I really hope the two of you will participate. I know there have been some terrible things that have happened in the past couple of weeks, but I truly believe that Terra Nova is pure good. We just have to learn to manifest the power of it to become empowered ourselves. Sending you so much love!

  Mom

  For Immediate Release

  Church of the New Earth to Host a Night of Communion with Terra Nova

  | Santa Monica, CA • January 5, 2016 |

  At midnight PST on the evening of April 4, more than 2,500 “Mirrors,” as members of the Church of the New Earth are called, will gather at various positive healing energy vortices across the Earth to commune with their mirror selves and with the energies of Terra Nova. The Mirrors will raise their hands to the sky and pray to their counterparts on Terra Nova, harnessing the healing energy of their higher selves.

  In honor of this historic occasion, the ecclesiastical leader of the Church of the New Earth and chairman of the New Earth Board, Mr. Andrew Sadakis, will travel to Honolulu, HI, to lead the ceremony.

  Members of the public are welcome to join us in prayer on the dawn of a golden era.

  Santa Monica’s state-of-the-art New Earth Facility provides visitors with an introduction to the Church of the New Earth. The Public Information Center contains more than 100 films and texts that present the beliefs and practices of the New Earth religion and the story of founder Robert Bennington. To learn more about our global human rights program as well as the New Earth Volunteer Minister program, visit our website to get involved with Church-sponsored philanthropic and humanitarian programs.

  New Earth Churches now stand in such world centers as Berlin, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Orlando, Quebec City, Rome, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Tel-Aviv, and Washington, D.C.

  For a complete list of New Earth locations, visit www.ChurchoftheNewEarth.org.

  The Church of the New Earth religion was founded by actor and mystic Robert Bennington in Santa Monica in 2015. The religion has since expanded to more than 200 registered churches in 18 countries.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I don’t know why I neede
d to go back, but it was as though it was calling out to me, like a voice in the dark.

  I thought of the Sirens. We studied them in Greek mythology in the ninth grade, and for my final project, I memorized Margaret Atwood’s poem “Siren Song.” I could recite it now if you asked me. And so I did recite it to myself as I pulled my bike out of the garage and rode to Tod’s Point through tiny side streets in Old Greenwich. It was already dark out, but the moon was full, illuminating the sidewalks and fences, making lone trees look particularly uncertain and somber. I repeated the words over and over again, pedaling down Sound Beach Avenue, banking right on Shore Road.

  This is the song everyone

  Would like to learn: the song

  That is irresistible:

  This song

  is a cry for help: Help me!

  Only you, only you can,

  you are unique

  It took on a new meaning now. “Help me! Only you, only you can, you are unique!” I said to myself. I knew exactly who the “you” was. And on that day, I still believed she really could help me. That she was the only one. After all, who else was there? My mother had gone to California, my father was despondent and confused. Meg wasn’t even my friend anymore.

  The realization was like that feeling of belly flopping into a pool, the water slapping you into another level of consciousness: There was no one in this world who could help me, and the only person who could understand me, understand what I was going through, lived in another world. A world I would never see, never travel to. A world so far away that it may as well not even exist. The desperation grew within me the longer I rode. I pedaled harder, past the stately homes that sat on the shoreline, all of them looking ghostly and pale in the moonlight.

  The gate to Tod’s Point was locked, but the fence was low enough for me to climb over, and I did, without thought or worry, as though in a trance. I had heard that people do crazy things during the full moon, but I had never been one of them. People blamed things on Terra Nova, but I knew the truth. The real reason I slept with Nick had nothing to do with Terra Nova. I slept with him because I loved him. Just the thought of this made me cry. How could I have been such an idiot? To let my guard down like that? I was better off eating lunches in the library, keeping to myself.