This Little Light Read online

  I went up to my bedroom and straight to my side bedroom window, hoping Jinny was in her room so I could spy. She was. Jinny Hutsall was lying across her beautiful bed, staring up at the ceiling fan—nekked—with her little ‘kini balled up on the duvet beside her. Boring. Still, I wanted to look.

  Then—and this was the weird part—she started talking. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I was like, who’s in there with her? All of a sudden she sits up and gets on her knees in the middle of the bed, and she raises her eyes to the ceiling and keeps, like, chatting in a conversational way, and waiting for a response, and then she’s saying more shit, and then waiting, and then she starts laughing her ass off. Okay. So I was right. Jinny Hutsall is off. She’s naked, having a hilarious conversation with her ceiling fan. Well, with God. I knew she was talking with God, which made the whole thing seem actually dangerous.

  I didn’t tell anyone what I saw. How could I? They’d say I was the whack one. They’d say, so what if Jinny was praying? And so what if she heard God answer back? And so what if she was naked in her own room? We all walk around naked in our rooms. Fair enough. And they would hate me for spying. I really didn’t want to out myself as a Peeping fucking Tina, on top of everything else. But I kept watching Jinny, that night, and most nights after, careful to hide behind my drapes, until she fell asleep, or left her room and my pervy view.

  The next day, Jinny Hutsall joined us for car pool and told us that her father had already been in touch with Jagger Jonze and he’d agreed to host the AVB and the orientation event. My hive screamed like fangirls. And there it was. A seismic shift. And rather than stand alone with my ethics and opinions, instead of being odd Jew out, which is how Jinny made me feel, I suggested we all head to Rodeo Drive for pre-shopping the following week. Shelley looked at me sideways, like wha…?

  “You might want to check with your father first,” she said.

  On the way to school, the girls were excited, talking about gowns and hairstyles and whatnot, but I was thinking about Jinny and her ceiling fan. I noticed Fee was also quiet. Delaney saw it too, and I heard her whisper, “You know my dad’ll totally buy you whatever he buys me.”

  Fee was like, “I know. But, like, even if he buys my dress and all, wouldn’t it be too creepy for me to, like, promise my virginity to him?”

  My mother kept her mouth shut but nodded. Very. Creepy.

  Fee opened her eyes again, so I stopped writing about stupid freaking Jinny in this blog, prison diary, memoir, deposition or whatever it’s morphed into.

  So…not to jinx it, but Fee’s sitting here with cracker crumbs all over her mouth. No puking. Her color looks better too. I think the poison—if it was that—must be mostly out of her system. The tequila too. Now she’s just severely dehydrated, and scared.

  She asked if I’ve been writing all night, and I admitted I had. She wanted to know if I’d been back online. Yep. I’ve been checking obsessively. She wanted to know the deets. So I told her we need to tune in to Jagger Jonze’s Higher Power Hour later, and that Miles was detained and released, and that Jinny and the rest of the Hive have been tweeting at us all night, and that I think Brooky and Dee and Zara have been brainwashed. I told her that my mother’s still being questioned, but I didn’t tell her that her mother’s about to be deported. I did tell her about the sympathizers sending in pics of themselves in wedding gowns, though, creating all the wild-goose chases and false leads. And the most promising development?

  Journalists, and regular people, are starting to question. CNN has been looking at the uptick in violent protests and other crimes at purity balls around the country, and wondering if it’s just possible that it’s the Crusaders themselves doing the crimes, sending “fake” protesters, creating a picture of persecution to bring sympathy to their cause. Remember that AVB in Missouri last year? Every car in the parking lot got tagged with violent antireligious graffiti. They never found the people who did it, but the whole country heard about it. And the alt-right definitely used that event to skewer the left. At another ball in Little Rock, a bunch of people in masks threw eggs at the girls in their white gowns. There was also a bomb threat at a purity ball in Sarasota. And one in Louisiana too. Those turned out to be hoaxes, but they got a ton of press. Genius.

  When I told Fee all of this, she closed her eyes. I thought, for a sec, she was going back to sleep. “Fee?”

  “Shh. I’m praying.”

