This Little Light

by Lori Lansens

Fee opened her eyes. She sat up a little and leaned against the shed wall, and looked around the shed like, the fuck? Then you could see the memory of it all flooding back.

  “Javier still here?” she asked.

  I got up and looked out the window. “Yeah.”

  “Water?”

  “I can’t go out there. Hear the copters? They’re over the beach right now, but they could swing this way any second.”

  “Please. Ror. I’m so thirsty.”

  “I know.”

  “When this is over?”

  “Yeah?”

  She just shrugged and shook her head. But I finally feel like she’s gonna be okay. She just needs water. Right now.

  Jinny Hutsall always has water. It’s her thing. I guess that’s why her skin is so amaze. She always has at least three bottles of water—the expensive stuff that comes in those keep-cool containers—in that big Louis tote of hers. A few weeks back we were in Beverly Hills doing a pre-shop for our AVB gowns and there was this crusty beggar—no teeth, no shoes, caked in dust and dirt, like the Santa Anas could just blow particles of him away, erode him like the hillsides. He was slumped against the marble wall of that restaurant that sells the hundred-dollar burgers, with his dirty palm out, saying, “Agua. Por favor. Agua. Por favor,” over and over again as people sidestepped him and looked around for security. I don’t know how he got there, because the cops usually collect the beggars and drop them off at the encampments or jail, if they get belligerent. But this guy was just sitting there looking tragic. My heart went out to him, right, because it’s a thousand degrees and dude needs a drink. I don’t have any water with me, so I ask Jinny if she’ll give him one of her bottles. She looks at me like I’m insane. And she’s trying to pull me along, but if we’re not giving him water, I’m gonna give him some money, because human. Jinny’s annoyed that I’m stopping, but I don’t care. I reach into my purse, but then I’m like holy crap because I see all I have in my wallet is my birthday money from the week before—hundred-dollar bills. Now my hand’s in my purse and this guy’s dirty palm is in my face, and his sunken eyes are on mine, so I ask Zee if she’ll loan me a few dollars, but she says no. No? The guy’s waiting and now he looks worried like am I seriously gonna leave him hanging. Fee and Delaney say they only have cards—no cash. So I’m obviously gonna give the old man one of my birthday hundys then. Right? I have to. So I did. The guy burst into tears.

  Right in front of the guy, Jinny goes, “Oh my gosh, Rory, if you give him money, why would he ever want to get a job and earn his own?”

  “Like the way we earn ours, Jinny?”

  “If people don’t give them money, beggars won’t beg,” she says. “They’re like seagulls at the beach, Rory. If you give them food, they will never go away.”

  “That’s straight-up unchristian, Jinny.”

  “You’re hilarious, Rory.”

  “Compassion, Jinny? Like, you don’t know anything about them. You don’t know what happened to put them on the street.”

  “Prolly illegal,” Zee said, then turns to Fee and goes, “Sorry.”

  We were in Prada, sifting through gowns, when I saw a security guy seize the old man and load him into the back of a van like a stray animal. Rolled him for the hundy, no doubt. Fuckers.

  Wait! Oh my God! Just heard the cabin door.

  Waiting.

  Javier’s boots on the driveway.

  Waiting.

  Truck engine.

  He isn’t gonna come check on us? Bring more water? Crackers? Hope? Instructions? Anything?

  I was about to stop typing and peek out the door, but Javier shouted out, really, really loudly, “Good morning.”

  To whom? Not us. I didn’t hear anyone respond, but maybe there’s someone out there—the drunk guy or someone else—and Javier shouted as a warning to us to stay put? Maybe there are copters on the horizon or drones nearby? Haven’t heard a whimper or whine or bark from the direction of the Airstream. I really hope that old dude leaves for work soon.

  This just in: the Feds set up a website so people can report sightings and send in tips about us at www.CalabasasAVB.gov.org. The site crashed about five o’clock this morning as thousands of reports came in. Thousands. We’ve been seen at bus stations and airports and coffee shops all over the country. According to the news, a network of sympathizers has also connected over social, and they’ve been flooding the site with false sightings, just to send the authorities on wild-goose chases. Hundreds of pics have been sent from all over the freaking world. Women are dressing up in wedding gowns and Photoshopping pics of themselves running away from flames and smoke. There are images posted from the UK, and France, and Italy, and even freaking Brazil! People who believe in us—even if it’s only by default, because they hate our accusers so much—are trying to throw the hunters off our scent. So we have sympathizers. Hope? I see you.

