I Am Radiant

Forget-me-nots grow in the neighbor’s yard. Plush bushes, held up by lattice fences on all sides. They were unlike any flower Andy had seen, shining with their bright, bold centers. In the right light, they gleamed gold in the sun.

Andy never met the neighbor, never saw her gnarled face between the boarded windows. If not for the manicured lawn, no one would know that anyone lived in the house at all.

The neighboring children say the flowers are magic, that each one grants a wish. “The flowers make people forget who they are!” They’re forget-me-nots, after all.

Sasha would make fun of the story, theorize about the strange woman in the house, as the two girls sat on the stoop in front of Sasha’s house. As the newest addition to the neighborhood, Sasha’s parents hadn’t known about the myth until they moved in. 

As she often did, today Sasha speculated. “Maybe it’s face fungus” 

Andy shoved Sasha’s shoulder. Her fingers lingered a moment too long, brushing away her golden strands. Sasha didn’t pull away, looked instead at her friend with a small smile. 

They fell into silence, a small breeze overhead. In the silence, Andy noticed her body, the hunch in her back, the loose skin between the porch and her back thighs. She tugged at the front pocket of her sweater. Underneath, she was flab and acne and a scar from a recent fall. She was an athlete, but not in a skinny way. A rock climber, built like a rock and just as heavy. She made this joke to Sasha once; she didn’t laugh.

The two had met a month ago, when Sasha waltzed into Andy’s climbing gym looking for “something to do.” Both had just graduated college, moving back home in the in-between before their real lives began – or, in Andy’s case, discovering where it was going next. 

“Hey.” Sasha was looking at her now. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Andy didn’t elaborate, only stopped fidgeting. Sasha looked expectant, then disappointed. A small crinkle formed in her brow when she made that expression. Andy wanted to run her finger along that ridge.

“I like your hoodie,” Sasha said instead, teasing with her eyes.

“Yeah?” Andy held it in the light, the fabric sitting lumpy on her torso going taut beneath her grip. It was from a recent event both of them had attended, a singles mixer for lesbians in their community. The same people attended, except now with Sasha in the mix. It was the most popular Andy had ever been. Wanna help me wingman your new girl?

Then, someone whisked Sasha away onto the dance floor. “Can I take her?” they asked, without asking. Sasha didn’t belong to her. Anyone could see that. Sasha leaned into the touch, laughed when she was kissed. Sasha was so beautiful under the lights, a willowy figure before an ogling crowd. 

Andy’s eyes grew cloudy with the memory. 

“You look radiant, you know that?”

Andy started at the sudden declaration. She laughed without mirth, looking down at herself. “Now?”

“Yes, now.” 

“Really,” she said flatly.

 “Yes, really.” With a smile, Sasha stood, wiping her hands on her shorts. “I’ll prove it.”

And then she was off, across the street without looking both ways. Andy couldn’t stop Sasha when she got like this, giddy with prospect. She watched as Sasha plucked a sheath of forget-me-nots from the neighbor’s bush, a couple of stragglers growing away from their confines in the yard. Sasha ran back, clutching the bouquet with a dazzling triumph. Gingerly, the girl plucked one of the flowers from the bouquet and twirled it in her hands, right before Andy’s eyes.

“For you,” Sasha said, brandishing the flower in triumph.

"You didn’t need to get the whole bouquet just for one flower.”

Sasha pursed her lips. “You can always use extras.”

Their noses nearly touched as Sasha threaded the flower behind the other girl’s ear. “An accessory to your radiance,” she whispered.  

  Andy’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

  That night, Andy twirled the forget-me-not in her hand like a parasol. The small flower flickered, as if smiling, with each rotation in her dark room.

  Andy sighed. Her childhood bedroom frowned back, the medals of Little League soccer and High School Musical memorabilia a fixture of a room she had outgrown when she first left. Now, she was back, and stuck, with only the promise of a small flower clutched in her hands.

Her hoodie had been shucked and thrown onto the bed. Another part of her discarded, reverted to this beginning. A person she could not outgrow, a body she could not escape. Only the rest of the forget-me-nots thrived, carefully placed in a drinking glass on her dresser. Straight-stemmed, they stood ready for duty, alert and awaiting the rest of their uprooted life. She wished she held the flower’s conviction.

  She returned to the flower in her hands. What a tease. A promise of a reciprocated feeling, or a truce of a long, unfulfilled friendship to come. The flower’s center stared with open arms, as if in a shrug. An embrace, or a challenge, she could not tell. It seemed to say, try if you dare, or if you have no better option.

She saw Sasha’s smile in the flower, extending the gift with tenderness. The gesture was sweet, or was it pitying? Sweet people often didn’t know the difference.

 The flower’s myth whispered to her, taunting. She told you you were radiant. Don’t you want to know if she told you the truth? 

To make a wish, the flower must be pulled apart. With each petal torn, the speaker must alternate between saying she loves me and she loves me not. If the final petal promises love, the wish may be made. Under her breath, she murmurs the words, loves me, loves me not. Fingers quivering, the incantation escapes her, enamored by the deboning of the precious gift. For a brief moment, she hated herself, the demolition of the only nice thing she received since her return.

