I couldn’t wait to get out of my cursed fucking Mishka. Fee couldn’t wait to ditch her Prada. We start peeling off the gowns—thousands and thousands of dollars shredded and puked on and bled over. I’m so grateful for the dingy T-shirt and the brown work pants and even the ball cap that keeps my dirty hair off my face. I fold up one of the other shirts to use as a makeshift pad. Feels like a diaper, but better than free bleeding.
Paula changes into the Hannah Good Patriot Girls dress over by the window, her back to us, keeping a lookout for hunters and drones. I don’t mean to look—I wasn’t being my usual creepy voyeur self—but both Fee and I turn when the little girl knocks over one of the suitcases. And that’s when we notice that Paula is wearing little boys’ undies, and inside those undies is a little boy’s penis.
Paula doesn’t see us see her penis. Fee and I just looked at each other. Everything is illuminated. Why the old man hates the kid, and won’t tolerate her playing with dolls and wearing her Patriot Girls dresses. That old man beats this little kid because she is an aberration to him. A dog. Perro. He calls her freaking Perro. When she told us her name was Paula, maybe it was the first time she ever said the name she’s given herself. Her real name. Javier knows about her, though. He must know. Javier’s protected her. Well, as best he could.
Paula took her grandfather’s phone from the side pocket of the backpack and showed us. “Abuelo have the VIV tracker app.”
“VIV tracker app?”
“For you.”
“There’s a freaking app?”
“Yes. There is a freaking app. Also, Abuelo have the app for the police. He is procit. Don’t have a driver card. Too much DWI.”
“Makes sense.”
“I get blue alert if police are nearby.”
“Oh my God. That’s amazing.”
“I can stay here with you?”
“Yes, Paula. Stay with us,” Fee says.
“And I come after?”
“Come after?”
“To where Mr. Javier take you? Rory? I come?”
Fee and I look at each other like, um…
“We don’t know where he’s taking us or how soon we’ll be, like, safe…”
“Me too.” The way she says it, like, yeah, every day she’s in danger, so leaving with us doesn’t exactly feel risky.
Fee hugs Paula. “You can come with us, Paula. Wherever we go.”
Paula reaches into the black backpack and pulls out this old electronic game—merch from The Dancing Dina Show. That’s probably mine from when I was little too. Paula goes, “You play Dancing Dina with me, Fee?”
Fee laughs and nods. Life is bizarre. An hour ago I thought we were dead; now Paula and Fee are curled up with each other, passing the game back and forth, giggling like kindies, and this, I think, is what joy looks like. It’s not happiness. It’s a moment of connection.
I think we have at least a couple of hours before Paula’s abuelo wakes up from his tramadol dreams. Javier should be home by then. I still can’t believe that Paula is here. And that she brought us burritos, which are still half-frozen, and which I’m ridiculously excited to eat.
The last time I felt joy was orientation night. Which is ironic. We were driving to the school, me and my hive, in my Prius. The dads were meeting us there. Jinny wasn’t with us because she was riding with her father and Jagger Jonze. It was like old times, me and my girls, music cranked, singing at the top of our lungs, and there it was…joy. Seems like a thousand years, but it was just a little over a month ago.
Orientation night. We were pretty fueled for that. Even me. In spite of what I knew about Jinny’s Jesus-freakishness, and in spite of the shifting vibe of the Hive, I was pretty eager to get dressed up and go fangirl over the preacher man. I figured Sherman’d be hanging with the dads, so I wouldn’t have to deal with that, and meeting Jonze—like I said—I thought it was gonna be oh so cool to take selfies with him. How many likes and fresh follows would we get from that, right? A lot. Plus, because he was a personal friend of Jinny’s dad, he was gonna hang out with us at Hutsalls’ after the official thing at the school. When the other girls heard about that, we were the object of some powerful envy.