This Raging Light (7 page)

“Which brings me to the good news,” Eden says.

She throws open the door.

“Such flourish,” Digby says.

“Come in the kitchen.”

We stumble past sleeping Wren in a line. Digby ducks a little as we pass through the doorway. All the cabinets are open. They are full. Every kind of rice, soup, canned vegetables, couscous, barley, box after box of pasta. Cereals line up neatly across the top shelf. Granola, oatmeal, and on and on.

“Holy crow,” I say. “Thank you.”

“What?” They say it in unison. Very twin.

“You guys did this, right?”

“No!” Again, unison.

“Well then, who did?”

“Just take it, Lu,” Eden says. “Gift horse. Mouth.” Looks to Digby. “Right?”

“This is good news?” Digby says. “Eden, think for a minute. Think about what this means.”

“It means the cabinets are full. And, tah-dah! That's not all.” Eden pulls on the refrigerator door. “This.”

The fridge is full too. I mean really, extra full. So is the freezer. Vegetables, fruit, yogurt for days and weeks, sour cream, cheese, tortillas, and ice cream, chicken nuggets, meat and fish, eggs, juice, and even some bubbly water. I have never, ever in my life seen anything like it.

“It's awesome, right?” Eden says.

“Do you not see?” Digby says. “This means someone knows. Someone who doesn't want you to know they know. It's weird.”

“Quit being so cynical, Dig,” Eden says. “She needs this. It's like she has a fairy godmother or something.”

“It was like this when you got back here from dropping me off today?” I ask.

“Yup.”

“That means somebody did it in the clear light of day,” Digby says. “That means they knew how long you'd be gone, that you'd have Wren with you, that they had to hurry. It means someone has been watching. Closely.”

“Well,” Eden says, looking less gleeful.

“Yeah,” Digby says, “it's troubling.”

“I have to start locking my door,” I say. No one in this town locks.

Digby leans against the counter. He is always leaning. “I guess this isn't exactly a hostile action. It's kamikaze generosity, for sure.”

I'm overheating. I want everyone to leave. I need to think and I can't, not while I'm standing here staring at all this food, and not with these two redheaded swizzle sticks hovering over me.

“At least you don't have to worry about food for a while,” Eden offers. “Although that is a lot of carbs.” She kicks up her legs and scooches herself onto the counter. “Okay, so there's one more piece of not-so-great news.”

“Really?” I say. “Did a wall collapse?”

“No. Wren came home with a note. Mrs. LaRouche wants to speak to your mom.”

Everything in me contracts.

“Mrs. LaRouche was the best,” Digby says. “You remember how she used to get us to be quiet?”

“Bum bum bee dum bum”
—Eden sings.

“Bum bum,”
I answer flatly.

“I don't think it's a big deal,” Eden says. “It's just . . .”

“Going to be challenging to produce a nonexistent parent.”

“Right.”

I cover my face. Count to three. Uncover my face. Nope, it's still here, still this earth, this life.

Eden's face scrunches. “Lu.”

“What?”

“You have a bloody nose.” Digby reaches for a paper towel from the new ginormous pile that has magically manifested itself on my counter. The expensive kind.

“There are tissues, too,” Eden says, pointing to the living room. “And toothpaste, mouthwash, Q-tips . . .”

“Stop!” I can't. I can't breathe, and it's not because of the blood that is dripping over my lips. It is all happening at once, and I can't make sense of it, of any of it, and I want to laugh just like I heard Dad doing. It's bubbling right under the surface, and if I let it go, I'll never stop. When Digby pushes the towel against my nose, I grab it from him and bat at his hand. My chest goes in and out, up and down.

Eden stares. “Dude,” she says.

I find the couch in the living room while I hold my nose, and they are shadows on me and I want them to go away, need them to go away so I can think. I've got numbers, so many numbers, doing Irish jigs on my head, and Mom, and her eyes they are big and so blue and so empty and they are all over me and my short shorts hot pants sexy shoes and makeup, and Dad who knows where, and a best friend who actually looks scared and everyone else and their perfect simple lives and me failing Wren all all the time and some Good Samaritan who knows and a love, a love who is standing right in front of me offering me his help and is so out of reach and I am so alone and I need them to go away.

