This Little Light

by Lori Lansens

  “Think she knows about the bounty? She must.”

  “She’s a kid.”

  “Kids know what money is. What’s happening?”

  “She’s just nodding.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my freaking God.”

  “Ror…?”

  I don’t know what to do. If this is the end, I need to get this blog out there, but there’s so much more to tell…Please, God…I mean…Hey, God…I mean, just saying, if I’ve been wrong about you all this time, can you throw us a fucking bone here?

  “Ror…?”

  “I think I just accidentally prayed.”

  “Well, pray for real.”

  “Are they coming this way?”

  “They’re all on their phones now. They keep looking up. They must be talking to someone in the sky. Oh my God. A big drone just showed up.”

  “Fuck.”

  “They’re still talking.”

  “I’m pressing Post.”

  “NO!”

  “No?”

  “Stop!”

  “Stop?”

  “Oh my God. They’re going away.”

  “What?”

  “The kid is pointing to the road. The guys with the rifles are heading out that way. They’re leaving, Ror.”

  “What?”

  “They’re walking away down that windy dirt road.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “They just went around the bend. And the drones and a bunch of copters are flying in the same direction, down the road and into the bush on the other side of the clearing!”

  “Back into the bush?”

  “I can’t see them anymore.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “The little kid just looked over here. She gave me thumbs-up. They’re gone, Ror. They’re gone.”

  “Holy fuck.” Holy fucking fuck.

  “Rory Miller! I’m going to punch you in the tit if you don’t stop typing right now!!!”

  We’re still shaking from the close call. When the men left, Fee just, like, dove at me, and we held on to each other for a really long time.

  Then we heard another noise outside, and nearly died thinking the guys with rifles were back, or this time it could be a crew of Crusaders dragging a big wooden cross. I was the one who looked out the window, but there’s no one out there, no sounds of clomping boots, nothing but the drone of the copters circling over the highway and beach. No sign of the bald girl either.

  I stood at the window for a while, watching the wind kick up waves of dust around the tires of the trailer next door, creating an optical illusion so that the Airstream looks like it’s in motion. The Calabasas temp online is ninety-six degrees. In here it must be one hundred and twenty. We have no fluid left to sweat.

  Fee is still so thirsty. I really can’t listen to how thirsty she is anymore, so I told her to go ahead and drink the can of soda we had left. She didn’t even offer me a sip. Not that I would have taken it, but that’s just not Fee.

  I went online for a quick sec with Fee reading the bullet news over my shoulder. This old pink laptop, missing the %5 button, and with broken volume control, is everything. A lifeline to the real world of fake news, but also a dumping ground for my messed-up mind. Thanks again, Nina. If I wasn’t writing about our situation in real time, I prolly wouldn’t remember it the way it’s actually happening. If I wait to tell our story until after we’re saved, I’d likely try to trick it out with meaningful lines, censor my fucks, and lay down a load of shit that sounds right instead of the ugly, uncensored truth. If I waited, I’d know how the story ends, and I’d be driving toward it, instead of taking the scenic route.

  With Fee’s chin on my shoulder, I scrolled down the InfoNow site. After the news about the fire in Bel Air and the threat to all the celebrity mansions, we’re the second most trending topic in California. The hunt for us remains global news. Fair enough. The world wants to know if those demonic teens in wedding gowns have been caught yet. I hit the link to the article announcing when the Feds are gonna hold the news conference about the contents of Fee’s purse. Fee read along with me and started to cry. I can’t even ask her about the stupid purse anymore.

  Gonna be honest. Fee’s mood swings, her irritability, the way she hasn’t been acting like herself? I asked her if she was doing Addies before, but now I’m wondering if it’s something way worse. Like, I’m kinda scared she’s been doing parfaits—those little test tubes of liquid caffeine with the cocaine cloud you snort before downing the shot. Parfaits started trending last year. Chase Mason told me about a guy he knew who died from doing two in a row. Parents all over the country have been checking their kids’ trash for plastic test tubes that smell like espresso. Like, are they gonna announce that Fee is a drug addict? Further evidence of our guilt?

