The Shining Girls

Harper ^{28 MARCH 1987}

First Catherine, then Alice. He broke the rules. He should never have given Etta the bracelet. He feels his control slipping, like a truck’s axle off a jack.

There is only one name left. He does not know what will happen after. But he has to do it properly. The way he is supposed to. He has to set things right, align the constellations. He has to trust in the House. No more resisting.

He doesn’t try to force it when he opens the door. He lets it open on to where it is supposed to be: 1987. He finds his way to an elementary school where he mingles with the parents and teachers moving between the displays in the hall under a hand-lettered banner that reads ‘Welcome to our Science Fair!’ He walks past a papier-mâché volcano, wires and crocodile clips on a wooden board that light up an electric bulb when you touch them together, posters illustrating how high a flea can jump and the aerodynamics of jet planes.

He is drawn up short by a map of stars, actual constellations. The little boy standing behind the table starts reading from a card in a shy monotone. ‘Stars are made of balls of fiery gas. They are very far away and sometimes by the time the light reaches us, the star is already dead and we don’t even know it yet. I also have a telescope—’

‘Shut up,’ he says. The boy looks like he might burst into tears. He stares, lip trembling, and then bolts into the crowd. Harper barely notices. He is tracing his fingertip over the lines drawn between the stars, transfixed. Big Dipper. Little Dipper. Ursa Major. Orion with his belt and sword. But they could just as easily be something else if you connected the dots differently. And who is to say that is a bear or a warrior at all? It damn well doesn’t look that way to him. There are patterns because we try to find them. A desperate attempt at order because we can’t face the terror that it might all be random. He feels undone by the revelation. He has the sensation of losing his footing, as if the whole damn world is stuttering.

A young teacher with a blonde ponytail takes him gently by the arm. ‘Are you all right?’ she says kindly, in a voice meant for children.

‘No—’ Harper starts.

‘Can’t find your child’s project?’ The chubby boy is standing next to her, sniffing, his hand clutching her skirt. Harper holds on to the reality of that, the way he rubs his nose with the back of his sleeve, leaving a smear of snot across the dark fabric.

‘Mysha Pathan,’ he says, as if coming up out of a dream.

‘Are you her…?’

‘Uncle,’ he says falling back on the explanation that has always worked so well.

‘Oh.’ The teacher is thrown. ‘I didn’t know she had family in the States.’ She studies him for a moment, puzzled. ‘She’s a very promising student. You’ll find her project near the stage by the doors,’ she points helpfully.

‘Thank you,’ Harper says, and manages to tear himself away from the star map that is only a useless fetish.

Mysha is a little girl with brown skin and metal in her mouth like a miniature railroad, not unlike the wiring that once held Harper’s jaw together. She is bouncing slightly on her heels, although she seems unaware of it, standing in front of a desk lined with potted succulents and a poster behind her head with numbers and colors that mean nothing to him, even though he looks at it very carefully.

‘Hi! Can I tell you about my project?’ she says, full of sparking enthusiasm.

‘I’m Harper,’ he says.

‘Okay!’ she says brightly. This is not part of her script and it throws her. ‘I’m Mysha and this is my project. Um. As you can see, I grew cacti in, um, different kinds of soil with varying acidity.’

‘This one is dead.’

‘Yes. I learned that some soil conditions are very bad for cacti. As you can see by the results that I marked up on this chart.’

‘I can see that.’

‘The vertical axis represents the amount of acidity in the soil and the horizontal—’

‘Do me a favor, Mysha.’

‘Um.’

‘I’m going to come back. Right away. As soon as I can. But it won’t feel like that for you. You have to do something for me, though, while I’m away. It’s very important. Don’t stop shining.’

‘Okay!’ she says.

Back at the House, it seems that all the objects are on fire in his head. He can still trace the trajectories, but for the first time he can see that the map leads nowhere. It folds in on itself. A loop he can’t escape. The only thing left to do is surrender to it.