Under the Light

Chapter 3





Jenny


I DIDN’T KNOW WHY I FOUND myself in front of that store window with a display of tie-dye kaftans and hemp shirts, but maybe I’d wished for the opposite of my old life. The shop was called Reflections; their logo, made into a stained-glass window in the front door, was a tree of life with a rainbow behind it. My mother refused to go into this or any other New Age store because she was afraid they were fronts for satanic cults.

I slipped right through the door without jingling the tiny string of brass bells that warned the cashier when customers entered. The room was filled with books up to the ceiling, and displays of candles, incense, crystals, massage oils, yoga mats, CDs with monks and angels on the covers, DVDs of Tai Chi masters and pregnant women meditating. Even statues of the Virgin Mary, Saint Francis, Buddha, and a goddess with six arms. There were two customers, an elderly man with glasses pushed low on his nose, and a young woman in overalls who had a sleeping baby strapped to her belly. She chatted with the cashier, a young man wearing black eyeliner and his long hair in a braid.

Even though I felt out of place in this world, the soundtrack that was playing—flute over the sounds of a babbling brook—calmed me. I was attracted to laughter from somewhere beyond the main room of the shop. I drifted back through a grass mat doorway and found a group of seven people sitting in a circle with their eyes closed and their hands in their laps, palms up.

The woman who was speaking seemed the same age as my mother, but she wore her hair in dreadlocks pulled back, and had a single silver stud in one nostril and a tattoo of a flying bird on one wrist. No shoes, no makeup. Like my mom’s polar opposite.

“Lift up this picture of your desires to God,” she said. “Don’t try to figure out how you will receive this gift. Just know that you already have received it and feel the joy. You don’t have to know how this blessing will come to be. You only need to be grateful.”

Then the woman, who was apparently the leader of the group, stopped and turned her face, eyes still closed, toward me. “Someone’s here.” She smiled. She opened her eyes for a moment, looked through me, then closed them again. “A spirit has come into the room.”

I scanned the room for a strange light or some other sign of the supernatural.

“Is it my father?” one of the others asked. “He died last month.” They all stayed still, eyes shut.

I didn’t want to see a ghost, so I stopped looking around.

“No,” said the leader. “I don’t think this person is dead.”

I froze. She means me. If I moved or breathed she might catch me somehow.

“What?” one of the others whispered. “What did she say?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said the leader. “This soul means no harm. She’s just visiting.”

“Does she have a message for us?” someone asked.

“Do you have a message for us?” said the leader, looking right at me with her eyes shut.

I said nothing. But I thought, Please don’t talk to me.

“She’s shy,” said the leader. “I think she’s a little lost.”

Childishly I thought, I know where I am—I just don’t want to go home.

“Oh,” the leader laughed. “I stand corrected. She’s not lost— she’s a bit of a runaway, I think.”

Maybe I knew where I was—the street name and which city—but she was right. I was lost. I’d gotten stuck in the land of bodiless wandering. I couldn’t use a phone or take a drink of water or smell a flower.

“You’re welcome here, sweetheart. We won’t bother you if you don’t bother us. Don’t be afraid,” said the woman.

But I was afraid.





I started going to Reflections every day at around the same time, just as this woman arrived or sometimes just after she started teaching one of her classes. The second day she seemed surprised when she sensed me watching. The third day, she seemed to expect me. By the fourth she had named me “the Runaway.” It was my only pleasure now, having a nickname and being noticed.

I came to sit in the same place every day, on the top of the bookshelf between the two windows. Her name was Gayle. Even though I spent the rest of each day and night alone backstage at the theater or in the arms of a pine tree, I made sure I visited Gayle every day she was there.

“Aren’t you ever going home to roost?” she asked me one day.

I’m scared to go home, I thought.

“You’re a lonely bird, aren’t you?” said Gayle. And then she sang a simple song I’d never heard before—it sounded like a hymn:





The lone wild bird in lofty flight

Is still with thee, nor leaves thy sight

For I am thine; I rest in thee;

Great Spirit come and rest in me.





No one had sung me a lullaby since I was tiny. My mother used to sing me songs about everything we were doing. When she made me a bowl of oatmeal in the morning she’d sing about hungry bear cubs. When she washed behind my ears, leaning over the side of the tub, she would sing about soap bubbles. And when she brushed my wet hair in front of the mirror, she used to press her hand on the back of my neck and comb my curls up over her fingers, singing a song about daisies. I could almost feel the palm of my mother’s hand, warm and safe, cupping the back of my head as Gayle sang to me.

And that was the moment I felt called.

Every other time I had gone from one place to another, I’d either decided where to fly and swam in the air to the spot, or I’d wished to be somewhere and found myself there. Or I’d appeared in a new setting instantly without knowing why. But now I felt drawn to move in a specific direction as if I were in the blackness of outer space and there was only one star to follow. I flew slowly at first, east, between buildings, then over railroad crossbars and along farm fences. I became more confident and started gaining speed, even though I still had no idea what I was looking for.

It’s heading straight for you, I heard some voice inside me whisper.

Instead of scaring me, this only made me want to get there faster. The world rolled forward, the horizon in front of me curling like the crown of an ocean wave. And then, in a rush of magnetic energy, I was swung around and then stopped, hovering in midair. Whatever was coming at me had passed by me, or possibly through me. I set my feet down in the grass of an open field where the horizon in every direction was flat. Not a hill or tree to give it shape or size. I had no idea how many miles I’d flown or what state I was in. The heavens came smack down to the earth all around, and I could see the faint curve of the planet in the distance.

But the field wasn’t completely empty. About a hundred yards away, I saw a boy levitating three feet off the ground. He came to rest with his sneakers in the grass and walked in my direction as if he’d forgotten he could just fly to me.