io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “In the Zone” by Lisa M. Bradley. Enjoy!
In the Zone
by Lisa M. Bradley
As her head hit the pillow, Yadira felt exhausted and relieved. Exhausted, because she’d worked on a very large collage almost the whole day straight. Her shoulder blades ached from hunching over her worktable, and, despite scrubbing, she still had ink under her nails. Relieved, because she felt like she’d left it all out on the field, rather than still vibrating with artistic energy. That meant what she’d experienced that day was a natural creative high, not the start of a manic phase. She wished she didn’t have to constantly question her moods, but she hadn’t been on the Vraylar for very long. She didn’t quite trust it, still.
That night she dreamed she sat on her balding velveteen couch watching a news report about Latin American immigrants stuck at the US-Mexico border. One woman cried as she spoke to the reporter in what sounded like Kʼicheʼ, though the voiceover translation muffled it. She’d trekked from Guatemala with her two young children and wasn’t being permitted to enter the US to seek asylum. Yadira’s heart felt sprained, seeing the mother holding her children’s hands even as she sobbed. Without understanding what she was doing, Yadira reached to touch her computer screen.
A circle flared to life on the screen and quickly grew to the size of a full-length mirror. Yadira saw the whole family as if spotlit by the circle. Squinting from the light glaring off her framed poster of Sylvia Rivera, Yadira stood and reached out again. She felt the mother’s shoulder, round and warm, under her fingertips. The mother turned from the reporter and looked Yadira in the eye. Without thinking, Yadira gripped the mother’s shoulder and pulled. The woman stumbled into Yadira’s living room, and the children followed, gliding as if on invisible skates.
That was as much as Yadira remembered the next morning. Over her café con miel, she thought, What I wouldn’t give to be able to yank every person trapped at the border into this country. Even better, to pull them into the Midwest sanctuary city in which she lived. Far away from Border Patrol and ICE, beyond the reach of police who abetted those carceral agencies. Yeah right, her inner critic blurted. Better to send them money so they can rebuild their lives somewhere else, since the US is betraying them.
That day moved slower than the previous had. Yadira still had ideas, but she needed to scan the artwork she’d already produced and Glaze the images against AI bots and content thieves. Then she had to send some images to the nonprofit she worked for and upload others to the print-on-demand website that sold posters and totes featuring her art.
The Guatemalan family from her dream never left her thoughts for long, though. When her mom called for their weekly check-in, Yadira mentioned her outlandish dream. To her surprise, Socorro started laughing.
“Oh, not that again!” Socorro said.
“What do you mean, again?”
“When you were little, I sometimes put you in front of the TV while I did chores. When I checked on you, you’d say one of the characters—a girl with glasses, I think—came out of the TV to play with you. I’d ask, Well then, where is she? And you’d say, Oh, she had to go.”
Yadira’s eyes went wide. “I don’t remember that.”
“I’m not surprised. You were very young and you didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.”
“Amazing.” Yadira kind of wanted to hang up so she could ponder what this recurring dream might mean, but she forced herself to continue the conversation, eventually asking, “How’s Abuela?”
“Oh, that woman, you know her, she never stops,” Socorro said with a familiar exasperation. “She’s got this gaggle of witchy types that frequent her botánica. They call themselves Las Bruja-jas and they’re always up to something. Good trouble, she says.”
“Good for her,” Yadira said. Unlike Socorro, she’d never been embarrassed of Abuela Hortencia’s curandera work. Healing was just something she did, like other grannies played dominoes or pickleball.
That night, Yadira looked up an immigrant aid group to offer some pro bono work. Afterward, she checked the news, despite her better judgment. Reading about the illegitimate president’s unconstitutional executive orders before bed more often than not left her with rage insomnia. Still she couldn’t help clicking on another update, this one live from the border.
