For a moment, I sat there, stunned. I felt like my world was inside a snow globe and someone had shaken it. My mother had just told me about her past, that she was really a slider and a light agent working to take down the most powerful dark networks.
“I regret that I couldn’t tell you earlier,” my mom said earnestly. “It would’ve put your life in danger.” She tapped faintly on the desk with her long nails.
This whole ordeal was completely surreal. I stared at my mom. Her black sweat suit and sneakers created the illusion I was talking to my D Glow mother on her way to her regular spa appointment, but the person sitting before me didn’t sound or act like my mother. This person was softer, nervous, caring—alien.
I searched around the pale pink room in an attempt to get a clue of who she really was, but the room seemed mostly barren. No books lined the shelf, and the only objects on the desk were a notepad, pencil, and a haphazardly cloud-shaped paperweight.
“I don’t have an office here,” she explained, noticing my eyes surveying the room.
“How could a bureau of supposed light allow you to kill all those D Glows that worked for Father?” I mumbled.
“I didn’t actually kill any of them, I just made it look like I did. It's easy to get D Glows, at the right place and the right time, to kill each other off. I just made sure your sister saw what she needed to see—that I was, well, bad to the bone, so to speak. She’d report back to your father and that helped my reputation.” Mom smiled reassuringly, then quickly looked down, her smile fading.
I rubbed my neck, trying to take it all in. Birds chirped happily and unassumingly in the background. Why were birds chirping? We were in a room with no windows.
“Make the damn birds stop chirping,” I demanded tiredly.
“Of course,” Mom said quickly, eager to comply. She grabbed a remote from inside the desk drawer and pointed to the portrait of a forest on the wall, and the noise abruptly stopped.
“So what am I, then?”
“A Light Glow. Your reading today was correct—well, sort of. You are up from neutral. There has never been a test for you as Julien Romero before so it assumed, since you are an L Glow, that you started at five and went down to plus one. At your last testing though, it was at neutral. The Light Bureau changed it to a Pure D reading to protect you.” Mom stood up and came around to the front of the desk to sit down on its side. “I have tried to keep you pretty much in the neutral zone as best as I could, but I think Skyla may have moved you a point to light.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. So she was actually trying to turn me?”
“No, no,” Mom quickly added. “I think you were falling in love with her, and that, my dear, brings you toward light. So, essentially, you moved yourself.”
“Well, that's just super. And Father, is he a light agent too?” I asked flatly.
“No, Stephen. He is a Pure D, as nasty as they come.”
“But how, then…how were you able to keep me from being completely dark?” I was utterly confused. A Pure D and a Pure L couldn’t make a Light Glow. Did my father love Mom, making me a slider, too? No—there was no way Father ever loved me.
“He's not your real father,” Mom said, so softly that I barely heard her.
“What the dark?!” I yelled. “Who the hell is my father, then?” I clenched my jaw, beyond frustrated. Everything I had thought to be true was a lie.
The lights flickered in the room.
“Stop using dark words, Stephen,” Mom urged with an uncharacteristic expression of concern on her face. “I know you are upset.”
“Oh, do you, now?” I snapped. “All this time I thought I was some loser D Glow, like something was wrong with me. And Skyla.” I paused to try and compose myself. “That was torture!” I flung my hands in the air in exasperation. “I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her even though I knew I had to. How could you—a light agent, for dark's sake—let me suffer like that? How could you raise me in one of the darkest households in New York City when you knew all along I was light? You risked my life every single day!” My face was flushed in anger.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” my mom said unsympathetically, like the mother I knew. “I would’ve pulled you out if I thought you were at risk, but sometimes it is easier to hide in plain sight. Your dark false father had too much pride to ever doubt for a second that his children were the darkest kids around.”
“How did you keep me neutral?” I asked, dumbfounded. I felt so stupid that I hadn’t figured this out on my own. The signals had always been there, like giant flashing lights and blaring sirens.
“First, let me rewind and tell you about your real dad.” Mom stood up and walked over to the portrait of the woods.
I’d forgotten for a brief moment that my mom said I had another father. Was he in New York? Could I meet him?
“His name is Jake Cooling,” Mom said, touching the side of the portrait, making it turn a different season with each touch. “He is an L Glow. He was an analyst at the location where I would go for my weekly interventions.” Before I could ask, she spoke again. “I had to have weekly interventions to keep me in the light. Anyway,” Mom sighed and turned toward me, “that's where we met and started dating on the side.”
