“How is that possible?”
“Because we have excellent scouts.”
By now her laptop is hundreds of miles away. She’ll never see it again. Nothing to do now but take another drink and try to take Rafe at his word. “There’s something else I need to know.”
“You’re wondering: why you?”
“Well, yeah.”
He looks like he wants to make a joke, but then he says: “What do you think?”
“Honestly I’m not sure.” She gazes down at the blurry land below. Dez knows they’re flying faster than planes should. And yet she feels no thrust, no turbulence.
“When you’re in the flow,” Rafe says, “with one of your films, don’t you feel you see things others don’t?”
Dez nods. “I guess so.”
“And don’t you want to show others all this”—he gestures, not just out the window and down at the world below, but also up at the sky, then at the two of them—“as only you see it?”
Dez is intrigued. She’s never put it into words before, but she knows she does see things differently from others. It’s one reason she never quite fit in at school growing up, in a culture where normalcy was currency. And it’s what drives her to make films, to represent life as she sees it, to make her visions tangible.
To bridge the gap between herself and the wide world.
But surely there are hundreds, thousands of other filmmakers with portfolios just as good as hers? Why did Acheron’s scouts pick her?
Rafe reaches up and touches the mirrored glass over his head. A screen comes to life before Dez’s eyes. A moment later, her film,Glimpse, begins to play.
It starts with Dez on a packed and sunny pier in Ventura, pursuing Asher through the crowd. Dez studies his shoulders, his gait, the flashes of his lovely profile. When she finally catches up to him, she taps him on the shoulder. He turns to her … and his face is a mirror, reflecting Dez back to herself.
It’s only three minutes long, but when it’s over, Dez feels dazed and exposed. She can’t help wondering what Rafe thinks of her work.
“You’ll have to check your imposter syndrome at the door,” Rafe says, “or you won’t make it at Acheron.”
“And if I can’t?”
“I don’t think the Dairy Barn is going anywhere.”
Dez decides then that no matter what happens at Acheron, she’ll make it work. She’s going to be a filmmaker.
“What’s with the mirror on the guy’s face at the end?” Rafe says.
“It was intuitive. But I guess what I meant was … sometimes the thing we’re chasing is the thing we can’t reach inside ourselves.”
He looks at her. The irritating push-pull of their rapport flickers into the Pull category whenever their gazes are locked. After a while, she makes herself look away. She sips her drink.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“Stranger I cast off the street,” Dez says, but she’s thinking about her golden phone, the voicemail Asher left for her a little while ago. “I never saw him again.”
When she looks back at Rafe, he’s narrowing his eyes. It’s very smooth, but Dez thinks she feels the jet descending.
“Except when you were editing your movie, right?” Rafe says. “You must have seen a lot of him then.”
“Sure, I mean, I’ve got his face and voice and mannerisms memorized, but I don’tknowhim.”
“Funny how that happens,” Rafe says, and they stare at each other long enough for Dez’s cheeks to warm.
Out the window, a bolt of light illuminates the sky, and a sudden jolt rattles the jet, making it nosedive. Dez screams, but her terror ends as quickly as it began. The plane levels out, resuming its easy glide.
