The alert from the Department of Decarbonization glared out at Amanda from her computer screen like an F on a report card. By the end of the month, the Coopers were on track to blow past their carbon allowance to the tune of 10,000 credits. And that was without factoring in D-Day.
Amanda shut her laptop and sat in the dark, running the numbers. Where had the credits gone? On water, obviously. Rehabilitated pee water was disgusting, so Amanda splurged on the desalinated kind. Also on electricity, but only because their solar panels didn’t work with all the smoke in the air. Nobody’s did. Nor, despite the bags of fertilizer stacked optimistically in the garage, could she grow anything without sunlight. The twins had to get their fruit and veg from somewhere, so Heavenly Harvest it was.
Still, she’d budgeted for all that.
Sounds filtered in from the next room: Dex, freshly returned from his latest business junket to Cabo, watching golf on the flat screen, draining an eighth of a credit every minute.
Wait. Had Dex gone sports fishing in Cabo?
Amanda pictured her husband on a gleaming yacht with some stupid name like Wet Dream or Reel Nauti, entertaining investors with a mojito in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. Just stepping on deck probably cost 500 credits.
Fucking Dex.
Under normal circumstances, she thought she could recover from a 10,000-credit deficit. She’d send Dex to his brother’s, pull the kids from school, flip the main breaker to the house, and check into the Four Seasons’ Net Zero facility, which she’d heard was basically glamping and a bazillion times better than LA County Correctional Facility for Carbon Debtors. But these weren’t normal circumstances.
Catching Up with the Coopers had been hemorrhaging subscribers. According to analytics, most had decamped to extreme carbon-hoarding accounts featuring gory content like cooking with roadkill. But even her loyal subscribers were turning on her. Someone had recently posted a poor-quality photo of a woman she claimed was Amanda buying fertilizer off the back of a truck in Koreatown. Even though one blurry photo proved nothing, there’d been a landslide of nasty comments.
During a sleepless night, she’d come up with the Dizzyland Challenge. The Coopers would scrimp and save for six weeks, then climb into Dex’s E-Inferno and make the 55-mile trip to Anaheim for a carbon-intensive day of fun at the Rat Shack. All livestreamed, of course. The video of Amanda breaking the news to the twins had racked up over 2.4 million views. CUWTC was back!
Except now it wasn’t. There was no way she could recover from a 10,000-credit deficit and afford the carbon cost of a trip to Dizzyland, which she estimated to be 5,000 credits, assuming they stuck to low carbon-emitting rides: It’s A Diverse World yes, Awesomecoaster, no.
Amanda felt a tear carve a path though her foundation, something she’d have to fix before she went live for her Fabulously Frugal Friday Fajita Fiesta. Maintaining a veneer of perfection was essential. If you took the Fabulous out of Frugal, all you had left was Failure.
#
She’d cooked up CUWTC after learning she was pregnant with twins and realizing she couldn’t go through with the mandatory selective reduction. What if the doctor picked the wrong fetus—aborted the Beyonce and left her with a Solange? Dex had agreed to pay the hefty fine so long as he got to keep his third of the family credits. She’d spent her last trimester obsessively watching ultra-sized family content: religious nutjobs, mostly, living on landfills or in caves, subsisting on a diet of rodents, garbage, and worms. One day as she watched a mom teach her disgusting children how to skin a possum, Amanda received a flash of divine inspiration. She’d document her family’s life, but it would be the opposite of those freakshows. She’d show the world it was possible for an ultra-sized family of four to live a nice, shiny life on the carbon allowance of three.
