This Little Light - Lori Lansens Page 0,7

in the parking lot of a Starbucks in West Hills. Another saw us in a black Escalade on the 405 south, heading toward the airport. The screen cut to an image of the bomb damage at Sacred Heart High—fire trucks everywhere, with men in black uniforms leading snarling German shepherds around the perimeter of the smoldering ruins of the blown-up bathroom. Then there was a shot of the shallow creek where we buried our smashed cell phones. Fee and I were just looking at each other, going, This is not real, it’s not real. But it is. We are news. We are the biggest news around.

I reached out to rap on the door, hoping one of Javier’s kids wouldn’t answer, because we looked like brides of freaking Frankenstein, me especially, but I prayed—well—I wished that the man’s wife was awake, because in addition to asking these strangers to hide a couple of teen girls accused of bombing a school and being runners for the Red Market, I needed a menstrual pad stat.

Then we heard a twig snapping behind us. Slowly we turned. There was a man, holding a rifle, looking nervous as shit. Our conversation went like this:

“Do you know who we are?”

He just stared.

“Es tu Javier? El primo de Javier the gardener?” I asked.

“Si.”

He soon saw we weren’t armed, like the media reports were saying, and we couldn’t have looked very dangerous, since he lowered his rifle. “They say you detonada una bomba.”

We spoke Spanglish to each other. “We did not detonada any bomb, sir. Believe me, por favor.”

He had a dead-thick accent. “Villains in Versace.”

I played my only card, and said, “Sherman and Shelley Miller son mis padres.”

“Rory. Te conozco.” Javier looked around, checking the woods for bounty hunters, the mountain road for vehicles. “Por qué vienes aqui?”

“We didn’t know where else to go.”

“We didn’t do any of what they’re saying, sir,” Fee said. Fee doesn’t speak Spanish. Her form of rebellion. “You have to believe us.”

He believed us. I could see it in his face. He gestured for us to step inside the door, out of sight from sky surveillance.

“I came here a few years ago when mi mami y papi were delivering navideños a su familia,” I said as he came in behind us and shut the screen door. “Thank you. Muchas gracias.”

“No.” He wagged his head back and forth. “You shouldn’t have come here. Muy peligroso. For me. For you. Ustedes deben entregarse a las autoridades.”

Fee shook my arm. “What’s he saying? What’s he saying?”

“He’s saying we should turn ourselves in.”

Still shaking his head, he said, “La recompensa.”

“We know about the bounty. We saw on our phones before we ditched them.”

“One million dollars.”

There was a crashing sound from the direction of the trailer next door. A metal bucket taken down by the wind, or a raccoon? Maybe it was that vicious pit bull. Or worse—the human who owned it. Javier waited a long beat, watching the Airstream from the doorway until he was satisfied there was no immediate danger, then he turned back toward us and said, “You cannot stay here.”

“We can’t turn ourselves in, Mr. Javier. I mean—with the bounty and everything…? We have to wait until it all dies down and people come to their senses, right? All the bounty hunters, and the Crusaders?”

He nodded.

“Who can we trust? The police? Hay una razón por la que los llaman Triggerheads.”

He nodded.

“Please. Please let us stay? Just for tonight, until we figure out our next move. My friend here? Feliza esta muy enferma. We’ve been corriendo a través de las colinas para siempre. Just, if you had a little agua? And maybe I could use your phone to call my mother?”

“Your mamá was detenido,” Javier said. “Detained.”

Wait. What?

“Her mother too,” he said, pointing at Fee. “Morena Lopez. The Guatemalan.”

“Why would they detain my mother? What have our mothers got to do with anything?” Fee was shocked.

“Los documentos de immigracíon fueron expirados.” Javier shrugged. Nothing more to say.

“Oh my God,” Fee said. “She’s gonna kill me.”

“What about my mother?”

Javier paused to study my face, then said, “Your mamá is being held on suspicion.”

“Suspicion of what?”

“They say she helped you plant the bomb. They say she’s involved with the Mercado Roja. Red Market.”

“Okay, well, that is insane. Actually insane. I don’t even believe in the Red Market. There’s no proof there IS a Red Market.”

“I don’t believe this of her either,” Javier said.

Obviously. I mean, Jesus, Shelley’s barely been out of the house in three years! Is