Lit pink by her bedside lamp and cocooned in her Snoopy duvet, she watched a reporter interview a spindly, dark-skinned man from Honduras. As a gay man, he’d tried to get asylum in Mexico, but with the US border locked down, they’d already exceeded their capacity for refugee intake for the next five years. The news network did not translate his commentary, probably because they feared retribution from the US president, but plenty of the audience, including Yadira, understood enough Spanish to grasp the man’s scathing frustration. Sometimes the news made Yadira so angry, she saw spots, and at first that’s what she thought was happening to blur the video. But then the circle from her dream appeared onscreen.
I really have to remember to report this to my prescriber, Yadira thought as she rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, the golden circle was expanding to touch the walls and dusty popcorn ceiling of her bedroom. She squirmed out of the duvet and stood beside her bed, then turned her laptop to face her. The circle turned also and the man spotlit within paused mid-diatribe to stare at Yadira.
This is crazy, her inner critic said. But Yadira’s therapist said the inner critic wasn’t qualified to render such a diagnosis, so she ignored the critic and lifted a hand to the man.
Dreamily, he reached out as well. Golden light flared from the circle as Yadira’s hand passed through it, and she took his hand. Then she pulled him into her bedroom. They collided and stumbled into the dresser behind Yadira. The reporter gave a little scream, while on the dresser, earrings fell from the framed chicken-wire holder and clattered onto the wood surface.
The man’s eyes searched the small, pink-lit room as he pushed himself away from Yadira in a panic.
“Qué pasó aquí? Y dónde es aquí?”
Yadira, glad she’d donned proper pajamas, led him to her kitchen. In her halting Spanish, she tried her best to explain while reheating tamales for him. Later, she asked if he’d like to wash up. She took him to her bathroom, swiped the workout bra drying on the towel rod from sight, and handed him towels. Later still, she made up the couch for him. He was too tall for it, his feet would dangle over one arm, but he’d refused to take her bed.
Augustín, for that was his name, sat on the fresh sheet and asked, for the third or fourth time, “I-o-wah? In the United States?”
“Sí. Mañana, voy a . . .” Yadira paused, suddenly unable to remember the rules of conjugation or parts of speech. “Voy a presentarle? a algunas personas que pueden ayudarle. Usted puede vivir conmigo por un rato.”
He looked dubious, and Yadira didn’t blame him. Even if she’d managed to say what she meant, she didn’t know who to contact yet, herself. But she wished him a good night and returned to bed.
Unfortunately, her brain wouldn’t stop for sleep. She kept being bombarded by images, doubts, inspirations. But, given the circumstances, she thought it was understandable, not a manic episode. She typed up some of her most pressing thoughts before setting aside her (mundane once more) laptop and staring at the dusty ceiling. She’d have to work on her Spanish.
Because if she could pull someone to safety again? She absolutely would.
• • •
Yadira didn’t know exactly how she yanked people from the news into her one-bedroom apartment, and she kinda didn’t want to know. She thought of it as she did her artistic impulses: better left to mystery. That did not stop her from experimenting to understand the parameters of her newfound (or rediscovered?) power.
She couldn’t do it using her phone, maybe because it was too small? Not enough power? And she couldn’t do it using a prerecorded interview, it had to be live. That prompted a slew of questions about what, exactly, she’d done as a child—if anything. Had she pulled out cartoons or puppets or real people, and had they been from live shows? She didn’t ask Socorro, not wanting to exasperate her.
She could do it with an audience. Augustín insisted on seeing how he himself had been transported to this mostly white little town, and after a week, Yadira pulled a trans woman named Dulce into her kitchen in front of him.
After a couple of days for Dulce to get used to her new environment—Yadira made Dulce sleep in her bed while she curled up with Snoopy on the floor—Yadira took her to the office of Migrant Movement for Justice, same as she had Augustín. The organization began the perhaps impossible task of procuring legal documentation for the two refugees. Yadira wasn’t sure what counted as impossible anymore.
Her power wasn’t limited to migrants at the border, either. One Sunday morning while Yadira was making migas for breakfast, Augustín sat at the kitchen table watching CNN. Not a morning person, Dulce sat sipping coffee and peered at the screen through slitted eyes. The director of Homeland Security was being interviewed, and he spent a good portion of his segment bad-mouthing a Congressional “upstart” who was leading Know Your Rights seminars in response to the administration’s horrible immigration policies.
