by Lori Lansens
“We gotta go see what’s going on, Rory.”
“No. No. This isn’t good.”
“Ya think?”
“Fee, this is…Something really wrong is happening. This is bizarre.”
Fee doubled over then, taken by a gut cramp, otherwise I think she would’ve pulled away from me and run down.
Jinny—holding the tiny baby with one arm—model-walked the way she does at least five car lengths to where a skinny, dirty, blond, methy teen boy was being held by two of Jinny’s five strong brothers. Where did this kid come from?
“Mine. She mine,” the boy yelled through his tears. He appeared genuinely tortured, and not very smart. “We thought she dead. She weren’t breathing.”
“He put that baby in the Prius!” one of the brothers who was holding him shouted.
The other brother shouted, “I saw him too!”
The methy teen was sobbing. “She weren’t breathing…”
The brothers patted the guy down like they were law enforcement. One found a huge roll of bills in his coat pocket, held together with a rubber band. “Where’d you get this money?”
“It was in the backseat,” the teen said. “They said they’d leave it in the backseat.”
Jagger Jonze held up his hand for silence. “Who said?”
The words floated up to us almost as if the whole thing were being amplified. Like a stage play. Scripted and acted.
The twitchy teen boy said, “She texted me to leave it in her car. The one with the turtle decal.”
There were murmurs, heads shaking.
“Who texted you?” Jagger seemed believably bewildered.
“One of the runners,” the boy said.
“The runners? Did you just say runners?” Jagger Jonze paused. “Are you saying there’s a runner in our midst?”
The crowd went dead silent.
“This is Rory Miller’s car,” Jagger Jonze said, confused.
“I didn’t get the name,” the teen said.
“Are you saying that Rory Miller is a runner?”
Jinny Hutsall turned to the crowd and repeated the line.
Then one of Jinny’s brothers prompted the teen. “And Feliza Lopez too.”
“I don’t know—I didn’t get any names.”
Fee and I just looked at each other. Holy freaking insanity.
Jagger took the baby from Jinny, cradling her against his shoulder. We could feel the heat from the mob, waves of fear and outrage. Emergency vehicles screamed in the distance.
The baby’s cries somehow rose above it all as Jagger Jonze walked through the crowd with the tiny thing, swaddled so that you couldn’t see its little face. Then he lifted her in the air like Simba from freaking Lion King, which seemed like a bad idea, and gestured for Jinny’s brothers to let the teen go.
It seemed like another bad idea when he placed the baby in the arms of the twitchy father, who’d basically just admitted he’d try to sell her for parts.
Sherman. I spotted him weaving through the crowd. At first I thought he was trying to find me, to make sure I was safe, and to tell me he’d take care of everything. But nah—he was fleeing the scene. Sugar Tits’ Mazzi pulled up to the security gates at the edge of the campus. And Sherman was gone.
All of a sudden, two more of Jinny’s brothers came steaming toward the crowd from the walkway that leads to the gym bathroom where we’d almost been locked in. Her brothers looked freaked, having obviously failed to find us trapped. I saw one of them shake his head at Jinny.
Jagger called out to the crowd, “Find them!”
We could hear sirens, first responders closing in. We didn’t exchange a glance, Fee and I, as we turned. We ran back the way we came, skirting the ridge, past the pool and the soccer field and the gym, then up the path that leads to the mountain hiking trails behind the school, tripping over roots and rocks and branches, on our way, although I didn’t know it at that point, to Javier’s cabin.
We didn’t get far before the earth rocked under our feet and we fell on the rocky trail. Earthquake? We got up and looked back toward our school. Smoke was billowing from a corner of the gym. It took a minute to register that a bomb had just exploded in the bathroom. The bomb, Jinny’s bomb, had torn a portion of the roof off and flames were shooting out of broken windows and skylights. No time to say Holy Shit.
We ran. And ran. And kept on running. Fee was a soldier—gutting it all the way. Thank God for five years of cross-country. And thank God for full moons.
