Glimmer

by Phoebe Kitanidis

  Out of the corner of my eye, two guys in green T-shirts slip out of the audience and sneak up behind the photographer. I hear the sickening smack of one of their fists against the back of his head, the choked cry as the photographer crumples. The other guy grabs his camera and they both run. Without thinking, I run after them. I’m not the only one. Before any of us can reach them though, an old beat-up pickup pulls up and they hop into the back.

  “Green Vista, bitches!” one of the guys screams as the truck starts speeding off. “That’s revenge for the big game.” Dude sounds righteously pissed off.

  But the Summer Falls folk take it in stride. “Loser!” yells a guy in a letter jacket while the doctor in his white coat checks out the photographer and helps him to his feet.

  “They’ve lost the big game every year since 1963,” another letter-jacket guy yells, and high-fives the first. “We’re always number one, baby!”

  The crowd breaks into a spontaneous chant: “Always number one, always number one!”

  I’m beginning to see why the Green Vista ninjas felt the need to even the score when the second letter-jacket guy walks right over to Elyse and puts his arm around her. “Hey, beautiful,” he says. “Want to ride the Ferris wheel with me?”

  She meets my eyes, and it’s hard to communicate with her when all my energy is tied up fighting the urge to physically remove that idiot’s thickly muscled arm from her shoulder. After a moment I manage to wave her away, like, Go, get out of here, have fun, act normal. And that is what I want her to do—that’s the smart thing to do. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I can’t see that.

  But I turn so I don’t watch them walk away together.

  Chapter 15

  ELYSE

  Okay, what do you do when you don’t like your best friends?

  It’s not like I hate these people’s guts, but sitting in the Ferris wheel basket next to Dan, with Pete and Carla in the basket just above us, feels a little like torture. For one thing, Dan keeps leaning over to kiss me and I’m not sure I’m into the way he kisses. He doesn’t have bad breath or a tonsil-banging tongue or anything—so maybe it’s not fair to imply he’s a bad kisser when the real issue is I’d rather be kissing someone else. Someone I actually know and care about instead of pretend to know and care about. Someone with dark, dangerous eyes. But I will say Dan seems to have clear ideas about who is supposed to be the kisser and who is the kissee. I’m guessing that would be the reason he keeps tilting my head back and leaning over me so I have no leverage and can’t breathe, so I have to look up at him. The one time I think I might be getting into it and try to kiss him a little more actively, he blocks my tongue with his own. After a while I just pull away and watch the scenery. Kissing may be a sport, but blocking other people’s goals doesn’t help you win.

  Then there’s Carla, who’s petrified of heights. Every time we get near the top of the Ferris wheel, she lets out a squeal as if we’re riding some kind of giant roller coaster instead of the world’s dullest ride and grabs Pete’s hand, and Dan and Pete yell jokes to each other that basically amount to What a Dumb Girl Carla Is for Being Scared of a Ferris Wheel.

  Clearly, this double date is really just an excuse for Dan and Pete to bond.

  From the top of the Ferris wheel I can see the fair crowds moving like a giant amoeba.

  I can also see a tiny figure. It’s the redheaded lady—the one who was asleep on the picnic table earlier—and if I’m not mistaken she’s swinging a bat. Into the window of Mollie’s Milkshakes.

  The next thing I know, the Ferris wheel’s gears have ground to a halt.

  I let out a “What the hell?” just as Carla in the basket above us cries out, “Oh my goodness!”

  Her basket with Pete is near the top.

  “I can’t take this, I can’t take being so high,” Carla says over and over. “Who’s running this thing?”

  “I don’t see an operator,” Dan yells. “Hey, operator! Get back to work.”

  “Please make it start again,” Carla begs, but it’s unclear who she’s begging. God, maybe. “Please, please, I have to get down.”

  “Hell, I can fix this,” Pete says. “I can’t stand to see my girl cry.” He slips under the safety bar and dangles from the footrest over our basket.

  Jesus. Is the idiot climbing down?