When Yadira leaned over Augustín to place his plate on the table, she glared at the white, thumb-faced director on screen. Almost immediately, a gold globule appeared over his face before it thinned into the familiar golden ring that preceded a teleportation.
“¡No! Ese hombre, no!” Augustín yelled.
Even as the director apparently gave the camera a puzzled frown, Augustín recoiled and slammed the laptop shut. Yadira, stunned silent, blinked at the broken connection.
“Bueno,” Dulce said, standing for a second cup of coffee, “no necesitamos ese problema.”
From then on, Yadira was careful not to focus too hard on celebrity interviews and the like. Sometimes she giggled to herself at the thought of pulling a pop star from the screen, but even if she hadn’t teleported the director of Homeland Security, he’d clearly been able to see her through the portal. Yadira had no desire to inflict what might feel like a hallucination on someone or yank them from their glamorous life into her already crowded apartment.
Yadira wished she could conjure folks directly into the MMJ office, not because she minded them in her home but because the org’s members spoke fluent Spanish and she thought they could more effectively orient refugees. She tried it once. She claimed she was there to pick up more Know Your Rights wallet cards and then locked herself in the bathroom with her laptop, but she couldn’t find a livefeed in the fifteen minutes she felt she could reasonably occupy the bathroom. Anyway, how would she have explained emerging with a whole ’nother person?
Within a few weeks, a queer-run shelter took both Dulce and Augustín into their protective environment. The shelter’s location was a secret, so Yadira couldn’t visit, but she got messages via Telegram with updates from her new friends.
Curious about the power of location, Yadira went to her boss at the nonprofit and asked if she could use an office computer after work hours. She said she was having trouble with her personal computer. Laura gave her the go-ahead and that night, once everyone was gone, Yadira searched for and found a livefeed from the US-Mexico border. No matter how many times she touched the screen, however, the gold circle wouldn’t blossom from the work computer. When Yadira switched to her own computer, harmless gold sparks fanned from the screen, but a circle never appeared.
So it seemed her apartment was the only reliable nexus, maybe because of its familiarity. She didn’t want to take the risk of experimenting in the building’s lobby or laundry room, where someone might see and report her. To whom? asked her inner critic, who’d actually come to support this weird endeavor. Would ICE or CBP believe anyone who claimed she’d opened a portal in her computer screen and pulled immigrants out?
• • •
Yadira knew she needed consistent live broadcasts, so she contacted the indie news agency in the Rio Grande Valley that had run the interview with Augustín and other folks stranded at the border. She told the agency it was important for the cause that they keep producing those live interviews, and she made a donation that would subsidize them—and reduce her to eating no-frills ramen for a month. In return, she got a text whenever their cameras were rolling.
The weekly interviews were not always conducive to Yadira’s teleportation process. Sometimes there were too many people in the frame, and notwithstanding the dream that started this whole thing, she was nervous about moving more than one person at a time. But at least once a month, she managed to save someone. And the unpredictable, dramatic disappearances made the videos all the more popular.
One evening, after a particularly frustrating day of artistic missteps, Yadira decided she needed to do something useful. Transporting another immigrant would do good and make her feel good. She prepared the usual platter of snacks and bottled water and placed it on the tufted ottoman. She lit a sweet-scented candle. She brought up the translation app on her phone, mostly to reassure herself. She’d developed a good introductory script and she had it memorized. Finally, Yadira arranged her laptop on a tray table in the middle of the living room to make the physical transition easier. Then she clicked on the video.
The camera focused on a teenager, the only one of a group who was brave enough to speak to the reporter. Yadira waited for a close-up, then stood to the side of her laptop. She’d read online rumors that she could be seen by people in the background, though no one had provided any identifying details. She touched her laptop screen.
And nothing happened.
No golden sparks, no dilating circle, no spotlight.
