First Light

CHAPTER TWO

“It’s a bird,” the girl, Madison, said.

“I see that,” Rachel Wheeler said. “It’s pretty. Why don’t we put it in the sky?”

Madison had snipped the misshapen bird from a sheet of black construction paper. It was part of a collage, a series of different shapes held in place with paste. The bottom was a strip of green paper and the sky was a strip of blue paper. There was a square for the house, and a block with wheels that represented Daddy’s truck. The forked brown tree was topped with a clump of green for leaves, and three scallop-edged dots of white were drifting clouds. The biggest object in the collage was a wobbly orange oval, a sun that projected brightness and cheer.

But Rachel’s main interest was the hidden interior of the house.

“Right here?” Madison said, setting the bird in the tree.

Tree. Perhaps she sees security there, maybe a nest.

“Wherever you want,” Rachel said.

“There,” Madison insisted.

“Okay, let’s put the paste on the back so it will stick.” Paste had not changed much from Rachel’s own grade-school days, and she helped Madison dab it on with big, greasy strokes using a wooden Popsicle stick.

Madison stamped the bird into place and frowned. “Maybe it should fly away.”

“How come?”

“So it won’t hear what’s happening in the house.”

“Would the bird be afraid?” Rachel kept her voice level, suppressing any eagerness. She was painfully aware of Do-Gooder Syndrome and those who wanted to help no matter the cost.

Madison shook her head, swishing fine blonde hair across her thin shoulders. “No, because the bird can fly away.”

“Do you sometimes wish you could fly?”

“Yeah, because Daddy won’t let me ride the school bus and then I could come to school.”

Madison had repeated the second grade because she’d missed twenty-seven days in the last school year. Despite the intervention of the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services, Madison’s father didn’t feel compelled to follow the law. Her mother was serving three years in prison for the manufacture, sale, and delivery of methamphetamine. Because the county had little funding for child services, Madison would remain in her father’s custody unless he committed some unforgivable atrocity on the order of molestation or murder. The “welfare state” was just one of the many oxymoronic catch phrases Rachel had encountered as a school counselor.

“What if we put a window on the house?” Rachel said, edging a little more deeply into her inquisition.

“Daddy says windows are for nosy people. Says you better keep the curtains closed.”

“But then you can’t see the sunshine. It’s dark all the time.”

Madison shrugged. “Not if you turn on the TV.”

Hard to argue with that one. Rachel glanced at the clock. It was almost two, and Madison was her last client of the day. She hated that word “client,” but “student” wasn’t exactly accurate, either, since she didn’t really teach. Rachel had finished her two-year Masters program and was currently conducting an internship at Greenwood Academy. The charter school was in a renovated warehouse on Charlotte’s rundown east side, a politically popular nod to school choice that had the ulterior motive of moving education costs from the tax coffers to parents.

Mrs. Federov, the dour and scrawny principal, had approved Rachel’s internship with the condition that no parents would be involved. Rachel was free to meet with students individually, but she wasn’t allowed to probe into anything besides school and peer subjects—as if home life had no role in academic performance and character education.

Rachel was under no illusions that she was here to save the world. She was here to save herself. Most notably from guilt over Chelsea, her little sister.

Madison wasn’t the only one who knew about loss.

“We don’t have TV at school,” Rachel said.

“We have a ’puter,” Madison said.

“Yes, we do have computers.” Rachel didn’t have an office, instead meeting with her clients in a supply room. That was handy for paper cut-outs, but not for technology. The media center had a bank of computers, but the one in Mrs. Federov’s office was the best in the school. Of course, it was Mrs. Federov’s personal property.

Which made using it even more fun, because it was off limits.

Rachel checked the hall, closed the supply-room door, and opened the side door that led to Mrs. Federov’s office. Mrs. Federov had a polished walnut desk that must have cost the nonprofit school association a thousand dollars. On it sat a MacBook, gleaming white like a futuristic relic. Madison pressed behind her, eager to enter.

“On one condition,” Rachel said.

“Not to tell?”

The kid is sharp. But then, aren’t they all, until grown-ups grind off all their edges? “I wouldn’t want you to lie. If a grownup asks, always tell the truth.”

Madison nodded, her brown eyes solemn. “What condition, then?”

“Can you tell me what’s inside the house?”

Madison’s brow furrowed as if she had already forgotten the collage. “House?”

“The one without a window.”

“Oh. Is this one of those times when I have to tell the truth?”

“I won’t tell anyone else. There’s a difference between a lie and a secret. And this would be our secret. Just like the computer.”

Madison looked longingly past Rachel to the computer. “Okay then. Daddy’s asleep on the couch. Drinking beer. He has a gun.”

A lovely combination. She could picture him, his shirt unbuttoned and hairy belly bulging, a platoon of empty bottles on the floor around the couch. The gun was a disturbing addition to the scene.

Great. Now I don’t just have to worry about him showing up in the principal’s office, I have to worry about him gunning down fifty innocent kids.

“Does he say anything about the gun?” she asked.

Madison shook her head. “Just said the gum…the gub…the guvment…is not taking his.”

Her father actually didn’t sound all that much different than many other Charlotte residents. The South was a conservative stronghold, despite the liberal university communities in North Carolina. The Mecklenburg school board was having a serious debate over whether to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons. Rachel wondered how long it would be before bulletproof vests were a classroom requirement.

“Okay,” Rachel said. “Let’s play some Dora the Explorer.”

When Rachel booted up the MacBook, it was already set to Mrs. Federov’s Yahoo! page. Rachel had no interest in the woman’s private habits, but she did notice an orange ball of fire in the news thumbnails. The accompanying teaser said, “Killer Solar Flare Heading for Earth?”

Rachel was well aware of Yahoo! and other news outlets using provocative headlines as click bait. She’d survived Y2K, collision-course asteroids, and the Mayan prophecies, accepting them all as hysteria. But she couldn’t resist, not after her grandfather had drilled doomsday paranoia into her skull from an early age. She clicked on the article.

“What’s that?” Madison said, pointing at the photograph that was credited to NASA.

Never lie to kids. “Scientists say the sun is giving off an awesome amount of energy that will reach the Earth by tomorrow.”

“Will I get a sunburn?”

August was humid enough already, so that was a legitimate concern. “No, it’s more like a type of invisible wave. Some people are worried that it will disrupt their phones, computers, and television.”

“Does that mean we won’t be able to play Dora the Explorer?”

“I’m sure it will be okay. People write these stories just to get our attention. If trouble was really on the way, don’t you think they’d be trying to do something about it?”

That logic sounded silly even to Rachel’s own ears. Pollution, global warming, gun violence, disease, and starvation were real and constant threats to human survival, yet no one seemed to be doing anything about them. Yet a bizarre menace straight out of a science-fiction movie drew eyeballs. She quickly scanned the rest of the article, slowing near the end to absorb a particularly sensational paragraph:

The article concluded with an aide to the president downplaying the threat but assuring the public that the situation would be closely monitored.

“Is the sun going to blow up?” Madison asked, as if it were just another video game.

“No, honey, it will come up tomorrow just like always.”

She booted up Dora the Explorer and let Madison start her usual fifteen minutes with the game. Then she went to the office door to keep an eye out for Mrs. Federov.

If the school board passed the concealed-carry requirement, Rachel was sure the leathery old bat would be the first in line to get a permit.