  As he drops into our basket, the seat swings wildly back and forth. In unison Dan and I each grab Pete around the waist, steadying his balance before he can tip over and fall to the ground.

  “Steady, man,” Dan says, “we got you.” He turns to me and winks. “We’re pros.”

  I ignore him. “Pete, why the hell are you doing this?” My heart’s pounding, not just with fear for him but with anger. How could he risk his life for something so stupid? I jumped out of a window because I had to, not to impress my date. “Are you crazy?”

  “Nah, I’m not crazy, I’m gonna fix this,” Pete says brightly, and calls to the couple below, “Heads up!”

  They give him a cheer as he nimbly drops one step closer to the bottom of the wheel. Two more hops and he’s on the ground. He gives a little bow to the cheering passengers and strides over to the controls by the gearbox.

  I breathe a sigh of relief that his stupid stunt didn’t get him killed.

  He’s poking around the fat black power cables. “Aha!” he calls up. “Looks like this one came unplugged.” Gripping the loose end in one hand, he pulls himself on top of the gears and connects the oversize plug into the open socket. “Ta-da,” he calls out, as with a mechanical whine the wheel lurches back to life. Our seat jerks forward. The rescued passengers cheer, including Dan.

  Suddenly the applause is interrupted by a sickening crunch and Pete’s bloodcurdling scream.

  Pete falls backward onto the ground, blood gushing from his leg. For a moment he goes silent—the fall must have knocked the wind out of him. Then he lets out another high scream of agony. I stare at the bloody stump of his leg. My god. His right foot is gone. Gone. Crushed between the gears of the machine he restarted.

  Dan stares down in shock at his friend’s broken body.

  Many people are screaming. Some people turn and vomit out of their baskets onto the ground.

  Everyone at the fair has now realized something’s wrong. A crowd has gathered in horror, but no one seems to know what to do as Pete lies on the ground crying and begging to God, to Jesus, to anyone, for help. A bright, white-coated figure parts the sea of the stupefied onlookers and shoves his way through. The doctor. If he can stop the bleeding in time, Pete has a chance. I breathe out finally, the sound that escapes me halfway between a sob and a sigh of relief.

  And that’s when I see a small figure perched at the base of the Ferris wheel. It’s a little boy with blond hair and faintly shimmering skin. As each pair of panicked riders swings by, he reaches his arms out to touch them and they slump forward in their baskets, unconscious.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

  Our basket is the next one to swing by the ghost.

  “Dan, we have to go!” I climb out of my seat and brace to leap to the ground.

  He looks at me blankly. “It’s too late. It’s too late to save him.”

  I jump the five feet to the ground and roll to my feet. Looking over my shoulder I see Dan collapse at the ghost boy’s touch.

  I run away. Away from the crowd. Away from Pete. Away from the ghost.

  Chapter 16

  DARK-EYED BOY

  Word spreads fast through the crowd. Something went wrong on the Ferris wheel. Knowing Elyse was heading for that wheel, I push through, determined to make sure she’s okay, trying not to think of the worst.

  But long before I get there I can hear the screaming of a guy, can hear the sad, hushed murmuring of the crowd. “Football hero . . . maimed . . . lost his foot . . .” And I know it’s not Elyse who’s hurt.

  Almost as quickly as the rumors fly, mass heatnaps start erupting. People to my left and right j
ust start dropping, and I feel a now familiar zap in my chest and see the blue light for a moment. If Elyse were here, would she have seen a ghost retreating, repelled by my tattoo?

  The people on the Ferris wheel are all asleep themselves, and I hope to God none of them fall out and die. Scanning the faces, I don’t see Elyse, though I do see the dumb jock who pulled her away earlier.

  Even though all the people around him are down though, one person stays up and alert. I see a tiny flash of pink light in front of the doctor as the people around him clatter to the ground. So he’s immune to the heatnaps, like I am. The ghosts can’t touch him. I look him in the eye, wondering if he has a tattoo like mine and how he got his. He doesn’t notice me, of course—I haven’t said anything—but he runs to the Ferris wheel and quickly injects the screaming boy with a syringe. The boy screams one more time and goes slack.