Frowning, Yadira withdrew her hand. Was it the angle from which she was approaching? A bad connection? She tried again, but her screen remained as stubbornly flat as the work computer’s had. She stood directly in front of it and tried again, this time squinting her eyes as she willed the magic to emerge from her device. Nothing happened, even when she left her hand on the screen until the segment was over.
Tears burned Yadira’s eyes. She dropped onto the couch and slammed her fists into her thighs. She couldn’t do anything right today and now her magic was gone, perhaps forever. She curled up on the couch to cry into a pillow. Hours later, when she dragged herself to bed, her inner critic chided her for being selfish: You weren’t really thinking about the boy, you just wanted to make yourself feel better. The criticism didn’t wound her as most pronouncements from the critic did. Instead, Yadira’s chest expanded with hope. She would try again, the very next time she got a heads-up from the indie news group. And she’d do it with nothing in her heart but a desire to help someone in need. It would work. It had to.
The next day over the lunch hour, Yadira randomly checked newsfeeds to see if anyone was reporting live. More networks were making camp on the border, trying to horn in on the disappearances that the RGV journalists had first captured, blurrily. In a couple of live reports, the network reporters themselves took up the whole screen, the immigrants tiny in the background and obscured by chain-link fencing. Sensing she might be in for a long haul, Yadira went ahead and set up: snacks, water, candle, phone, laptop. She favorited some Indigenous languages in the translation app, just in case.
A couple of hours passed before Yadira received a text that jolted her hungry, sleepy self to full alert. The RGV group was about to go live. She closed her eyes and visualized the impending (successful! insisted the critic, now turned cheerleader) teleportation. She imagined her posture, the gold sparks, the widening circle. The spotlight, her extended hand, the eye contact. Her firm grip, the inertia replaced by momentum, the human body taking up space in her living room.
By now, the indie journalists had determined the optimum approach for catching a disappearance, and other networks’ camera operators followed like scavengers, jostling to get the same angle. Yadira knew she was risking her anonymity; with so many cameras it seemed only a matter of time before someone filmed the right space at the right time to see her through the portal. But she couldn’t be distracted by personal concerns. She had to be there for the one person she could save. This time, however, when Yadira clicked on the feed, it was two people: a mother and babe in arms.
She took a deep breath and planted herself directly in front of her laptop. She reached toward the screen, awaiting the gold circle that would flare like benediction around mother and child. When it failed to materialize, she took another calming breath and gently touched the screen. She pressed the space over the mother’s left shoulder, because the baby was resting their head on her right shoulder, and she wanted to see both teleportees in the spotlight to come.
The mother wept as she spoke, explaining that her husband had died on the journey. She swayed in place as if to comfort herself and the baby. Yadira concentrated on the woman’s wet brown cheeks, the plaintive slant of her thick eyebrows, her round body under the FIFA t-shirt. She turned the same attention to the baby, wild-haired, missing one sock, gnawing on a thumb, maybe teething.
And nothing happened.
Resolute, Yadira removed her fingers from the screen, waited a few moments, and then touched it again. And still nothing happened. Though she held her welcoming posture, her inviting look, Yadira’s heart shriveled in her chest like the Grinch’s in reverse. She didn’t cry until the interview concluded and she’d gently closed the laptop.
• • •
She tried repeatedly over the next few days, but Yadira’s magic was gone. Her mourning followed the pattern she’d established for coping with the artistic doldrums and bipolar slumps. She cleaned her workspace and tested all her pens and markers, looking for the duds. She made herself take walks, shower, and eat three meals a day, even if two of them were plain ramen. She bought old magazines from Goodwill and cut them up for collages. Watched documentaries.
Then, out of nowhere, Abuela Hortencia invited her to a video chat.
“Abuela,” Yadira said, smiling at her grandmother’s deeply tanned face. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Hortencia said. “The question is, How are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“According to your mother, you’ve recently had a dream come true, but for some reason, it’s stopped.”
“Mom knows?! Why didn’t she say anything?”
“Ay, you know that woman, afraid of anything that can’t be explained,” Hortencia grumbled, one hand up to mimic Socorro’s typical deflection. “But she saw something with her own eyes. It’s been on the news, and once she told me, I started to pay attention. Then it stopped. Socorro hasn’t noticed yet, or maybe she’s just relieved. But I thought I should check in with you.”
