The final bell rang.
Ana remained seated at a grainy laboratory table. Soon she was alone, apart from a bottled fawn fetus, a plastic cage of patchwork mice, and the persistent reek of ancient formaldehyde. She raised her fingers to her nose and smelled sodium under her nails.
“Still here, Ana?”
Had Ana been invested in the present, she might have jumped.
Ms. Yu, small as her voice was high, was hidden from view by her laptop and an enormous pile of biology textbooks. When she stood, her computer rattled forward on the counter and wrenched her head down; she’d forgotten about her earbuds. By the time Ana reached her, Ms. Yu hadn’t managed to untangle herself from the cord.
Milo, Ana thought.
“Don’t leave on my account!”
Ana readjusted her backpack.
“Frazzled” was the right word. More than once while Ms. Yu was going over the syllabus, she’d tucked a pen into her hair, forgotten about it, and grabbed another from a beaker on her desk. After a full day of teaching, Ms. Yu’s black-and-silver curls were crowned by a fan of red and blue and black Bics, an Expo marker or four.
“I’m staying after to feed the beasts. You’re welcome to help! When the mice don’t get their grains, they start eating each other alive. I’m not joking.”
Ana watched her skitter to the storage closet. The socks peeking over Ms. Yu’s clogs didn’t match: one was navy, the other polka-dotted green.
Ms. Yu jangled a ring of keys, trying several in the lock. At last she cried “Eureka!” and clomped inside. Ana traipsed in after her, took in the sour smell, the sight of empty fish tanks and microscopes and scales. Another pantry.
Ms. Yu kneeled beside tubs of feed pellets. Ana bent down to help, and together they wrested one into the open.
“Many thanks, Ana. Fighting cannibalism is a noble cause.”
Ana stared at the ceiling. The door had closed behind them. It wouldn’t take much for that single lightbulb to die. She pressed fingers into the space just beneath her sunglasses lenses and pulled them free. In here they made it too close to darkness.
“You know, Tom—sorry, Mr. Chilton? He showed me the diorama you designed for the astronomy unit. You must’ve spent hours on all those details. Didn’t you invent seasons for your planets, based on their proximity to the two stars in your solar system?”
Ana shrugged.
“What a great example for the other kids!” Ms. Yu tore off the plastic lid, hoisted a scoop of pellets out. “You’re interested in science, huh?”
“I’m not interested in anything.”
“Bullshit.” Ms. Yu clapped a hand over her mouth, forgetting the pellets stuck to her palm. She spat one off her lip. “Pardon my French. Wanna tackle the hamsters?”
Ms. Yu proffered a measuring cup.
“I can’t. My brother is waiting for me.”
“Oh.” Ms. Yu’s shoulders fell. “Okay. But I mean what I said. Stay anytime! And I’ll see you in class on Wednesday!”
It wasn’t until she was back at her locker that Ana realized: Ms. Yu had met her eyes. Maybe science teachers were less afraid to look at stars.
Maybe there were people who hadn’t yet circled the Vasquez name in red pen.
Three years ago, Ana would have stayed after school for swim class. Two years ago, it would have been student council. Last year, volleyball.
This year there was nothing to hold her there.
After leaving Ms. Yu, Ana curled up in a cubby parallel to the gymnasium. The golden light of the court through open doors struck the trophy cases, illuminating the darkening hall as the sky purpled beyond the window above her.
The brow scab throbbed. Maybe Ana could pin her eyelids to her sunglasses with a binder clip and nap until Hank appeared. She might be lulled by the song of squeaking sneakers on wood, the warmth of the bodies in motion in the bright gym, the steady, icy breeze from the vent beneath her—
A shadow blocked her light.
Ana’s eyes scraped fully open.
Between Ana and her light stood a thin boy with a long neck. Even if she’d been wearing neon spandex and doing cartwheels rather than tucked away in her cubby, she didn’t think he would have noticed her. He kept the entire hallway between himself and the gym doors, but was obviously transfixed, leaning forward on subliminal tiptoe, trading his weight from foot to foot in quick succession. He seemed almost to vibrate.
“Hank’s not in there.”
Brendan snapped his body her way. “Ana. Hi. I wasn’t …”
“You were. But he’s not in there.”
Brendan sank. “I heard varsity practice started tonight. On the announcements?”
Ana shrugged. She inched out of his shadow.
“Why? Stalking my brother?”
Brendan frowned. His face was just as sharp as the rest of him, and every expression exaggerated that sharpness. Her brother’s ex-boyfriend betrayed more emotion in one dimple than Ana currently had in all of her.
Brendan Nesbitt, blocking her light.
“You should move,” Ana told him.
“I only want to talk to him. And I do have a legitimate reason for being here. Musical tryouts start next week. I stayed after to practice in the choir room.”
Blink: Brendan, deleted from existence.
After the blink Brendan existed again, gaze helplessly drawn to the gymnasium doors, fingers fiddling with his belt loops. Ana wondered how he ever found clothes that fit him. Those shoulder blades must wear holes in his cardigans.
“But why are you still here? Taking a renewed interest in cheerleading?”
“I’ve never tried cheerleading,” Ana mused.
“Don’t all popular girls go through the ‘I’m gonna be a cheerleader’ stage?”
“Like all gay boys go through the ‘theatah’ stage?”
“Yes, exactly like that.” Brendan smirked. “I mentioned I’m here for the musical?”
