by Nancy Isaak
Should be lots of fun.
DECEMBER
AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT
It was a lot of fun—until Lily saw the light.
The night had started out innocently enough. We grabbed some blankets and pillows and walked down to Chumash Park, setting ourselves up in the middle of the field that they used for football and lacrosse games. Jay had chosen that spot because it was far enough away from the trees that she figured we would have a good view of the sky.
Earlier, Jude had carried down the hibachi and set the coals to heating up. We were going to be having bean and salsa burritos; popcorn and candy bars would follow for dessert.
* * * *
Even though we weren’t scared of coyotes anymore because we had the gun (Jude wore it in a fanny pack whenever we went outside), we still decided to leave Pugly back at the townhouse. Having lived in the Conejo Valley long enough, we all knew that coyotes were sneaky, sneaky, sneaky and—before any of us would have been able to stop them—they could easily have darted in from the shadows and grabbed the little pug.
Lily, of course, wasn’t happy about leaving her dog behind. Still, she dealt with it like a big girl.
* * * *
“Oooo…it’s so beautiful,” sighed Jay.
Up above us, an explosion of meteors arced to the west, one after another. They were so bright that their light actually reflected off the dewy grass around us. Having just finished dinner, the four of us were lying on our backs, watching the magical spectacle unfold so very high above us.
“Do you know what it makes me think of?” I asked.
“What?”
“Tinkerbell. It makes me think of her flying across the sky, shooting sparks out of her little wand.”
Tucked in between Jude and me, Lily suddenly perked up. “Can we go to Disneyland?”
“Wow,” I said. “That never occurred to me. Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios—we’ve got all the major theme parks around here…and the movie studios!”
“What are you thinking?” asked Jay. “Do you really want to go visit them?”
“Yes, yes…I do!” squeaked Lily.
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think we could make it to Disneyland in a day on our bikes. But we could definitely make it to Universal Studios.” I grinned at Jay. “How weird would that be—sneaking into Universal Studios and wandering all around?”
“I think it’s a stupid idea,” growled Jude.
“Why?” asked Lily. “I love going to Universal Studios?”
“Because it’d be dangerous.”
“But you’ve got a gun,” insisted the little girl.
“I thought we were supposed to be watching the stars,” said Jude, irritated. “If this is going to get stupid, then I’m just going to pack up and go home.”
“If you go home,” I said, “we’ll all have to go home. You’ve got the gun.”
“Then stop talking about stupid Disneyland and Universal Studios. It’s annoying!”
We were all a little confused by Jude’s somewhat over-the-top response. Jay’s jaw was set, so I knew that she was feeling the same tension that I was. Lily, meanwhile, looked like she was close to tears.
Jude, however, just seemed angry.
Suddenly—a thought came into my head. “Jude,” I asked, “have you never been to Disneyland or Universal Studios?”
“Shaddup!” was all I got back from her.
I thought about what I knew of Jude. Most of it was the typical high school rumor mill-stuff—but now I began to wonder.
How much of it could actually be true?
According to the gossip, Jude had been a ward-of-the-State for years, before she was finally adopted by an older couple, a husband and wife in their sixties.
Brandon Keretsky loved to tell everybody who would listen that Jude-the-Rude originally came from ‘meth-heads’. I had always thought that Brandon was just being his usual dick-self. Now I wondered if maybe there had been some truth to that.
Maybe Jude had been one of those kids who had lived on the edge of society. If her bio-parents had truly been in the drug business, then that could have been how she wound up in the foster care system.
In which case, it could certainly have made sense that Jude had never visited the theme parks.
(You have to understand—this was Southern California. We kids had all been brought up with Mickey Mouse and Goofy basically living in our backyards. Going to Disneyland and Universal Studios was just something that we all did two or three times a year. Not going to the theme parks—now that would have been strange to us.)
Taking a deep breath, I decided to take a chance.
“I’m sorry, Jude,” I said, carefully. “I’m sorry that you never got to go to Disneyland or Universal Studios. And I’m especially sorry that now you’ll never get to experience what it was like.”
She turned and looked at me—not angry, just looking.
“Shaddup,” she said, after a moment. But this time it wasn’t a growl like before. This ‘shaddup’ was quiet and—perhaps—a little sad.
“I’m sorry, too, Jude,” squeaked Lily. “Everybody loves Disneyland.” The little girl reached out and took one of Jude’s big hands in her tiny one. “If you want, I’ve got a Minnie Mouse doll you can have.”
Jude squeezed Lily’s hand lightly. “It’s okay, Sailor Moon. You keep your stupid mouse doll.”
But she was smiling when she said it; Lily smiled right back.
And, yes…I admit it—I was still jealous.
* * * *
As the night wore on, the coyotes in the park began to bark and yelp, although none of them came anywhere near us. Meanwhile, high overhead, an owl silently glided back and forth, no doubt hunting one of the many rabbits that were now flourishing throughout Chumash Park.
