Free Glimmer by Phoebe Kitanidis Page A

say to the librarian. “Where are the computers?”
    “Researching some new cheers?” she says brightly. “Down the hall.”
    I don’t bother to tell her there’s more to me than being a cheerleader. First I need to make sure it’s true. I’m planning to Google myself and see if anything comes up.
    On my way down the hall, though, I get derailed, distracted by a rich, sweet, female voice in one of the other small rooms. The door’s ajar. I peek in and see about a dozen preschool-aged children sitting in a squirmy horseshoe, their parents hovering at the edges of the room. The girl reading from a rhyming picture book looks about my age, but she’s about as far from my reflection in the mirror as you could get. She looks more the way I imagined I would look—the way I thought I should look.
    Tall. With long, slender limbs. Small breasts that barely disturb the clean line of her blue flower-sprigged sundress. You can tell her glossy chestnut hair would never dream of waving without her permission, let alone tangling and falling into her face like mine’s doing right now. Most striking of all is her serene smile, so innocent, so sure, the exact opposite of how I feel inside.
    “Time for one last story today,” she announces in her even, hypnotic tone.
    Several small voices clamor back, “No! More!” and their parents gently shush them.
    She gifts the audience with one more poised smile and holds up another picture book. “ The Legend of the Tribe with No Name . ‘Long ago,’” she reads from page one, “‘there lived all over this valley a tribe of Native Americans. They hunted deer and rabbits in our big pine forests. When the deer and rabbits weren’t plentiful or easy to catch, the tribe gathered mushrooms instead. Or fished for trout in our big, calm lake. They lived happy and easy lives, protected by the spirit of the giant waterfall.’”
    This is a girl who’s happy and content. Who knows exactly who she is, who’s never for a moment felt unsafe or scared. She’s beautiful, in all the ways I’m not . . . and never can be. It hurts to look at her, but I linger in the doorway, unable to look away.
    “‘The waterfall was their holy place, and the tribe’s medicine woman lived as close to the water as the spirit would allow her. Once, and only once, the spirit even let her swim in its waters without harm.’”
    Great, a story encouraging kids to go swimming in a waterfall. That’s when it occurs to me to wonder: Is the story supposed to be about this valley? A local legend about this waterfall?
    “‘But one day a strange man and his wife came to the valley. The man told the medicine woman that he had brought gifts for the water spirit and needed her permission to get near it. Now, the tribe knew something wasn’t right about this man. His smile did not reach the corners of his eyes. But they also knew the spirit was powerful, powerful enough to devour any mere man who tried to get the better of it, so they all agreed to let him build an underwater stone labyrinth on the condition that he pay the tribe in grains and metals.
    “‘When the man’s labyrinth of stones was finished, he laughed with delight. Holding his wife’s hand, they dove together underneath the surface of the water. But the spirit did not devour him. It had no chance to. The man was an evil magician and he had weighed the spirit down with stones so it could not move, and then he whispered the words of his magic spell to it. At that moment, the medicine woman lost her power, and without her guidance the tribe dispersed. Many fish died in the water. Many trees fell, and in place of the trees appeared a labyrinth of buildings nearly identical to the one the magician had built underwater. From then on, the water spirit was no longer wild and free but was enslaved by the magician.’”
    To my surprise, the kids and their parents are clapping, and when I look up, the tall girl is showing them the final picture, but just