All the Little Lights

by Jamie McGuire

“Duke. I . . . didn’t realize anyone was here. I’m sorry, what can I do for you?” “I’ll take care of the heater. You stay out of the basement from now on. I hear you have a bad habit of getting locked down there.”

He was moving things around, making a racket. I was glad I’d finished my homework. The banging and screeching of chair legs being pulled across concrete would have made concentration impossible.

The streetlamps had been neglected and were slowly going out one at a time, but the millions of stars above would always be there: mysterious, silent witnesses, just like the guests of the Juniper.

“We’re going to get caught.” “That’s why I’m here, right? In case someone comes into your room without permission?”

“This is a mess,” I said with a sigh. “My life is a mess.” “Well, now your mess is my mess.”

“No, she just scares me. It gets worse every day. It’s hard to explain, and Elliott . . . I promise you it wouldn’t matter if I did. You can’t fix it.”

Mama was at the center of the Fentons’ dirt plot in her nightgown, staring down the road.

I told myself that in the end, I could love her enough that she would choose me. If she didn’t, I wasn’t sure I could pack up my car for college and leave her here alone again to fend for herself.

“I remember the first time I saw you. I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Then, you were the most compassionate, then the saddest. The scaredest. The bravest. I am more in awe of you every day, and if you wanna know what scares me, it’s that I probably don’t deserve you, but I know I will love you more than anyone else will. I’ll do anything to keep you safe and happy. I just have to hope that’s enough.”

“This place is going under with or without you to go down with it. No one would blame you for abandoning ship. If your mom was in the right state of mind, she wouldn’t, either. Anyone who loves you wants you just as far away from this place as you want me. So just ask yourself, when it goes down—and it will—will it have been worth it? What would your dad want you to do?”

The guests aren’t your family.” “But she is. She’s all I have.” “You’ve got me,” I said. “You’re not alone, and you never will be again.” “If I go with you.”

“Haven’t you figured me out by now? You go where you want. I’ll follow. But we can’t stay here. You can’t stay here, Catherine. You don’t want to, I know you don’t.”

“You can’t get someone out of quicksand if you’re stuck in it, too,”

“There are a lot of things we don’t know, but I can promise you won’t do it alone.”

“I’m Detective Thompson,” he said, shaking Elliott’s hand. He eyed us with his bulging blue eyes.

AHHHH took long enough!!

“Presley Brubaker didn’t come home last night,” Thompson said matter-of-factly.

“I was sitting in that white room with white floors and white furniture, feeling like I was suffocating. I was thirsty, hungry, and afraid. I just kept thinking of all the little lights on our street and what it felt like to walk down it holding your hand, in and out of the darkness. Nothing they could say could change that. Nothing anyone can do can take that away from us. Except you. And you love me, I know you do. I just can’t figure out why you won’t let me in.”

“Do you know what it would do to me if something happened to you? I’d cut off my throwing hand to keep you safe.” I held him tighter. “So we’ll keep each other safe.”

The guests seemed on edge when he was close. Or maybe he was close because they were on edge.

Althea curled her lip, seeming disgusted. “She’s the one who called the DHS on your mama before, ain’t she?” “She was just worried.” “Is she worried now?” Althea asked.

“Your mama would never hurt you. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, either. She’s proven it over and over. Don’t you disrespect her to me. Never.”

The stadium lights dimmed, and hundreds of tiny glowing lights were visible. The students and parents began singing a hymn, and Madison tugged on my coat.

“I feel bad for saying this, but it’s creepy that they just tried to attack Elliott and are now singing ‘Amazing Grace.’”

A part of me worried that at some point, he’d stop believing that loving me was worth it.

I frowned. It was the first time Mama had missed breakfast since we’d opened.

She was humming to herself—the same song my music box played.

“You said you didn’t sleep because of noises. I didn’t hear anything.” “It was beneath,” she said.

I turned the dial of my locker, yanked, and for the first time, the latch released on the first try.

“Everyone dies,” she whispered, her eyes glossing over.

I patted her hands, noticing dirt packed under her fingernails. “Mama, what have you been doing?”

“The new guests . . . they don’t leave. Sometimes I find their suitcases in the basement, their toiletries still in their rooms. We don’t have guests other than the regulars very often, but . . .”

“You’ve never seen anyone leave?” “Not anyone who’s come alone.”

Now that Mrs. Mason was forcing me to choose between saving Elliott or the Juniper, the answer came to me in seconds. In that moment, I was sure that I loved him, that I was worthy of his love, and that letting the Juniper go under was what would truly save Mama in the end.

“After the Masons came home to find my mother in their house.” “What?” Elliott said.

“It was after the first time I reported her to DHS, about six months after Mr. Calhoun passed,” Mrs. Mason said. “So . . . was she just walking around or what?” Elliott asked. Mrs. Mason paled. “She was hiding under our bed.”

“Isn’t it funny how lights seem so much more beautiful in the dark?” she asked. “Like the stars,” I said. “I used to stare out my bedroom window, down at the lights that lined our street. The city stopped replacing the bulbs when they burned out, and it bothered me until I realized I could see the stars better.”

I found myself standing in the hallway alone, waiting for the house to breathe, for its eyes to open and watch me like the Juniper did at night.

As my eyelids grew heavier, I heard the whispers from the backyard fill my head: familiar, close, the voices I’d sometimes hear down the hall from my bedroom in the Juniper. Conniving, strategizing, working together to implement a plan or to configure a new one. The guests were like birds, flying in the same direction, turning, landing, and spooking at the same time. They were one, working toward a common goal. Now they were outside, waiting, just like they had always done at the Juniper. I would never be free. Mama would never let me go.

“I’m not sure where I’ll be.” “You’ll be here. Until you leave for college. You haven’t said much about the applications.”

“Pain . . . love. Can’t really have one without the other.”

he pulled my hand through the small opening and kissed it.

“I love you, Catherine Calhoun. No matter what happens, know that.” His words felt like a sunrise, a sunset, a beautiful dream, waking from a nightmare. It was every wonderful moment balled into one. “I love you, too.”

“Lots of me and not much else.” He shrugged. “They say you photograph what you love the most.”

“That’s the beauty of a secret. Trust. Trust me with this. Let me help you.” “You mean I should let you save me.” He swallowed. “We could save each other.”

“I’m getting a headache. I should probably go home.” When Elliott didn’t respond, I looked up, meeting his gaze. “What?” “That’s the first time I’ve heard you call a place home since freshman year.”

I looked up at the tiny white lights strung along his ceiling and closed my eyes, pretending they were stars blurring together just before everything went black.

Elliott shared so many of her features that it was hard to feel anything but love for her.

“Even if you break up with me, I won’t go. Mom has good intentions, but she has no clue what I’ll do or what I’ll give up for you.”

I pulled the string and lifted the lid, revealing a black-and-white photo of Dad and me just a day or two before he died. We were standing on the porch, smiling at each other. It was a quiet moment, one that I had forgotten.

Someone had been dragged across the kitchen, four small streaks from fingers left behind as whoever it was futilely clawed at the tile.