“I’m fine,” Yadira said carefully. If Abuela didn’t speak of the magic outright, neither would she. “I mean, I’m down, but I’m trying to accept that it’s over.”
“No! Wrong! Absolutely not!” Hortencia waved both hands as if wiping away Yadira’s error. “These things do not disappear overnight. They ebb and flow like everything in nature, and they must be cultivated.”
“So you think I could still do it?”
“Yes, mija, but you need to practice, like a musician or athlete. They don’t perform every day, but they definitely put in the hours to be at their best when it’s time.”
“But has it ever happened to you? Have you ever just . . . lost it?”
Hortencia laughed, an easy guffaw that showed off her silver fillings.
“My dear girl, of course! That’s why I have Las Bruja-jas. If I can’t do it, maybe one of those bitches can.”
Yadira gasped, as she always did when Abuela cursed.
“And even if they can’t,” Hortencia said, ignoring Yadira’s prudish reaction, “they’ll support my soulwork until I can get back in the zone, y’know?”
“Maybe it’s different for me, though.”
Hortencia’s lips pursed as she considered this. “Maybe it is,” she conceded, “but let me tell you, I’d be really surprised if it was. Lots of folks with the touch—artists, healers—think they’re the only ones who struggle, but when you have the right community, you see others on all different points of the roller coaster. Find your people, mija.”
Yadira reflected on Abuela’s words for a couple of days, then she returned to the MMJ office and asked to be put to work. Marcos, their volunteer trainer, was surprised that she appeared alone.
“Yeah, that might be over,” Yadira told him, but she didn’t explain because, as she learned when introducing Augustín, the org didn’t want to know about the potentially illegal activity she engaged in. “I hoped I could file paperwork or run the vacuum for you. I’ll even clean the bathroom if that’s all you’ve got.”
Marcos chuckled. “We never make volunteers do the really dirty deeds, or they’d never come back. We’re sending out flyers about our next ICE-watch training session. You can help me stuff and address envelopes.”
While she waited for him to gather the materials and spread them out on a table with two chairs, Yadira went over to the dry-erase board that listed the office supplies that needed replenishing. She doodled a flowering vine in the margins.
Once she and Marcos got into a good rhythm with the flyers, he said, “Not a lot of volunteers can come in during normal work hours.”
“I’m lucky, I’ve got a flexible schedule. I wish everyone did.” Yadira paused to toss aside a duplicate address label. “I’m an artist.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Marcos said, smiling and tilting his head to the dry-erase board. “Maybe we can put your skills to better use and have you put on a youth workshop someday. You can help the kids we serve to design a zine about immigration rights or make posters for a rally.”
Yadira’s eyes brimmed with grateful tears. She’d felt so useless the last week; it was a relief to know that the folks here wanted her around, even if she wasn’t bringing them new clients. Maybe these were her people, like Abuela had said.
Bashful, Yadira kept her gaze on her work. “That would be really cool. Sign me up.”
• • •
The next week, she met Dulce and Augustín at a university concert hall for a free string-quartet performance. Dulce’s dress was a casual floral, perhaps from the community closet, but her rose-palette makeup was pristine. Augustín’s midnight-black hair was styled and set in a fashion-forward swirl. The three friends took seats together and chattered happily over the simple, folded programs they’d received from music student ushers.
Yadira wasn’t familiar with the music being performed, but the cello’s notes warmed her heart and loosened the painful knot she’d carried in her stomach for weeks. She thought of Abuela’s encouragement and wondered how long the cellist practiced every day. At the end of the first piece, she wanted to stand up and cheer, maybe even whistle with two fingers, but she restrained herself and joined the polite clapping of the audience. She looked to see if Dulce and Augustín were smiling as broadly as she was and found Dulce in tears, covering her mouth with one hand.
“What’s wrong?” Yadira whispered.