She grasped for the last petal, and found none.

She loves me. 

She loosed a breath, staring at the barren stem, an eye, awaiting her. If Sasha loved her, she wouldn’t need the wish. If she didn’t love her, the flower would be coercion, against her will. The flower’s dilemma was clear as it bore itself to her, relinquishing its petals.

But what did it matter? At least she could have what she wanted. Uncertainty be damned.

“I wish I was radiant.”

For one startling moment, she couldn’t breathe. A single moment, where time hung before her, and all she could see was her wish, sparkling. She gasped, soundlessly, airless and afraid.

Then, something like a star, a cool, hard lump, entered her gasping mouth.

Something scratched, like a matchstick against the lining of her stomach. Flickering up and contained, the fire caught and warmed her. She gasped with the force of it. 

Then, the sensation stopped, quick as it had come. In her room’s darkness, her fingertips glowed with an amber light, radiating. Radiant.

She was glowing.

In the mirror above her dresser, she touched her cheek. Beneath her light, she had smoothed. The acne that had once dotted her chin was a distant memory. Her cheeks flushed, her curves shaped with purpose. As if the light had washed away her insecurity, subduing it to naught. She laughed. She smiled.

She was whole.

“Andy.”

It was Sasha, waving her over to the table at the back. She was near enough that the light her body cast illuminated Sasha’s eyes. 

“You look…” 

Her sentence trailed off. The light was a beacon from her own body, but Sasha didn’t seem to notice. No one had, even in the lamplight of the dim bar. Sasha smiles, suddenly nervous. Andy couldn’t imagine what her friend had seen just then, but it pleased her. She could tell by the mischievous glint in Sasha’s eyes. 

Sasha patted the stool next to her, and Andy slid in. Around them, the bar patrons all turned their heads. The place is divey, cluttered with sticky stools and crumpled posters of long-abandoned events. Andy observed the crowd with curiosity; they all seemed to give her a long look before returning to their own circles. Could they tell? Did they know something was different?  

She shook her head. They were looking at Sasha. They always were.

When she turned back to her friend, she was staring with wide eyes. When their two gazes met, Sasha pushed back with a small, nervous laugh. 

“So,” she said, “have your eye on anyone?”

“Me?” Andy glanced at the room, at the same old people who’ve never given her attention. “I think people are tired of looking at me.”

“Why do you say that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think people are interested.”

“I am.”

Sasha grew red with the weight of her sudden confession. Andy had never seen her friend so flustered. It amused her, the sudden effect she had.

The music changed above them, whining into a slow nineties song, written for the beauty of a woman that the singer could not touch.  

“Do you want to dance?”

The words slipped so easily from her lips. Sasha was startled, but nodded.  

“Yes.”

In her dreams, she was here. Lifting Sasha by the waist, maneuvering her to the cramped space in the bar’s center. There was no resistance, as Sasha let herself be led, her willowy legs light as a bird’s in flight. Their arms intertwined, and electricity ran between them, a current or a jolt. They were magnetic, pressed together like a flower between the pages of a book, so close they imprinted on one another. Sasha’s cheek rested on her shoulder, gentle, and Andy stroked the golden halo of her head. 

All the while, Sasha’s eyes drank her in. She didn’t look at Andy in that mixed way of hers, the pity and the awe. If she had attraction before, it was diluted by the mangled heap of her imperfect form, the parts of her she could hide but not change. Now, in the bar’s dim light, her eyes were unblurred, shining only with Andy’s reflection. As she was.  

She cupped the soft curve of Sasha’s cheek, dimpled, porcelain, the smoothest edge of a flower’s petal. When she pressed her lips to Sasha’s, they gave way, parting, magnetized. The two stood there like that, hardly moving, for a long time. 

“You’re so beautiful.” Sasha’s eyes flicked open for the briefest moment. Their gazes collided, pressed together, two halves wound tightly together. 

Andy believed her.

In a short time, Andy had learned all there was to know about the hauntings of beauty. To be loved, and ceaselessly watched.  

It was glorious, at first. Once she existed unseen; now she could never be ignored. Eyes flickered curiously to her, as they had at the bar. Baristas treated her to drinks. People came to her at the climbing gym. Strangers would stare. It is a flattery to be noticed, when the world seeks only to observe itself.

And Sasha. She was watched constantly by her. The two seemed to coexist these days, date after date on Sasha’s front porch, slowly meandering to her living room, then her bedroom. Andy didn’t realize how much she craved Sasha until the girl was upon her, around her. Sasha, splayed hands and dimpled grin. Her eyes drank in her light. Her attention was like ambrosia, warming and healing, infectious, godly. She could not get enough. 

“I like you, Andy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think I like you a lot.”

But Sasha was one person in a too-small town. Baristas’ hands lingered, climbers' mouths gaped, strangers' eyes grazed as she walked past. It was a ceaseless pursuit, a watching of the most terrible kind. It didn’t matter what she wore, how she hid her face. The light she swallowed was a magnet, and no one could leave her orbit.

