This Little Light - Lori Lansens Page 0,45
to meet Fee’s cousin Dante, the one with the piercings and tats. But Fee hard passed.
“But what about Dante?”
“He won’t be there.”
“Whatever. I wanna meet your abuela too.”
She was like, “No. Ror. Ugh. My relatives don’t like white people.”
“I can handle that.”
“They’re cold. They’ll call you Blanca and make faces behind your back. Awkward.”
“Then I’ll wait in the car when you go in.”
“Plus, you get carsick when you don’t drive, Rory, and Mr. Tom said I could bring the convertible and I really wanna drive.”
“I can take meds.”
“Ror.”
“I’ll be fine, Fee.”
“No, Rory. Stop.”
I was being relentless. But, like, I’ve always been this way, so why didn’t Fee want my company in the car? We’re best friends, and we’ve hardly spent any time together, just the two of us, since Jinny Hutsall. I know Fee’s embarrassed about the procit thing, but I had another thought—a sickening thought—that Fee was gonna take Jinny Hutsall to Cerritos instead of me. So I kept watch over the Sharpes’ house from my front bedroom window Friday morning. Fee left alone. Thank God.
“The necklace?” I said, realizing that I couldn’t remember Fee having a necklace on at the ball.
“What necklace?” Her face was blank.
“The one you drove out to Cerritos to get the other morning?”
“Oh. Yeah. The clasp broke, so I couldn’t wear it.”
Fee was obviously lying. I don’t know why. Then she burst into tears, and I wrapped her up in my arms and let her heave and sob, and then I started thinking, fuck, those tears! She really needs to stop crying because dehydration.
“Fee. We’re gonna get out of this. Okay? I promise.”
“I’m so thirsty, Ror. It’s all I can think about. Can’t we just go home? I get that there’s a bounty, but people aren’t actually gonna kill us.”
“What rock have you been living under? Remember Joyce Johnson? Leslie Givens? Those girls from New York? Remember what the Crusaders did to them? What about that Allegra Coombs? She was shot by some Crusader for wearing a My Body T-shirt, for the love of fuck!”
“Well, I’d rather be in a prison cell drinking water than here dying of thirst! Please, can we just start walking on the road and see what happens? I can’t take it anymore, Ror. I can’t!”
We were quiet for a long time, then Fee said, “What exactly are you writing, Ror? What all did you write about what happened?”
“Just the facts.”
“You didn’t tell about me crapping myself and puking all night?”
“I’m writing our defense.”
“Okay.”
“I’m explaining about the Hive, and our lives, and about Jinny and Jagger, and I’m gonna write about orientation night next, and all that went down at the ball, and I’m, like, writing our convos down—not verbatim, but, you know, close.”
“Okay, well, I really hate that. And you can’t write about orientation night. You cannot write about that, Rory.”
I can. And I’m gonna, but I don’t wanna fight about it with Fee.
“Wait. Can’t they trace us through your posts?”
“I’m not posting. Just writing. I won’t submit until we’re safe. Or found. Whichever comes first.”
“If they were gonna find us here, wouldn’t they have by now?”
“There are a lot of people looking, Fee. We’re a gold mine.”
She reached for my hand. We squeezed fingers.
Now we’re just sitting here as the sun rises higher and the shed becomes a pizza oven. Fee’s staring straight ahead, like she’s lost in fear. Maybe confusion? I used to think I could read her mind, but now I just don’t know. Maybe she’s so thirsty she just can’t deal. I’m thirsty too, but I’m also edgy from being stuck in this shed. My period is flowing thick and sticky, and all of it just makes me wanna punch Jinny Hutsall in the head.
The winds seem pretty calm at the moment, which is not good. Fee managed to pull herself up to look out the window. I joined her and we counted the little black specks in the distance—small planes and copters flying our way from the airport in Santa Monica. Twelve of them. “The copters look like tadpoles,” I said. She nodded.
You’d think, with all the fear and stress, my period would stop, but I’m a crime scene. I just opened the dusty suitcases wondering if maybe I’d find some clothes or towels or something, but they were empty. The white trash bags? Can’t bring myself to open one. Looks like they’re filled with leaves and shit. The smell. I mean, aside from me and Fee. Definitely mice. Or rats. What if there