This Little Light

by Lori Lansens

  “Rory, there was freaking tequila in the Gatorade.”

  I sniffed the bottle. I’d sipped from a margarita once or twice. I know what tequila smells like. Jesus. Just. Jesus.

  Fee didn’t throw up, which was shocking since she’d announced she was definitely gonna hurl, and I mean, tequila. She just laid her head back down and murmured, “My mom’s gonna kill me.”

  I have no idea how much tequila was in that bottle, but I think she’s passed out drunk now. Fantastic. I’m looking at Fee in the shards of moonlight streaming in from the gaps in the roof, mouth-breathing beside me. If she was already poisoned, what is alcohol gonna do? What if she’s too sick to move when Javier comes back to help us? Then what?

  I’m exhausted, but too afraid to sleep. Going online and reading the news and tweets is making me crazy, yet I can’t stop myself. Fucking Pastor fucking Hanson is up in the middle of the night, tweeting out our school records and detention stats. He’s calling me a “well-known agitator.” He used that word—agitator. He’s saying that Fee is insubordinate and points to her numerous skirting offenses. She did get a lot of skirting detentions, but that’s only because she and Delaney sometimes mixed up her medium-sized skirts with Delaney’s small.

  Fuck. You. Pastor. Hanson. Fuck. You. Sacred. Heart. And God? Where the hell is God? Doesn’t he see Fee here in pain and despair?

  I honestly think I’d still believe in God if I hadn’t found out how haterish He is. You really start to get that lesson when you reach middle school and start taking health class with Miss Vogelvort, whose eyes went crossed after her last botched facelift. We didn’t talk about puberty or the reproductive system or nutrition in her class. No, we talked about the gays, and how much she, and God, hates them. I wanted to point out to her that Jesus is God, and if you really look at it, His profile is totally bi. He was hot for that prostitute, but then again, the Apostles? I just can’t imagine that the most awesome and influential schizophrenic who possibly ever lived would hate on anyone. Not gays. Not Jews. Not Muslims. Not Hindus, and not even Mormons—well, except for the child-bride fuckers—and possibly Scientologists because cult.

  Vogelvort warned us one day about the need to resist our growing “urges” when we’re alone, because masturbation is a sin. She quoted a Bible verse, which isn’t in the actual Bible, about “wasting seed.” This, in an all-girls school.

  I despise Vogelvort. We all do. Brooky does a hilarious Vortie imitation using this witchy-poo voice. “Girls. When the devil tempts you in your bed at night, think of my face and you’ll get a fright. Imagine I’m watching you. With my right eye. No, my left. No, my right. Whatever. You’re all going to hell!”

  Brooky was right when she told Jinny Hutsall, that first day we met, that I only went to Sacred because of my friends. One day when we were in eighth, baking at Zuma Beach, I floated the idea of changing schools. The girls had laughed at the thought we’d leave Sacred, even with its stupid restrictions and bogus teachings. Even Fee thought I was joking. I mean, who leaves the best? Though I was having doubts as to whether it was the best. And I wasn’t brave enough to leave the school on my own, especially since my parents had just split.

  Our Sacred Heart campus sits almost directly across from the public school, King Gillette High. We girls stand behind our huge iron gates each morning, pulling at our regulation high ponytails, wilting in our woollies, watching the circus on the other side of the road. Sometimes I catch sight of Chase Mason hopping out of his Jeep, then wish I hadn’t, because he’s usually being molested by some Lark’s Head fangirl who’s, like, flopping out of her beach-wear because no dress code.

  The public school kids seem like a different species—dry-humping on car hoods, French-kissing on benches, dangerous-driving in the parking lot. Our teachers refer to them as Sodomites, and during our morning “Conversation with God” we pray for the lost children across the road. Maybe I should have been part of that tribe, instead of a secular fish swimming against the Christian current.

  That’s it. No more skirting. No more sexism. No more Handsy. No more Crusaders. No more God.

  I’m leaving Sacred Heart High.

