This Raging Light Read Free

have tried a million times to puzzle out the moment he turned so vital, and I can’t do it. I only know that my stupid, annoying feelings have completely compromised my ability to function around him, that I want to close the space between us and wrap myself around him. My whole being would exhale, I think. It’s ridiculous.
    Â 
    Which is why I stare at my plate. So hard I stare at my plate. I eat my meatball (I can only seem to stomach one), while Eden and Digby throw one-liners at each other. Nobody notices much, and I am afraid to look up, because Digby is exactly across the table from me.
    Wren stuffs meatballs all in her face. Sauce drips down the front of her shirt.
    â€œOh my gosh,” she says to Janie, “you’re, like, a culinary genius.”
    Janie beams in my peripheral vision.
    â€œYou come here anytime you want,” she says. “You are officially my favorite guest.” She spears some asparagus, smiles, and says, “Culinary.” Shakes her head. “So, Lucille, how long is your mother out of town for?”
    Forever. “She should be back in the next couple of days.”
    â€œIs she doing okay?”
Since,
she wants to say.
After.
Janie looks so intense all the time.
    Wren tilts her head toward me, and I unfreeze.
    â€œYou’re doing all right by yourselves down there?” Janie presses.
    â€œOh, totally,” I say, going in for some asparagus myself. “Mom will be back.”
    It all stops. The movement at the table.
    â€œOf course,” Janie says. Her fork
tic-tic-tic
s against the plate. “Obviously she’s coming back.” She takes a bite and chews. “I’ve left a couple of messages for her, you know. Just checking to see if she needs some help. She hasn’t returned my calls.” Straight to voice mail. Yeah, I know all about it. “She must really be enjoying her time away. She must need it.” There’s something in her tone that doesn’t register on her face.
    I make myself meet her eyes. Nod. Present a meek smile. On the way back to my plate, those traitorous jellies that live in my head rest on Digby’s, and roller-coaster rush number 892 thrashes through me. He drops his eyes, twists spaghetti, and pays really close attention to his mom and what she is now saying about the wedding she is catering this weekend.
    I thud, kick Eden under the table. Mean footsies.
    He knows about my mother.
    Digby knows.
    Â 
    â€œAll things truly wicked begin from an innocence,” Eden says.
    Janie has Wren making some kind of cookie thing, so we are in Eden’s room after dinner, and she is stretching and bending in a way that makes me uncomfortable because those are things the human body shouldn’t do. Also, her feet are disgusting, and I have to look away when she pokes one of them in my face, not on purpose but because she is in the midst of some bananas contortionist move.
    â€œSick,” I say to a bunion, to a ripped purple nail, to a bloody flap of skin.
    â€œHemingway,” she says, and flutter, flutter, flutter goes the foot.
    â€œSeriously, you need to do something about that. It looks infected.”
    â€œBaloney,” she says. “Are you listening to me?”
    â€œHemingway,” I say, wondering how this will ever help me in my life.
    â€œNobody
means
to be a douchebag, much less wicked.”
    â€œSerial killers?”
    â€œEven them, I bet. Personality disorders complicate my theory, but you have to figure even they were cute little babies once upon a time. They can’t help it that they got the raw end of the human gene stick. Compassion,” she says.
    â€œYou called her a bitch.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m saying.”
    â€œThat my mother is wicked?” Sometimes I wish she would just spit it out instead of making me work so hard.
    â€œNo. That she’s not. That her behavior is. That it stems from innocence