The Brightness

By the time Cara reached her locker, the light had already arrived.

It was rising through the floor in a slow, deliberate sheet, a pale brightness that behaved less like illumination and more like weather. Not harsh. Not blinding. Just there, pressing gently upward, filling the hallway from the ground like something patient and inevitable. It softened the edges of everything it touched. Lockers. Shoes. The thin layer of dust that never quite disappeared, no matter how often the cleaners came through.

It pooled along the tiles and curled around the bases of the lockers, seeping into the thin cracks between metal and floor, making everything glow faintly from underneath.

Students moved through it without stopping. Some stepped carefully, lifting their feet a little higher than necessary. Others didn’t adjust at all, walking straight through the glow as if it were nothing more than reflected sunlight from a window that didn’t exist.

Cara stopped walking. “Oh,” she murmured. Not to anyone. Just to the air.

Jess was already there, struggling with her locker door, one foot planted in the light like it was a puddle she hadn’t noticed. “It’s warm today,” Jess said.

Cara looked down at her own shoes. The glow had reached her toes. “Is it?” she asked.

She stepped into it. The light slid up her calves, warm and oddly gentle, the kind of warmth that felt intimate, misplaced. Her skin looked faintly translucent, veins visible beneath the surface like she’d been turned into a medical diagram. She lifted her leg slightly, watching the glow move with her, clinging to her skin like a second atmosphere. “That’s… weird,” Cara said.

Jess glanced down, then back to her locker. “Yeah.”

They stood there for a moment, both watching the light climb. It lapped at their ankles now, patient, unhurried. Cara had the strange impression that if she waited long enough, it would keep going whether she acknowledged it or not.

“So are we late?” Cara asked.

Jess checked her phone. The screen was washed almost completely white, text barely visible beneath the glare. “No. First bell hasn’t gone.”

Cara exhaled. Relief, irrational and immediate.

They walked down the hallway together. The light had reached the base of the walls now, a thin luminous tide creeping along the skirting boards, making the lockers glow from below like rows of softly lit teeth. Every step felt slightly misjudged, like walking through fog that wasn’t wet but wasn’t air either.

Cara watched her feet as she moved. The soles of her shoes seemed to blur at the edges, dissolving into the glow. She lifted one experimentally, half-expecting it to float.

It didn’t. But it felt slower when she put it down, like gravity had been diluted.

Around them, the hallway was full. Not panicked. Not loud. Just… busy. Students wove around the light in small, unconscious patterns, stepping over the brightest patches, adjusting their gait without ever fully stopping. A boy crouched near the lockers, tying his shoelace with exaggerated care so his hands wouldn’t dip into the glow. Two girls leaned against the wall, comparing wristbands.

“Mine’s heavier than yours,” one said.

“They’re different sizes,” the other replied. “It’s about body weight.”

“Who told you that?”

“The nurse.”

“Did she explain why?”

She shrugged. “She said it’s preventative.”

Cara caught a fragment of another conversation as they passed.

“Just don’t look straight into it for too long.”

“Why not?”

“Because it messes with your eyes.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know. Like when you stare at your phone in the dark.”

Cara felt a strange urge to laugh. Not because it was funny, but because it was familiar. Everyone had explanations. Not good ones. But socially acceptable ones. The kind that filled silence without demanding belief.

They passed the noticeboard near the office. A new poster had been pinned up overnight.

PLEASE REMAIN CALM

THE BRIGHTNESS IS A MANAGED PHENOMENON

CLASSES WILL CONTINUE AS SCHEDULED

Someone had drawn a smiley face in the corner with a highlighter.

Jess slowed down. “Managed by who?” she asked.

Cara glanced at the poster. “I guess… someone."

“Oh. Okay.”

Near the science wing, a maintenance worker was kneeling on the floor, placing reflective tape along the boundary where the light met the wall. He wore thick gloves, even though he wasn’t touching anything hot.

“Does it hurt?” Cara asked him as they passed.

He looked up, surprised to be addressed. “Hurt?” he repeated.

“The light.”

He hesitated for a second. “No,” he said. “Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

He smiled, the polite, professional kind. “It means it’s not dangerous.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

He stood up, already backing away. “Well,” he said, “danger’s a strong word.”

The girls continued walking. A group of younger kids were clustered around a girl who had dropped her pencil. It floated just above the glow, spinning slowly in place.

One of the teachers approached. “Don’t crowd it,” she said calmly. “Just let it settle.”

