but it wouldn’t go over the knuckle. He thought he might’ve gotten her ring mixed up with Delaney’s and they switched, but no. So Fee put the stupid too-small ring in her Gucci metal clutch, which she left on the counter in the school bathroom. No doubt it was blown to bits along with the porcelain toilets and speckled tile floor. Not that she should give a shit about the stupid pearl ring.
Poor Fee. She just barfed again. I’m really starting to wonder if she was poisoned. Is that crazy to even think? But she seemed fine today, until we got to the ball and she ate those little chocolate ganache thingies Jinny pushed on us. The ones I didn’t eat. Did Jinny Hutsall actually poison her? Did she mean to poison me too? Or to poison me instead of Fee? Did Jinny and Jagger Jonze wanna make sure I’d be stuck in that bathroom back behind the gym, where she’d specifically told me to meet her, shitting and puking my guts out, when the bomb went off?
A breeze sweeps tumbleweeds against the patchwork walls of the metal shed. Not the Santa Anas yet, but twigs snap. Branches crack. My heart stops at each sound, wondering if we’ve been discovered. If what I’m hearing is the wind, or the stealth boots of some rude dude from the homicide squad, or a redneck with a rifle, or some white-collar with a pistol out to collect the bounty.
I’m also on edge over every crackle of noise because it’s fire season. Well, I guess it’s always fire season now. The drought is all the local news talks about between pauses to discuss White House tweets and the war in the Middle East. We’ve had only a few inches of rain in over two years. There was a huge fire in the canyon behind Hidden Oaks when we were in middle school. Shelley and I watched the twisting flames rise up over the hills, blazing the black skeletons of oaks and sycamores left for dead after a smaller fire years before. There was a mandatory evacuation so we grabbed the boxes and suitcases we keep in the closet by the door and hurried out to the car. Our friends on Oakwood Circle stayed—they always do—but I was glad my mother didn’t think of a mandatory order as just a suggestion. I was scared.
If a fire started here in the hills, or someone tried to smoke us out, we’d be doomed. I wonder how much it hurts to die of smoke inhalation. Like drowning, only in smoke? And what about that? Whoever planted that bomb is lucky that the whole hillside behind the school didn’t go up in flames.
Fee’s passed out again. She looks corpse-y. This is bad. It’s really fucking bad. But she’ll feel better in the morning. Right? And we’ll figure a way out. Hope. It’s all I have, so I have to hold on to it. I have hope—no—I have faith that the truth will prevail. And it will. Right?
Been looking out the window. The lights in Javier’s little log cabin at the front of the property just went out. I don’t know how he can sleep with two of America’s Most Wanted hiding out in his toolshed. The TV is still on in the Airstream trailer next door, but no lights, and no car or truck in the driveway. No dogs barking. No coyotes howling. Just wind whistling through the slits in the shed.
I guess it’s time to fill you in on Javier. He’s the cousin of our gardener, who’s also called Javier, and that’s why I remembered his name. Not-our-gardener Javier lives in this cluster of half a dozen cabins and trailers on this weedy plateau in the hills a few miles from the coast. He was once a client of my parents and I was here before, a few years ago, a tagalong when my parents delivered Christmas baskets.
My parents used to be immigration lawyers, and they did a lot of charity work with procits, and helped newcomers settle into the area with food and clothing and electronics donations, all that. There used to be foreigners with dusty suitcases and peppery odors in our guest room for weeks at a time, back when my parents were soul mates and did good deeds together.
I remember that while I waited in the car for Miller Law to bring tidings of comfort and joy here, I noticed that the place seemed familiar.