“You had an affair?” I gasped dubiously. “I didn’t think Lights were capable of something like that.”
“First, I’m not a normal L Glow, Stephen. Second, Pierre and I have merely a partnership like any other D Glow. I wanted to experience true love, and Jake—your father—gave me that. He had no idea I was with Pierre and didn’t know about my mission. My mission was only known at the director level at the Bureau. He did, however, know that I was an agent, so he agreed to keep our relationship quiet.”
She walked slowly back to her desk and took a seat in the brown leather office chair. I could tell this wasn’t a comfortable subject for her to talk about. “I became pregnant with you almost immediately. Reckless, I suppose. I had no choice but to tell the Bureau.” She fidgeted with the diamond bracelet on her wrist.
“They sent Jake on a mission overseas and I haven’t seen nor heard from him since.” She sighed and looked back over at me. “I suspect the Bureau told him not to contact me or it would endanger my life. I know for certain he had no idea that I was pregnant, or he would have tried to see me again. The Bureau then told me I needed to tell Pierre the child was his and they would protect you.”
I hadn’t realized my mom had been through so much for this agent job. I felt my anger toward her dissipate, albeit marginally.
“What does my real father look like?”
“Is that important?” my mom asked.
“To me it is,” I replied pointedly. I wanted to know everything I could about this man.
“Well,” she started hesitantly. “I’m not sure what he looks like now, but when we met, he had a full head of light-brown hair with bangs that sometimes fell over his eyes. He was about the same height as you are now, and the same build, actually. His eyes were amber, nearly catlike—I would tease him about that.” The corners of her mouth lifted into a remembering smile. “They would turn different shades of green or brown depending on what he was wearing.” Her smile extinguished, and she regained her composure, sitting up straight and looking serious once again.
“Anyway, the Light Bureau has been protecting you behind the scenes since you were born. Like I told you earlier, you went to a testing center run by L Glow agents, when you turned of age, who always set you as a Pure D. I also brought you to playdates with Light Normal families as a small child so you could experience caring and kindness. Oh yes, and you had interventions without even knowing it—repeated messaging, tapping into your subconscious, and the like.”
“And Alecia?”
Mom shifted her position on the desk.
“Darkness, who else did you sleep with?” I scoffed, overwhelmed. I couldn’t believe things could become even more complicated.
“No, no,” Mom said, waving her hand. “It's not like that. Alecia's father is Pierre LeBete. She just has a different mother.” Mom sighed and continued as I rested my hand against my head.
“I got the idea when one of your dad's mistresses came to the house demanding that Pierre partner with her because she was pregnant with his child. She was desperate. Everyone knows that a D Glow mom not tethered to someone tends to end up relegated to a lower-class lifestyle. No Dark Glow wants to support a child that isn’t their own. When partners break up or departner, the respective father has to continue to provide for the children that they have had. So they don’t want to pay for someone else's kid as well. Anyway, Pierre, of course, told the girl, I think her name was Jewelle, to bug off. I quickly took my plan to the Council and, surprisingly, they approved it. A light agent team swooped in posing as a rival cartel and told Jewelle that they had been doing surveillance on Pierre so they knew what had happened. They told her that the cartel leader and his partner hated Pierre so much that they wanted to raise the kid as their own and train him to eventually help take down the LeBete dynasty as sweet justice for all the LeBete family had taken from them. Jewelle could then start fresh with cash in hand somewhere else. She loved the idea and stayed in a ‘cartel warehouse’ until the baby was born. Last I heard, she had run off to Croatia. All I had to do was to pretend I was pregnant.”
“Didn’t Dad notice a baby wasn’t popping out of you the day she was born?”
Mom laughed sarcastically. “He was in Mexico. I knew he wouldn’t bother coming around. I don’t think he even laid eyes on Alecia until two weeks after she was born because he had some other trip already planned.”
“But your pregnancy?” I asked.
“That wasn’t too hard,” Mom said, sliding off the desk to sit back down on the office chair on the other side. “The Bureau helped, and I did my best to stay clear of him during the last two months. There was no way I could have a Pure D baby. If I went into the Pure D zone for nine solid months, there was a risk I wouldn’t be able to get out of it, and all would be lost. This was the only way for me to have a Pure D child.”