  Seriously? But then again, why not? Fee’s not a heinous God person. I know a lot of Christians who aren’t haters, like Miss Maureen in the front office at school, and Miss Yvonne from the lunchroom. They’re sweet. And helpful. And I’ve never felt them look at me with anything but kind eyes. Even if I don’t believe in Him, their God is not an asshole. I guess. I don’t know. Maybe secretly I’m hoping I’m wrong, and that He’s somewhere in the atmosphere, and will answer Fee’s prayers.

  She was still praying when we heard banging outside that sounded like it was coming from the trailer. Wind? The big black dog?

  I got up and looked out the little window. The trees are bending in the wind, tumbleweeds blowing around—so many tumbleweeds at this time of year. A plastic garbage bin was rolling back and forth in Javier’s driveway, and just slammed up against some paint cans stacked neatly against the side of his house.

  I’m like, “When the dog-beater leaves his trailer, I’ll find a way to get into Javier’s cabin and get us something to drink, Fee. Or I’ll break into the Airstream.”

  “Think Javier has a water filter, Ror?”

  Highly doubtful. “Maybe there’s something in his fridge.”

  Fee was quiet for so long I turned to look at her.

  “I’m thinking we need to turn ourselves in,” she finally said.

  “No way. We wait for Javier. He’s coming back with help.”

  “We can’t stay here all day. I seriously think I will die if I don’t get some water. I just wanna go home.”

  “But turning ourselves in? We won’t be going home, Fee. We don’t have any friends out there. Our girls? You don’t seem to be getting that they’ve turned on us.”

  “They’ll turn back. They’re family. And Mr. Tom’ll figure out the immigration stuff with my mom. She’s like his sister.”

  We heard another noise outside. I jumped up again to look out the window and saw the blue tarp that blew off the Airstream trailer last night flapping our way like some huge drunken heron, then wrapping itself around the oak beside the shed. When that old drunk comes out of his trailer, he’ll come over here to get it. I’m very afraid of that man.

  “I’m worried about the dude from the trailer. Javier says we shouldn’t let him see us. If he finds out we’re here, it’s over.”

  “Then it’s over.”

  “Don’t say that, Fee.”

  “My mouth is so dry it hurts to talk. Let’s just be quiet, ‘kay? Let’s just sit here and think about what we’re gonna do next.”

  Ouch. I’ve been so lonely here, and dying to talk to Fee, and she’s just shut me down. I’m going back online.

  Breaking news? Fee’s purse—her little gold metal clutch—was recovered from the bombed-out bathroom. The media is making a big fucking deal of this, showing pics of Fee with the purse at her quinceañera last July (Tom Sharpe refused to buy Fee and Delaney new bags for the ball since they already had a closetful of them). Now everybody’s freaked about Fee’s purse and its undisclosed contents. What? Some melted lipstick? The pearl ring that was too small for her finger?

  Fee is shocked that the metal clutch survived the bomb blast. I thought it was whatever, but she is so upset. Agitated. Like, I get that our purses are private, but come on. Given everything that’s going on, why does the idea that people are looking in her purse make her so fucking itchy?

  “Who cares, Fee? Seriously. I don’t think you’re seeing the big picture here.”

  “I am seeing the big picture. I care about my purse because it’s private.”

  �
�Private? What the hell, Fee? What was in there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Rory…I don’t…I don’t understand any of what is going on. Jinny’s a Crusader and all, but she’s our friend. And Jagger…”

  I said, “Jagger Jonze is a straight-up con man. And Jinny Hutsall is not our friend.”

  “I don’t know who planted that bomb, or who put that nasty thing in your car, Ror, but is it possible Jinny and Jagger are being played too?”

  Que the fuck pasa to my life? Fee is protecting Jinny Hutsall? Making excuses for Jagger Jonze? I know she’s sick and tired and thirsty, but really? It’s gotta be more than that. When I think about it, there’s been something off about Fee for the past few days.

