Brighter Than the Sun - Darynda Jones Page 0,1

before I was tall enough to piss in a toilet. The man got in a fight with Sir. Earl used to make me call him Sir. He still tries. He fails.

I don’t know what the fight was about, but when he went to heaven, a light opened up around him and he disappeared. The baby is like that light, and I wonder if she swallowed it. I’m three at the time, remember. I wonder about a lot of strange shit. Either way, she’s special. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She stops crying and looks at me—right at me—her eyes wide and curious. They sparkle like a diamond ring and I can see things in them. Stars and ribbons of light. Shimmering gold rivers and purple trees. And I realize she is from there. That place I’m seeing. She was sent here, and she’s showing me her galaxy. Her universe. And I don’t know how, but I know what she is. The seeker. The one who searches for lost souls.

A name pops into my head. It’s in another language. Aramaic, maybe. It’s supposed to be something like D’AaeAsh. No, that’s not quite right. D’MaAeSH? No. There’s more to it. Either way, I can hear it in my head. I just can’t pronounce it, so when I tell her what she is, it comes out “Dutch.” I know a lot of words I can’t pronounce at that age in a lot of languages. Earl gets mad when I talk about it. He calls me a liar, but I’m not.

Doesn’t matter anyway. Dutch will work for now.

She seems to like it, but I feel like she’s scared when she looks at me. Just a little, so I hide. At first, I imagine a cape like Superman’s but decide against it. Too bright. Too flashy. Instead, I imagine a cloak like the knight in my comic book wears. It’s thick and black with a hood. As I think, it appears around me like a big, black sea and settles around my shoulders. That’s the great thing about daydreams.

The doctor “calls it” and checks the clock. The nurses clean the girl—Dutch—and take her to a room with other babies, and she stays there for three days. The man comes and goes. He doesn’t stay long. But that’s okay. We keep vigil. Me and the ghosts.

She likes them. I can feel it. Even the one with a big hole on the side of his head. But when I get close, she winces, so I call forth the cloak and watch her from a corner of the ceiling. I watch until the man comes to take her home.

His sadness hurts my chest and makes it hard to breathe. He whispers into her ear. Something about just the three of them now, and I remember that the man has another daughter. He was telling a nurse as he looked down at Dutch. As he held her for the first time. As he balanced a bottle in his big hands. As he cried and cried and cried.

I remember wondering why nobody ever told him it’s not okay for boys to cry.

Then she is gone, taken to be with her family. What’s left of it. And I wake up from the dream. The dream about a girl made of pure light. You’d think that since it was a daydream and not a night one, I could’ve controlled what happened. I should have tried harder. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve made the lady live and be with her little girl. If I’d thought about it.

2

When I wake up, I’m not in the basement anymore. Groggy and disoriented, I don’t recognize my surroundings. It takes me a minute to realize I’m in a hospital. A hospital. I stay still when a nurse comes in. Checks my IV. Tells me I had a seizure.

Okay. That’s all fine and dandy, but I always have seizures. I’ve had them since I was three. Since I first saw Dutch’s light. Why am I in a hospital? I’ve never been to a hospital. I’ve never even been to a doctor. I’m in a blue gown and my arms are taped up. One has an IV in it. The other has a bandage that runs from elbow to wrist.

Earl is sitting beside me. His cheap cologne hovers in the air around me like teargas. Inside, he is furious. I can feel it like red-hot needles on my skin. Outside, he’s all smiles. A