Honey Girl(17)

Grace reaches out for both of them. They are her family, the ones she found and made and kept. “I want you to listen to something with me,” she says, heart pounding too fast in her chest. “And you have to—you have to promise you won’t be mad.”

“I promise,” Meera says immediately.

Raj squints. “Why would we be mad?”

“Raj.”

He shuts his eyes and leans back against the pillows. “I’m not promising,” he says. “But I will try to keep an open mind. I am filled with empathy and compassion and have never judged another person in my life. Let’s hear it.”

Meera pinches him, but he stays stubbornly still.

Grace sighs and glances at the time on her laptop. She felt brave when she asked them over. She felt in control. Now she feels pink-raw and vulnerable.

She exhales and watches the little audio player load on her computer. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

A pause, and then, there it is: Yuki’s voice, quiet and spooky and a lonely, lost creature.

“Hello, my fellow late-nighters,” she says. “I want to say hello to a special late-nighter in particular, one that I hope is listening. In fact, she is the one that inspired me for tonight’s show. Are you there?”

Grace grabs Meera’s hand. Raj leans closer, intrigued. Above them, Grace’s glow-in-the-dark stars shine neon green and alien. Grace has counted them hundreds of times, trying to follow them to sleep, but tonight she follows them to a voice of a girl who transports her somewhere new and terrifying.

“If you’re listening, Honey Girl, this is for you, okay? You said something to me. Or, actually, your mother said something to you. She said the sunlight was drawn to you. She said the sunlight loved you so much it had to infuse some of itself in you where everyone could see, and that’s why your hair burns gold and melts into the bedsheets like bee honey.”

Grace holds her breath. One, two, three, four. Exhale.

“I asked you,” Yuki says quietly to her audience, to Grace, “I asked you if you thought it was true, and you said you didn’t think the sun favored you more than anybody else. Well, I think that’s bullshit. I think that maybe your mother knew the sun was watching when you were born. I think the sun saw something in you, something bright all its own, and it picked you. It dripped sunrays from the top of your scalp to the very ends of your hair, and it made you fucking glow. I saw it. I saw you glow, and I—”

Yuki pauses, her frantic, almost angry tone tumbling to a stop.

It is so quiet. Grace does not breathe. Raj and Meera do not breathe.

“I was scared,” Yuki says finally. “And I’m scared now, saying this to you over a local Brooklyn airwave. But you glowed, and I was drawn to it. You were warm, like a sunrise, and it killed me to leave the bed with you in it. You are orange and pink and brown-gold, and your mother was right, and you don’t even know.

“I wonder,” Yuki asks quietly, “do you ever get scared like I do? Do you ever wonder how things will come together, and how things will fall apart? It seems bizarre to wonder so deeply about a stranger, but I have half of you in the ring on my finger, so I don’t think you are a stranger at all. I think you are a favored child of the sun, like your mother said. I think maybe she watched as the sun sent its blessing down to you. I think maybe she saw, over the years, as the rays grew and multiplied, until you were Medusa in your own right. There were not snakes that sprouted from your head, but sunlight like fire. But gold.

“It makes me think of all the stories our parents have told us. Little magic things that we dismiss as their attempts to make us feel special. Lately, I’ve been thinking. What if we are special, and we just don’t know? What if the stories of things bigger and bolder reaching out to claim us are true? If you are favored, touched by the sun, what does that make me? Am I a creature, or favored by something big and magnificent, too?”

Yuki laughs, and the sound echoes in Grace’s ears. Her heart pounds, and her fingers tremble, and her skin pimples with gooseflesh. Meera squeezes her hand hard.

“God, I sound lovesick tonight, listeners. I met a girl, and when you meet a girl, you think too much, you know? But I hope she is listening. And I hope she knows next time is soon, and I have not forgotten that it is my turn.”

The show goes on, but Grace cuts it off. The room is dark and silent. Meera does not let go, but if she did, Grace thinks she might just float up to the ceiling. Raj sits up, and Grace feels his eyes on her: inquisitive and sharp.

“Don’t be mad,” she says. “It’s okay, it’s just—you can’t be mad.”

“It’s okay,” he repeats. “Who was that girl? She was talking about you. She was talking about you like she knew you, like she, I don’t fucking know, fell in love with you, Gracie.”

“Okay,” she cuts in, while Meera looks back and forth between them. “Stop. I—I met a girl in Vegas. We were drunk and silly and—” She taps her fingers against her arms. “She’s really nice, actually. And we got married.”

“Wow.” Raj rubs his face, and flecks of his mask fall on the bed. “What is okay about getting drunk-married in Las Vegas? This is like that movie. That American one. What’s the movie?”

“The Hangover,” Meera says.

“The Hangover,” Raj repeats. “This is like that. Only it’s you and not a white guy I’ve never heard of. What did Colonel say?”