This Raging Light (17 page)

I'm pretty sure my lymph nodes just got bigger.

“So what is it?” he says.

“Can I work?”

“Your sister here again?”

The tablecloth under the plastic has flags on it.

“I saw her in the back,” he says. “You gonna keep her here all night?”

I scoot back in my chair. “Okay, so I'm fired, right?”

He stands up and paces for a second. I want to bolt. I don't need to sit around for this. And he looks mad. Supermad.

“You're makin' out with people in the halls. You bail before you're done with your side work. You bring your kid sister to work with you.” He scoots his glasses back on his nose, reaches inside his pocket for a cigarette, lets it hang between his fingers. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I get it, okay?”

“No, it's not okay. You are part of a team. You have to act like it.”

I don't know what that means, and that's fine because he's not done talking. I sit here like I'm five and take my medicine.

“You're jumping into rivers and shit, and you don't even tell me. Best friend's in a coma? And who's that guy with his hands all over you, anyway? And why do you have your sister with you?” He puts his hands on the table. “Where are your parents, Lucille?”

I'm out of here. I'm out. I am almost by him, but he grabs my arm. “Uh-uh,” he says. “Think I don't know about your dad?”

“I'm sure you do,” I push past my swollen throat. “Everybody knows about that.”

“That's right. And I know your mom's not around either. I don't know why, but I know that. I know you need this job, so why don't you trust me and act like you need this as much as you do.”

“Why?” I ask. “What for?”

“So we can help you.”

His eyes are really blue. I've never had him this close to me before. His breath is all coffee and cigarettes, but his eyes are a blue that breaks right past his dirty lenses.

“I never had a kid, Lucille, and I probably never will, unless I knock up some resistance hottie after the zombies come.”

I smile.

I smiled!

“But if I had a kid, I would want one like you. One who doesn't sit around and wait for things to happen. I would want a badass chick for a daughter who goes out and gets a job and takes care of her own like you do that sister of yours. I would want one who jumps into rivers in the middle of the ever-loving night and pulls her best friend out of the water and saves her.”

I start to say something, but he puts up his hand.

“I want you by my side when the zombies attack, okay?” He makes a weird digging motion with his hands. “I wouldn't say that to just anyone. Own that shit.”

“So I'm not fired?”

“On one condition,” he says. “We're going to sit down, and you're going to tell me exactly what's going on with you. And you can't keep the kid here anymore. We'll figure something out. Get the girls to help out. Rachel can do her makeup on her nights off or something. And I swear to Christ if I catch that boy with his hands on you again, he's gonna meet my leetle friend.” His hand is an unlit cigarette gun. “Together we stand, divided we fall.”

He hoots, and it is so dumb that it kills the cry that wants to come.

He is such a cheeseball.

And so magnificent.

“Hey,” he yells in the general direction of the office. “What's all the dilly-dallying for? Get your asses out here and start working! You got twenty minutes to get this goddamn place shipshape!”

Everyone shuffles out of the office and starts doing stuff.

His clammy hand is on my shoulder, then it reaches into his back pocket and pulls out some money. Four hundred dollars. “I already covered your shift today. You're going to take this and not say one single word. You take the week off, and I'll see you on Monday.”

“Freddie . . .”

He cuts me off. “Not a word.” He heads for the side door, surveys the room. “Well, okay then,” he says. “Good.”

When we get home, our house is spotless. I mean completely. Everything is suddenly at right angles. The cupboards are stocked too. I can't even get mad or scared or anything, even though I know I locked up before I took Wren to school this morning.

I have nothing left inside, no room for panic. Neither does Wren. We just look at each other when I get Wren her snack, and we have so much to choose from. We both head up to the bathroom so I can take my shower, and up there, too. New bottles of shampoo and conditioner, brand-new soap, a few new towels. Whoever this person is has gone to new and greater lengths. Or maybe it isn't a person at all. Maybe it really is magic. Maybe it is like Wren says. Maybe it's an angel with giant luminous wings, shopping at the Super Fresh in gauzy duds, clipping coupons and stuff.