We heard barking dogs—police dogs, we figured. I pulled Fee toward a nearby creek, and we hiked up our dresses and waded through to throw them off our scent. On the other side, I grabbed a baseball-sized rock, smeared it with menstrual blood then hurled it as far as I could back across the creek, into the brush in the direction of the school—I’d seen a TV show about a murderer on the run scattering rocks with his scent to confuse the dogs. Fee grabbed a rock and spit on it, then hurled it—pretty good arm actually—too. We carried on throwing rocks saturated with our scent until the barking got too close. Then we climbed higher into the hills, through spiky bushes and spiny grass. Each summit we made meant another descent, over dry, crumbly rock and patches of hoary-leaved briar.
We’d been running for I don’t know how long when I realized we were headed in the direction of our gardener’s cousin’s house in the hills. Just about then, we stumbled into a hot zone for cell. The group texts started blowing up again.
I knew about pings and there was no way we were gonna respond. We stopped, though, and I read the texts aloud to Fee.
BROOK: R u guys reading these texts? Omg you guys? What have you done?
DELANEY: Runners? You guys?
ZARA: ppl gonna shoot you. Turn yourselves in.
BROOK: Turn yourselves in, Ror.
DEE: There is a million-dollar bounty on you.
BROOK: True. Reverend Jonze just put it on Twitter.
ZARA: Go to the police. God have mercy on your souls.
DEE: Can’t even believe this? Why would they do this?
ZARA: Ror has no God. Fee has no guap.
DEE: My dad SO MAD.
ZARA: OMG you guys. Just got trend alert. We’re everywhere.
Fee and I looked at each other in the moonlight, scratched and pale in our filthy, torn gowns. Wait. What?
BROOK: We’re on TMZ right now. Turn it on. We look amaze in our gowns. Frowny face that Ror and Fee ruined the Virtue Ball.
DEE: Turn yourselves in!
ZARA: My mom says Shelley has to be involved. Not surprised. Commies.
BROOK: Your parents are getting death threats. Turn yourselves in!
ZARA: Oh my God you guys. This is crazy!
FINALLY, JINNY HUTSALL: God’s will be done.
Fuck.
“We gotta get rid of our phones,” I said.
“No!” Fee said.
“Yes. They’ll be able to track us.”
I remembered there was another shallow creek up ahead. I snatched Fee’s phone from her hand and ran, planning to drown my phone and hers. Only there was no water at all in the once-raging creek. I smashed our phones against a rock and buried them in the mud. Fee just looked at me.
“Oh my God, Rory. This can’t be happening,” she said. “I don’t understand any of this. Why would they say that about us? Why would that guy put that baby in your car?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.”
All of this time I’ve been worried that the baby was real. After watching the footage, though, I’m sure that it was a prop—animatronic. You could tell by the jerky motions, and the face. I have no doubt someone’s gonna find that mechanical newborn somewhere online for sale to the movie industry, or to eccentric people who want to pretend to be mothers. It’s gruesome, but less gruesome than the thought that they used an actual baby for that stunt. What the fuck crime category would that fall under? Whatever happened, the “miracle baby” has not been found.
Fee and especial
ly Paula have been watching the windows and doors while I’ve been blogging. The cops? Security company? Still no sign of either. But every time we hear a siren on the Pacific Coast Highway, which is every ten minutes, we flinch, and wonder if we should head back to the closet.
Social media and news outlets are now dissecting the security cam vid. At least some people are suggesting that thing in my backseat was a prop, like the fake fetuses Jinny brought to the courthouse in Pasadena. And the methy teen? Obviously an actor. A pretty good one. Some of the dads that were at the ball are still claiming they saw us grab that baby that was not a baby from the father and run with her into the hills. Others say the methy teen dad just sort of disappeared. No one has come forward with any information about the baby. Interesting that there is no crowdfunding to find either the methy teen or that child.