  I think it started the day before yesterday, when she went to Cerritos to see her abuela to get some family heirloom necklace she wanted to wear to the ball. It was the first time Fee was gonna be driving out there without her mom. She was going there and coming straight back—only take a few hours—and I offered to go with. I was actually dying to go with. I wanted to meet Fee’s cousin Dante, the one with the piercings and tats. But Fee hard passed.

  “But what about Dante?”

  “He won’t be there.”

  “Whatever. I wanna meet your abuela too.”

  She was like, “No. Ror. Ugh. My relatives don’t like white people.”

  “I can handle that.”

  “They’re cold. They’ll call you Blanca and make faces behind your back. Awkward.”

  “Then I’ll wait in the car when you go in.”

  “Plus, you get carsick when you don’t drive, Rory, and Mr. Tom said I could bring the convertible and I really wanna drive.”

  “I can take meds.”

  “Ror.”

  “I’ll be fine, Fee.”

  “No, Rory. Stop.”

  I was being relentless. But, like, I’ve always been this way, so why didn’t Fee want my company in the car? We’re best friends, and we’ve hardly spent any time together, just the two of us, since Jinny Hutsall. I know Fee’s embarrassed about the procit thing, but I had another thought—a sickening thought—that Fee was gonna take Jinny Hutsall to Cerritos instead of me. So I kept watch over the Sharpes’ house from my front bedroom window Friday morning. Fee left alone. Thank God.

  “The necklace?” I said, realizing that I couldn’t remember Fee having a necklace on at the ball.

  “What necklace?” Her face was blank.

  “The one you drove out to Cerritos to get the other morning?”

  “Oh. Yeah. The clasp broke, so I couldn’t wear it.”

  Fee was obviously lying. I don’t know why. Then she burst into tears, and I wrapped her up in my arms and let her heave and sob, and then I started thinking, fuck, those tears! She really needs to stop crying because dehydration.

  “Fee. We’re gonna get out of this. Okay? I promise.”

  “I’m so thirsty, Ror. It’s all I can think about. Can’t we just go home? I get that there’s a bounty, but people aren’t actually gonna kill us.”

  “What rock have you been living under? Remember Joyce Johnson? Leslie Givens? Those girls from New York? Remember what the Crusaders did to them? What about that Allegra Coombs? She was shot by some Crusader for wearing a My Body T-shirt, for the love of fuck!”

  “Well, I’d rather be in a prison cell drinking water than here dying of thirst! Please, can we just start walking on the road and see what happens? I can’t take it anymore, Ror. I can’t!”

  We were quiet for a long time, then Fee said, “What exactly are you writing, Ror? What all did you write about what happened?”

  “Just the facts.”

  “You didn’t tell about me crapping myself and puking all night?”

  “I’m writing our defense.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m explaining about the Hive, and our lives, and about Jinny and Jagger, and I’m gonna write about orientation night next, and all that went down at the ball, and I’m, like, writing our convos down—not verbatim, but, you know, close.”

  “Okay, well, I really hate that. And you can’t write about orientation night. You cannot write about that, Rory.”

  I can. And I’m gonna, but I don’t wanna fight about it with Fee.

  “Wait. Can’t they trace us through your posts?”

  “I’m not posting. Just writing. I won’t submit until we’re safe. Or found. Whichever comes first.”

  “If they were gonna find us here, wouldn’t they have by now?”

  “There are a lot of people looking, Fee. We’re a gold mine.”

  She reached for my hand. We squeezed fingers.

  Now we’re just sitting here as the sun rises higher and the shed becomes a pizza oven. Fee’s staring straight ahead, like she’s lost in fear. Maybe confusion? I used to think I could read her mind, but now I just don’t know. Maybe she’s so thirsty she just can’t deal. I’m thirsty too, but I’m also edgy from being stuck in this shed. My period is flowing thick and sticky, and all of it just makes me wanna punch Jinny Hutsall in the head.

  The winds seem pretty calm at the moment, which is not good. Fee managed to pull herself up to look out the window. I joined her and we counted the little black specks in the distance—small planes and copters flying our way from the airport in Santa Monica. Twelve of them. “The copters look like tadpoles,” I said. She nodded.

