Page 34 of White Lights
“Yes, Dr. Zarlengo,” the students around Dez respond.
“Both kinds of filmmakers face challenges,” Zarlengo says in rhythm with his pacing. “Scribes will battle the distracting whisper of your inner voices. It is your job to shut them up so that you can tune directly into the inner voices of your subjects. If you can’t do that, you’re out.”
Someone laughs nervously. Zarlengo bows his head. A troubling silence hangs over the room.
“As for you Visionaries … you’re in danger, too. You probably came here thinking you’re entitled to any aesthetic judgment that streaks across your hippocampus. But at Acheron,films aren’t about you.”
At this, his focus falls on Dez. The John Wayne performance is ridiculous—but why is a chill spreading down her spine?
“Close your eyes!” Zarlengo commands the class.
Dez does.
“If I asked you to tell me abouthome,” he continues, “about where you come from, what would you say?”
Dez inhales slowly, and she’s there. Death Valley. The house she shared with Moses and her mom for her entire life until now. She left so suddenly, with such little preparation, under shocking duress.
It’s painful to see her home so clear in her imagination.
She’s in the galley kitchen, which smells like rosemary from the two planters on the windowsill. She’s sitting cross-legged on the counter next to the sink. She’s reaching into her mom’s cold cannister of frozen coffee crystals, pinching some between her fingers, popping them in her mouth. She’s watching Mo lick burger grease off his finger while impersonating some friend who’d fallen off a diving board at a party he’d been to that night.
Dez can see the blue clock over her brother’s shoulder, ticking toward two a.m. She can see the dishes in the sink Mo was supposed to wash before he went out tonight but didn’t. She can see her mother’s current cross-stitch project featuring yet another Christmas tree, spread out across the chair under the good lamp. She’s trying to finish before the holidays, but they usually end up as Easter presents.
It’s one of those utterly mundane moments from Dez’s life. So common it could have happened a hundred times. But suddenly Dez knows this scene will never happen again, because—
She sees the guy in the mask pushing past her into the Dairy Barn.
She sees the scattered Styrofoam cups behind the sink when she leapt over the counter to reach him.
She sees her hands around his throat, the threads in the fabric of his hood.
She sees the eyeball in her hand.
The deep fryer filled with oil.
Mo, scalded. Disfigured.
Loaded like a corpse into her car.
The haze of the night when she’d chased him.
She sees Rafe on his motorcycle, how she’d felt in her whole body like she knew him from somewhere before.
She sees it all, down to the sketched expression in her eyes on the napkin Rafe gave her. She sees the rooftop at the hospital where he first told her about Acheron. Her mom’s face reading her acceptance letter. The cops circling the hospital, looking for her. The obsidian jet carrying her far away from Death Valley, from her joy and troubles. And that first sight of Acheron, like a dream. Like a movie.
“Open your eyes,” Zarlengo commands.
Dez is crying when she opens her eyes. She wipes them quickly, blinks until she can see straight.
From his jacket, Dr. Zarlengo produces two thick stacks of sealed white envelopes. He hands the first stack to one side of the room, the second stack to the other.
“I imagine,” he says, “that each of you now suspects which type of student you are. Which type of track you might be on. Scribe or Visionary. These envelopes will confirm your path. Open them.”
Simon passes Dez an envelope.Desdemona Raereads the inscription in small, precise script. Dez slides her thumb under the seal of the envelope and pulls out the white card inside.
In the center of the thick white stock is a detailed, black embossed lithograph of an eye. She stares at it, feeling it stare at her.
The iris is nearly as dark as the pupil. It’s unnervingly similar to the eyeball in her pocket now. She feels a creeping certainty that this is an indictment. That everyone at Acheron knows what she did on herway here. She can still feel the eye’s taut density. She thinks she might throw up.
