1
Haze
W hen Bee woke up, there was a girl standing in her room.
âYou are me,â the girl said.
Then she was gone.
The eucalyptus leaves, rung by the night breeze, tinkled as if the salt from the sea air had crystallized, turned them to glass. Beegot out of bed, flung herself to the window and looked out at the sleeping garden. The polished glass chips in the flower beds and the sequins on the saris hanging over the gazebo reflected the light of the full spring moon and made the air phosphorescent.
But there was not even the shadow of a girl.
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The loneliness Bee always feltâhad felt since she could remember feeling anything at allâwas so big now, so alive, that it was almost a creature. And after what she had seen, it felt colder, crueler than ever.
As a little girl she couldnât make friends. She was too quiet, unable to read. Her teachers thought she had a learning disability, and for a while she was in Occupational Therapy trying to learn how to interpret facialexpressions and the tones of peopleâs voices. Now she struggled through school, just passing every semester.
âYouâre smart,â her mother said. âIt has nothing to do with intelligence. Some of the most creative minds were diagnosed with learning disabilities.â
School wasnât the only problem. Even with the O.T. it was hard to know how to act with people. And everything about Bee was odd. She couldnât eat animal flesh or watch all that television, try to talk about what celebrities were wearing or the war in Iraq. She preferred the solitude of her motherâs garden.
âMiss Green Thumb,â her mom called her. When she was little she fantasized about eating handfuls of dirt to be closer to nature. The red, yellow and sterling roses bloomed bigger than cupcakes. The waterhyacinth in the pond burst into edible-looking purple-and-white blossoms. As she got older she tended that pond, lovingly, feeding the koi, gently lifting out the plants with their long trailing roots to clean the filter, drain and refill the water. On the mossy bank by the pool she set out rose-petal beds and an abalone-shell bath, filled with water that brought out its rainbows. She squeezed lemons from the tree and picked figs, made lemonade and fig cakes in tiny cupcake holders, put them out on doll-house china. In the morning the food was gone and the beds looked slept in.
That is the world I belong in, she thought. The tiny garden world. Not this.
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Ever since she was a small child, Bee knew she couldnât tell her mom about the mysteryin the garden. Now she had another secret: the girl in her room. Deena didnât believe in the supernatural. She was a born scientist; everything had a tangible cause, related to some function of the brain. But for Bee this way of looking at the world felt empty, as if you were trying to explain away angels as static in the temporal lobe, deities as no more than electricity.
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Joseph Hayes, or âHaze,â as they called him. He might know something about all of this. He always had a book with him, and those thick glasses to hide behind. People said he thought he was an alien. After last night she would have believed almost anything.
Haze was sitting alone as usual at lunch-time. She slid onto the chair across from him. He glanced up. She hadnât noticed hiseyes before, with those glasses and all. But they were huge and dark, and even this far across the table she thought she saw herself reflected in them like two little dolls.
She thought, Heâs weird, in a good way. Weird like me.
He was reading his book. It was a withered old volume, leather-bound. It looked ancient but preserved, like a mummy inside its linen binding. Bee wondered what it was about.
âHello,â she said.
He seemed startled that she would sit here at all, let alone talk to him. They said he stuttered, but sheâd never heard him speak once. Not that she talked much
Haze
W hen Bee woke up, there was a girl standing in her room.
âYou are me,â the girl said.
Then she was gone.
The eucalyptus leaves, rung by the night breeze, tinkled as if the salt from the sea air had crystallized, turned them to glass. Beegot out of bed, flung herself to the window and looked out at the sleeping garden. The polished glass chips in the flower beds and the sequins on the saris hanging over the gazebo reflected the light of the full spring moon and made the air phosphorescent.
But there was not even the shadow of a girl.
Â
The loneliness Bee always feltâhad felt since she could remember feeling anything at allâwas so big now, so alive, that it was almost a creature. And after what she had seen, it felt colder, crueler than ever.
As a little girl she couldnât make friends. She was too quiet, unable to read. Her teachers thought she had a learning disability, and for a while she was in Occupational Therapy trying to learn how to interpret facialexpressions and the tones of peopleâs voices. Now she struggled through school, just passing every semester.
âYouâre smart,â her mother said. âIt has nothing to do with intelligence. Some of the most creative minds were diagnosed with learning disabilities.â
School wasnât the only problem. Even with the O.T. it was hard to know how to act with people. And everything about Bee was odd. She couldnât eat animal flesh or watch all that television, try to talk about what celebrities were wearing or the war in Iraq. She preferred the solitude of her motherâs garden.
âMiss Green Thumb,â her mom called her. When she was little she fantasized about eating handfuls of dirt to be closer to nature. The red, yellow and sterling roses bloomed bigger than cupcakes. The waterhyacinth in the pond burst into edible-looking purple-and-white blossoms. As she got older she tended that pond, lovingly, feeding the koi, gently lifting out the plants with their long trailing roots to clean the filter, drain and refill the water. On the mossy bank by the pool she set out rose-petal beds and an abalone-shell bath, filled with water that brought out its rainbows. She squeezed lemons from the tree and picked figs, made lemonade and fig cakes in tiny cupcake holders, put them out on doll-house china. In the morning the food was gone and the beds looked slept in.
That is the world I belong in, she thought. The tiny garden world. Not this.
Â
Ever since she was a small child, Bee knew she couldnât tell her mom about the mysteryin the garden. Now she had another secret: the girl in her room. Deena didnât believe in the supernatural. She was a born scientist; everything had a tangible cause, related to some function of the brain. But for Bee this way of looking at the world felt empty, as if you were trying to explain away angels as static in the temporal lobe, deities as no more than electricity.
Â
Joseph Hayes, or âHaze,â as they called him. He might know something about all of this. He always had a book with him, and those thick glasses to hide behind. People said he thought he was an alien. After last night she would have believed almost anything.
Haze was sitting alone as usual at lunch-time. She slid onto the chair across from him. He glanced up. She hadnât noticed hiseyes before, with those glasses and all. But they were huge and dark, and even this far across the table she thought she saw herself reflected in them like two little dolls.
She thought, Heâs weird, in a good way. Weird like me.
He was reading his book. It was a withered old volume, leather-bound. It looked ancient but preserved, like a mummy inside its linen binding. Bee wondered what it was about.
âHello,â she said.
He seemed startled that she would sit here at all, let alone talk to him. They said he stuttered, but sheâd never heard him speak once. Not that she talked much
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