The old fella, Don Lewiston, laughed. “That’s one way a puttin’ it.”
“That’s because it feels what you feel,” Carol continued. “That’s such a powerful concept. I’m surprised more people haven’t followed the thread of that idea to see where it goes. If you can create a feeling of security and well-being and acceptance, the Dragonscale will react in a very different way: by making you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt before. It will make colors deeper and tastes richer and emotions stronger. It’s like being set on fire with happiness. And you don’t just feel your happiness. You feel everyone else’s, too. Everyone around you. Like we’re all notes being played together in a single perfect chord.”
“And you don’t burn,” Michael said, twisting the orange coil of his beard.
“And you don’t burn,” Carol repeated.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” Harper said. “How does it work?”
“Harmony,” Carol said.
“Harmony?”
“Connection, anyway,” Renée said. “Strong social connection. John has some interesting theories about it, if you can draw him out. He told me once—”
Carol’s face darkened. An artery, squiggling in her right temple, thickened. “John Rookwood isn’t here and he doesn’t want to be here. He prefers to keep his distance. It’s easier to maintain his own personal myth that way. I think he looks down on us, honestly.”
“Do you really think that?” Renée asked. “I’ve never had that impression. I would’ve said he looks out for us. If he does have a condescending view of camp, he has a peculiar way of showing it. He’s the person who led most of us here in the first place.”
There was an uneasy silence. Renée gazed at Carol with an innocent curiosity. For her part, Carol would not meet her stare. Instead she took a long swallow of coffee, a benign, easygoing gesture that Harper saw through. For an instant, there had been hate in her face. John had made it clear the night before, in the woods, that he was no fan of Carol Storey; the feeling, it seemed, was mutual.
Michael was the first to speak and smooth over the awkward moment. “The easiest way to join the Bright is to sing. The whole mess of us, the entire camp, get together in church every day after breakfast and have a big sing and we always shine. You’ll shine, too. It might not happen right away, but stick with it. When it comes over you, it’s like someone plugged you in to a giant battery. It’s like all the lights are turning on in your soul for the first time in your life.” His eyes had a bright, hot look that made Harper want to check him for fever.
“I had no idea what was happening to me, the first time I went into the Bright,” Renée said. “To say I was surprised doesn’t do it justice, Mrs. Grayson.”
“You better start calling me Harper,” Harper said. She didn’t add that she thought she was all done being Mrs. Grayson. That name belonged to Jakob, and she felt she had left everything of Jakob’s behind in the woods. Her maiden name had been Willowes. She missed the way it rolled off her tongue, and the thought of having her old name returned to her felt like another escape—a far more satisfying and peaceful escape than her leap out the bedroom window.
“Harper,” Renée said, trying it out. She smiled. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get used to it, but I’ll try. Well, Harper. I was reading to the children. We were working our way through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I stopped to sing ‘The Candy Man’ song from the film. A few of them knew the words and sang along with me. It was such a nice, peaceful moment, I forgot we were all sick. I got that melty, tranced-out feeling that comes over you when you’re in front of a fire and you’ve had a couple drinks. And suddenly the kids began screaming. Time began to run thick and slow. I remember one of the children knocked my potted mint off my little end table and it seemed like I had half an hour to reach out and catch it. And when I did, I realized my whole arm was splattered with light. I thought it was so glorious looking, I couldn’t find it in me to be terrified. But then someone shrieked, Get away from her, she’s going to explode! And right away, I thought, I am! I’m going to go off like a grenade! Sometimes I think people are a bit more suggestible when they enter that state. The Bright. So I ran for my life, with my potted mint. Straight past two sets of guards and half a dozen doctors and nurses, across the parking lot and into the meadow south of the hospital. I thought I would set the grass on fire when I waded into it, but I didn’t. It took a while for the light to die out, and afterwards I was shivery and drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“Oh, yuh,” said Don Lewiston. “You wind up pretty pickled after you go into the Bright. Especially the first couple times. You forget your own name.”
“You—what?”
Carol said, “A lot of people forget their own name the first time. I think that’s the most beautiful part of it. All the stuff you think defines you—it peels off like Christmas wrapping. The Bright winnows you down to your truest, best self, the version of you that goes deeper than a name or what football team you root for. And you become aware of yourself as just one leaf on a tree, and everyone you know and love, they’re all the other leaves.”
A willow, Harper Willowes thought, and shivered.
“First time I ever joint the Chorus,” Don Lewiston said, “I forgot the face of my father, the sound of my mother’s voice, and the name of the ship I spent the last twenty years on. I wanted to kiss everyone I saw. Oh, and I got real goddamn generous. I remember this was in chapel, after a good hard sing. I was sittin’ next to a couple young fellas, and I was just burstin’ to tell ’em how much I loved ’em, and all I could think to do was take off my boots and try to give them away. One boot for each of them, so they’d always have somethin’ to remember me by. They laughed at me, like grown-ups havin’ a yuk at some kid who just drank his first beer.”
“Why didn’t you come back to the hospital?” Harper asked Renée. “After you . . . went Bright?”
“At first it never occurred to me. I was just too out of my right mind. I was still holding my mint and it came to me that it didn’t belong in a pot, that it was cruel to keep it in a pot. I was ashamed of myself for all the months I had held it prisoner. I drifted deep into the woods and had myself a nice quiet planting ceremony. Then I sat with my mint, with my face turned up to the sun, feeling about as content as I’ve ever felt in my life. I believe I thought I was going to photosynthesize, along with my plant. At some point I heard a branch snap and opened my eyes and there was Captain America and Tony the Tiger. And you know what? I wasn’t the least surprised to see them. A superhero and a tiger-boy just seemed like the next logical part of my day.”
“Allie,” Harper said. “And Nick. Nick! What about Nick? How can he join your sing-alongs and shine with the rest of you if he can’t hear?”
The others looked at one another—and erupted into happy laughter, as if Harper had said something quite witty.
“Nick,” Carol said, “is a natural. He could shine before I could. Why, though . . . why it’s so easy for him to join the Bright . . . that’s a question not one of us can answer. Nick says just because he can’t hear music doesn’t mean the Dragonscale can’t. My dad says it’s another miracle. He’s a great believer in miracles. So am I, I guess. Come on, Harper, I want to show you the rest of the camp.”
“If you want a crutch,” Michael said, “I have a shoulder.”
On their way out, they stopped to put their dishes in a bin of gray, soapy water, and Harper glanced at the two teenage boys working in the kitchen. They were drying glasses by hand while listening to a radio.
It was tuned to static.
5
The kids were chasing a soccer ball in the valley again, the eerie pale green ball racing this way and that, like a will-o’-the-wisp on crack.
“I don’t know how we’ll wear them out when it snows,” Carol said.