by Lori Lansens
Light from the full moon streamed in through the wall of windows, and blazed off the white Carrara marble floor so that it looked like an ice rink, like we’d slip and slide if we tried to walk. When we moved, grit from our shoes scattered over the marble. Because my mother raised me, I told myself I would locate a broom to clean it up later.
We could see the kitchen to the left, which was open to the great room, both huge rooms looking out over the ocean. I set the big backpack down on the kitchen counter and noticed that there was a note on the stove, under a dim light—the only light in the house. It said: Sit tight. No lights. No calls. In or out.
We looked around for the fridge, desperate for water, and finally found it, behind a door—a walk-in fridge like you see in a restaurant, with a fully stocked dairy section and meat department, the freezer crowded with frosty boxes, and cases upon cases of water, and juices and sodas. I was struck by the bounty of it all, so I can only imagine what Paula was thinking.
We drained a couple of bottles of water each as we continued to explore. Another door opened to a walk-in pantry, with more food, boxes and containers and cans. Our kitchens on Oakwood Circle are well stocked, but this place was like a mini–Whole Foods. We didn’t touch any of it. We’re too fragged to have an appetite.
Fee noticed a calendar tacked onto the pantry door. Paula used her phone flashlight so we could see it better. Dates blocked off in late November—now—for Maui. So Chase’s uncle and his family are away, and their Malibu beach house is our refuge from people who want to kill us for a crime we did not commit. That would be among the ten top things I thought I’d never write.
We crept through the first floor of the house just taking everything in. Down one hall, a screening room with plush theater seats and popcorn machine. Down another, the den, with another huge screen and more comfy seating. Paula’s face said it all. She might as well have been walking on the moon.
We opened a door at the end of the hall to find a soundproofed room filled with band equipment and a big professional mixing board—the recording studio. There were pics all over the walls of old-school singers and gold records in frames. One picture I lingered on. It’s of Chase Mason—pimpled and twelve-ish, at a Grand Canyon lookout with his family, his mom and dad and his dead sister, who shared his same long-haired, brown-eyed, tragic beauty. Lady Jesus.
We headed back into the main area of the house, and had a closer look around the great room. Above the travertine fireplace there’s a portrait of the uncle’s family. Chase Mason bears no resemblance to his bald, stocky uncle. The guy’s wife is tall and blond and looks like a model, prolly is a model, and their little girl is stunning too.
Paula wanted to see the second floor, but Fee said she was too tired to climb the stairs, and settled down on the white leather sectional to stare out at the ocean.
I took Paula’s hand and we went up to find the bedrooms, including a huge master suite with a double-wide king and miles of knotty reclaimed oak. On a table by the window there was an old washbasin, and on the table beside the bed an old-school phone—one of those big black jobbies with the round dial from the time before real phones. Paula gestured to the nightstand and whispered, like, in case I didn’t know, “It’s a telephone. I see this in the movie.”
You don’t see many of these dial phones anymore. Plus, people don’t really have landlines much. Then again, cell reception is bad at the ocean, so maybe Chase’s uncle needs a landline in case of tsunami or whatever. The note had said no calls in or out, so when Paula put a finger in one of the holes, I told her to be careful not to pick up the receiver just in case it was connected.
I looked into the washbasin on the table. It was filled with lavender. Lavender. This whole house smells of lavender. Aromatherapy unit in the venting system, I figure. I love the smell of lavender. Reminds me of the romance candles Shelley and Sherman used to burn in their bedroom. And my Gramma and Pop kept lavender sachets in their drawers. I always connected the scent of lavender to love. I guess I still do.
In the master bathroom, I asked Paula to shine her phone flashlight on the cupboards as I rooted through the drawers to find some period pads. At some point the T-shirt I’d wadded up and stuffed in my undies had fallen down the leg of my pants and been lost. I just about cried when I found a package of nighttime maxis under the sink. So grateful. Paula didn’t seem embarrassed to see me clutching the box to my chest.
She shone the light inside the massive shower—all white tile and stippled glass. “Is bigger than Abuelo’s whole living room.”