“You're going to be okay,” Digby says. He makes a move for my hand and I jerk it back. “All this is going to be fine.”

“Go home,” I say, and my voice is hard. I've never heard my own voice like that.

Neither have the twins, apparently, because they both look like I just smacked them.

I wipe the blood from my nose, will the bleeding to stop. I march to the sink, splash water on my face, wash my hands, try to pick the blood from under my crooked nails. I'm pretty sure the splashing makes my mascara run, but right now I am too pissed off to care, and I don't want to look in the mirror because I don't know who I will find looking back at me. Mirror smashing will ensue. Just in case the seven-years-of-bad-luck thing is real, I'm not messing around. I'm not that far gone.

Welcome to my life.

The worst joke ever.

They are watching me like they're not sure what to do. I go to Wrenny on the couch and put my arm under hers, scoop her awake.

“Shower time?” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, make my voice quiet so she won't hear the hurt. “Shower time.”

I start up the stairs. Twelve to go. I don't look back, but I hear the door close behind me, the Beasty rumble. Mad that they left, but I would have shredded them if they had tried to stay.

Once I have Wren upstairs with her head leaned against the bathroom wall, I go back downstairs, close the blinds that look out onto the street, turn off the lights, and lock the door.

I go to the public library to email
Mrs. LaRouche from Mom's account, since one of the things Mom took was Dad's laptop. The librarian doesn't look up from her book, just hands me the sign-in sheet and waves at me with her very long nails.

“Good book?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding me into the computer room. “It's a good book.”

I type in Mom's password. Tonylaura1031. It's probably not the best password ever, but my parents met at one of Dad's shows on Halloween, and then Mom wound up magically having Wren on that same date however many years later. 1031. If you knew that one simple set of facts, you could get into just about any private Bennett business there is. Well, if you also knew the bank account number, that is.

Mom has 551 new messages. There's no sign that she's been on this email at all since she left. Some of the messages look important, so I scan the subject lines for a second. Mostly it's a lot of nothing. A sale at the Gap. Special deals on travel to the Bahamas.

I get to it. As Mom, I explain to Mrs. LaRouche that I work days and that I am sending Lucille in to discuss Wren after school and that she should feel free to pass along whatever information she needs to.

I wait.

I read some Internet news, which makes me feel a little guilty, considering that I have so much homework to catch up on and that a very nice-looking lady with way too many bags is waiting for my computer. Whatever. I still have thirty minutes. In that time I wander onto E! news and find out that the guy from the forthcoming zombie/werewolf/slasher movie slept with this girl while on that set, while his pregnant wife sat at home, and he's here to tell the world just how sorry he is. Not so long ago I could have told you all the celebrity news. Now I know nothing. Lately, it all filters as superfluous babble, but it's pretty nice right now, I have to say.

Just as my hour is running out and I'm about to have to turn the computer over to the lady with all the bags, a new email pops up.

Mrs. LaRouche will be fine having a conversation with Lucille. It will be delightful to see her after such a long while, she says. How about this afternoon?

I want to call Eden and tell her, ask her what I should do, how I should handle it, but I know I can't. Something bad happened last night when I made Eden leave, but I'm not sure what.

The classroom looks almost exactly the same as it did when I was in fourth grade. The book-cover posters have changed, but it still smells like apple juice and impending puberty. Wren is waiting for me on the playground with Shane and Melanie, and I can hear the kids shrieking out there.

Mrs. LaRouche is cute behind her desk, with her glasses hugging the tip of her nose so far down that I don't even know how they stay on. Her indiscernible chin has gotten even less discernible, and she wears a pageboy haircut that went out of style, like, thirty years ago.