Holy war. In a war, there must be villains. And the villains have to die. But we didn’t.
One of the images I just saw was of Jinny’s brother, Garth, who maybe isn’t her brother at all, emerging from the girls’ bathroom much earlier in the day. Long before the event. But Garth and the other Chippendale dudes can’t be questioned because—guess what—they’re nowhere to be found. So Garth planted the bomb? Fuck you, Garth.
Paula just asked me to stop writing so we can go check on Fee. I hadn’t even realized she’d left the room.
* * *
—
Fee wasn’t anywhere on the main floor. We found her sitting on the marble floor of the dark master bathroom.
“You okay?”
She wouldn’t look up. “No.”
“Fee?”
“I had really bad cramps…not stomach cramps, but cramp cramps. I was hoping there’d be blood. I was hoping I was having a miscarriage…”
“Oh, Fee…”
“I didn’t.”
“Okay.”
“What am I gonna do, Ror?”
I really don’t know.
There was a noise outside. I checked out the bathroom window but couldn’t see anyone on the beach. No vagrants near the fruit trees. Maybe it was Monty next door, swatting at the raccoon. Paula said she was going to look out the windows downstairs.
I sat on the bathroom floor next to Fee. “Malibu Sunset,” I said.
She half-smiled.
“I got your back, Fee. And if you wanna…I mean…we’ll find a way…There’s still lots of time.”
“There isn’t that much time, Ror.”
“There’s lots of time.”
“I’ve missed three periods.”
Wait. What? “How is that possible?”
“It just is.”
“But—”
“At first I just thought, oh well, sometimes I miss my period when I’m stressed, and I’ve been stressed. Then I wasn’t counting, and I missed the second, and—I don’t know. I was in denial, I guess. I just kept thinking no. And then…last week, like, my boobs are so swollen, and I feel different…”
“Wait. Are you saying you’re, like, three months pregnant?”
“Something like that?”
“Something like that?”
“Ror…”
“But we just met him. We just laid eyes on him for the first time, like, five weeks ago.”
“The father is not Jagger Jonze.” She looked into my eyes. “It’s not him.”
I don’t like being wrong, but I have to say I was relieved. But if not him, who?
“He said there was no way I could be pregnant because he pulled out…”
Oh my God. “Who pulled out? What are you saying right now?”
“I don’t…I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
“You don’t wanna get who in trouble? Fee?”
“I love him, Ror. And he loves me. And it’s complicated, but we’re gonna be together.”
I blurted, “Dante?”
“No!”
“Miles? Is it Miles?”
“Ror?”
“Fee? Who the fuck got you pregnant?”
Fee paused for a long time, and then, without looking at me, she whispered, “Mr. Tom.”
I shut up. His name hung in the air between us. Like a storm.
Mr. Tom. Tom Sharpe? The father of Fee’s baby? No. Just. No. Tom Sharpe? Fee had this way of looking at him, this respectfully adoring thing I always thought was daughterly love. And he doted on her to the point it made his own daughter jealous, but I thought that was because maybe Fee was his kid.
Finally I go, “You’re being one hundred percent serious with me right now. Tom Sharpe is the father of your baby. You had sex with Tom Sharpe.”
“Yes.”
“If you’re joking, it’s not funny.”
“Not joking.”
“And he knows.”
“I told him a few weeks ago that I was afraid I might be. But he said I was stupid, because I couldn’t be, because he pulled out.”
“Oh God.”
“And before the ball yesterday, I told him I took the test.”
“Jesus. So that’s why he was so edgy?”
“He thinks I cheated on him.”
“What?”
“He said if I was pregnant, how could he be sure it was his?”
“What?”
“Jagger Jonze told Mr. Tom about what I did with Dante. So now he thinks I’m a slut.”
“Why would Jagger Jonze be discussing you with Tom Sharpe?”
“Maybe he wanted to make sure Mr. Tom was protecting me?”
“That’s what you call it?”