  And thank you, Santa Anas. I usually hate the winds because hair and fire, but right now I’m, like, blow devil, blow. Keep the machines grounded. People hate sky traffic as much as they hate ground traffic. They may not have to sit in it, but it intrudes on their lives anyway. I remember thinking about that when the girls and I were lazing at the Leons’ pool one day this summer, drinking virgin margs. You look up thinking a bird just flew by, but it’s a drone. Did it just take a pic of us? Privacy? Is there such a thing?

  The bounty. A million dollars. I mean, I get that people want that prize. That’s a lot of money. So what about Javier? Will he be blowing leaves or pruning someone’s bushes under the baking sun today and just go, fuck it. I mean, he might not be able to bring his little daughter back from the grave, but with a million dollars he might be able to get his wife back from Mexico. Or he could go there and live with her like royalty. There’s a million things he could do with a million dollars. I wonder what I’d do, in his boots.

  Brooky just posted video of men in suits taking computers and boxes of files and stuff out of my house. Did they find my little palm-cam? I don’t think so—my dresser weighs a ton. Bee wrote, “Rory’s mother in deep *&%#. Still being interrogated about her Red Market ties.”

  Brooky? Why are you hating on my mother like that? Even if she is involved in some activist stuff, you know it’s not Red Market. Plus, I mean, your great-grandfather was a Black freaking Panther! My mother was never anything but loving and kind to you and every other girl in the Hive. How do you just turn on people like that? When this is over, I’m going to write a long-ass post about friendship, and what it means, and what you should be able to expect from a person you call a friend.

  Shelley Miller is the best human I know. She’s the kind who’d take off her necklace and give it to you if you said you liked it. With her friends, she was there. I mean, she doesn’t really have friends anymore, but when she did, she was the type who’d be, like, dying from exhaustion, in pain from a toothache or something, but she’d never use that as an excuse if someone needed to download a problem, maybe get a little legal advice. She never minded. Not like Sherman, who got snippy when random people asked for free legal—unless he wanted to nail them, I guess. Mommy? I’m so sorry I got you mixed up in all of this.

  I don’t know why I still think this way, but I really do believe that justice will prevail. But, Jesus, everything the cable news and Internet is saying about what happened at the ball last night is just so wrong. The Internet also has no clue what happened on Oakwood Circle when Jinny Hutsall moved in next door. There’s just so much data to unload about Jinny, and Jagger, and us, and the nights in question. So I’ve decided I’m gonna set it all out here. It may be a little out of order. But consider this my deposition.

  That first day, when we met her in the cul-de-sac, after she iced me in front of the Hive for being the Jewy heathen I am, Jinny invited us all over to her new house—previously owned by an extremely rich older couple who sunbathed nude in their backyard (voyeurs do not discriminate), where she said there was a pitcher of lemonade and a batch of fresh brownie
s. It was boiling outside, and we were bored and curious. The girls were all in. Me? Fear of missing out.

  We walk into this beautiful sunlit kitchen and, sure enough, there’s this huge pitcher of lemonade with sparkling ice cubes and a massive plate of ridiculous frosted brownies that normally we’d only look at. But Jinny took one and ate it in three bites and we all just followed. We followed. Then I start thinking. Wait. What? Jinny literally just stepped out of the Town Car that drove her to her new house. There are no parents at home. So who put out the lemonade? And the brownies? And how could they know we’d come over?

  So I say, “How did the lemonade get here?”

  Jinny stared at me. “You ask a lot of questions!”

  “It’s just, your parents aren’t here and the cubes are fresh, and—”

  “Oh my gosh! What is this, interrogate the new girl?”

  “It’s just—the ice cubes…”

  “Oh my gosh, you really are a scream!” Jinny said, then excused herself to go to the “loo.” My gramma called the bathroom the loo and I always thought it was the cutest thing, but Jinny Hutsall saying it made me wanna hurl.

  When she was gone, I whispered, “Guys. A Crusader. Seriously?”