  Fee wants it to be over. She wants us to get caught, as much as she doesn’t want us to get caught. I get that. But she still doesn’t seem to understand, or accept, that over could mean dead. Maybe I feel so different because I’m Jewish. Like, when you’re even the slightest bit Jewish, your reality is that there are people in the world who want to eradicate you from the face of the earth because of the blood that runs in your veins. I remember Sherman telling me that, before he died, his dad gave him a map, a crayon map (his dad had dementia) with an escape route from his house in Winnipeg to the Israeli embassy in Toronto. It was the 1970s. Sherman’s father wasn’t observant in any way, but that kind of fear is passed down through generations. It has a name: epigenetic trauma. We learned about that in our psych class, but in relation to the Christians, not the Jews, or black people, or the homeless.

  My father continues to escape scrutiny for the most part, which I really don’t understand. No comments from him. No accusations about him. Maybe it has something to do with his generous contributions to the box church in Orange County. According to the news, Sherman’s hired some big attorney to “protect his interests.” What does that mean?

  What I said before about how I wished my father were dead? I don’t. I really don’t. To be honest, for the past three years, I just wished that Sherman would ditch Sugar Tits and come home. That he’d fall on his knees and beg for forgiveness and tell his soul mate he was gonna spend the rest of his life making it up to her, to us, and just, like, be my daddy again. Stupid. I know. Fuck happy fucking endings.

  Happy. I hate that word. I want to stab that word. That word offends me the way curses offend people who don’t swear. The way taking the Lord’s name in vain offends the Christians even though half of them do it anyway. Happy. It’s a bullshit word. Happy is the word equivalent of Valentine’s Day—Aunt Lilly said that. She told me about how her ex would say, “People choose happy.” And that would make her crazy, because it’s a fundamental lie. Christian people talk about happiness a lot, but that word does not appear in the Bible one time. Not once.

  Aunt Lilly’s barometer for all things? First World versus Third World. So people can choose happy? People can find a hundred keys to happiness? Twenty tips for happy? All those stupid books. Like, there are seriously more books about how people can find personal satisfaction and happiness than there are books about how people can help other people find water and food. So basically, the “ingredients” in that idiot book Recipe for a Happier You? If you can’t apply them to the starving mother cradling her fly-covered baby in the slave camp in West Africa, then it’s bullshit. Period. If all of humanity can’t use the same formula for this thing called happiness, it’s a big fat North American lie.

  I get that I’m an asshole for calling bullshit on happiness. I live in paradise. But I’m not happy. I have everything, but I feel confused, and empty. I don’t wanna find happiness so much as I wanna find purpose. And love. I’ve been thinking—being a prisoner in a sweltering shed really makes you think—about how I can help the world when I grow up. Like, how I can be an activist, a volunteer, an influential blogger or lobbyist or something. Purpose. I get that. But happy? Aunt Lill says happy is like a rush of propofol—th
at drug they put you out with before surgery. It’s just so much anesthetic.

  Joy, though? I believe in joy, and not because that word is in the Bible. It’s because joy is fleeting and real, and comes without a recipe. That orgasmic feeling of celebration and communion with something outside yourself? I’ve felt that. Never because of my fab clothes, or my big house, or anything material. Once upon a time, when I believed in God, I felt joy when I sang that song about how much Jesus loved me. And that other one about letting my light shine. I’ve felt joy with Shelley, because even at half-mast my mother’s still boss. With Sherman, when he used to be Sherman. And I’ve felt joy with Fee. And the Hive.

  Not a lot of joy in this shitty fucking shed right now.

  It’s sooo hot in here. Caliente. People say that’s how our state got its name. Caliente Fornia—hot oven.

  Come on, Javier. Come back already.

  Fee moved to sit against the wall across from me. Says she’s hot, and that I reek. It is. I do. She says she’s not pissed at me, but she obviously is. She says she doesn’t blame me for any of this, but she does. I mean, it is my fault we’re here.