  * * *

  —

  Keep hearing noises outside. Keep checking out the window, but no one’s out there. Just the wind. There are a few copters in the sky—prolly the fire department machines that can handle the high winds—but they’re far away and not a threat right now. They’re concentrating their search at the beaches and all those homeless communities around the Santa Monica Pier and the tent cities in the canyons of Bel Air and the dry viaducts downtown. There are hundreds of reports of us being seen among the homeless. People say we’re handing out wads of cash so the vagrants will hide us behind their shopping carts and cardboard shelters.

  I read the comments again, of course. Fuck. Me. I remember that each time I pressed Post on one of my blogs, I hoped a hundred people would read it. Now thousands of people are reading shit I’ve written, all the way back to middle school, and misinterpreting and misquoting. And then, also, somehow, my texts and chats on that app we girls thought was private? They—whoever they are—found it all. The thing is, I swear a lot. We all curse. But especially me. Memes of me cursing are everywhere this hour. And people are, like, freaking out that a girl who goes to Christian school swears like a normal human. One Crusader tweeted that someone should cut out my devil tongue. People are blaming Shelley for raising a potty-mouthed, baby-killing bomber. Nice. Jagger Jonze is flaming me too, tweeting about how he knew I was trouble the first time he met me, on orientation night. Hilayly. Considering what happened that night.

  My mother doesn’t swear. Not that she’s offended by swears, it’s just not her nature. But I bet even she’s let a few fucks fly tonight. My poor mommy. Authorities still aren’t saying if, or when, they’re going to release her. She doesn’t know if I’m dead or alive. She doesn’t believe what they’re saying about us—I know that much. She’s just scared for me. And for Fee. I hate so much that Shelley’s alone. What about Sherman?! Why’s he not making some statement that Shelley Miller’s a good person and the accusations against her are false.

  The old Sherm, the one who loved my mother, was an irreligious liberal who’d quote Confucius or Shakespeare when the other dads threw down their Corinthians. Where is that man now? My daddy? The one who’d scoop me up in one arm and hug my mother with the other and, just like that, make us whole?

  He left three years ago and he left again tonight. But Jesus, he must have heard about the bomb exploding in the bathroom right after he left the AVB. I’ve searched the news footage of the bomb site for Sherman’s face in the crowd behind the barricades. I guess he went home to Sugar Tits. To help with the investigation. Has it occurred to him that we didn’t set the bomb—that we were actually meant to die in that explosion?

  I’m so tired. And this night is so long and it’s more than a little bizarre to know that thousands and thousands of people have spent these dark hours obsessing over us.

  I hope Aunt Lilly’s headed to California by now. I hope my mother was able to call her from jail. Come on, Aunt Lill. We need you.

  * * *

  —

  Jagger Jonze just tweeted that he’s going to do a two-hour special segment of his Higher Power Hour in the morning to talk about me and Fee and the AVB. Genius marketing. Overnight superstar. His franchise business must be exploding too. He’s also announced a free concert at the Santa Monica Pier tomorrow night. Fireworks at midnight. They’re expecting record crowds. Everyone’s sure we’ll have been apprehended by then, or shot dead. The concert will be a celebration that God’s will has been done.

  None of this, not any of it, would have happened if Jinny Hutsall hadn’t moved to Oakwood Circle. Freaking lunachick. I can imagine her looking at herself in her mirror and going, “Mirror God, Mirror God on the wall—am I, like, the hottest, most radical Christian Crusader of them all? Amazing! I will spread your word, Mirror God, like rounds from
an AK-47, and I know that you will totally, like, bless me with my own Amazon or Netflix series or recording contract or talk show. Amen.”

  Insta-polls say the country is split down the middle on our guilt or innocence, with the big cities being for us and the Southern states overwhelmingly against. Shouldn’t actual evidence decide guilt or innocence, not freaking polls? I’m torturing myself. Each time I click on a link, I sink a little deeper into the dirty shed floor. That cognitive dissonance again. Do all people live in that state now?

  The Internet is saying Zee is a twin for Khloe Kardashian. I mean, no one has ever said that Zara Rohanian looks remotely like any Kardashian ever before. Zee is Armenian, so I guess there’s that. They’ve been showing pics of Zee’s fam—Mrs. Ro with her pubey black hair and too-red lipstick and Mr. Ro with his handsome face and hairy hands.

