save us. And when I tell Fee about Chase Mason’s betrayal, she is not mad for me. She is not sympathetic or bestie-ish in any way. Fee is not acting like Fee.
“Who cares, Ror? It’s not like he’s your boyfriend. And Lark’s Head sucks anyway.”
“Too true.”
It just hit me that something was wrong with the business card Chase Mason held up to the camera.
I just went back online and I’m like—right—the card says Larkspur, not Lark’s Head. They changed the shitty name to an even shittier name. Okay. Whatever.
Will the betrayals never end? I will never forget what Chase Mason did.
Makes me think of Montreal. My parents dragged me along to a weekend conference there when I was in seventh. We got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to our hotel and I noticed the license plates on the cars said Je me souviens. Shelley told me it means “I remember.” Like “Lest we forget” in America. She said it was a call to keep in mind all the terrible things that have happened in history or else we’re doomed to repeat them. Maybe because of the Jewish thing, or the human thing, I don’t know, but it stuck with me.
Je me souviens, Chase Mason.
* * *
—
More noises outside. Can’t see anyone or anything, but I’m really scared about that old man coming over here to get his stray tarp.
According to the news, the air surveillance and bounty hunters are concentrating their efforts on a homeless encampment near Griffith Park now, where hundreds of tipsters say we’re hiding. They’ve shown pics of all these ATF guys—because we’re packing, don’t you know—and ICE guys, of course, hassling the homeless. I’m sorry to all of the humans who are enduring this bullshit because of us.
The little bald girl’s nowhere in sight. I hope she doesn’t come back, because what if she leads the hunters to us? What if someone in a copter wonders what a little shaved-head girl is doing playing around a random shed in the hills? Wish I could thank her, though. Well, I can. Here. Now. Thank you, little bald angel in the Patriot Girls dress.
Just occurred to me that little girl might have cancer or something. So skinny. Damn.
Also in the news just now—the Kardashians. Mama Kris has posted a pic of her and her five daughters, and all the granddaughters, in long white wedding-style gowns. So Vogue cover, but whatever. “Innocent until proven guilty”: that was the caption. Choked me up. Seriously. Thank you. From the bottom of my shattered heart. I will KUWTK until I die. Fee too. That must have been hard for those girls, because they are God people. Like, that shout-out means everything. It gives us hope.
And hope is hard to hold on to right now. Especially since I also just read that they’re going to be moving my mother to another facility because the crowds where she’s currently being held are clogging up the roads and making it hard for emergency vehicles to get to a fast-moving brush fire that broke out near Bel Air this morning.
They showed the crowd gathered outside the courthouse, and I’ll be fucked if it isn’t Chase Mason again. Front and center of the crowd, wearing a red Larkspur T-shirt. Must have taken a copter to get there so fast.
He wasn’t waving an American flag around, chanting, “Burn Shelley, burn,” like some of the protesters, but he was standing with them. And Aunt Lill is there on the courthouse steps too. She’s still wearing her Roots ball cap and she’s still got on that gross pink T-shirt. Those numbers: 14:34. I googled the Corinthians verse—something about “women should be silent in the churches.” I’m so bad at riddles. The fuck, Aunt Lill? I know she’s trying to send me a message. Just? What? Go to a church and be quiet? Doubt that. Those numbers mean nothing to me. I’ve been adding the numbers up and moving them around. Nada.
Aunt Lilly knows about my crush on Chase Mason. Maybe she went to the library to see if he had any ideas about where we might be? Or did she think we might be hiding there? In the courthouse crowd, I saw her moving closer to Chase. Why? Is she gonna kick him in the balls for all the crap he said about me to the media?
After Chase’s interview, I watched a panel discussion on CNN—one of those split-screen jobbies with multiple guests. Jagger Jonze was streaming