“It’s not settling,” the girl said.

“That’s okay,” the teacher replied. “Not everything needs to.”

Jess nudged Cara. “We’re going to be late.”

Cara nodded.

They stepped over the brightest patch of light at the classroom door. For a moment, Cara felt the strange, irrational urge to apologise to it, like she was interrupting something private.

Then she went inside.

In English, the desks were floating.

Not dramatically, just enough to notice. Each one hovered a few centimetres above the glowing floor, suspended by thin metal chains bolted into the ceiling.

Cara stopped beside her chair. “Are we supposed to just… get on these?”

Mrs Smith smiled. The kind of smile that meant please don’t make this harder. “Yes, Cara. Please take your seat.”

The chair swayed, a small, obedient movement, as if encouraging her. It felt ridiculous to be afraid of it. It also felt socially illegal to remain standing while everyone else was already settling into place, adjusting their posture and testing the gentle bob of the floating desks with cautious curiosity.

Cara sat.

The chair dipped, then steadied beneath her. The movement was subtle, but her stomach lurched anyway, the way it did in elevators. The floor glowed beneath her feet, close enough now that it felt less like ground and more like a suggestion of ground. “So what is it?” she asked, nodding toward the floor.

Mrs Smith capped her marker. “The Brightness.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s the term we’re using.”

“Who decided that?”

Mrs Smith paused, then turned to the board.

Essay: Describe a time you had to adapt to change.

Cara stared at the word adapt.

She thought about saying something else. Something sharper. Something like this is insane, or isn’t anyone worried?

Instead, she opened her notebook.

At recess, the yard glowed.

The grass was lit from below, every blade outlined in soft white. Kids floated slightly when they jumped, not enough to panic, just enough to notice. Enough to laugh, at first. Jumps turned into gentle drifts. Landings took longer than they should have. A boy kicked a football and watched it hover mid-air for a full second before dropping back down.

“Do it again!” someone shouted.

A teacher walked around handing out weighted wristbands. “Just for balance," she said brightly.

Cara took one. “Do we need these?” she asked.

“Well,” the teacher said, “it’s better to be prepared.”

“For what?”

The teacher smiled. “For the day.”

Cara slid the band onto her wrist. It made her arm feel heavier. More real.

Jess sat beside her on the bench, feet dangling above the glow. “My mum says it’s probably temporary,” Jess said. “Like when the Wi-Fi goes down.”

Cara nodded. “That makes sense,” she said.

It didn’t. But it sounded plausible enough to rest on.

In the cafeteria, the light reached waist height. The tables were tied down with thick ropes, looped around the legs and anchored to metal bolts in the floor. Trays had to be passed carefully across the glowing threshold. Anything that dipped too far into it began to lose colour.

Cara picked up an apple. It glowed faintly in her hand, skin thinning, colour bleaching toward white.

She watched it for a moment.

Then she bit into it. It tasted like water. Not bad. Just empty. Like the memory of what an apple tastes like.

“Do you think the food’s safe?” she asked.

The lunch lady smiled. “They wouldn’t serve it if it wasn’t.”

Cara nodded. She finished the apple.

In maths, the light reached their chests. Everyone sat on high stools now, floating in a careful horizontal line like a badly aligned choir. The teacher’s desk had been tethered to the wall with thick straps. The whiteboard glowed from below, making the equations faintly luminous.

Cara raised her hand. “Sir,” she said, “is there, like… an explanation for this?”

The teacher leaned against his desk, which had been tethered to the wall. "Well,” he said, “there are a lot of theories.”

“Which one’s right?”

He smiled, tired but kind. “That depends on what you need.”

Cara laughed. The sound came out thin. No one else joined her.

By the last period, the light was at Cara’s shoulders.

She felt lighter. Not emotionally, but physically. Her feet barely touched the stool rung. Her body felt less anchored, like she was slowly forgetting its own weight. “Miss,” she said, “I think I’m floating.”

Miss Harding glanced at her. “Yes,” she said. “Try not to lean.”

Cara adjusted her posture.

The light reached her chin. Her reflection in the window looked washed out, edges soft, like a memory of herself instead of the real thing. “So what happens tomorrow?” she asked.

Miss Harding hesitated. “Tomorrow,” she said carefully, “we continue as normal.”

Cara nodded and wrote that down.

Not because it made sense. But because everything in her, the room, the teachers, the schedule, the quiet agreement humming beneath it all, told her that was the correct answer.