Little Lauren and Jack had never worn diapers—neither disposable, which cost an entire credit a pop (or poop as Amanda joked to her subscribers), nor cloth, which averaged out to the same once the hot water, bleach, and detergent were factored in. The no-diaper thing had turned out to be a blessing in disguise; her subscribers—those sick fucks—had loved watching her get shit on. She never used the AC during the day, claiming that an ambient temperature of 92 degrees was the secret to staying skinny—along with a plant-based diet, of course, which everyone followed except for Dex. Amanda provided the carbon receipts for everything. Well, almost everything. Like everyone else, she visited Koreatown from time to time. Slowly, her subscribership had grown. At its height, CUWTC was bringing in $60,000 a month. But it wasn’t about the money. Ever since the twins had been born nine years earlier, CUWTC had been her entire life. Without it, she was nobody. A nobody with too many biological kids.
If she couldn’t pull off Dizzyland, CUWTC was finished.
Amanda re-opened her laptop. As expected, brokerage ads had sprouted all over her feed like mushrooms.
#
“Most families in your situation opt for a local adoption,” the broker said, pulling a tablet out of his briefcase and putting it on the coffee table. He started to scroll through head shots of prospective adoptees. Haggard old men. Yuck.
“We’ve recruited candidates through several downtown shelters. These folks use an average of maybe 300 credits a quarter. Hardly anything.”
“I guess I was picturing someone younger.” Amanda said. “Maybe from Bangladesh? Like Jeff Bezos.”
The broker chuckled. “Apparently Bezos has moved on to Niger. Supposedly he’s adopted half the country. Guess he’s gotta keep that yacht floating somehow.”
It took him a moment to realize that Amanda wasn’t joking. The broker removed his reading glasses and set them on the table. “Look, Ms. Cooper. International adoptions are complex. They have the advantage of a longer probationary period but cost more in fees. Then there’s bureaucratic hoops. Didn’t you tell me you needed something fast?”
Amanda shunted the little brown girl from her mind.
The broker went back to scrolling. “How about this guy? Homeless, schizophrenic, and scheduled for medically assisted dying later this year.”
An adoptee with a built-in expiration date was appealing—and tragic, obviously—but Amanda was grossed-out at the idea of adopting someone who looked so smelly.
“Hmm.”
The broker scrolled on.
“Wait,” Amanda said. “Go back.”
The kid looked about eighteen. Scowling, with multiple face piercings and those horrible giant holes in the earlobes. But at least she wasn’t a sad old man.
“What about her?”
The broker frowned. “Er, them. Let’s see. Quill Rodriguez. Seventeen, lives in Central City East, used 476 credits during the last quarter, with 17,000 available credits —”
“Skid Row?”
“Yeah. Listen Ms. Cooper—”
“Amanda.”
“Amanda. I think you’d be better off with someone else.”
“Why?”
“Honestly, these old guys are so strung out, they’re not going to give you any trouble. They’re not going to suddenly take up jet-skiing, you know? A kid, on the other hand, is a wildcard.”
The broker had a point. But if her subscribers ever found out about the adoption, Amanda needed a plausible excuse. Helping a kid get back on her feet was downright noble.
“Can’t we get her to sign something promising not to use credits?”
“Side agreements aren’t legal. The only wiggle room is the opt-out after the one-month probation. After that, they’re yours for life.”
“But she doesn’t have to know that, right?” Amanda said, widening her eyes in the way that used to get her free drinks in college. “About the side agreement?”
The broker raised his hands good-naturedly. “That’d have to be between you and them.”
17,000 credits. More than enough to get the Cooper family to Dizzyland and then some.
“How do we contact her?”
#
Two days later, it was done. After paying the brokerage fee, which was sizable but not so sizable that Dex would notice its absence from their healthy joint account, Amanda transferred $1000 onto a cheap phone and gave it to the broker, who said he’d deliver it to the kid. Amanda could monitor their cash and carbon spending via the phone and, if necessary, contact them, although she hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. The kid had been surly at the virtual signing, keeping their hood pulled low over their face, not seeming particularly grateful.
