The Book of Joan. Lidia Yuknavitch

rubbed at Joan’s arms, as if the conversation would return everything to normal. “Like the trails left by submarines . . .” he offered, laughing crazily like too-worried parents do.

      Her mother came to embrace her in a kind of parent cocoon, her face between relief and a pure unanswered question.

      “Like in the war,” her father said, still rubbing. “Bioluminescent algae. It’s all over her skin. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

      Things used to make sense like that. A father, a mother, children. A brief vacation.

      Bioluminescence obsessed her for months. She grew her own algae in a closet aquarium. She became addicted to her technology, searching for knowledge. And she begged her parents to vacation next in New Zealand, at the Natural Bridge colony, home to the largest colony of bioluminescent glowworms in the world. And they did. Something about the fear of their daughter losing her mind. At sunset, she, along with her parents and hundreds of tourists, could be seen exploring overhangs and crevices that were filled with glowworms, literally millions of them. Even though the surrounding area was pitch-dark, inside the caves the sun seemed to shine from the nooks and crannies surrounding them.

      All of this before the sun itself, like girlhood, broke and dimmed Earth forever.

      CHAPTER SEVEN