This Raging Light (4 page)

“No,” I say.

“You said she is.”

“I did, Wrenny girl.”

“Okay,” she says.

I want to ask the top of Wren's head what we're going to do. What does the future look like now? All I see is a black hole, an empty space where college and boys and food should be. If I don't do something, pretty soon the house will disintegrate and fall into the ground. Someone will find out we're here alone, Wren and I will have to leave and we will be separated, and my cell phone will be disconnected. Mom won't be able to get in touch if something happens to her. And if she does come back, she will have that slack look on her face. She won't try hard enough to get better. She won't fight. And we will all be lost and listing in oblivion.

Hundred-dollar bills from wandering souls aren't going to cut it.

Wren is snoring. I have been staring at the ceiling for a kajillion years.

My phone vibrates under my pillow. I don't even briefly think it's Mom. Only one person ever texts me at this time of night.

KNOCK KNOCK,
it says. Eden.

WHO'S THERE?
I manage to type, over Wrenny's head.

GET THEE TO THE RIVER

GIVE ME 30

We have a spot. You go a little way up the tow path and then cross over, past the old train car. We don't know how the train car wound up nestled between trees, wedged among rocks. We've always wondered why no one goes there but us, since it's so obviously the coolest spot in town. It's the perfect place to stare at the river and talk about stuff. We used to spend hours dipping our toes into the water on hot days, surrounded by lush green and sweet shade, back when we decided to be BFFs and had fake-gold necklaces to prove it. We even took a botched blood oath. Eden was in charge. The cuts took weeks to heal. Kind of like when she pierced my ears right on her rock. I should not allow her to wield sharp objects near my person.

So much has happened at this spot.

Now we meet at night, in the dark, because it's the only time we have to really be alone. And before you judge me about leaving Wrenny home, consider that she once slept through an earthquake at Disneyland and that we live in probably the safest place on earth. Anyway, whatever. Call me irresponsible.

I swear Eden is a lighthouse. Perched on her favorite rock in her leg warmers and black hoodie, she looks like she's glowing in the dark, which hardly makes sense considering what she's wearing. I think it's her freakishly pale skin.

I hug her for longer than I should. It's different here than at school, or even her house. It's just the two of us, no witnesses. I like to think that the things we talk about here are safe, that words drip from our mouths into the earth and grow trees that guard secrets in their leaves.

“I'm scared,” I say before I am even all the way sitting.

“I know.” She holds on to her knees and angles her head to the side, a lithe, bright tree fairy.

“Mrs. Albertson is asking questions and the house is falling apart, and Wrenny, I don't know what's going on with her and I can't see the future anymore when I look for it in my head.”

She slips hair behind her ear.

“At least you don't have rent or a mortgage. Praise be to your Aunt Jan.” She crosses herself. “May god rest her soul, of course.”

“Taxes,” I offer. “The bill came today.”

“You need some help, Lu,” she says. “You're not going to be able to do this alone.” She pulls a smoke out of her pocket. All ballerinas smoke, she says. Weight. I like the smell of it, how it almost reaches my lungs too. Somehow it isn't horrible on her the way it is on others. Maybe that's because the rest of her smells like honeysuckle and rock salt. It all comes together pleasing, like a really complicated piece of chocolate. She takes a long drag. Ashes. “Well, I guess you only have nine months until you turn eighteen, right?”

I know she means to comfort me, but that sounds like forever to hold it all together. And it's the first time anyone's said that Mom might really not come back. And what happens when I turn eighteen? At the stroke of midnight on my birthday everything magically gets fixed? Maybe I could get guardianship of Wren, but what happens after? What about the rest of my life?

“Don't let my mom find out,” she says. “She will do exactly the wrong thing. And she's been asking questions. She's not stupid.” She pulls something from her pocket. Shoves bills into my hand. A no-nonsense tree fairy. “I think you should stay away from my house for a while. Lie low. Maybe she'll forget to involve herself. Meanwhile, buy groceries. And let me think. We'll figure this out.”