Ana’s lips twitched. She tried to recall why lips did that. “There’s light here. I’m sitting here because there’s light in this hallway.”
“Huh. Glaring and fluorescent. But I suppose.”
Ana cleared her throat. “Also. Hank told me to wait by the gym after school.”
“School ended an hour ago. Do you think he forgot you?”
Ana shrugged.
“He can’t simply keep forgetting people.” Brendan squeezed his knees.
“He can,” Ana murmured. “I can’t.”
“… how is everyone?” Brendan asked, and though maybe he was really saying … Hank Hank Hank? Ana knew he cared. In every single interaction she could remember having with him, Brendan Nesbitt cared.
Ana had watched Brendan climb alone out of the canyon on June 7.
She’d been helping her mother clean up the wreckage. The flipped card table, the overturned birthday cake in the yard, runaway paper plates lifted by desert wind. Mom had climbed into her car to drive circles around the canyon—
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Men will make it worse.” Mom shook her head. “Stay here!”
The van peeled away. “There are policewomen, too,” Ana muttered.
In a matter of seconds she pivoted at the sound of shoes scraping gravel and there was Brendan, flying over the fence, soaring out of Nameless Canyon.
“Brendan—what—where’s Hank?”
Ana had never seen the bird-boy so restless. “I left him. I just—there were these lights down there, and I—Christ, I was honestly scared—”
“What the hell is there to be scared of? There’s nothing down there but dirt!”
Ana had little reason to be so angry—Brendan Nesbitt wasn’t her boyfriend. Anyhow, she didn’t expect outsiders to plunge into holes for the sake of Vasquezes.
Ana threw her long hair into a ponytail. Before she could get her second leg over the fence, Brendan intervened.
“Let go.”
“Ana—you can’t—there’s, there’s something—”
She slipped loose and slid down the slope. “My brothers are idiots, but you don’t have to love them. I do.”
“Ana! Be careful! Please!”
Minutes later, halfway down the incline, she collided with them: her idiot brothers stumbling skyward with their ears and fingers aglow, insects of light springing from them. When that glow struck Ana’s eyes, she raised a hand to shield herself, but Luz had already seeped in.
And then Ana saw—oh god, the things she saw—
“Hank did that today, too.” Beside her, Brendan furrowed his brow.
“Hank did what?”
“He just … went away. Earlier today? Arlene and I were hanging a poster, and Hank vanished right in front of me. Into his own head, like you just did. Your family is never loquacious, but is this an all-new Vasquez special feature? If I talk to Milo, will he vanish, too?”
Ana scoffed. “Milo has always done that.”
“Well, I suppose you would know.”
The window had blackened above them. Only five p.m., but the sky didn’t care. Ana tried not to, either, but the streetlights hadn’t switched on. All along the main hallway, the overheads were being killed by a jangling janitor. The players in the gym quieted. Probably they were huddling up, preparing to leave.
Soon all the lights would go.
Ana pressed a hand against her forehead, yanking what few hairs remained to her eyebrows taut. The scab itched. Luz, no, please show me something beautiful, please …
“Hey, Ana?” Ana could count the faint freckles on Brendan’s cheekbones. “I don’t know anything about … about what happened. But you’ve always been so blunt. It used to scare me, you know.”
Had Ana ever been the person he described? “Seems like lots of things scare you, Brendan.”
“Yes. Would you scare me now, please?” Brendan shuddered. “Would you tell me what really happened after I … I left you all? This summer?”
Ana lowered her sunglasses. Brendan’s dark gaze wavered before the constellations, fell for an instant before rising again.
“Also. Unrelated, but I want to tell you something else.”
Ana stared. The first column of lights went out in the gymnasium.
“I like your Band-Aid. Belle was always my favorite princess. Also, why do you smell like cinnamon?”
Ana breathed his air. “Brendan. Are there lights in the choir room?”
“The usual horrible kind.” The second column went.
“Take me there?”
“You don’t think Hank …”
“He’s not coming for either of us.”
“Blunt, like I said.” Brendan fluttered to his feet and looped his arm through hers. Darkness deepened in their wake.
“Everything this creature did—all the shining memories it showed you?” Dr. Ruby had reiterated, once and again, in the clinic she’d built in the Vasquez garage. “Ana, these were lies, an attempt to make you a more welcoming host. With your personal history of self-harm, it was nothing short of emotional abuse.”
“Luz didn’t lie. He just replayed memories for me. They were already mine.”
“That’s how insidious it was. This entity used your own thoughts to manipulate you. If you closed your eyes and Luz showed you, for example, a happy recollection of a day at the zoo, the intention wasn’t to warm your heart.” She held Ana’s hand. “This parasite was creating emotional dependency.”
It was probably true. But that didn’t make the memories Luz had paraded before Ana over the course of the summer any less golden. The way Luz told it, on the backs of Ana’s eyelids: Brendan Nesbitt was always alight.
How this boy glowed while joining Milo for imaginary dinner. How he shone when he gifted Ana’s mother with a photo collage of her children on Mother’s Day. Brendan Nesbitt became blinding in those moments when he helped Ana with her homework or laughed at her sarcastic quips.
Brendan Nesbitt, as relayed by Luz, became something just shy of a supernova whenever Hank held his hand.
Luz hadn’t invented these things. They’d always been there. Ana just hadn’t known how to see them.
Without Luz, Ana wouldn’t have known light now, in this school hallway, while it stared her in the face. She wouldn’t have recognized light when it complimented her Band-Aid.