Maybe I'm finally losing it for real.

Whatever.

This has been the longest day.

Eden once told me she wanted to be cremated. Said she didn't want worms in her. She wanted to be in one of those biodegradable urns that you plant somewhere with a seed in it so you become a tree. I thought it was romantic, cool. I figured a thousand years from now I would tell Eden's husband or kids what she wanted, that maybe we would get to be part of the same garden.

I wasn't thinking about Eden dying now, in reality.

Potential hypothetical death is way less scary than actual maybe really soon death.

What will I do without her if she doesn't survive? Life without my father I can take. My mother, even. And Digby. Thinking his name is too much for me. But I cannot withstand any more loss. I know in my bones that I can't.

Shakaaaawah.

“Wake up,” I say to my best friend on this earth. “You hear me? You. Wake. Up.”

Shakaaaawah. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Please,” I say. “Please.”

“Why is it so hot?” Eden was laid
out on her lounge chair, book over her face while I people watched and tried not to be too depressed. Mom and Wren were at the store, and Dad was still sleeping. There was a lot of foot traffic that day, car traffic too, what with the giant U-Haul pretty much blocking the street.

“Um, because it's July, and it's hot in July,” I said.

“It's like God has a personal vendetta against the East Coast and has unleashed his wrath upon us with explosive heat and humidity.” She perked up for a minute. “The new house has air conditioning. Like, real, actual air conditioning.”

“How nice for you,” I said.

John and Digby came out the door, each on one end of a desk, and shuffled to the truck.

“Are you serious right now?” Digby shot as he went.

“What?” Eden said. “All my stuff is packed.”

“Yeah, but Mom's in there cleaning. You could help.”

“I will, okay? I am taking a break.” Eden flopped back down, wiped her forehead. “Pain in my ass.”

“I'm going to miss you,” I said. “Nothing is going to be right, now.”

“Everything is going to be right,” she said, stretching forward over one leg, tugging on the bottom of her foot. “It's just going to be different. Nothing wrong with different.”

“Well, I like things the way they are.”

She shrugged and pulled on her foot again.

“I guess if I was going to air conditioning and a custom-decorated house, I'd be okay with it too,” I allowed. “But it's going to be boring and stupid without you.”

“We'll meet,” she said, proffering a pinky. “We'll meet at our spot anytime you want, whenever we feel like it.”

I sat on the railing, tangled my pinky in hers.

“Promise?” I said.

“Oh, I promise.” She leaned forward. “And, Lu, trust me when I say, whatever else, it will never be boring.”

“What? The neighborhood? Yes it will. It will suck forever.”

“No,” she said, smirking as John and Digby came back toward the house. “Not the neighborhood, silly. I'm talking about life.”

I come to consciousness back to
front in pitch-black. I'm burning. That's the first thing I feel. I'm burning, not my skin so much, but my insides, all the way down. It's an ache that starts from somewhere I can't name, and I'm separating from my body it hurts so much. I would do anything to escape it.

Ashes to ashes to ashes to ashes.

I'm coming apart.

I have been dreaming something and the dream has chased me out.

It takes a long time. Hours to turn a body to ash, to basic chemical compounds for alternate disposal, to burn a person back into dust. You don't get incinerated in seconds or minutes. Even then there are teeth, bone fragments. I think that's how they do it. At night. They fire up the oven and cook you down, come back in the morning and fit you into one of those little boxes.

Eden's legs are so long. I don't want that to happen to her. Not now. Skin melted, muscles chewed away, and finally even the bones of her giving in and crumbling. No more arabesques. No more pliés. No more worrying about pointe, about whether she can make it, about anything. No worries. None of anything else, either.