  She’s just sitting there, rubbing her poor tummy, staring into space, prolly hoping whatever embarrassing or incriminating thing that was in her purse melted in the blast and all this angst is for nothing. Damn. In this moment, I feel like I don’t know her at all. Just sitting here looking at her and—

  Oh. Fuck. There’s a freaking lizard in the shed! Just saw him slink under the suitcases in the corner. Little green alligator lizard about the size of my palm, with a very long tail that I can see poking out from where he’s hiding, less than a foot from Fee’s bare leg. Fee is petrified of lizards. Like, how many times a day does she screech because there’s a little blue skink on the path at school, or a harmless gecko resting on the Pebble Tec under the chaise by one of our pools. Even if we’re in the car, she screams if she sees a freaking salamander in one of the flowering bushes in the medians. I love lizards. I think they are my spirit animal. In fact, if not for Fee, I’d see this little guy as some kind of good omen. If Fee sees it, she will scream.

  Too late.

  Oh. Fuck.

  Just heard the trailer door creak open.

  So, people, this happened. Fee saw the lizard and screamed like I knew she would. I’m looking at her going like, NOOOOooo.

  Then we hear the neighbor’s trailer door screech open, and boots pounding down the metal stairs, and I look out the shed window and there’s the mean freaking drunk standing in the gravel beside his truck, stock-still, one arm in the air, one crooked finger pointing straight at the shed. My girls and I used to play Freeze Frame. He looked like that. Like scared that if he moves a muscle he’ll get tagged out. I whisper to Fee, “Holy shit, the guy from last night is out there.” We’re dead. There’s no place to hide in this freaking shed.

  The wind is gusting hard. A big, spiky tumbleweed rolls toward the dude and stops at his feet, but he doesn’t look down. Doesn’t move at all, just stands there, still pointing, his eyes on the shed. There are no copters or drones overhead, at least none that I can see, and I’m just thinking, the fuck?

  Fee comes to look out the window with me, careful, so he doesn’t spot us. We can see that he’s not as large as he’d seemed in the moonlight. We keep watching. Dude’s not moving. Doesn’t even blink.

  Then the lizard skitters out from under the suitcases and winds his way to the greasy lawn mower near the door. Fee sees him from out of the corner of her eye. I don’t have a chance to cover her mouth before she screams again. Fuuuccckkk.

  I nudge the lizard toward a gap in the wall with my toe. Fee’s scream hangs in the air.

  Out the window, dude’s on the move, goose-stepping through the weeds toward us. But the little shaved-head girl appears from out of nowhere, sneaking up behind the guy. Where did she come from?

  She calls out to him. We can’t hear what she says, but he stops, and makes a six-point turn to face her, like it’s all happening in slow motion. She moves a little closer.

  We watch the dude raise his arm and swat at the little girl. She dodges his hand, and starts to back away. Then he reaches out with both arms and starts after her, like a zombie. That’s when Fee and I bust out of the shed.

  We didn’t talk about it. Didn’t check for copters and drones and bounty hunters. We ran straight out into the stinking, dusty wind, screaming, “Hey! Hey! Leave her alone!”

  The guy turns around, and we see his face. He totally looks like the undead—unblinking eyes, just no one home. He starts taking uneven steps toward us, and the little girl seems scared.

  Fee and I step to the guy, calling out to the little girl to run away, but she doesn’t. And the dude—it’s like he “comes to” for a sec, and he starts blinking, and I can see he recognizes us. He breaks out into this huge, ugly grin, and turns around and starts back for his Airstream—no doubt to get his phone. The little girl tries to stop him, but he pushes her into the trash cans beside the front porch.

  Fee grabs his arm, saying, “Please. Stop.” He throws her off, then shakes his finger at us, saying things in Spanish that I do not understand. Sounded like he was stroking out.

  The little girl gets up and dodges the dude as she runs into the Airstream. The man stumbles after her. And that’s when we hear the sound of a chopper coming up over one of the hills. We can’t run back to the shed across the open yard without being seen—and we gotta stop this guy from hurting this little girl, and calling the cops. So we run for the trailer too.

