Features
Years later, Lani easily remembered a day, one of the purposeless, foggy, waning days of high school, when her face, her world — indeed the whole world — changed for good.
Lani spent her teens avoiding mirrors — not because she was ugly, or a beauty, or had zits, a big nose, flat hair or a crooked front tooth but because every feature was average. Nose not too flat or bulbous; eyes average brown; lips neither thin nor luscious. She knew this was because she was a mix of every ethnicity in Los Angeles. Instead of bestowing upon her a unique appearance, she was a mash-up. Generic girl.
She was ending high school equally generic. No direction, no purpose, no plans, somewhat above average grades, no special aptitudes. She liked school okay, she guessed, but nothing was calling her or prodding her out of her neighborhood. The truth was, she was pretty pissed about not being special. In any way.
That’s when the big blow-up happened. Her mother said something about her featureless life — and her mom’s creepy boyfriend agreed, and Lani exploded at both and stormed out of their cramped apartment, furious, her average nostrils flaring with fire.
She didn’t even notice the TVs in the appliance store she raged past, all displaying the explosive emergence of a new island in remote South Pacific, its twin volcanoes blasting lava and ash from a huge mountain in its center, hollows forming to the north and south of the mountain, other prominences forming as if in a big hurry. The island was already the size of L.A. and growing.
Lani stomped and fumed and thundered until she finally stopped outside a storefront. She had no idea where she was; not her hood, that was for sure. She peered through the glass, seeing her bland reflection. Art studio. A dozen blobs of clay rested upon tables, awaiting student hands. The bust they were to follow sat up front, challenging. Next class, 6 p.m., the door sign read. Half-hour away. She didn’t know why, she couldn’t wait to touch the clay, to form features.
When she came out of her daze, she had completed a perfect duplicate of the bust, and the studio instructor, Camille, was shaking her, asking if she wanted to have one-on-one instruction.
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A few weeks later, Lani was a graduate and escaped from the apartment. Camille had put her up in a back room and had helped her how apply for a scholarship. Mornings passed in front the mirror until Lani noticed her irises had turned olive, her cheekbones had sharpened, becoming more prominent, her lips a little fuller. She felt alive. She felt purpose.
Five thousand miles to the west, the island had expanded, stretched, risen to the size of California, its central nose no longer flaring fire. Dark green pools, each the size of Lake Ontario, had formed above the central mountain range, and an even bigger cavern, surrounded by rounded highlands, had risen and blossomed to the south. But features were still mostly obscured by steam, fog or smoke.
Every nation wanted to claim it, or part of it; no one could agree on a name, but the Americans called it Pacifica. And, it seemed, Pacifica would not be claimed. For Pacifica, much to everyone’s astonishment and then horror, was on the move. It was coursing northwest. No one knew how. But certainly, no human power could stop it.
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Lani completed her first scholarship, advanced beyond busts to full bodies to abstracts to mixed media, restless to create anything and everything from clay, metal, glass, stone, extending paintings into sculptures and vice-versa. She hardly slept, she was always in motion. Her pieces were making waves in the art world. Her mother, her previous life, were fading memories. She was getting bored with static art; with Hollywood next door, she craved cinema and had begun haunting midnight movies.
Her cheekbones had risen, her eyebrows arched, her lips were copper. Her eyes had become emeralds and on a wild tear, she ran to Pearline’s Salon and had the bottom foot of her now waist-length, loosely curly auburn hair dyed the same neon green.
Six thousand miles to the west, scientists noticed, Pacifica, now the size of Alaska, had suddenly become lush with vegetation, a sanctuary of rain forest, piney woods, deciduous and sub-alpine that should not commingle but did. Massive beds of kelp streamed and flowed from every edge. The smoke and steam had cleared, but fog continued to hide many features. Tsunamis — 10, 20 feet high at times from its wake — had become regular.
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And then, one day, it stopped. Lani was scarfing down a lunchtime burger and fries in the nearest bar and grill when “Breaking News” reported Pacifica had halted a couple thousand miles northwest of Hawaii, equidistant from North America and Asia, and the fog had cleared. Satellite photos revealed its features clearly for the first time.
That was when all the chatter in the restaurant stopped, dead silent, and Lani felt the pressure of dozens of eyes upon her visage. She looked up. The satellite image might as well have been the reflection in her mirror from the back room.
“Anyone want some fries?” she stuttered — and ran out the door to Pearline’s.
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The following Monday — head shaven, wearing a ballcap and fake eyeglasses — Lani, on a recommendation from Camille, nailed an interview to begin as an apprentice graphic artist for a mid-size film studio. All she wanted, she told the graphics chief, was a chance, behind the scenes, to create beautiful images for feature films.
“I don’t need my face out front,” Lani told her new boss. “I just want to be one of the average Joes.”
Scientists later that day dismissed reports of satellite images purporting to show, for the briefest instant, a smile on Pacifica’s features. It must have been, they said, a glitch in the graphics translation from the satellite.