“‘We,'” I say, staring at the money in my palm. It's enough for lunch supplies for the next couple of days. Money I would like to give back but can't. Guilt. Shame. Joy. So many things.

“Of course ‘we.'” She smiles. “You're my BFFFFFFF.”

I giggle. She made me giggle. It feels like so long since I've done that. Eons.

I slip the money into my pocket, take her in again.

“Do you think my mom loves us?” I ask.

She watches me for too long, chooses her words so carefully. “It doesn't matter if she loves you or not.” She tucks long fingers inside her sleeves, lets them dangle.

“Really?” I say.

“‘All feeling has an equivalent in action or is useless.'”

“Did you say that?”

“Of course not,” she says. “Virginia Woolf.”

“Oh.”

“You know what I think, my li'l Lulu?” Eden pulls her zipper up and down like she's hoping the answer will spill out of her chest if she does it enough times. I know how much she wants to have answers for me. “I think that your mom loves you. She might love you so much that she cries all damn day. She might be that sorry.” She looks at me, right through me to the other side and back again. “But if she doesn't show up, if she can't—for whatever messed-up reason that allows her to stay away knowing everything you've been through, everything you will have to endure without her—then you just tell me, Miss Lovely Lu, you just tell me what the fuck difference it makes.”

In the name of action, Eden and I put on our pragmatic hats. She pulls a pen and her little quote notebook from her pocket and we come up with a list.

• STEP ONE: Answer Shane's text and go to that job interview at Fred's tomorrow even though it's really, really scary.
  

   
  

• STEP TWO: Eden will watch Wrenny for me two days a week at my house if I get it, so that I can go to said job. She will pretend she's at ballet for extra days. Four hundred dollars a week should do it. Barely, but it will make a big difference.
  

   
  

• STEP THREE: Pay the bills one at a time, in order of importance. Strangely, cell phone and cable are at the top. Well, after electric.
  

   
  

• STEP FOUR: Go to school and make sure Wrenny goes to school and does homework so that no one gets suspicious.
  

   
  

• STEP FIVE: Smile some.
  

Eden writes this, makes a loopy smiley face, rips the page from her notebook, and stuffs the list into my hand.

“That's a start,” she says. Looks at me sly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“I'm just trying to picture you in short shorts.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“I don't think overalls are on the menu at Fred's.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“Or saying ‘Oh my gosh.'”

“Oh my gosh!”

“You're going to need a makeover.”

“Shut up.”

“And to expand your vocabulary,” she says. “‘Shut up' and ‘Oh my gosh' aren't going to cut it. Work on ‘Hey there, mister, how do you like your taco? Soft? Or hard?'” She says “hard” so sick. Pushes her chest forward and shakes.

“Ew!” I say, and we are laughing so much. Then I think out loud. “He'll never hire me.”

“Oh yes he will,” she says. “You have a thing—you just have layers on you.” She flits her leg out across my face like she does. “You'll have to take. Them. Off.” Gets serious. “Just pretend you're a theater geek and it's a school play or something.” This is a preposterous notion. The strength of a thousand Mr. Universes could not persuade me to the stage.

“Anyway, you're not eight anymore,” she says, glowing mischief into the black. “Buy some lip gloss, for crying out loud.”

“So what did I say?” Eden grills me.

We are in front of Fred's right at the edge of town, sitting in Mom's car. I am here for my interview, trying to steal a glimpse through the rectangular building's reflective windows to no avail. Eden is biting her thumb, which means she's worried.

“You told me to be brave,” I tell her so she knows I remember her instructions.

“Right.” Eden acts like this is all I will need if I can just hear it clearly enough. “‘Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.'” Peers at me. “That's a good one, you know. You should commit it to memory.”

“Okay,” I say. “But I don't want you to be disappointed if I don't get it.”

“Stop. You'll get it. You look great.” She picks at my V-neck T-shirt, pulls it down at the front. I pull it back up. “You have to show a little body. Just a little. Mini-cleavage.”

“Okay.” I pull the shirt back down some.

“You look like Mom,” Wrenny says.

“I borrowed from her closet.”

“That's not why,” Wren says, and I feel funny.