Hot skin presses against my own. Eden with her flesh falling away and her eyes bulging. Feel her all on top of me in the dark. It's not Eden. Eden's not dead; she's at the hospital. My head isn't right.

It's Wren on me.

I lay a hand across her forehead, and my palm stings. I try to sit up, but I'm dizzy.

“Wrenny girl,” I whisper, grasp around for the bedside lamp.

She moans. She is so hot.

I scramble. I have to.

I have no phone. I have no Tylenol. I don't know what to do, but we are both sick and something bad is going to happen to Wren if I don't take action. She doesn't argue or anything when I throw one of Mom's jackets over her.

She runs a hand over my face, says, “Oh, you're hot.”

I grab a towel and get it wet. “Put this on you,” I tell her. She holds it on her forehead, and I get her out into the cold. There's more snow on the ground, but it's not anything I can't handle. I get her in the car and drive.

Not to the hospital. I don't want to go there. I go up.

To the cul-de-sac.

I knock at the door a lot before I remember the doorbell, and then I push that. It's white and shiny under the streetlamp and I'm not hot anymore. I'm the coldest I've ever been.

I never saw Janie look like that before, little pieces of her red hair like an electrocuted Raggedy Ann. When she saw Wren, she uncrossed her arms and took us in, cooing. She's spending her first night home away from the hospital. John is there instead. And we had to get sick now and keep her from sleeping.

Tut-tut,
she says. She's not sleeping anyway.

I know this room so well. Eden's. The softest down blankets and pillows, all that certain cream color, the hardwood floors, the plush rectangular matchy carpet. The prints of ballerinas on the walls, mostly black-and-whites, framed. The books and books and books, so many, all worn along their spines, and the shelf. Every pair of Eden's ballet shoes from tiny all the way up. The closet, half open, all the clothes swishing and shimmering in there. If I open the drawers, I will find all the leotards, the leg warmers. The bulk of Eden. And then up on the ceiling above my head, that newest and best quote. The last quote, maybe.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT. RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT.
Again.

Janie has Wren in the living room so she can keep an extra-close eye on her. It's hollow without her on me, but I can also just lie here, full of antifever medication, tea at the bedside, and do nothing.

Thoughts get watery. There was something sleepy in the meds.

Is Eden in her body? Does she know her dad is next to her? Does she know I'm sorry? Will she dance again or will she burn? Where's Mom?

Maybe Eden is going to flit through the door any second and bounce onto the bed. She will tuck her chin into her hands, hair falling all around her heart face, and she will say, “Tell me, li'l Lulu. Tell me everything.”

How Digby ends up in bed with me, I don't really know.

I'm sweating. Because my fever broke or because of this. Breathing makes time go faster, and I don't want time to do anything at all. I want time to take a vacation. I want to give it a pink slip, walking papers.
Beat it, time.
This is where I want to be forever. With Digby.

I am also not breathing because of Digby's hand. It has crept under the blankets and is on my waist now. Moving. Just a little bit, not too much, but it is. An inch up. An inch down. So soft, like it's daring, but only just. If he stops, I will spontaneously combust. It's vicious how much I want to move into him, but I make myself stay still, just shaking on the inside, maybe on the outside some too. I don't know.

He trembles like me. I can hear it, the way his breath is coming out. But his hand is sure. That part of him dips under my T-shirt and rolls over the skin underneath. I wish it was everywhere. I want to turn over. I don't want to do anything that will make the lights come on, that will make this stop, and Elaine is in my head somewhere, though I try to push her out because she doesn't belong here. This is between Digby and me.

Just us.

Which is when we hear Janie. Sobbing. It isn't a human sound. It's like a wolf, like a ghost, muffled in something, but not enough. Not with the house so quiet.

Digby's hand goes still.

“Closet,” he whispers into my neck. “She's been crying in her closet.”

A mother's cry curdles cream and skin pulls tighter and Digby and I wrench our bodies against it, squeeze even closer together.

It's like Janie is begging.