“Kills me that he thinks I’ve cheated on him. The thing with Dante happened before we—”
“Cheated on him? What are you even saying right now? He’s married. And you’re like his kid.”
“I’m not. I’m his soul mate.”
She said it. Soul mate. “Oh my fucking God. That’s why you were crying after the vows? Because he accused you of cheating on him.”
“Well, yeah, that, and because I’m pregnant, dumbass.”
“Okay. Well. This is just fucking ridiculous.”
“Do you think he told Jagger Jonze? I saw them talking. Do you think he told him I’m pregnant?”
It hit me that Tom Sharpe might indeed have told Jonze that Fee was knocked up. It occurred to me that Tom Sharpe might somehow be involved with Warren Hutsall, and Jagger Jonze, and everything that happened tonight. It occurred to me that it wasn’t Jagger who needed to get rid of the evidence—it was Tom Sharpe. I couldn’t tell Fee my new theory. Just. Too. Evil.
“I fucked everything up,” Fee said.
“Oh my God, Fee.”
“It’s my fault, though. Do you understand?”
“No. How did it even…?”
“The first time?”
“Oh my freaking God, there was more than one time?”
“We were alone in the house. He was helping me with math at the kitchen table and it just kinda happened. I wanted it to.”
I could only shake my head.
“It’s not his fault.”
“People say him and your mother…”
“I’m not his daughter, Rory.”
“You trusted him. He betrayed you, Fee.”
“It was consensual.”
“You’re sixteen. It doesn’t matter if you jumped him and gyrated all over his face, he’s an adult.”
“It matters.”
“He raped you.”
“If people find out, his whole life will be ruined. And don’t say rape. He loves me, Rory.”
“Kinga?”
“That marriage was a huge mistake. He loves me. And we’re gonna be together.”
Paula startled us when she appeared at the bathroom door to say she’d checked around downstairs and all was quiet. With no clue what Fee and I had just been discussing, she sat down on the floor beside us and said, “Don’t be sad. Help is coming soon.”
When Fee said she wanted to rest awhile, Paula and I tucked her into the downy bed in the master bedroom and crept bac
k down to the great room.
* * *
—
Paula is at the window staring at the beach. I couldn’t wait to grab the laptop and write down what Fee had just told me.
It doesn’t make any more sense seeing it in print. Tom Sharpe. Fuck. Me.
Fee was right. Her soul mate’s world will be destroyed if this gets out, and the lives of all the people around him. Imagine Delaney, who’s already lost her mother, and who already hates him for being a cheating fuck, discovering that her father impregnated one of her teen besties. She’d have to double, maybe triple, her meds. Kinga’d be suicidal. No, homicidal. Tom Sharpe would go to jail. And Dee’s little sister would lose her father. Jesus motherfucking Christ.
Paula is pointing out the window right now. I think that homeless family might be back.
I whispered, “Back away from the window, Paula. We can’t go out there again.”
She’s not backing away from the window, though.
She’s saying, “Rory. Please to stop typing.”
“Is somebody there?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Jesus.”
* * *
—
I knew. Before I even looked up from the computer. I knew Paula had just seen Chase Mason. He’d come in through the beach entrance, and the security siren didn’t go off and the yard didn’t flood with light.
By the time I got to the window, he was standing on the deck, smiling. Rory, he mouthed. I opened the door and let him in.
We didn’t move toward each other, though I have to say I wanted to.
I go, “I got your message.”
“Figured you would. Corinthians.”
“And Larkspur.”
“Good catch.”
“Also, Aunt Lill would never wear pink. Or a V-shirt. Or a ball cap.”
“We were counting on you being bugged by all that.”
Paula moved in the shadows, startling Chase, who hadn’t seen her when he walked in. I reached out for Paula’s hand. She moved forward to take it, her eyes on Chase’s face. “This is Paula, our friend. Paula, this is Chase Mason. He’s come to help us.”
“Hey Paula.”