We stepped inside the shower. There would have been room for Fee too. And the rest of the Hive, for that matter.
“They got all the Sun products—soap, body wash. Oh my God, this shampoo costs a hundred bucks a tube,” I said.
I took the bar of Sun soap from its crèche and held it to Paula’s nose—oranges and apples and eucalyptus and lavender—and noticed the control panel. On. Warm. Pulse. Very user-friendly. I pressed. The water shot out of the four large heads at the far end and the steam rose up from the floor. I smiled at Paula and started to take off my filthy clothes—but Paula hung back. I knew why.
“I go get Fee,” Paula said.
“She can shower after, Paula. We’ll be quick.”
Paula just stood there watching the water pelt the tiles.
“You wanna wait? It’s okay.”
Paula paused, then, unable to resist, said, “I’m coming in the water.”
She turned away to pull off her dirty, torn Patriot Girl dress and tossed it into the trash, where I’d put my clothes too. I was careful to look straight ahead when she stepped into the shower and moved forward under the raining showerheads. I wanted to tell her I knew her truth, and that I understood. But Paula’s the one who should start that conversation, when she’s ready. One day we’ll talk about it. I know that for sure. One day we’ll talk about every detail of this day and this night and whatever comes next. We’ll never forget.
That shower. I’ve never actually appreciated my access to a shower. I’m obviously looking at my whole life in a different way—all the things I’ve taken for granted. The sense of entitlement I only saw in others, not myself. My house. My en suite bathroom. My filtered water. Agua. Not just clean water to drink and cook with, but clean water to wash myself with. Some people can’t take a shower every day, or even every week. Paula? I wonder if she even had a working bathroom in that trailer. I wonder if the closest she got to a shower was splashing a little polluted water on herself at the kitchen sink. God.
We stood under the warm, pulsing spray, washing away the dirt and blood. Even though she doesn’t have hair, I put a little of the Sun shampoo on Paula’s prickly scalp and massaged it in. She purred like a kitten because of the way it smells, but also because I don’t think she’s been touched in a kind way for a long time. I thought of Paula’s mother, and called out to her in my thoughts: I got her. I’ll take care of her. When we were done, we used the huge white towels stacked on the shelf to wrap ourselves, and stood there for a sec, looking at our dim reflections in the darkened bathroom. “My hair will come back,” Paula said.
My period blood stained the white towel. Fuck.
In the master bedroom closet, I found a drawer with some expensive lingerie from that place on Rodeo, matching bras and panty sets and camis, and some naughty stuff, then I opened another drawer and found a stash of period panties—granny-style, but tight-ish—that would keep the pad in place. In the section of the closet devoted to athletic clothes, I chose some sweatpants and a plain black hoodie. Thank you, Mrs. Mason, for the clothes, and the period panties and the shower and the pad.
We couldn’t find any clothes to fit Paula in Mrs. Mason’s closet, so we went to look for the little girl’s room. When we opened the double doors at the far end of the hall, we got quite the scare when Paula shone the flashlight against the wall. Dolls—shelves and shelves filled with dead-eyed Patriot Girls, trussed up in their red, white and blue, look
ing like a horror movie. On the shelves of another wall was all their swag—every item—the tree house and the schoolroom, all the cars, the kitchen set and the playground set.
Paula was confused. “It’s a Patriot Girls shop?”
“No. It’s just the little girl’s room.”
“All for one girl?”
“Yeah.”
“But how she can play with so much dolls?”
“She can’t.”
Paula took them in. “Katie May and Nancy Pool and Grace Chapman…every doll.”
“Spoiled, huh?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Lucky,” she said.
We found a black tracksuit hanging in the little girl’s walk-in, and a matching ball cap decorated with little red hearts. The price tags were all still attached and Paula didn’t feel right wearing something new, but I said we’d pay this family back for everything we ate or drank or borrowed—even the Sun products—when all of this was over, so not to worry about it. I found some underwear in the little girl’s drawer. And a little training bra from that store for girls under ten—who actually don’t need bras but love to look like mommy. Paula smiled when I gave her the bra and panties, and I left so she could dress without feeling she had to hide.
