This Raging Light Read Online Free PDF

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.
    â€œI’m scared,” I say before I am even all the way sitting.
    â€œI know.” She holds on to her knees and angles her head to the side, a lithe, bright tree fairy.
    â€œMrs. 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.
    â€œAt 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.”
    â€œTaxes,” I offer. “The bill came today.”
    â€œYou 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?
    â€œDon’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.”
    â€œâ€˜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.
    â€œOf 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.
    â€œDo 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.
    â€œReally?” I say.
    â€œâ€˜All feeling has an equivalent in action or is useless.’”
    â€œDid you say that?”
    â€œOf course not,” she says. “Virginia Woolf.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œYou 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