  Brooky and Delaney are getting a lot of media attention too, obviously. Everyone’s saying how Brooky’s family looks like they stepped out of Cali Fashion Daily, which is too true. Big Mike was in the NFL for a minute and he’s definitely the alpha male on our cul-de-sac. Bee’s mom, Verilyn, owns a Pilates studio where she trains celebrity clients. Miles is taking a gap year before college, playing bass in Lark’s Head with Chase Mason. Miles is fine as fuck, but too close to crush on. He’s more like the jerky big brother to all of us. Well, except Fee, who acts annoying whenever he’s around.

  The press is digging deep. Talking to everyone. But they’ve got everything wrong. For example, Delaney’s mom, Amber, died when Dee was eleven, not eight—we girls had just started middle school. I was spying out my front bedroom window one night back then, and saw Tom Sharpe tonguing a skanky redhead in a blue van parked up past the Leons’. I told my mother. She told Amber. Amber died. Not just like that. But in stages.

  After the affair with the redhead was out in the open, Tom asked Amber for forgiveness in front of the whole congregation at Sacred Heart. She forgave. They hugged it out and everyone cried and clapped—not that I was there, but I heard all about it. Business at Sharpe Mercedes went up thirty percent. Lookin’ Sharp! Snap. People love redemption. And public confession. I remember the dinnertime conversations between my parents around that time. Sherman was Jesus-Christing his way all over the house about what an idiot his friend was. Jesus Christ, what was Tom thinking? Jesus Christ, poor Delaney. Jesus Christ, Amber must be humiliated. All for a piece of ass? Jesus fucking Christ.

  My mother loved my father’s outrage over the affair so much I’d had to put three pillows over my AC vent to cover the sound of the headboard in their room. Ugh. The truth is I also found my father’s disgust about Tom Sharpe reassuring. Sherman would never risk hurting me or humiliating his soul mate. He would never, ever, in a million years, risk everything for a piece of ass.

  Tom Sharpe was repentant at church, but he actually kept up the affair with Kinga, a twenty-year-old waitress from Sagebrush Cantina, and everyone, including Dee’s mom, knew it. One rainy morning Miss Amber was heading home after car pool when she got an alert on her spy app: texts between Tom and Kinga. She called her therapist for an emergency phone session and stupidly thought she could drive home in the middle of her breakdown. She lost control of her Mercedes SUV and landed in a ditch—broke both of her legs and one of her arms and hit her head hard on the dash. She was in traction for two weeks. The day before she was supposed to get out of the hospital, she died from a blood clot. Delaney blamed her dad. She doesn’t know that my spying was the thing that opened the Pandora’s box in the first place. I guess she will when she reads this. If she ever reads this. I’m sorry, Dee. I’m so fucking sorry.

  She was pretty shattered by it all, but her prescription for Wellbutrin seemed to help. Her hatred for her father simmered, but didn’t boil over the way mine did when it happened to me. Brooky and Zara had hated Tom Sharpe for breaking our friend’s heart and for ruining our portrait of perfection. And then, when Sherman left Shell and me for Sugar Tits, we all blamed Mr. Sharpe for infecting my father with upgrade syndrome.

  Fee never quite hated him, though. She’s always been respectful and grateful to Mr. Tom in a way that none of us are to our own fathers. A few years ago she joked about getting a saliva swab and sending it off to Paternity.com so everybody would just shut the fuck up about him being her father. Sometimes I wonder if she did. And he is.

  Cable news keeps replaying vid of Mr. Sharpe in his white tuxedo in the parking lot last night, throwing his hand up in front of his red face, saying, “No comment.” His cheating crimes offered him a chance at redemption, but his association with the Villains in Versace has people calling for a boycott of his dealership. He must be worried. And pissed. But still—why doesn’t he stand up for Fee? Biological or not, he’s always called her his “other” daughter.

  * * *

  —

  Being here, bloody and gross in this small, dirty shed, makes me long for the cloud of my canopied bed. I know that makes me a princessa, which is something I’ve obviously struggled with. On the one hand I really like my beautiful house and nice clothes and designer purses, but on the other hand I know I kinda suck for having so much shit. I talk about it with Aunt Lilly, who shakes her head a lot when she visits Calabasas, and sums her feelings up by saying, simply, “You live in a bubble. This isn’t real life.” My mother agrees. “It’s true. Oakwood Circle is not real life.”