  “She’s super-nice, Ror,” Zee said.

  “God, Rory, she’s just saying you’re funny!” Fee chimed in. “Seriously? That’s a compliment! What is your problem?”

  “Crusader. ‘Nuff said.”

  “Yeah, but so what? We don’t have to chill with her every day, but she just got here, Ror,” Delaney said.

  “Jesus, Rory,” Zee added.

  “Jesus? Did you just take His name in vain, Zee? What would Jinny Hutsall think?”

  Zee shot me the finger.

  Fee goes, “Just saying, be nice.”

  I was in dangerous territory with the Hive. They’d see everything I was gonna say about Jinny as me being jealous. “I just feel like something seems off about her. You guys…you must see it too.”

  But they didn’t. Or didn’t want to.

  “Rory. You’re being so judge-y,” Zee said. “Like, you hate judge-y, but you can be super-judge.”

  “But I’m judging the judgiest of them all. She’s a Crusader. Come on.”

  Bee goes, “You’re just too much sometimes, Ror.”

  “You’re okay with this too, Bee? Sincerely? Crusaders hate the Jews, and the heathens, but they’re not so fond of black people either. All those Crusaders carrying the American flag at that rally last year? Not a lot of people of color.”

  Just then Jinny called out, “Girls? Come meet my brothers!”

  We found her in the huge foyer. And that’s when her five brothers—one for each of us?—emerged at the top of the winding staircase, like opening night at Chippendales. Five dead-fit college-aged guys who had no reason to be home that weekend—I didn’t think of that until just now—bounding down the stairs with their hard bodies and fine threads, all white teeth and chiseled jaws.

  And, like Jinny, they were so nice. The brothers asked all kinds of questions about our lives at Sacred Heart, and about Calabasas, and our families, other girls we knew in the community…Come to think of it, her brother Garth asked me a lot of questions about my mother. Why was he so interested in Shelley? Anyway, we giggled and blushed and answered in depth, because boys. After a bit the tallest brother, Joel, turned to Jinny and asked, “Did you tell them about the AVB thing?”

  Jinny shook her head and gave him a look like, don’t, but really she wanted to tell us about the AVB thing, very, very badly.

  “You should, Jin,” another brother said.

  “Oh my gosh!” Jinny said, faking annoyance. “Brothers!”

  “What about the AVB? Did you do an AVB?” Zee asked.

  We girls all knew what AVB stood for, of course. I mean, there are so many chastity balls now, but Jagger Jonze’s American Virtue Ball franchise was the most popular, but like I said, we’d always found the whole idea of it hysterical. So why did I blink my eyes at Jinny’s smokin’ brother and go, “One of the girls at Sacred tried to get one going last year, but we had this big fire and the school was closed for weeks. The air was so bad for so long we had to wear surgical masks the rest of the semester. Not a good look. Anyway.” I implied regret about the lost AVB.

  Jinny explained that she’d been about to attend a ball sponsored by her church in suburban Chicago and had everything ready—Monique Lhuillier gown, Lacroix sandals, pashmina—then her father decided to relocate the family to California. Poor princess.

  Garth said, “You girls should do one here.”

  Zara batted her eyelashes at him. “That would be cool.” Another hypocrite. Even Zee, the most Christian girl in our hive, had been totally anti–purity ball. She’d laughed about the whole idea of the chastity pledge. What are we, like, marrying our fathers?

  Then Jinny goes, “Oh my gosh, you girls wanna see my dress?”

  Our first glimpse of Jinny Hutsall’s bedroom. I mean, I’d seen it from the side window in my own room, spied on it from behind my curtains a thousand times over the course of two previous owners. I never saw sex in that room, even though I had a clear view of the bed and the monster ceiling fan that hovered over it. Mostly I just saw old, fat people sleeping, or cleaners with vacuums, fluffing the duvet and dusting the dressers.

  Jinny’s furniture was oversized, fit for a queen, all of it just too big and too much, and the closet…? At some point when I wasn’t watching, someone had moved Jinny’s whole amazing wardrobe of designer outfits into her closet. We oohed and aahed the shit out of her massive walk-in, and the floor-to-ceiling shelves of color-coded shoes and boots and purses, and then there it was, encased in plastic, hanging on the back of the door. She slid the zipper down and lifted the diaphanous gown out of the bag. A wedding dress. That’s what it was. The Holy Grail. Girl crack. We wanted it. Jinny was hooking us, like a drug dealer.