“I need a cigarette,” I muttered, feeling my jacket pocket to see if I had another one stashed inside.
“Sorry, you can’t have one here.” She picked up a pencil and tapped it lightly on the desk. “Trust me, I could use one too.” She gave a faint smile of sympathy.
“What exactly was your plan? When were you going to tell me?” I said, standing up.
“I had planned all along to become a queen and use the power to take down as much darkness as I could. I was going to tell you at the crowning…but then you said you liked the Light Glow, and that changed everything.” She started talking faster, gesturing with her hands to emphasize her story. “It gave me an idea. I had to work it out with the Council first, though. I told you to break it off with Skyla, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t, and I suspected she was going to want to scale soon. I even tried warning you not to scale, but your father interrupted us. So I tasked a light surveillance team to alert me in case it happened. They did, and I got in the car and immediately brought you to the Bureau. It was a tad sooner than I had expected, but I’ve thought it through and have an approval for a plan.”
“At least I know I’m not crazy now,” I said flatly. “I was looking over my shoulders when I went to meet Skyla because I just knew you’d have a team on me. Did you have mics in my place, too? Cameras?”
“No,” my mom said, shaking her head. “Look, Stephen, you have every right to be angry at me, but I did everything in my power to protect you and keep you in the light. We don’t have the luxury of time to dwell on things right now.”
There was a knock on the door
“Come in,” Mom called as she rose to go to the door. A white-bearded man in an awful green suit slowly cracked the door open and peered into the room.
“Michael!” she exclaimed as she scurried over to greet him. He swung the door open and, to my surprise, following closely behind him, was Skyla.
“You must be Skyla,” my mother said brightly as she extended her hand to Skyla. Skyla shook it timidly while glancing over at me.
“Michael, this is my son, Stephen.” My mom gestured for me to come closer. I could tell she was trying hard to sound positive to counter the tension in the room. I stood up and faced him but remained rooted in place, staring at this version of my mom. I was nervous about Skyla's reaction to me, as well. If she was here in the Bureau of Light, then she probably knew the story behind me and my mother, and I could imagine she hated me now, if she was even capable of that emotion. The man named Michael walked over to me.
“Hello!” he said warmly. “I want you to know that your mother is a real hero. She has helped the light cause immensely, and you should be incredibly proud.” He shook my hand heartily.
“Hello,” I mumbled.
“This is Michael Erickson, Skyla's father,” Mom said.
“Oh,” I said, startled. I wasn’t expecting to meet Skyla's dad.
I saw Skyla flicker a smile at my reaction. She stayed put, arms crossed, standing close to the entrance of the office.
“And, of course, you two already know each other,” Mom waved her fingers at me and Skyla awkwardly.
“Are you a light agent as well?” I asked Mr. Erickson before my mom could say anything else.
“No!” Skyla and Mr. Erickson said in unison.
“I don’t work in operations like your mom. My job deals with strategy; nothing too exciting.”
His face looked friendly, but I could tell he was a serious man.
“OK, then,” my mom said pleasantly. “Michael, why don’t we go get a quick cup of tea and let these two catch up?”
“Skyla, dear, would you like anything?” she offered, placing her hand on Skyla's upper arm. My stomach knotted. Was this real? Was my mom really this nice or was this an act? I didn’t know what to believe anymore. It was so…wrong to see her acting all kind and maternal.
“No thanks,” Skyla said quietly, looking down. I could tell she wasn’t happy about this whole situation.
“You, dear?” my mom asked, turning to me, her hand still on Skyla's shoulder.
I shook my head no.
“OK, then.” She looked at Skyla. “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Time is, unfortunately, not on our side right now.”
They both left the room and my mom shut the door behind her. I stood in place. I wasn’t sure what to do. Skyla's arms were still crossed and she looked extremely uncomfortable.
After what seemed an eternity, I blurted out, “I’m sorry.”
She uncrossed her arms and looked down as she focused on twisting a ring on her pinky finger. “I don’t know what to think right now, Julien—I mean, I guess it's really Stephen,” she murmured, still playing with her ring.
“I didn’t know, I promise,” I said, walking toward her.
“Did you like me?” she asked abruptly, looking up. “Or was it just a big game for you?”
I forced myself to stop and think about my words first so I could be careful, hoping to ameliorate, at least somewhat, the troubled air between us.