  I have dual citizenship, which makes me feel sophisticated. I travel alone to stay with Aunt Lilly in Vancouver at least once a year so I can experience her version of real life. She lives in a one-bedroom apartment in a tall, round building that looks out over the water. We walk the miles of seawall and eat at ethnic restaurants—it’s our thing. And she takes me to movies, because her job is online movie reviewer. And we always hit up the Roots store on Robson, this oh-so-Canadian athleisure-wear company, because I like to bring the Hive back Ts and sweaties from there. Represent.

  Aunt Lill is fifteen years younger than my mother, and doesn’t have kids. We can talk for hours. About everything. Religion, meaning her disapproval of my Christian education. Boys, meaning Chase Mason. Love, meaning the heartbreak of the Frumkin girls.

  Fee’s the only one of us, besides me, who’s been out of Calabasas, if you don’t count day trips, and resort vacays, or ski week in Mammoth—and you shouldn’t. Fee’s seen things. For two weeks each summer she’s dragged off to stay with her father’s family, her abuela and some uncles, in Cerritos, fifty or so miles away. She chills with her cousins and, like, runs through the sprinklers old-school, and hangs out at some sketch mall, and sleeps on a cot on a screened-in porch. She doesn’t talk about Cerritos all that much, except to complain that she has to babysit the younger kids all the time, and that her grandmother hates her because she doesn’t speak Spanish.

  Well, Fee didn’t say much about Cerritos until recently…

  Los Angeles has the highest population of homeless people in America and lots of them are undocumented or procits. Fee knows this. The world knows this. But the rest of the Hive doesn’t. I mean, they do, but they don’t. There are dozens of tent cities and homeless encampments, one of them just a few miles from us, but they might as well be another country, or planet. One time I suggested we could get some good community hours by going to help at one of the soup kitchens, but all the parents except Shelley put the kibosh on that idea because they believe the rumors about homeless people spreading necrotizing fasciitis.

  My parents took me to sketch parts of Los Angeles to see the tent cities when I was young, and the stretch of dirt road where the hoboes beg, and they drove me down to the beach one starry August night to see the meteor shower. Instead of shooting stars, we ended up watching these little groups of vagrants sneaking past the guards to wash themselves in the sea.

  We Millers served Thanksgiving meals to the homeless at City Hall every year too, until the crowds got too big and there was that riot. I was relieved when my mother told me the dinner was canceled and we were going to join
the Sharpes for turkey and trimmings. To be honest, I was scared of the hoboes. Not gonna lie. Hungry and haunted, stinking of pee and cigarettes, coated with a fine layer of dust that blurred their edges like a filter app.

  I’ve been to the homes of Sherman and Shelley’s clients, the crappy trailers with no running water, and tiny shacks with cockroaches and mice, and cabins with ten mattresses on the floor, and also some sweet little places, all done up and tidy, and a few super-nice places—people who’d been in America for a while and done well. Before we went in anywhere, my mother would warn me not to ask for anything but to eat a small amount of whatever was offered, and not to notice or make faces if the place smelled, and to sit if I was pointed to a chair, even if was dirty.

  At one house they made me wait in the dusty yard with a wailing, tomato-faced baby in a playpen. The mother had instructed me in Spanish not to pick the baby up, before she went inside to talk business with my parents. The baby was one or two—I’m not good at baby ages—and had scabs on her little arms, dried banana in her wiry black hair, purple stains on her torn dress. This tragic baby was looking at me, crying hard with her arms outstretched, and I just couldn’t ignore her. I lifted her out of the playpen and put her on my shoulder and bounced her around like a boss until she finally fell asleep. She reeked, but I didn’t care. I felt like Beth March from Little Women, which we were reading in English at the time, kinda rare and saintly, until I remembered Beth March caught scarlet fever from the babies she cared for, and I wondered why the kid’s mother had said don’t pick her up, and I started wishing my parents would hurry up because shower.

  I found these visits so stressful that after a while Sherman and Shelley were fine to let me wait in the car, checking my social and texting with my best friends about when we’d start our next cleanse or whatever, as they delivered cases of water and buckets of hope. I guess at some point I accepted that I’m more of a Jo March than a Beth.