“All right, little girl,” Eden says, throwing the car in reverse before I'm even all the way out. “Let's go have some fun.”

“Yay!” Wren says.

“And there will be dancing. Oh yes there will.”

“Yay!” she says again.

“Text me when you're done and I'll come back for you.”

I nod.

They drive away with the music up loud.

Apparently I am not sexy enough.

“What the hell is this?”

Fred looks like a mad scientist, not a restaurant owner. Salt-and-pepper hair, horn-rimmed glasses, shorts, socks pulled up to his knees, and clogs. I don't know what I was expecting with all the gossip about him and his eccentricities, but not this. This is a whole other thing. He's like Hunter S. Thompson the chef. Gastronomical gonzo. Eden would love him.

Shane, decked out in the required short shorts and black tank, which she is totally pulling off, smacks him on the shoulder.

“Beth quit, right? This is my friend Lucille. Hire her and be quiet. She's here to save your ass.”

“Hunh. Is that a Jimi Hendrix thing? Your name?”

I am impressed. No one gets that. I nod.

He points a skinny finger at me. “What is she wearing, Rach? This girl look like one of us to you?”

“Come on, Freddie. She's cute, even in boring clothes.” This from perhaps the most gorgeous human I've ever seen. Platinum blond hair, a body that makes my non-gay self want to weep, and eyes so big you could just fall in. “Rachel,” she says in the softest voice, and she takes my hand in hers. A limp handshake. “Nice to meet you.” Marilyn Monroe liveth.

“Does she talk?” he asks. He wipes clean, wet hands on his apron, then rests his palms on his waist, Peter Pan–style. He fairly vibrates, and I'm pretty sure he hates me. I knew I wasn't right for this. How did I let Eden talk me into it?

Two hundred dollars,
I think.
Stack of bills,
I think.

I try a smile.

“Oh, girl, stop that,” Shane whispers in my ear. “That does not look good.”

“I talk,” I say to Fred, willing myself to meet his eyes.

He smiles a weaselish smile. “Well okay, then, Talkie Talkerton, I got a question for you. Are you ready for war?”

“We love war,” Shane says. “Right, girl?”

Generally speaking, I am a pacifist, but I nod, say, “I totally love war.”

“Good, because this floor is a battleground, and when I say ‘go' we are shooting bullets. My food is grenades you drop. Pull the pin, baby. We are special ops, got it?”

I nod, follow with a “Yes, yes, special ops.”

A few girls have wandered in and are doing things behind him. Cutting lemons and limes, filling plastic bottles with honey, rolling silverware. Listening to Fred rant and making faces at each other behind him, but grinning and happy, too. This is a good sign. But Fred seems all kinds of crazy. Which reminds me of what Shane said. How we are all some kind of crazy. I think I might like Fred's particular brand.

“You listening to me?” he says.

“Yes, I'm listening.”

“The way I see it”—he paces around in front of me, does a shuffle step—“I open at five and close at ten. You're a member of Freddie's Special Forces from when you get here at four until you're done mopping and shit.”

“Okay.”

“You don't mess with my food, with my team, we'll be all right. We're family, and I will have your back, see?”

He pauses until I say yes. Then he's at it again.

“Okay, good. I need you four nights a week, Monday through Thursday. You want weekends, you have to earn it or someone from my weekend crew has to die.”

Four nights. I told Eden two, and no one is going to believe that ballet goes until after ten. I don't know what else to do, though. I have to take this job, and I have a feeling Fred isn't all that into negotiating.

“So let's do this,” he says.

I twitch. I'm hired?

“I'm hired?” I say.

“You'll be Rachel's busser, so you get waters for people, get drinks. Ask Val to grab your alcohol for you, and clean up after people. Get straws and sides of sour cream. Run checks, whatever needs doing. Make sure people are happy and taken care of. Never leave the floor without taking something off a table, and never come back without bringing something with you. You have to move in here. There's no sitting down. We'll see how you do.” He gives a crooked smirk. “We'll just see.” He turns to Shane, who is filling ketchups in the far corner. “She can't work like this, though. Can you do something about the clothes?”