"The Effects of Light" (Arrival)

Shade

We’d been walking for two weeks already, only resting at night. We were asked to clear the large cities as soon as possible. No one asked any questions, it seemed pretty serious. I didn’t know California had a desert. I didn’t know it was so big.
My little brother Grey walks so fast. I know it’s because he’s got shorter legs and takes smaller strides, but he says the sun makes him faster. One day, as the sun set behind a mountain, Grey sought to race its shadow in the waning light of the sun. He ran so fast…but the inevitable is resolute. When the shade caught up with Grey, his stride slowed, and shortened, then lengthened, then stopped.
The next morning, Grey ran ahead of the entire group, all day, without stopping. There was no shade to speak of.


Reflection

We couldn’t tell if we were going south or north, or any direction in particular. The announcements to evacuate L.A. were really sudden, and really organized. The P.A. system at my high school told us absolutely nothing. All students: please leave the building in an orderly fashion. There is a state of emergency being issued by the President of the United States for the state of California. Please go home.
As we were packing our bookbags, I met a pair of worried eyes. True. True Holiday. If you’re going to fall for someone, they should at least have an awesome name. I’ve had a crush on her since middle school, I think she knows my name.
The desert is starting to give way to woods or something, small plants poke through the grains of sand like snakes. One bites me, and I realize the desert isn’t giving way at all, there are a lot of snakes here. As the medic of the group comes to my aid, his panicked tone and sweaty palms inform me of the seriousness of the bite. His apprentice has the most beautiful bronze skin. She meets my eye, and says that everything will be fine. Then she says my name. True. In the distance, I see a shimmer, it looks like Mom.

Gleam

Surrounded by giant Sequoias, casting long vestiges of their profile against the uneven and escalating terrain, the group can safely ascertain that we’ve been traveling north since leaving L.A. The last month blew right by us, and now we know what Lewis and Clark have dealt with. After looking back at my own journal entries, I am noticing a pattern in my language. It’s an odd feeling. I feel it often. Yesterday, a tree fell in the woods. A really big tree. Grey moved two people twenty feet away before it fell. He’s getting faster. I..I pushed True into the path of the falling tree, tripped Grey, and pushed a flat slate of boulder toward the tree. All within seconds of one another. True hit the ground hard, behind the flat rock, which propped up the tree. True’s left leg tripped Grey, who was trying in vain to save a third person from the tree’s fall, also behind the flat rock. It was amazingly fast, but somehow I knew it would happen that way. True was pretty pissed at me.

Refraction

Now we are moving into Washington. The Space Needle is threading in and out of the horizon. We haven’t decided whether we should avoid cities or not, we still don’t know what’s happened. We came across a radio a few days back, I’ve been following a radiowave pattern I can hear without telling the others.
True spoke to me yesterday. I knew what she was going to say before she spoke, I could read her body language. I said, “You’re welcome.” I said it before she had taken a breath in to say ‘thank you’. Then I said, “I don’t know how, I just see and hear, and feel patterns. It’s getting more intense by the day.” Then she stopped trying to talk and just stared at me. Then she kissed me quickly, and whispered, “You did not see that coming. Did you?” Then her eyes grew inches in diameter, her blood started rushing, I could see her pulse quicken, saw what her mouth started to say, and spun to meet four people with guns.
As these strangers were delivering an intimidating diatribe, I could hear True muttering prayers, just barely audible. She was standing four feet away from me, but I could hear her clearly. I thought the fear was making my hearing clearer, but then I recognized the sonic wave patterns in her speech, they were amplifying. I nodded to Grey, and he became a blur. Dashing behind True, grabbing her around the waist and squeezing, True screamed. I yelled, “Down!” The group followed my lead. The sound was deafening, and the wind caused by True’s sonic assault blew all four assailants at least forty yards away and knocked down two trees. All this sun must be good for us.