The Great Mall Mirage

Up We Go

There's a little smidgen of gun metal green that presses through the mobs of reporters and camera crew, black-suited businessmen and ditzy high schoolers. He's doing his best to be polite, but it's hard when the people are packed elbow to elbow and he's got somewhere to go. He earns some sharp looks and a few pushes anyway.

You can't help but laugh a little looking at him. The future trial attorney, all decked out in a bomber jacket, cargo pants, and Converses, with bark brown hair and sparkling hazel eyes. A bold personality in a slim frame, too young to command the respect he craves. Jack Hart. Your classmate and friend.

He pushes away your embrace and shields his eyes to stare up the building, where the noontime sun has skewered itself upon the building's pinnacle.

"Food court's at the top, right?" he says. "We should get something to eat."

"Sure, when the —"

The buzz from the phones around you's louder than the roar of the cars on the street. You pull your phone out of your jacket pocket, but Jack's faster, tapping open the news alert.

"Miles Dane reported missing en route to the grand opening of Mall Mirage," he reads.

You take the phone from him and scan the article. Sure enough, the richest man in the country has vanished without a trace, leaving his press secretary, Camila Fern, to oversee the grand opening.

Somebody laughs. "Really? April fools?"

"I wouldn't put it past him to pull off something like this, then show up last minute with his entourage."

"Good publicity, it is."

"No..." Jack whispers. You follow his gaze past the crowds to where a slender, tall woman in an Oscar-worthy dress and six inch heels clicks her way down the red carpet. She's surrounded by a security detail, and wears a perfectly pinched frown on her face.

Camila Fern. It's really her.

She was the person you'd seen on TV, on talk shows. People studied the way her scarlett hair fell in waves down to her waist, the way the corners of her mouth twisted into a mysterious smile. She was the model of the perfect woman: intelligent, elegant, absolutely gorgeous.

So of course you hated her.

She paused in front of the revolving glass doors. The crowd fell to a hush, stunned by her presence.

"It is my regret that Mr. Dane is unable to be here with us today to celebrate this groundbreaking moment. But I assure you that this monument to his success will remain just as astounding as it would be if he were here.

This is not a mall, but a temple. A tribute to today's society, to our way of life, to progress. An example to all those around us of how we as a people can be — should be. Exceptional.

People of Midtown, USA, let me wholeheartedly welcome you to the greatest mall on Earth: the Mall Mirage."

As she snipped the velvet ribbon around the doors, the security guards began lifting the stanchions. But nobody waited for them. They leaped over and ducked under the velvet cordons, trampling each other, stampeding with more force and vigor than cattle fleeing from gunshots. They poured through the doors and inside the mall. There was no stopping the flood.

Jack and you wait, letting the others buffet you from all sides. When the rush of people slows to a run, you take a deep breath. Shoulder to shoulder, you step inside.

Glass. All glass. A garden full of glass.

There are glass blown flowers balanced on pencil-thin stems. Class leaves paper-thin and marbled in a hundred colors. Glass birds and butterflies that shouldn't be able to fly, but somehow do, hiding their mechanical innards beneath layers of shimmering crystal.