DALENA STORM

FASTER THAN THE LIGHT

Hey, Ana. Hey, come here. There’s something I want to share with you.

Ana walks over, her feet like little animals in the grass, her toes softening the dirt. Ana has white eyes: colorless, blind; no pupil, no nothing. They have the appearance of translucence, but it doesn’t go all the way through to the inside.

Give me your hand.

Ana gives me her hand, and I am tempted to place it on my breast. Her mouth hangs slightly open; I see a glistening on her lower lip and her tongue pink and warm in her mouth. Instead, I take her pointer finger and stroke it very gently against what I’m holding.

Feel that?

Ana nods.

Do you know what it is?

Ana pauses, searching for the word. Butterfly.

Ana. You’re good. But I bet you don’t know what’s special about it.

Ana purses her lips. Her eyes vibrate slightly as if they are looking inside her head for traces of the unseen environment.

No live?

No, Ana. It’s not alive. But there’s something else. Do you remember the definition of beauty? We’ve been over this many times before, and I trust Ana remembers, but I have to give her time.

A bug crawls up my leg. We are in an open field and the sky is afternoon white; bright. Ana’s hands slowly clench and unclench. Her backpack—a bear—sits in the field a few feet away.

Beauty, says Ana at last, brow furrowed with effort, is same-same.

Yes. Same-same. Beauty is symmetry. And this butterfly is perfectly symmetrical. Would you like to have something that is perfectly beautiful?

Ana’s face has no expression.

I said…

But now I see that Ana has heard me. She is nodding.

I take out my pocketknife, and place the butterfly on the cutting-board surface of a sawed-off stump.

Put your hand on mine. I’m cutting the body, so we can each have half. We’ll do it together.

Ana’s hand on mine is warm, sweating sunlight. Ana absorbs sunlight. I think she takes it in through her eyes. When I wrap myself around her, waves of it pour out of her so I think I’m going to burn up and I can hardly breathe.

We run our hands together down the length of the butterfly.

No fly, murmurs Ana, and she sounds like she might cry.

Ana… it couldn’t fly anyway, Ana. It was dead.

I look at Ana closely to see if she has understood, but Ana’s thoughts seem to be elsewhere. Sometimes I don’t know where she goes.

Let’s find somewhere to keep it. Let’s look through your bag.

I go and fetch Ana’s bear, and unzip it. Inside, she has matches, a juice box, three marbles, a wallet, a Rubik’s Cube puzzle—correctly solved, an iPhone attached to headphones, a collapsible cane, and sunglasses in a case.

I remove the sunglasses and give them to Ana.

Put these on. I’m keeping the butterfly in the case.

Ana puts on her sunglasses and looks more normal. The lenses trap her light.

Ana, find your shoes. We’re going into town.

Behind her glasses she is frowning. Ana doesn’t like town.

No town.

Ana, come on. We have to go.

No town! Ana pouts, and looks about to throw a fit.

Ana, you have to go! Come on. Don’t be like this. Okay, listen. If we go, we’ll play the crossing game. Okay?

All at once, Ana is beaming. I hate to resort to this, but a few months ago we were in a hurry. I didn’t want Ana to get in trouble for being late back to the house, but she refused to cross the street until she heard the beep that meant the light had changed. Traffic wasn’t heavy, so I told her we’d play a game, a game where we had to run faster than the light. Ana got so excited by this idea that she yelled and yelled—even after we’d crossed, she still didn’t stop. I thought that maybe something inside of her had broken, but when I asked her what was wrong, she just laughed. Her eyes seemed brighter, like she’d seen something.

Ana’s fingers twiddle the air and she sings a little song as we walk. When I try to join in, picking up on the tune, she gets mad at me.

But Ana, it’s my song, too. I can sing with you.

No! No sing.

But Ana, that’s not nice. You know if you can’t be nice, I won’t come and play with you every week.

No! Ana cries, beginning to weep, clutching my clothes. I’m sorry. Ana sorry. Her hot tears fall onto my shirt. I stroke her hair, dry and oily, in need of a wash.

It’s okay, Ana. You know I love you, Ana, right?

Ana nods, wiping her eyes. We continue walking. No more song.

At the bottom of the hill, we reach the road, which we follow to the gas station, and then we arrive at the first intersection. Ana can hear the cars passing and when I stop, her grip on my hand tightens.

Play?

Yes, Ana. We can play.

Ana’s free hand toys with the air and she bounces.

Wait for me to tell you when it’s time. When I say ‘go’…

We cross one street this way, and then a second, and then a third. After the first, I am tired, but after the third, I am elated. Ana’s joy is contagious, like she’s getting higher and higher. She alternately shouts and emits high chirps, making passersby stare and then turn away. We walk in our own world, and others keep out.

When we reach the main intersection before the mall, I’m worried. This street has two lanes of traffic and not a lot of space between cars.

Ana, I think we have to wait for this one to change.

Ana’s smile fades. She turns to me, the corners of her mouth pulling down, her hair wild around her head from running and not caring.

No. Her tone indicates her conviction.

Ana. I’m serious. This time we have to wait.

No!

Ana hand wrenches from mine, and before I can do anything to stop her, she’s off.

Ana!

I watch the car on its trajectory toward her, and time, which normally seems to follow a single continuum, forks in front of me, dividing into two possible universes. Much in the way Schrödinger’s cat exists in a space of aliveness or deadness, Ana enters a space of in-between. On the other side of this moment, Ana will be hit, or she will be saved, and the choice is up to me: on what I decide.

I throw my body forward, entering the space of in-between, throwing Ana’s body forward and putting myself in her place. I am hardly aware of Ana falling toward the safety of the sidewalk, but I am very aware of the car hitting me with the force of a train.

As my body is crushed it is also thrown forward, and I am tossed into the air though I have no wings to fly. Ana’s scream reverberates all around me like a hymn, like a song of the angels: love is faster than the light.

Dalena Storm lives in Western MA with their partner, child, and two cats. Dalena's first novel – an LGBTQ+ Thriller, THE HUNGRY GHOST (Black Spot Books, 2019) – was dubbed ‘page-turning and full of surprises’ in its Kirkus review. Dalena has published short stories with literary journals like PANK and The Worcester Review, among others.