  Almost instantly a black car pulls up as close to the Ferris wheel as possible, and quickly a crew of gray-uniformed medics descend on the now silent, unmoving boy. Two of them load him onto a stretcher. The other two shut down the Ferris wheel and begin wiping away the blood and bits of bone.

  Fuck. If he lives, he’s going to wake up without a foot. That’s got to be even worse than waking up without a past. He’s going to be as confused about his identity as we are. Overnight he’ll have gone from football hero to “that guy without a foot.” I can’t help but notice everyone in Summer Falls is super-healthy-looking and attractive. He’ll stick out, even if they fit him with a prosthetic at the hospital. Assuming that black town car is in fact taking him to a hospital. The thought sends a chill of terror up my back. Where else might they be taking him?

  As they finish cleaning, one of the medics pulls the lever and the wheel whirs to life again. The black car pulls away.

  Moments later, people start waking up. The people on the Ferris wheel, incredibly, keep riding it. The people on the ground look around with confused expressions, then shuffle into food or game lines. Conversations resume all around me. Casual conversations. Nothing about the boy who just got carted away. They’re not wondering what happened to him.

  It’s like they don’t even remember that a guy got his foot caught in the Ferris wheel’s gears.

  Because they don’t remember. It hits me suddenly.

  Just like the Bishops after they were squared off in the kitchen, fighting their way toward an ugly divorce.

  It’s not just that they moved on. It’s that they lost the ability to look back.

  The heatnaps aren’t random, like Wikipedia said. They happen after traumatic situations. They erase traumatic memories somehow. But how?

  Nearby I hear an old man’s plaintive voice and look up to see Hazel, the baker, still down. “Come on, sweetie. Get up.”

  Sheriff Hank is on the scene within moments. “Come on, get up, old girl.”

  “Come back to me,” the old man pleads.

  Hank kneels down to take Hazel’s vitals, but it’s clear she’s alive. Her eyes are even open. But she’s not moving, not responding to anything anyone says. The doctor talks quietly to Hank. Then together they lift Hazel onto a gurney and carry her to the sheriff-mobile. Her husband, I notice, has instantly fallen to the ground in a second heatnap.

  “Elyse?”

  At the sound of her name I whip around and see the jock guy who was asleep on the Ferris wheel. He’s searching through the crowd, calling her name.

  Without thinking, I walk right up to him. “What happened? She was with you a minute ago.”

  He blinks at me. “Oh, it’s you. Since when has Elyse needed someone like you looking out for her?”

  “Apparently she does, since you lost her.” While you were passed out like every other idiot in this town.

  Letterman jacket grabs me by the arm. “You don’t need to worry about my girl. We clear on that?”

  Crap. This is not going well. Remembering how the lady in the antique store reacted to being insulted and reminded of bad memories, I say, “You just sat there drooling while your dumb jock friend’s foot got pulverized. Elyse doesn’t know you anymore and don’t tell me you can’t tell.”

  The guy’s face gets redder with rage, then his grip on my arm slackens. He crumples to the ground.

  As usual when people collapse here, no one around seems to care. They walk around him.

  I’m not going to learn anything more tonight in this crowd of zombies and I need to talk to Elyse, so I turn and walk from the fair all the way back to Preston House.

  Only thanks to my disguise as a Brazilian tourist, I can’t exactly knock on her bedroom door at night. I hope that if she saw half of what I did at the fair, she’ll want to talk as much as I do—and she’ll come find me.

  Back in the Rustic’s Cottage, I take off my shoes and shirt, turn on the bathroom light, and stand in front of the mirror, washing my face and brushing my teeth. The eye tattoo in the center of my chest stares back at me, making me wonder about what the hell possessed me to get a tattoo like that in the first place. It’s disheartening that the whole day’s passed without my even getting close to figuring out who I am or what happened to me. And now I’m alone, without Elyse. Her absence gnaws at me.

