over and saw there was a Miller Law sticker with the password written in Sharpie. America321. A gift from Sherm and Shell. Serendipity.
* * *
—
Fee just lifted her head and asked me to stop typing because the noise is hurting her ears. “I’m so thirsty, Ror.”
“I know.”
“What is even happening?”
How can I answer? I do not know. “It’s okay, Fee. Try to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. And we’re gonna figure it all out. Don’t I always have your back?”
Fee nodded and closed her eyes, but before she passed out again, she whispered, “Malibu Sunset.”
I laughed, then felt queasy, as I always do, at the mention of our most secret secret. Back in sixth grade, Fee pocketed a red lipstick at the mall drugstore. It was just the two of us running an errand for her mother, while she was running errands for Tom Sharpe. I didn’t know what Fee’d done until the bald security guard grabbed us both by the arm and yanked us into this tiny, windowless room at the back of the store. He told Fee to empty her pockets and she set the gold tube on his desk. The old dude picked up the lipstick, turned it over, and read “Malibu Sunset” from the sticker on the bottom. Then he shook his head tragically, saying he had no choice but to call the police, and our parents. Store policy. He sat behind his desk, and must have hit some unseen button, because the door suddenly locked behind us.
We waited, trembling, as the guy sat there watching us squirm. Finally he goes, “I don’t want you girlies to get in trouble for one little lipstick. I wonder if there’s something we could do?” I dug into my pocket and found the fifty-dollar bill I’d grabbed from my jewel box on the way out the door. I was eleven yet understood extortion.
The old dude took the bill and slipped it into his shirt pocket, and told us he’d keep the police out of it but he still had to call our parents. “Or,” he said. “Maybe there’s something else you two girlies could give me.” Fee and I shared a look. We didn’t need to discuss. We turned back to the old perv, lifted our shirts and gave him a three-count flash of our tender buds in their little cotton bralets. When we pulled our shirts back down, he hit the button on his desk. The door unlocked behind us, and we bolted. We ran through the drugstore and into the mall, then out to the parking lot to Morena’s empty car, and sat scream-laughing in the backseat, imitating the slurry way he’d said, “Malibu Sunset.” The ickies, as Fee called the feelings, would come later. I cried in my bed that night for betraying my boobs.
We didn’t tell our parents about the drugstore perv. We would’ve had to say why we’d ended up in that windowless room. We didn’t tell the other girls because they’d have judged Fee for stealing. I never asked Fee why she lifted the lipstick when I had money in my pocket and would’ve bought it for her. “Malibu Sunset” became our code for when shit was getting all too real.
This laptop is my savior. To be able to write about what is happening right now? While I’m living it? Not to mention the access to information. Knowledge really is power. I cannot even imagine, as bad as this is, what it would be like to be sitting here in the dark, in the dark.
* * *
—
Sherman Miller. My fucking father is helping with the investigation. I’m kinda tripping on that right now.
I’ve looked online, but Sherman’s not out there shouting that I’m innocent, or calling on people to put down their guns. Like, how would Sherman be helping? By throwing my mother under the bus like he did when they split up? He did that. Threw her under, ran her over, then backed up and rolled over her again, and again, until she was flattened, like in cartoons.
I was beginning eighth grade when my father slipped away. He was suddenly gone a lot, and when he was home, he was cold and distracted. He’d go out to the patio at night to smoke cigars and talk on his phone, and I’d crack open my window and listen as he confided to my parents’ friends, and associates and clients, and family members, “Shelley has lost her mind. She’s gone off the