  Hoarder. Piles of crap everywhere in a space already too tight. Stuff he must’ve taken from people’s trash—broken chairs and old computers, bulb-less lamps, and stacks and stacks of hardcover English books. I nearly gagged from the smell—cream of sewage soup.

  The old TV is on—pictures of us flashing on the screen. He points to the screen and back at us, and he nods ‘cause he knows he just won the lottery. Then he’s muttering, stumbling over crap on the floor as he’s looking for his phone in the mess. We can’t see the little girl, but we hear her moving around in a curtained-off room at the back.

  Fee’s trying to talk to the dude, telling him that we are innocent, that we didn’t detonada the bomb, and please don’t turn us in, kinda like the way I’d pleaded with Javier when we got here. But he just keeps looking for his phone. On the counter I see a line of black ants marching toward a peanut butter–covered knife, so I nab it and hold it behind my back. My hands are shaking bad.

  Thought dude was looking for his phone, but when he turns around, he has a gun. He gestures us toward a couple of broken chairs. He wants us to sit. Never imagined it would end this way. I think of my mother. And I think of my blog, and how I won’t have a chance to tell the whole story. That I’ll never press Post. Maybe I should have started at the end instead of the beginning.

  Through the window we can see the helicopter banking in a circle over the clearing. The guy with the gun turns his attention to the copter too. I wonder if we could overpower him and take the gun. He’s got the shakes, which is terrifying. When he turns back to us, I’m really afraid he’s gonna pull the trigger by accident. He stuffs his free hand into his pocket to get his phone, laughing. Like, this guy is definitely not all there.

  He’s staring at the numbers and he can’t seem to press them, or his phone’s not working. He’s getting frustrated and he’s all over the place with the gun, and he starts calling out, “Ven acá! Ven acá!”

  The little girl appears from the other side of the curtain. She doesn’t meet our eyes. She starts talking to the dude in Spanish—so fast I can’t catch a word. He sneers at her, and says something about her dress, and pauses to spit on the floor. Disgusting. But the kid keeps talking to him and he starts nodding.

  The old dude starts looking around again and the little girl reaches for his coffee mug, resting on a stack of ancient mags on the table. When she hands it to the guy, I can smell that it’s not coffee but whiskey, and I
wanna tell the kid that’s a bad idea.

  Dude shoves his phone into his pocket and takes the mug, waving the gun at us shakily. I’ve still got the peanut butter–covered knife behind my back, but what am I really gonna do with it? Against a gun?

  We can hear the stuttering blades from the copter making circles overhead. The dude lurches over to look out the window then turns toward the door, like maybe he’s gonna go outside and alert the copter, but the little girl shouts at him, and I can pick out the Spanish words. Tell. Share. Bounty.

  Fee and I reach for each other’s hands, because that’s what we do. When the dude sees this, he starts yelling again, no idea what he’s saying, but I wonder if he thinks we’re gay and there’s a whole other level of hate he’s about to deploy.

  The little shaved-head girl whispers to us in English, “It’s okay. He not gonna hurt you.”

  Um?

  The guy drains the mug, sets it down and takes his phone back out of his pocket. He starts pounding on it with his index finger, still holding the freaking gun. Then he starts to lose his balance, like he thinks he’s leaning against the wall or something, but he’s not, and he sinks down into this nasty old chair near the TV.

  Fee whispers, “His phone.”

  Now I get why he can’t make a call. His phone is screen-side down. Okay.

  Now the dude starts to nod. He’s still trying to use his phone, but he can’t keep his eyes open. Then the phone drops to his lap and the gun drops to the floor. Fee and I look at each other and don’t even know what to say.

  The little girl kicks the gun under the chair, snatches the phone and repeats, “He’s not gonna hurt you.” She has a thin, scratchy voice to match her scarred little body.

  “Is he dead?”

  She shakes her head.

  “What the heck?”

  “Pills,” she said softly.

  “Pills?”

  “I give to him for to make him sleep.”

  “Jesus.”

  We’re silent for a sec, looking back and forth from the girl to the drugged dude. Then the kid says, “Villains in Versace.”