Beside me—I eventually heard the quiet snoring of one little girl.
“Lily’s asleep,” I whispered to the others.
“We should probably get her back home,” said Jay. “Lily’s a growing girl, needs her sleep.”
“I’ll carry her,” offered Jude.
She picked Lily up and cradled her against her shoulder, then waited patiently while Jay and I began to gather up the blankets and pillows.
“The hibachi’s out,” I noticed. “So there’s no chance of it starting a fire. We can always come back and get it and the rest of our gear in the morning.”
Moments later, the three of us (with Lily still in Jude’s arms) started toward home.
We were directly across from Agoura High School, when we came out of the park. As we turned right at the sidewalk and began walking up the hill that would eventually lead us home, Lily lifted her head momentarily from Jude’s shoulder and, with a big yawn, said…
“…what’s that light?”
* * * *
“What do you think?” I asked, gnawing on my fingernails nervously.
Jay and I were standing in front of the Agoura High School Performance Center, a large building—recently built—with high ceilings, and bizarre angles. I remember my mom had said that it reminded her of the Disney Music Hall down in Los Angeles. That made sense because there was something similarly caricature about its architecture—like it possibly belonged in ‘Toon Town’.
Lily had completely woken up by now, and was standing beside Jude—twenty feet behind us—back at the sidewalk. Jay and I, meanwhile, were trying to come to a decision on whether or not we should enter the Performance Center.
“There’s definitely someone in there,” Jay whispered.
A soft glow emanated from the doors leading into the main theater. Shadows seemed to flicker and move across the light.
“I think I hear somebody talking,” I said, quietly.
“I think I hear somebody laughing,” Jay gasped. A moment later, she turned and gave me an astonished look. “I think there’s more than one person laughing inside!”
Jude and Lily walked up beside us.
&n
bsp; “Wassup?” asked Jude—as if this was a normal, everyday occurrence.
“What’s up is that you’re supposed to be over on the sidewalk, keeping Lily safe,” I hissed at her, irritated.
Jude just shrugged, not moving back. “I’ve got the gun.”
She did have a point.
Jay tugged at my sleeve. “What do you think, Kaylee? Go inside or not?
Definitely, absolutely…NOT!
But instead, I said, “Yeah, I guess we probably should.”
Jude took a step toward the Performance Center. I quickly reached out and pulled her back. “Seriously, Jude?!”
“Well, what do you want to do then, Barbie?” Jude huffed. “You want us to just sit on our butts out here, or are we gonna’ go find out who’s inside?”
* * * *
After thirty days of thinking that we were all alone in the world—it was surreal. And it was loud; everyone was chattering and gabbing at the same time.
There had to have been at least forty or fifty girls seated inside that theater!
Some of the girls I knew from school.
Others I had seen around, but didn’t know personally. They were all aged between seven and seventeen, although there were very few of the younger girls; most of the girls seemed to be in their mid to late teens.
And there were other girls—older, tougher-looking 11th and 12th graders—who stalked up and down the aisles, as if patrolling for trouble.
Almost all of the seated girls I recognized as coming from Agoura High. Over in one corner, however, were two Continuation School girls—Cherry Winslette and Wandy Marken. They were seated next to a pretty, overweight African-American girl of about twelve or thirteen.
While the majority of the Agoura High girls were talking excitedly in their seats, the ones from the Continuation School remained curiously silent, just waiting.
“Holy cow,” I murmured.
“Now this is interesting,” said Jude, grinning.
“Very interesting,” agreed Jay.
The theater—lit by tiki torches in sand-packed barrels placed strategically along the wall—sloped downward to the stage in front of us. There was a small line of girls—about five or six—in front of a desk placed against a wall to our left.
Sitting at that desk was Sophia Rojas, the third of Cherry’s ‘anti-Foxes gang’. She motioned us forward with a smile.
“Over here, girls,” Sophia called out. “You need to sign up here.”
As we slowly headed over, I took the time to scan the crowd once more. “Have you noticed? There’s no boys,” I whispered to Jay. “Just girls.”
“Too weird,” she whispered back.
When we reached the desk, Sophia handed us a clipboard with some papers attached. “We all have to fill this out,” she told us. “It’ll make things easier for the organizing.”
I flipped through the pages; they were sign-up sheets, handwritten in black ink. The usual data was required—Name, Address, Age, Pets, Special Skills. Ironically—for the first time in my life—there were no boxes for a phone number, e-mail address, or website.
Using the attached pen, I tapped on the clipboard, bringing Jay’s and Jude’s attention to the fill-in box at the very end of the page…Weapons Owned.
“Guess we don’t have to fill out this box,” I said, looking directly at Jude, “since we obviously don’t have any weapons.”
Jude stared at me. I stared back. She stared at me some more. Finally, her eyebrows rose and she gave a little nod.
Jay, meanwhile, looked back and forth between us—trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” said Jude. Then she turned to Lily. “And we don’t have any pets either, do we, Sailor Moon?”