  You’d think, with all the fear and stress, my period would stop, but I’m a crime scene. I just opened the dusty suitcases wondering if maybe I’d find some clothes or towels or something, but they were empty. The white trash bags? Can’t bring myself to open one. Looks like they’re filled with leaves and shit. The smell. I mean, aside from me and Fee. Definitely mice. Or rats. What if there are rodents in the trash bags?

  Then Fee asked me what I was thinking about and I said, “The fiery deaths of Jinny Hutsall and Jagger Jonze.”

  She took the high road again, which is really fucking annoying. “Hating on Jinny and Jagger isn’t gonna change anything. Besides, we don’t have the facts.”

  “You’re doing it again. Protecting them. The fuck, Fee?”

  “I’m not protecting anybody. I just said I can’t see Jinny and Jagger Jonze doing this to us.”

  “Can’t see? You saw. You were there.”

  “But what actually happened? We don’t even know. You really think Jinny or Jagger Jonze planted that bomb? And the rest of it? Why would she set us up? We don’t have any proof of anything. Aren’t we doing to them what people are doing to us? You hate conspiracy theory people.”

  “What is even happening right now?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense, Ror. Why go to all that trouble to frame us? You really think Jinny wanted you to die because she hates Jews?”

  “Yeah, Fee—that’s never happened in the history of the world.”

  “And you think Jagger Jonze hates Jews so much too? I mean…I’m not Jewish and I’m in this too.”

  “It’s not just that, Fee. I’m not sure what all the connections are, but something happened. The night before the ball. I did something.”

  “You did something?”

  I know I have to tell Fee about spying on Jinny Hutsall and filming her in a very compromising situation the day before the ball. I have to tell her that I think the real reason we’re here is that footage on my palm-cam, on the floor behind my dresser in my room.

  Fee knew I’d asked my aunt Lilly for the little long-lens palm-cam for my birthday because I told everybody I was interested in making short films. Not true. I wanted that camera for the sole purpose of filming Jinny Hutsall. I thought if the girls saw how actually flaked she is—how fully insane she looks on her knees on her bed talking to the ceiling fan—we could push her out of the Hive. Ever since I got the camera, I’ve been recording Jinny’s bizarro conversations—no audio—but I couldn’t always get a great angle, or she didn’t look as crazy through the lens as I thought she would
. I needed the kind of footage that would persuade my girls to take a step back from her.

  Then, the night before yesterday, I looked out my front window and noticed there were a bunch of cars at the Hutsalls’. I figured maybe one of her brothers was home and having friends over or something. I didn’t really expect to find Jinny in her room when I crossed to my other window, but there she was, on her bed, naked as always. Truth? If I had a body like her, I’d be naked as much as possible too. So I grabbed my little video camera, and I’m in position behind my curtains, and there’s Jinny stretched out on her bed. She’s talking, but not to her ceiling fan. She’s looking toward her door. There is definitely someone in her room. Holy fuck.

  My hand is shaking, but I keep filming. And then this pair of jeans walks past the bed. I can tell it’s a guy. One of her brothers? I’m freaked that her brother’s in her room when she’s nude. I wait. Jinny stops talking. Then she kneels like she does, ready to pray, and I totally zoom in, and that’s when it happens. She gets down on her hands too, and sticks her perfect ass up in the air, and she turns around to look at the person in her room, and I realize she’s, like, presenting herself. I watch, and I film, and I’m trying not to tremble so my camera work isn’t shaky.

  I keep on filming as the guy—which fucking brother?—walks up behind her, naked too. I can’t see his face because I’m in so tight, but I watch as this guy jams himself balls deep into Jinny Hutsall’s butt. Then I tilted the camera up to find the guy’s face. It wasn’t one of her brothers.

  And that’s when the Reverend Jagger Jonze looks up, and I feel like he’s looking right down the lens, and I freak. I dropped my camera, and it fell behind my dresser. The thing is, I don’t know for sure if he saw me filming them. I just…But it has to be that. Right? It’s the only thing that makes sense of what happened.

  This news, my confession, doesn’t freak Fee out the way I thought it would. The way it should.

  She doesn’t believe me. She actually says, “That didn’t happen.”