We went back downstairs to find Fee still on the sectional staring out at the ocean with her hand on her stomach. We told her about the shower, but she just nodded and shrugged. Paula sat beside her and reached out to pet her hair but stopped, because Fee is filthy and her hair is matted and Paula is clean and smells like Sun. Paula goes, “Soon Rory’s mamá will come.”
Fee turned to look at Paula. “I’m sorry about what happened to your abuelo.”
Paula nodded. Was she sad? Not exactly. But something.
“You look good in that outfit, Paula.”
Paula smiled, looking at her reflection in the window.
I combed out my hair and stared out at the ocean. I wanted to tell Fee to go up and have a shower because smell, and because it will make her feel better, and I need her right now, but I’m trying not to be relentless.
Poor little Paula. I can see she’s exhausted. I wanna pick her up and carry her to the king-sized bed in the little girl’s room and pull the huge duvet up to her chin, and tickle her neck and kiss her cheek and say nighty-nite, boo, like my mother did with me. But I think we need to stay together. And the truth is, we have no idea what happens next, or how fast we’ll have to leave. Or even when.
I’m exhausted too. But I know I couldn’t sleep. My head is too filled with fear, and worry, and hope.
Jagger Jonze and Jinny Hutsall have vanished into thin air. The media’s reporting that their social accounts have gone silent. Gone. Just gone. Jonze never showed up for the free concert at the pier. Jinny’s house on Oakwood Circle is dark and vacant. The papz got pics of all these dark vehicles leaving Hidden Oaks, but you couldn’t tell who was inside. No one knows where they are. They’re just gone. Just. Gone. I have to tell Fee.
“What are you saying? Did they go together?” Fee asked when I told her the news.
“No one knows.”
“Why would they leave?”
“Because they’re guilty, Fee. Because it’s exactly what I said. They orchestrated this whole thing.”
“But why would they do that?”
“Are you kidding? The entire country’s talking about the Red Market. Crusaders are everywhere on the news. And Jagger Jonze is famous as fuck. Plus, look at all the sympathy this has brought to the Cause.”
“So they sacrificed us?”
“If we’d been killed in that bomb blast, no one’d be asking questions about Jagger Jonze. Or Warren Hutsall either. The story would be that a couple of teen “anti-life” agitators planted a bomb at the AVB and got killed in the process. Maybe they’d say we were suicide bombers. Maybe they’d say we were idiots and accidentally blew ourselves up.”
“I don’t know, Rory.”
She’s fighting the logic of the illogical—religious fervor.
“They didn’t count on us getting away, Fee. They didn’t count on all the questions and the investigations and the hunt.”
“I guess.”
“Fee, if we’d been killed in that blast, it would’ve taken care of Jagger’s other problem too. The evidence would have been destroyed. Right?”
Fee started blinking, like, processing the idea that Jagger Jonze was ruthless enough, and cold enough, to find a way to kill the teenager he’d impregnated, and catapult himself to superstardom in the bargain. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Fee.”
“Maybe they had death threats against them. Jagger and Jinny? And they’re hiding, like us?”
Wow. She still can’t see it. “Maybe.”
“Maybe Jagger thought he’d get shot if he showed up at the pier.”
“Yeah. Maybe, Fee.”
I wanted to keep trying to persuade her to see what’s in front of her freaking nose, but Fee’s done. Her heart must be in splinters. I could see she was still holding back tears when she asked, “What about your mother? Any news on her?”
The whereabouts of my mother is still unknown, but I feel sure Shelley’s okay, and that she, along with Lilly and Chase, was part of this plan to get us here. I’m gonna see her. Soon. I feel that like a premonition. Like, I can totally see her face. Smell her Chanel. Feel her arms around me.
Sherman? The media followed him to some prayer circle at his church in the OC, where he and Sugar Tits and some other Hollywood types are praying for our souls. Um. Thanks?