Dulce shook her head, rocking with silent sobs. Yadira looked beyond Dulce to Augustín. They locked eyes and nodded, and as one, they rose from their seats and escorted Dulce to the lobby.
“Lo siento,” Dulce whispered between sobs. “I don’t mean to take you away from the music, it’s just . . . I never thought . . .”
Augustín took her hand and led her to a narrow bench under a bulletin board papered with concert posters, practice schedules, and audition sign-up sheets. Yadira followed, holding Dulce’s other hand.
Once Dulce caught her breath, she explained in Spanish. “It’s just that, I never imagined, while I was riding in the backs of trucks and scraping together coins for buses, I never thought I’d be here, listening to beautiful music with friends, and no fear, no fear of being harassed or assaulted or ripped off. But I’m here and I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the day after that or a month from now, but for now I’m safe and happy. I didn’t think I could ever have that.”
Augustín nodded and squeezed her hand, as did Yadira as she wiped away her own tears. The three sat breathing together, recovering. Eventually Dulce sat up straighter and carefully wiped under her eyes.
“I need a bathroom, god knows what I look like,” she said.
Yadira assured her she looked beautiful, her rose and silver eye makeup miraculously intact, but she led her friend to the ladies’ room to primp anyway. When they emerged, Augustín stood, and the friends squeezed one another in a three-way hug. Then they returned to the music.
• • •
A month later, Yadira entered her apartment and dropped two tote bags of art supplies on either side of her welcome mat. Smiling enormously though her arms ached from the weight, she let her front door swing closed behind her and then slumped against it. The MMJ workshop with the kids had been a huge success. Teens from United Action for Youth had joined the workshop as mentors in the zine-making process, and there was talk of organizing a zine fair to show the kids’ work to the community.
That would’ve been enough to make anyone happy, but Yadira had even more going for her. Lately she’d been a creative blur, zooming from one project to another and loving every second of it. She’d perfected her technique for creating gel prints from newsprint. She’d created a collage of a fat mermaid meditating, and once she’d posted it on the print-on-demand site, it had gone slightly viral, with customers wanting the image reproduced in prints of every size and on all kinds of merchandise. At the nonprofit, Laura had submitted Yadira’s new logo design to a contest, and it won, which led to a feature in a regional magazine and new connections for future projects.
Everything was going so well for Yadira personally that she felt a little guilty. After all, the country was still being led by a despot whose minions were ripping apart all social safety nets and vilifying helpless minorities. And more migrants than ever languished at the US-Mexico border, but news coverage had waned without the exciting possibility of migrants disappearing mid-interview.
That evening, while chopping green onions and a poblano for yakisoba, Yadira received a text message from the RGV journalists: Tomorrow afternoon would be their last live interview. They’d lost a grant due to the federal funding freeze and had to focus on more dynamic news coverage. Yadira understood their need to attract more views to survive and texted her thanks for doing so much while they could.
Still, the update needled her. She kept thinking about it as she gobbled her sweet and savory ramen. She hadn’t tried to use her magic in a while. What if, as Abuela insisted, it wasn’t really gone? What if she’d needed to refresh and recharge? What if, she thought with a surge of hope, her magic was like her art or bipolar? What if it did ebb and flow, and she was just along for the ride? Maybe she had to leave room for it in daily life, while also doing the dreary self-maintenance that put her in the best possible position for a breakthrough. By the time she’d finished her meal, she’d made a plan.
First, she texted Augustín and Dulce to ask them for moral support. Would they come to the apartment for an immigrant rescue attempt? Their replies were near instantaneous: “Omigod, of course!” from Augustín and “Ay, hermana, gracias a Dios que vas a tratar de nuevo. Estoy muy orgullosa de ti.”
The next afternoon, Dulce insisted on giving her a “magical” manicure for good luck. Despite all the painting she did, Yadira rarely took the time to paint her own nails. When Dulce finished her salon-worthy work, Yadira had cobalt blue nails embellished with gold flares. While she sat admiring them and waiting for them to dry, Augustín surveyed the space around Yadira’s worktable and tsked. Without a word, he dragged the vacuum from the closet and began sucking up all the bits of paper from Yadira’s art projects, now strewn to every corner of the apartment.
