Free Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne Page A

pull his hair out, I knew I had to do more than pity him; I had to intervene. Grabbing hold of his spindly wrists, I pushed against his strength, which as it happened was something to be reckoned with for a kid so slight and swish.
    â€œDon’t. Okay?” I said. “You’re scaring me.”
    He looked up at me and tilted his head, and in that moment all his resistance fell away. He just sat there, staring at me, scanning my face and clothes and hair, assessing it all and calculating the cost of change. I felt for sure that he was a heartbeat away from making some pronouncement about my look or offering a suggestion about how to style my hair or rearrange my outfit. I could see that all his attention was suddenly focused on me and he had stopped crying. I figured, hey, if this was his way of coping, the least I could do was to hear what he had to say.
    â€œGo on,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œGo ahead. Say it. I know what you’re thinking.”
    â€œI’m not thinking anything. Honest. I’m just looking.”
    Unable to stand the pressure of his gaze another moment, I glanced around the room looking for I-don’t-know-what. I happened to notice that one of the boxes had been opened and there was a small stack of books on the floor. I walked right over to the pile and picked up one of the books.
    My grandmother, Judy Hertle, had a collection of books written by people who had died and then come back to life, people who could see into other dimensions, people who spoke to spirit beings on the other side, people who wrote automatically. She was into that kind of thing back when she was still alive and living in Bradley Beach. I never actually read these books, but I had poked around in her boxes of stuff enough to know what they were about and to know they were not for me. I also knew them well enough to recognize them sitting beside Leonard’s bed.
    â€œYou’ve been going through these boxes,” I said as I brandished a copy of Edgar Cayce’s Channeling Your Higher Self in Leonard’s face. “You know you’re not supposed to. This is not your stuff.”
    â€œI couldn’t sleep.” He was suddenly done with the crying; all of his attention was focused outward—on me. “I wasn’t snooping. Honest. I was just looking for something to read.”
    I started furiously packing the books back into the open box.
    â€œShe must’ve been something. Your grandmother.”
    Nothing from me. He wasn’t getting a word.
    â€œI don’t remember what book it came from, but I read this thing all about how the whole world is actually a pulsing, glowing web of invisible fiber optics that connect one person to another.”
    I turned and stared at him hard. “They don’t belong to you.”
    He was now up, kneeling on his bedspread, and even though his face was swollen and puffy from crying, he was lit with excitement.
    â€œBut still,” he went on, “it said that the stronger and truer the bond between two people, the brighter the strand between them becomes. The more strands there are, the brighter the overall glow. Not everyone can see this, of course, because not everyone is looking, but certain people—the guy who wrote the book, for example—could see it all the time. He said sometimes he was blinded by it.”
    â€œAnything else?” I asked, giving my voice as much edge as I could without actually drawing blood.
    â€œActually, yeah. A lot,” he said, ignoring my tone. “Like sometimes the glow got so dim, he worried it would completely disappear. And I was thinking maybe that’s why you shoplift. Maybe you steal stuff as a way of making more connection. What I mean is, maybe you want to get caught so that—”
    â€œWhat’re you talking about? I do not shoplift. Are you saying I steal things? What’ve I stolen? What? Name one thing.”
    He just knelt there staring at