Page 93 of White Lights
Two of the Vault’s towering walls show enlarged pages of screenplays, and a series of voice-overs read lines of text aloud.
He loves me …
I messed up …
It’s cancer …
I got accepted …
We married …
She betrayed me …
It’s over …
I’m in love …
Goose bumps rise on Dez’s arms. These are script excerpts, samples of what the scribes have been writing this term. These are the voices Simon and the others spent hours listening for, opening themselves to, then re-creating.
Around her, all the students—even the jaded last-years—look up, absorbed by the spectacle, pointing at script excerpts, laughing at some, cringing and clutching their hearts at others.
In the center of the dance floor, still in Rafe’s arms, Dez looks up in wonder as the remaining two walls in the Vault begin to show montages of movie scenes. These scenes must all come from films made by Visionaries, like Dez.
Scenes of babies being born. Children learning to plié at the barre. A woman weeping in a stairwell. A team of fifty face-painted adults losing in a tug-of-war game. A man looking in the mirror, brutally slapping his own face.
Bombs detonating buildings.
Protestors blocking streets.
A fire that looks like a tornado ravaging a neighborhood.
A dandelion being blown into the wind.
The images speed up, take on an almost psychedelic swirl as people make love in cars, in beds, in opera boxes, and laundry rooms. Hailstorms and hearses and horses. Families at dinner tables. Families shouting and slamming doors. Families posing for photographs at beaches and mountains and monuments.
And then—
Dez sees herself up on the screen. Sitting on the hood of her car with Moses the day he got his tattoo. She takes up half the giant screen directly in front of her. It’s the last scene ofLazarus, the closing shot, ending with the clouds reflecting in her eyes.
“That’s my film,” she says to Rafe nervously. Hersecretfilm. “What’s it doing in this showcase?”
“It’s all right now, Dez. It’s beautiful.”
Her eyes are still on her cinematic eyes, fading on the screen. “I miss him.” She swallows. “I wish I could see him over break.”
“Can I give you some advice?” Rafe says slowly. She looks at him. His eyes soften at the corners as he says, “Be here, now. The night is young. And tomorrow doesn’t even exist.”
Held in the trance of his gaze, her fingers brush Rafe’s gently. Desire throbs within her and the song comes to an end too soon. From the DJ booth, Jet speaks into a microphone:
“Find a seat, party people, and give it up for Director Moriah!”
ASPOTLIGHT SHINES ON DIRECTOR MORIAH, seated in the middle of the room at a table lit by tall crystal candelabras. The crowd on the dance floor disperses. Dez pulls away from Rafe, finding a seat at a high-top table with Simon and Esther. They’ve fallen into an unspoken formation: first-years on the right, last-years on the left, the director in the center of them all.
“Good evening, filmmakers,” Moriah says, petting the cobra winding around her arm. She’s donned a black velvet cape over her gown, the hood lowered to the nape of her neck. Her lips and nails are glossy bloodred.
“As some of you know,” she says, looking over at the last-years, “and as the rest of you will soon discover”—she turns to the first-years—“this is a night you’ll never forget.”
Dez glances at Simon, whose uneasy expression mirrors hers. On his other side, even preternaturally chill Esther is cracking her knuckles one by one. Dez looks across the dance floor where Yael compulsively smooths her dark hair with her fingertips while Jet sits smiling with his arms crossed.