When Yadira saw the rainbow of paper flecks in the clear vacuum canister, she tried to rescue them, but Augustín threw his hand in the air like a stop sign.
“Not on your life,” he announced. “If your nails are dry, it’s time to set up the charcutería.”
Augustín had insisted they make more of the afternoon than simply preparing for the possibility that Yadira would bring a migrant through the portal. Even if she didn’t manage it, they were going to have a consolation party with sausage, cheese, and margaritas. Yadira was so grateful that he and Dulce were in her life. Even more than the folks at MMJ, these were her people.
At the appointed time, Yadira brought up the RGV group’s livefeed on her laptop, which was once more set on the tray table in the living room. A candle that smelled like spilled rosé burned in front of the dark TV and the charcuterie board waited on the ottoman (which Augustín had also vacuumed). He and Dulce stood on either side of Yadira for support but left her hands free for her work.
Eyes riveted to the screen, Yadira teared up when she realized this last interview was an update on the status of the teenage boys she’d seen months ago. The same brave boy spoke directly to the camera about how his cohort had lost touch. Some were trying to return to their home countries. Others had been housed by a volunteer group farther south from the border. He himself had spent time in the hospital from a gunshot wound, when the US Border Patrol fired through the border fence into a protesting (“rioting”) crowd.
“This is good,” Yadira quietly told her friends. “I can work with this. If only I’ve still got it.”
Augustín wished her luck. Dulce asked if she might say a prayer. Yadira was, perhaps stubbornly, still agnostic, despite her seemingly supernatural powers, but she appreciated Dulce’s heartfelt offer and agreed. As Dulce’s words wrapped a curtain of security around them, Yadira waited for the camera to zero in on the teenager, hopefully with no bystanders in the background.
The reporter and cameraperson were old hat at this by now, and Yadira didn’t have to wait long. As the teenager gazed into the camera, his focus seemed to shift very subtly. Yadira didn’t feel like he was looking into the camera, but into her soul. Her chest tightened and she experienced a subtle shift, too—from hope to belief.
YES! her inner cheerleader hissed.
On the screen, a ring of golden sparks centered on the boy.
Yadira felt like her heart was ratcheting around in her chest, but her arm moved smoothly as she lifted it to the screen. Painless sparks flew as her fingers pressed the screen, then passed through it. She cupped the boy’s cheek briefly, and he pulled away, rather like Yadira imagined he would’ve ducked an overly doting tía’s touch. But he didn’t take his eyes from her. The gold ring expanded to a circle, and she moved her hand down to rest on his shoulder. The circle grew further, casting light on the walls and ceiling of the living room. The framed poster of Sylvia Rivera gleamed and gently rattled.
“You’re doing it,” Dulce whispered. “You’re really doing it. Dios mío, look, I’m glowing too!”
Yadira had a vague impression that Dulce was raising her arm, and Augustín examining his, but she didn’t dare look away from the boy. She concentrated, wanting to remember this feeling so she could summon it again and again. She felt . . . right. Not manic or low, not roaring on top of the artistic roller coaster or diving down into the barrens. Just . . . right. Like her best self.
Yadira gripped the teenager’s broad shoulder, feeling the warmth of absorbed sunlight in the fabric of his Nirvana shirt. She smiled.
And the room lit up like dawn as she brought the boy home.
About the Author
A queer, disabled Latina originally from South Texas, Lisa M. Bradley now lives in Iowa. Her work has been featured on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast and in F&SF, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Uncanny. Her first collection is The Haunted Girl (Aqueduct Press). Her debut novel is Exile (Rosarium Publishing). Learn more at www.lisambradley.com or on Bluesky, @cafenowhere.bsky.social.
© Adamant PressPlease visit LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the November 2025 issue, which also features short fiction by Angela Liu, Gene Doucette, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Joel W. D. Buxton, Modupeoluwa Shelle, Tina S. Zhu, Sam W. Pisciotta, and more. You can wait for this month’s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $4.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition here.
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