  Other than the ink eye, I look pretty normal. I have light brown skin and supershort dark hair. Eyes that aren’t too much paler than my pupils. My ancestry clearly isn’t European, or not just European. And I didn’t grow up in this town, or more people would recognize me. Even though Elyse doesn’t feel like she fits in here, she looks like she does. Her clothes, her haircut, her accent, her mannerisms. She was clearly born and raised in this town. But I could be from just about anywhere on earth. How the hell am I supposed to narrow it down?

  Through the sliding patio door I can hear crickets chirping. I must be from a big city, because all this quiet is freaking me out.

  I have to talk to Elyse about what happened to that boy at the fair. I don’t give a damn if I cause a ruckus by heading up to her room.

  I pull my baggy shirt back on and slide open the patio door. The night air feels warm through the screen, and the blue-black sky is bright with stars. Endless stars. The breeze smells like flowers and freshly cut grass. I can see Jim and Candace lying next to each other on chaise lounges, talking softly.

  Then I see her hurrying across the yard in white pajamas and bunny slippers. She’s clutching a large book to her chest. She nods a hello to the tourists without looking at them. I’ve opened the screen before she can even knock.

  “Thank god you’re home!” she says.

  Thank god you’re safe, I think. “Then you saw the accident?”

  She nods. “The accident was horrible. His foot . . .” She shudders. “But what was even worse were the ghosts putting everyone to sleep.”

  “Ghosts?” I think back to the mass heatnaps. “You’re telling me ghosts did that?”

  “I saw it. I saw it and I ran, all the way home.”

  I let out a sigh. “I believe you. And I need you to believe this: While everyone else was knocked out, a car with dark windows pulled up and hauled him away. After people woke up from the heatnap, they’d forgotten all about what happened. People at the fair went right back to dancing and playing, like nothing ever happened.”

  “You’re saying heatnaps affect people’s memories.” She looks at me. “You think that’s what happened to us?”

  “Maybe. But they all still seemed to remember who they were. Well, except one person. That old lady whose door we knocked on, she didn’t wake up from her heatnap. Her eyes were open, but you could tell there was no one there. The doctor took her as well.”

  “We have to find out what’s going on. We’ve got to fix our memories before the doctor takes us too.”

  “Yeah, get our memories and get the hell out of here.” Then I think about her mother and her dumb boyfriend. “Or maybe not. You’ve got family here. You’ve got friends.”

  “You’re not going to like this.” She holds up the book. It’s a yearbook
. The Mountain Cat. “But so do you.”

  She opens the yearbook to a bookmarked page. It’s the portrait of Marshall King. The same picture in the Satanist guy’s house, on the bedroom wall. Photo guy. Me. It’s like a gut punch.

  “Hi, Marshall.” Elyse waves at me.

  I shake my head, not knowing what to say. “It doesn’t feel—”

  “Like it’s really your name? Welcome to the club.”

  The room’s spinning. If I’m Marshall King, if that room is my room with all my junk in it, then that means . . . the Satanist guy is my father.

  “Maybe I should go back and talk to that guy at the house. I mean, you were right, it was my room. He must be . . . my father.”

  “Who cares if he is?” She sets the yearbook down, her green eyes hard as glass. “He’s obviously not a good one.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’ve at least found your family.”

  “They’re not my family. They’re just people who look like me.”

  “Well, for now, because you don’t remember them.”

  “It’s more than that.” She speaks slowly, trying on the words. “I don’t know . . . if I like them. It all just feels so random.”

  “Random?”

  “Like someone put together this life for me from a box of spare parts. ‘Here, you’re named Elyse, and you’re an innkeeper’s daughter in a small town, and you have’”—she grabs a wavy lock of her own hair—“‘blond hair.’ But it doesn’t feel like me. It doesn’t feel real.”

  “Right now,” I tell her, “you’re the only real person I know.”

  A crashing sound interrupts us, followed by a muffled cry. We look at each other and run outside.

  “Sounds like it was coming from the main house,” I say.

  “Did you hear where that sound came from?” Elyse calls to Candace and Jim. But they don’t answer because they’re both passed out on their respective chaises under the moonlight. Candace is even snoring. They were awake five minutes ago.