The Hive? They’ve gone quiet too. No more tweeting at us. No more accusations and taunting and Bible verses. I think of them, my best friends, alone in their bedrooms with their laptops and phones, obsessively checking their feeds. Or maybe they’re watching the news with their quiet, frightened parents. I imagine how they must have felt seeing the footage of the fire near Javier’s cabin, and the crashed copters. Smoke. Death. Real shit. And all the investigation into Jagger Jonze and Warren Hutsall? At some point in these past few hours my friends and their families, and thousands more, have to have realized that the people they sided with are frauds. Is the spell finally broken? Zara? Delaney? Brook?
So we’re sitting tight, as instructed, here in this lavender-scented home. Waiting. Again. For help. For someone to come and take us away. Chase? If I crushed on Chase before, what do I feel for him now? I don’t know the word for it, but I keep picturing him at the library with all those girls, how it hurt, and how, if I’d known…I wouldn’t have just crushed on him, I mighta worshipped him.
The Charmlee fire is still raging up the coast. That one in Bel Air has burned two hundred acres, five structures, and is only twenty percent contained. The local news toggles back and forth from interviews with angry Crusaders to interviews with numb families inside berms of black dirt and ash where only hours before their houses stood. In the blink of a fucking eye, through no fault of their own, the flames took everything. I feel that.
Cable news is ticking down the time from when the bomb exploded at Sacred, so I don’t have to wonder how many hours and minutes and seconds we’ve been on the run.
Thank God I still have Nina’s pink laptop. This house has a dozen charge stations, of course, so the computer’s juiced and I can keep writing all night. And if no one comes, I will. Because if I couldn’t write all of this down, I really don’t know what I’d do. Has writing about what’s happening helped me make sense of it? Definitely. If I couldn’t write, I’d curl up beside Fee right now and completely lose my shit.
I don’t know who all will read this blog when I press Post. Maybe by the time I submit, we’ll be old news. Eventually the Crusaders will leave the Pier, and go home to their jobs and families. The other bounty hunters will move on to the next outlaw on America’s Most Wanted. With Jagger Jonze incommunicado, how would anyone expect him to honor the bounty? It could all die down. Or it could ratchet back up.
One day, a long,
long time from now, I’ll give this blog to my children. I’ll tell them that this crazy thing happened to me, and my best friend, and this other kid, but we survived it, and here’s the whole story minute by minute, written down for posterity. Maybe the world will still be fucked-up when I have kids. Even more reason to teach them about resistance. I wanna raise the kind of people who speak up, and ask questions, and call themselves out as well as others, and dig deeper. I hope, in my future, I’ll be a good example of all those things. I guess I’ll have to tell my kids it’s okay to swear, since their mother clearly had a mouth on her.
Every now and then I take a break from the laptop. I talk to Paula. Rub Fee’s back. Feel like a coach, giving my little team pep talks, like, we’re in the home stretch, and we gotta stay positive, and we can do this. I’ve been catching them up on the breaking news, but all they really wanna know now is when Shelley will get here. I wanna know that too.
The latest news is that Warren Hutsall’s gone off the grid along with his absent, mysterious wife. The last known location of his private jet is Aruba. He’s being investigated for securities fraud, and illegal trading, including human trafficking, among other things. So running away looks guilty. Right? Isn’t that what they said about me and Fee? He is definitely guilty of something. Is Jinny with him? And Jagger Jonze? No point in telling Fee about Warren Hutsall. Looks like she’s going to delude herself about Jagger Jonze until the bitter end.
Will all the emerging info, you’d think the Crusaders would put their rifles down and rethink the hunt? Not happening. People believe what they want to believe, plug their ears with their fingers and sing lalala when the other side talks. I mean, no one, including me, knows exactly what went down at the AVB, but shouldn’t the fact that our accusers have disappeared put it all on pause? Nope. They say they’re even more determined to find us. If I stood right now at the ocean’s edge, I’d be able to see the Crusaders gathered on the Santa Monica Pier a few miles away. I wonder if they’re still gonna do fireworks at midnight. I feel like Paula would love that.