“I liked you and hated myself for liking you because I thought I was a D Glow,” I said slowly. It upset me that she was upset, but I also didn’t think I was completely to blame.
“Put yourself in my shoes for a minute, please, Skyla. I did initially have the idea to turn you, but I also liked you from the start—right from the very first day we talked. You were always in my head and it drove me a little crazy. I thought I was a total D Glow failure.” I chuckled ironically at how stupid the situation was.
Skyla stood silent. There was no trace of sympathy on her face.
“I was selfish, Skyla,” I pleaded. I didn’t want her to be mad at me. “I enjoyed hanging out with you and didn’t want it to end. I justified it by saying I was going to turn you, but I don’t think I had it in me. I just couldn’t bear to do it.” I was standing directly in front of her now and could see from her face that she was exhausted.
“How you acted at the park today…it scared me…and now I realize that I don’t really know you at all.” She turned and walked to the other side of the room and kept her back to me. I sighed. She was right to be upset with me. We stood in silence for a minute; I resisted the urge to run over to her and caress her shoulders.
“I smoke—not much, maybe a pack a week—but enough, I guess,” I admitted. “I do drink and do get angry sometimes. But that will likely change now, Skyla.” I walked over to the other side of the room and circled around Skyla so I could see her face again, keeping a polite amount of space between us. “They will probably give me a full intervention and I’ll move way back into the light. I feel like I’ve already moved a point just today.” I was starting to feel like it could work out between us, but then a stark reality hit me.
“Oh!” I started, putting both hands through my hair.
“What?” asked Skyla, still guarded.
I stopped and thought about my situation. Was my mother going to pull me out and give me a new name? Was I going to have to start my life all over as an L Glow? Cigarettes I could give up, but, frankly, I liked my whiskey. I liked my status and privilege. Was I ready to change my life completely as I knew it?
“I don’t know what they are going to do with me. I guess I’m gonna have to start over as an L Glow, and that just hit me.”
“That's not a bad thing,” Skyla said flatly.
“Imagine what a good boyfriend I could be as an L Glow that knows he's an L Glow?” After a few minutes of silence, while I brewed inside my own head, Skyla stepped closer to me and looked me in the eye. We were now only about two feet apart. For the first time ever, I saw she had dark circles under her eyes. Despite this, she still was so beautiful. I wanted to see her smile and hear her joy-filled laugh again. I opened my mouth to tell her that I needed her in my life, but was stopped short by Skyla's next words.
“I don’t think, well—I mean, I don’t know if I can still see you, Julien—no, Stephen. ” She pressed her lips together and looked as though she was holding back tears.
“Oh,” I breathed, taken aback and deeply hurt. I had thought maybe since I was really an L Glow, she would want to try and make it work. Instantly, I shifted into my defensive mode and fixed my face to show no hint of emotion, like I had countless times in my life. The last thing Skyla needed was to see me get upset, and while my heart wanted to plead with her to reconsider, I merely stood silent, taking quiet, controlled breaths. I hoped she wouldn’t notice my disappointment.
Skyla walked over to the side of the desk and picked up the paperweight cloud. Inside, swirls of blue sand swooshed around.
“Everything is different now.” She shook the paperweight, almost speaking to herself more than she was to me. “It's too much for me to deal with.”
I nodded. “I understand.” Of course I understood her, but I was also desperately hoping that this could still work out somehow. I slumped down in one of the chairs, seeing my hope was futile. What a terrible day.
“I guess I should figure out who I am before I can be in a relationship with anyone,” I finally managed, more to reassure her than anything I really believed.
“Yes, that's probably the best way forward.” She grimaced as if she wasn’t entirely certain about the decision and I sat up a little straighter. Was she changing her mind?
I was contemplating how I could convince her that the best way forward would actually be together, but before I could say anything, there was a light rap at the door.
“Come in!” Skyla called out, turning to face the door. My mom burst into the room like a pop song, smiling brightly, and I inwardly cursed her timing.
Michael Erickson peeked into the room and announced he had to head to a meeting. “Stephanie will take you back to my office when you are done here, and we’ll go home together afterward,” he stated as he gave Skyla a reassuring look and then closed the door.
“Come have a seat,” my mom chirped as she gestured for Skyla and me to take a seat in front of the desk. We both reluctantly complied.
I felt like a school boy that had been sent to the principal's office.
“OK!” My mom clapped her hands together. “Let's talk about the mission.”