The little girl stared up at her, completely confused.
“No pets,” I quickly added. “No weapons, Lily…no pets.”
Lily smiled, perhaps thinking this was all a game. “Nope…we got nothing.”
If anything Jay looked more confused than Lily. She leaned toward Jude and me and spoke very softly. “Seriously…what’s up?”
It was Jude who answered, so quietly that we had to strain to hear her words. “If we tell them, they’ll take the gun and eat the dog.”
* * * *
I think it was at that moment that I finally realized that Jude was smart…really smart. Instinctively, I had known that revealing the gun was probably a bad idea. But it was Jude who immediately understood why pets had been included on the sign-up sheet.
Jay, however, was not convinced. “That’s just stupid.”
I pulled her close to whisper in her ear. “I don’t care if you think it’s stupid. You don’t mention Pugly or the gun…understand?”
Jay pulled back, looking a little hurt. “You don’t have to get all bossy-pants!”
Meanwhile, Jude grabbed the sign-up sheet and began writing.
I looked over her shoulder, to see what she was putting down. “What’s that address?”
“My house,” she answered. “It’s where we all live, right?
“Right,” I said, slowly. Then I looked down at Lily. “You know where we live, kiddo?”
“I don’t know my address,” she whispered, looking a little embarrassed.
With a grin, Jude reached out and ruffled her hair. “You live at my place, stoopy-doop. So, say it, Sailor Moon…say where you live.”
“I live at your place.”
“That’s my little super hero.”
One of the older, tough-looking girls was passing by. She stopped, giving us the once-over. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I realized that she was wearing one of those little holsters that went under your arm.
The butt of a gun stuck out of it.
I immediately looked around at the other older girls who were patrolling around the theater. They were all wearing holsters; two of them even had what looked like whips attached to the webbed belts they were wearing.
“What’s in the fanny pack?” The older girl reached out her hand, about to touch the bag around Jude’s waist.
“Snot rags and Tampax,” answered Jude, not even looking up from the clipboard where she was writing. “You bleeding or blowing boogers, I’ve got you covered.”
The girl quickly snatched her hand back. “You’re such a pig, Rude!” she grunted. Then she turned and stalked off.
Meanwhile, Jude finished filling out the form and handed it to me. “Just copy what I put down,” she said, quietly.
“Maybe we should just leave,” I suggested.
“They know now that we didn’t get taken,” Jude said. “So, who’s to say they won’t come looking for us?”
“This is so stupid! I am not writing down Jude’s address!” Jay pulled the clipboard from me and started filling it out. “It’s just high school girls, not terrorists. What is wrong with you two?! We should be happy that there are other kids alive, not acting like a bunch of paranoid dumbasses!”
Suddenly, a murmur rose up from the seated girls.
Up front, on the stage, a podium was being pushed into the center, two chairs being placed on either side.
“Here we go,” muttered Jude under her breath.
“Idiots,” said Jay, turning back to finish her paperwork.
The murmur rose in volume as three girls came onto the stage. There was applause from the older girls—the 11th and 12th graders who were patrolling—and soon, the seated ones were also applauding.
Up on the stage, meanwhile, the three girls separated—one to either chair, the last to the podium.
Jay looked up from the clipboard, just as the applause was dying down.
“Oh crap!” she groaned, her mouth dropping open in shock as she recognized the three girls onstage. Then Jay’s hand began to move, quickly erasing the townhouse address she had written on the sign-in sheet—substituting Jude’s address instead.
Up on the stage, meanwhile, the Foxes began their ‘reign of terror’.
I guess I should start this out by saying that there are other girls alive.
A lot of them.
Girls our age, mostly from Agoura Hills—although we’re finding others are coming into our neighborhood as well. The Foxes don’t like that. In fact, they’ve started armed patrols to keep them out.
I hate having to say this but—it’s getting scary again.
Here’s what Orla said that night—when we first found all the girls in the theater. This is her speech, not word-for-word, but as close as I can remember it.
ORLA’S SPEECH
“Ladies, welcome.
Thank you all for coming. I can see that our little flyers did their job.”
(When we got home, we discovered that there were hand-written flyers tucked into the handle of the front doors of the townhouses in our neighborhood. We had been coming and going through the back entrance, so we had simply missed them.)
“I would like to thank Sophia Rojas and her Continuation School sisters for hand-writing each and every one of our flyers. Let’s give them a little love, shall we, Ladies.”
(Applause. Sophia stood up and bowed. Cherry and the others remained in their seats, however, just watching.)
“So, I guess the first thing that I should say is—like all of you—we have no idea what happened. What we do know is this:
First—it’s been thirty days since our loved ones disappeared.
Second—from what we’ve been able to figure out, it was everyone over seventeen or under seven. Again, we don’t know why.
Third—we have yet to find any boys of any age who survived (massive boos at this). We are, of course, still looking (a few cheers and giggles).
