Someone shook my arm. I tried to move it, but couldn’t. My eyes had shut tight and my body had curled into fetal position. I was catatonic.
I unfroze, gasped for air. I clawed my hands over my ears, palms pressed flat against them. It was a reaction to the screaming. It was so loud. Who was doing it? When would it stop?
Arms tugged at me. They wrenched the hands from my ears and took the mask off my face. My eyes opened and I saw a looming circle of Glowfolk around me, looking down on me with pity.
I was the one screaming. Once I realized this, I could stop.
“Get up,” Ella said.
I stood and faced her.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To save someone, like you were once saved.”
“I-I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
A pit of something like decades-old shame welled up in my stomach. The Ripper—my first and fortunately rare reminder that no one is ever safe. Joanna’s act is my first lesson that there is no guarantee in life but our own actions.
It led me to the island. It taught me not to trust others, only myself.
Ella placed a hand on my shoulder. “I was there with you. I saw what you saw. You haven’t moved past the memory because your twelve-year-old self learned the wrong message from it. Which was?”
“One day I need to save the person that saved me.”
She smiled. “You came here to save your sister.”
Rumors flew across the group:
“Sister!”
“Is her sister here?”
“Who is it?”
“Joy, the EO.”
“They were talking together yesterday.”
“Hey!” Ella motioned for the others to shush. She looked to me again. “Joy’s not the one you need to save. But, stay. Work with us. Save others. Starting with yourself.”
She embraced me, pressing my head against hers, swaying me from side to side with her body.
I took in her scent. Jasmine. I released all my muscles at once.
As if they knew I’d do that, the Glowfolk rushed in to take my weight, swaying me to the rhythm of Ella’s movements.
“Tell us what you feel,” someone said.
“Yeah, Lily! Share with us? Please?”
What did it mean that they knew about Joanna now? And what did I think about the memory, if that’s what it was?
Everything went too fast. The group’s attention exerted a pressure on me to perform to their satisfaction. And I still hadn’t eaten.
I broke down, tears gushing down my face. My arms rushed out, independent from me, and gripped Ella.
When my arms fell at my side again, all of them released me and stood back, forming a concentrated circle.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” I said.
“You wouldn’t have done it otherwise,” Ella said.
Paternalistic bullshit. I hadn’t even subscribed yet and already they were making decisions for me.
Though I did feel something like—well, a glow inside. Like the high I got those few dry Januarys that I managed to abstain from drinking. Time would tell if it really was the catharsis it seemed to be.
“Lily,” Ella continued, “if you hadn’t gone through this, they would have ordered me to send you home.”
The old “above my pay grade, mate” excuse. They probably call it “above my trophic level” or some shit out here.
“Neither of us want that,” Ella added.
So apparently she was psychic as well as deeply invasive.
“We all went through it.” It was Gabriel’s soothing voice behind me. “I ran away from home as a kid. During my first session I saw it from my mother’s perspective. It was devastating.”
“Summer did it for me back on land,” Ella said. “In my vision, I was my own friend and, in this role, I had to watch a condensed version of my drug and drink years. The process releases traumas in order of urgency.”
It would’ve felt good that they shared their own struggles—if I had any reason to believe them. Without proof, I just felt ashamed by my own warped memories.
“Don’t you feel good now?” Gabriel said. Why was he being kind to me? Did he like me or just the attention I gave him? If I couldn’t figure that out about regular, land-based men, what hope did I have of decoding him?
“May I be excused for a moment?” I said.
The group reacted with stiffness. They seemed to think I’d melt right into them. It pleased me to subvert. I didn’t want any involvement in things going their way.
“Sure,” Ella said.
I nodded and headed towards Joanna’s room. It surely wasn’t great that they knew who my sister was. Either way, I no longer had a reason to hide it.
I felt them beneath me in the plaza. Their confusion, their rigidity.
None of them could leave an activity at will—but they had to convince me I could, at any time, if they wanted me to join.