Only in the night could she escape their scrutiny. At night, she would sneak before the old woman’s house, led by her own light. She would trim forget-me-nots from their bushes and carry their carcasses home. In vain, she would love me, love me not.

There was no use – the petals were even. Each person only received one wish.

Occasionally, on these trips, something flickered. Above her, or around her. Something was watching her, she could swear it. Forever paranoid, she would think bitterly. A symptom of radiance.  

After a while, she spent less time outside. It was a refuge from the world’s scrutiny, she told herself, with someone who appreciated her. Behind Sasha’s doors, she was safe.  

Now, they lay tangled, Sasha’s hands tracing her torso over her graphic 80s band tee. Her porcelain cheek rested on Andy’s chest.

“You are so beautiful.” Sasha mused, winding her hair around her finger. “So, so beautiful.”

Andy smiled, looking down at Sasha’s face. When she reached up to touch Sasha’s cheek, her eyes illuminated, faintly, with Andy’s unearthly light. Sasha’s eyes fluttered shut until her chest rose and fell.

Unlike Andy’s room, Sasha’s was decorated with her grown tastes, all floating plants and hip hop dancers and Hong Kong movie posters. The walls breathed, an extension of Sasha, of her liveliness. Wind whistled through an open window. Even in post-graduate stagnation, Sasha’s life continued, its lungs at full capacity.

Andy stroked her hair, absent. She too was a fixture in this place, another thing revolving around the orb of light in her arms.

Sasha mumbled something. Andy didn’t catch it.

“Hmm?”

“I think I love you.” Sasha’s confession melted into the fabric of Andy’s T-shirt, imprinting itself.

“Sasha…”

Her eyes fluttered open. Her sleepy smile cracked with a budding delight. “I love you.”

Andy’s eyes watered. Her heart convulsed. Then fluttered.

“I love you, too.”

They were light, the two of them. She saw it now, in Sasha’s eyes.

“You’re beautiful.”

Andy laughed, hiccupped. She knew. “You’ve told me.”

“I’ve never met someone as radiant as you.”

Andy’s eyes clouded with tears. She wiped them and looked.

Sasha’s face loomed before her, haloed by light. The photograph of her dream.

And her gaze was glassy, glazed with a sight beyond her. Blinding her.

A shudder ran through Andy. Cold and absolute. Her eyes brimmed over, and she wiped them. Why had she not noticed before?

Sasha leaned back to look in Andy’s face. “Andy, are you okay?”

She winced now, at Sasha’s tone. So sweet, so unassumed. It stung worse than pity. From this distance, the fog was so clear. Those luminous, unseeing eyes.

Until now, she did not know if her radiance was a spotlight. Or if it blinded.

Now she knew.  

“I need to go.”

Andy stumbled and stood. Her hair lay rumpled, her face hot and red. It didn’t matter. No one would notice.

“Did I say something wrong?” Sasha’s face melted into hurt. Like a child prodding a broken toy.

Andy paused, looking at Sasha. Her light. Her love.

Then, she ran.

The doors burst open without resistance. Andy scampered away, wiping her eyes. She heard Sasha calling after her, begging her to come back, come back. She couldn’t. She couldn’t stand it, the look of an eye concaved around what was true and what it wished to see. She was only distorted, a musing of a person.  

Andy stumbled through the dark lawn, into the street, and across to the other side. The gnarled house turned its bleary eyes to her, the forget-me-nots dilapidated, purged, sagging on the floor. They had been spent, a collective misery of the abuse that had been wrought on them. She nearly sobbed at the sight. She had gotten what she wanted; the flowers had done her a favor. 

Something flashed above her. Wiping her eyes, she looked, but she saw nothing but the wide-set windows of the house, looking down at her in dismay. She shook her head, and it flickered again, but when she stared, she saw nothing but the trees, the wind whistling around it.

Then she saw it. In the window, a figure’s bright blue eye. She stopped and looked. The dilapidated house seemed to sag around it, the beacon glowing from a broken home. At once, she understood.

She unlatched the front yard’s gate. It creaked under her, unused to guests. Unused to anyone curious enough to want to know. She ran up to the door and began to pound it, begging.

“Open up,” she screamed. “I know who you are.”

At first, nothing. Her banging continued, and her cries grew into sobs, heaving out of her all at once. “Please! Please! You understand! I know you do!”

The door swung open.

Before her was a beautiful woman. Older, she was all angles, striking even in an unwashed robe and with matted hair. Her full mouth was pressed into a small O.

Under her skin, a dull golden light thudded, illuminating her.

Pleading, she looked to the older woman, with the question in her eyes. The older woman shook her head, her eyes glassy. Not from the forget-me-nots, but from the tears, spilling over in a quiet stream.

Neither woman noticed Sasha, standing at the foot of the home. At the two shimmering women, radiance-cursed, and seen. She only half-understood, but it would be more than anyone else could, witnessing the scene.

The two women looked down at themselves, commiserating in their quiet tears, at the cruel reminder of what could not change. Of the beasts they had become.