“Ah.” She scoots from behind her desk and proffers a bony hug. “Lucille Bennett. It has been a spell, hasn't it?” She's originally from Georgia, and the accent has stuck. Her teeth are yellower than I remember. Aging looks like it sucks. “Have a seat, please.”

I do.

“You'll always be nine to me, I suppose.” She gives me a head-to-toe that is only acceptable because she was once my teacher. “You are turning into a beautiful woman.”
She said “woman” to me. Gross.
“How are you, sweetheart?”

“I'm okay,” I mumble. “Senior year and everything.”

“You're a senior?” Shakes her head. Her hair does not move. “What happens to the time? Do you have big college plans?”

I have no college plans.

“I'm thinking about a gap year,” I say.

There is a definite uneasy pause, like she's waiting for me to explain myself, which I am not going to do.

“So there was something about Wren?” I don't mean to be rude, but being in this classroom gives me the heebies.

“Yes.” Mrs. LaRouche startles back to the papers in her hand. “Of course. I'm sorry your mother couldn't come today. This is rather important, I think.”

I will hold it together no matter what she says. I am strong.

“Yeah, her hours got all changed around. It's a mess. Some nursing politics.” The nursing lie spins and spins.

“All right, well, she said it was fine with her if I share this with you, so let's talk.”

“Okay.”

“Let me begin by saying that your sister is a remarkable child.”

“I know.”

“She is far more developed than her classmates in a variety of areas. Science, for instance, and math.”

“Oh.”

“She also has excellent verbal skills. Did you know that Wren is currently reading at a ninth grade level?”

I should start reading out loud to her on my nights off. I should do a lot of things.

“Quite frankly,” she goes on, “if it were up to me, she would move forward and skip a grade. She seems unchallenged by the curriculum, and she simply breezes through her work.”

“That's all good news, right?” I say.

“Ah, well.” Mrs. LaRouche removes her glasses and allows them to fall on their chain around her neck. She looks at me square. “Yes, all of that is good, but I do have some concerns.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Wren appears extremely anxious, especially recently.” She hands me a paper.

I have a stomachache.

“She has requested lately to sit away from the other children. She complains that noise bothers her.” She points to a desk in the corner. “That's where she likes to spend her time. She's rather good-natured about it, but she is isolating herself. I'm simply worried that Wren is disappearing into her own world, not engaging with the other students, and I'd like to make our school counseling services available to her, if that's all right.”

“For what, exactly?” I breathe. In. Out. In. Out. “What good would that do?”

“There has been,” she says gently, “a lot of change for Wren in the past few months.” She sighs. “I really would have preferred to speak to your mother about all of this. It must be difficult for all three of you.”

“We're fine,” I say, then think of what an adult would want to hear. “We're in an adjustment period.”

“Yes, well, I'd like to show you something.” She hands me a piece of paper, Wren's writing all over it, the pink pen, the curly letters, the hearts over the
i
s.

“Should I read it?”

“Please,” she says. “Take your time.”

It says:

My Hero

 

My hero is the Barefoot Contessa. The Contessa bakes and she's round. The Contessa always has people over to eat dinner and we never have people over except Eden and Digby. The Contessa lives in a pretty house and our house isn't pretty. She has a soft voice and I bet her hugs are like pie. I bet she would tell me I'm pretty even though I'm not and that she would never leave ever.

I put the paper down. Mrs. LaRouche sits across from me. “Do you talk about this last summer's events within the household?”

I shake my head.

“I believe those events affected Wren much more than she is willing to admit, and I'm concerned that if the issue is not addressed openly within the home, it will begin to eat away at her. She needs a place to express herself without fear of repercussion.”

I nod.

“At this point, I would recommend some family counseling. There are some wonderful people who specialize here in town.” She hands me a piece of paper with some names. “But if you don't pursue that avenue, it might be good for Wren to feel she has somewhere safe to discuss her feelings. Often,” she goes on, “a gifted child such as Wren can unconsciously take on all the guilt and sadness associated with a situation like this.” She reaches a cool hand across to mine. “There can be some depression, of course.”