  Before we knew it, we were on the floor in front of the flat screen in the sitting area of her bedroom, watching this slick promo vid with these beautiful girls our age in their stunning bridal couture talking about how the American Virtue Ball changed their lives. For as long as I can remember, we’d all howled at the purity ball pics of dads and their daughters looking like messed-up minime child brides. But something had shifted.

  Then Jinny pimped up the whole thing by telling us that her father was a personal friend of Jagger Jonze himself—and that even though Jonze almost never makes appearances at his franchise events, Jinny was pretty sure her daddy could get him to host our ball since he lived in Beverly Hills.

  One of the brothers knocked on the door and asked if we wanted to go for a swim. “I have a net for water volley,” he called. Dee opened the door and I think I actually saw her knees buckle. She’s all about the buttoned-up types and the brothers were prep on ‘roids. This one, Garth, was standing in the hallway dressed in his cute swim trunks, looking like a cross between Michelangelo’s David and that rapper Diggie Dawg—all ripped and tanned and bulge-y—and every one of us wanted to get into the water with that big smokin’ college boy. “Girls against guys,” he said, grinning.

  We all have pools. We do not swim. Never. I mean, not since elementary school. But we dove at the chance to go swimming with Jinny’s fine brothers, and because Jinny didn’t wanna break the spell by letting us leave, she opened a drawer filled with these designer ‘kinis and tanks for us to borrow. Within ten minutes we were all in the pool playing volleyball. The thing is, it was fun. Old-time fun. Like the fun we used to have when we didn’t care what our hair looked like wet or if our tummies were poochie. The brothers, sexy as they seemed, didn’t flirt with us, and never said anything inappropriate. It was kind of comfortable.

  After, we lay out on the teak chaises around the pool. The brothers disappeared pretty fast, which made everything way less interesting, and then this awkward thing happened. I mean…I guess I was staring at Jinny’s tits because I was so sure implants. Jinny caught me lookin
g, and I wanted to die because she misunderstood and started acting itchy. I thought about admiring the tiny blue bows on her halter to deflect, but figured I’d just make it worse.

  In the foyer we lined up to hug our new bestie and to tell her how much we already adored her—’cause that’s what chicas do. When I pressed against her, I faded a bit because her breasts are all too real.

  Outside, before we split up to go into our houses, we stood in the darkening cul-de-sac. “That was awkward,” I said.

  “You were staring at her boobs,” Zara said. “So yeah?”

  “I was not,” I said.

  “I literally watched you,” Zee said. “They’re real.”

  “Whatever. She’s weird. We’re not really gonna do the AVB, are we, guys?” I said.

  Brooky grinned. “We should. For a laugh. We could do it for a laugh.”

  “Um?”

  “I mean, why not?” Zee said.

  “Because we don’t believe in the whole abstinence-before-marriage thing?”

  “Who cares, though, Ror? In a way?” Dee said.

  “Shouldn’t we care?”

  “I don’t think it’s all that serious,” Brooky said. “You say what you say and then you do what you do.”

  Made sense. Sort of.

  “Think about it,” Brooky pressed. “Couture gowns and Jimmy Choos. Pics with Jagger Jonze. Think of the posts. Imagine the likes.”

  True. Posting pics with celebrities, even minor celebrities, does prompt a lot of likes. I really really like likes. To be honest, we’re all kinda obsessed with our pics and our likes.

  Fee shrugged. “Could be fun.”

  “I guess.” I didn’t think it’d be fun exactly. Also, at that point, I didn’t think we’d end up going through with it.

  My skin was flaking from the chlorine in Hutsalls’ pool, and my hair was frizzy and tangled, and my chest heavy with the realization that this whole AVB thing, and Jinny Hutsall, was gonna be the end of my hive as I knew it. I could see, even then, I was gonna have to buckle up.

  When I got home, Shelley asked me what I thought of the new girl and if she was gonna make a good addition to the Hive. Um. Fine. Um. No.