Amanda threw herself into streaming content. Here she was giving the twins a sponge bath in “pee” water (it was actually desalinated, but the twins didn’t know and freaked out accordingly). Here she was walking them to the library in 103-degree heat, in smoke so thick that Amanda was able to capture Lauren having a genuine asthma attack. The fact that they took a Youpi home, or that Amanda was now keeping the AC running whenever she wasn’t streaming, was lost on her subscribers.
Dex, however, didn’t prove quite so oblivious. On the day the of the adoption, he came home and, instead of lowering he thermostat to 70, nodded approvingly at the ambient temperature. Then he poured himself a scotch, sprawled on the coach, and flipped on PSEN.
“You still doing that Infinite Studios thing?” he said, staring at the TV.
“Dizzyland. And yes, we are. In exactly four weeks.”
“Huh,” Dex said.
#
The first alert came one week after signing.
“O’Ronalds?” Amanda said, staring at the notification on her phone. It was two in the morning. Dex had been snoring peacefully, but now he mumbled, “Whatzatttzut?”
“Shhh,” Amanda said. “Go back to sleep.”
The kid had spent $82 and 463 credits, an insane amount! Had they developed a binging disorder in honour of their good fortune? Bought veggie burgers for all the bums on Skid Row?
No matter. She’d call the broker in the morning. He could deal with it.
By the time Amanda returned home from yoga, however, there were two more alerts: $543 and 717 credits at Urban Camper and $110 and 502 credits at Blazing Kingdom.
The hot, lava feeling returned. Amanda called the broker.
“We need to dissolve the adoption and start over.”
“Good morning, Ms. Cooper.”
“Amanda. And did you hear me? I’ll take that schizophrenic you showed me.”
The broker cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, that’s impossible.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It was in the papers. There’s a one-month probationary period.”
“Yes,” Amanda said, speaking slowly, as if he were brain damaged, “which means I can’t dissolve once the month is over.”
“And also that you can’t dissolve before the month is over.” He sounded bored. “Only the adoptee can. The adoptive parent gets one day.”
Panic fluttered in her chest. Had that been in the papers?
“Well. You need to talk to her. Them. Remind them about the side agreement they signed.”
“As I believe I made clear, that side agreement has nothing to do with us. If you want to threaten your child with an illegal contract, be my guest. But my agency won’t participate.”
“Then convince them to dissolve!”
“Also illegal, and I’m pretty sure they won’t. They’re planning to start an animal shelter with the pay-out.”
“What should I do?” Amanda wailed.
The broker sighed. “You could force them to move in with you and monitor their consumption. Technically, they’re still a minor.”
Amanda’s eyes darted around the room. Move in here? With her, Dex, and the twins?
But maybe the garage could work. Nobody ever went in there. Dex rode to the office with his brother Wes during wildfire season, leaving the Inferno in the garage so the smoke wouldn’t wreck its finish. Amanda hadn’t bothered to tell him she’d turned off the air filters weeks ago.
“My account has 864,000 subscribers,” Amanda hissed, exaggerating by only a few hundred thousand. “If you don’t fix this today, I’ll blow the lid off your entire industry.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Ms. Cooper.”
“Amanda.”
#
Amanda kitted out the garage with an inflatable mattress and a sleeping bag, retreating to the house whenever the heat and smoke threatened to overwhelm her. She wasn’t sure what to do about a bathroom; finally, she put a bucket beside the mattress and called it a day.
At 2:30 pm, there was a rap on the door. She’d been expecting the broker to be on her doorstep, ideally with the kid in the car so the neighbors wouldn’t witness the exchange, but when she opened the door, there was the kid, wearing the same hoodie they’d worn at the signing—no evidence of the Urban Camper haul—their dyed hair hanging over their face in clumps. They held a paperback in one hand and a leash in the other. Attached to the leash was a medium-sized, muscular dog with a reddish-brown coat, a wide skull, and a short, whip-like tail.
Amanda took a step back. The dog strained forward.
“You never said anything about a dog!”
The kid—Quill—shrugged. “You never asked.”
“It can’t come in.”
Quill turned, drawing the dog with them. “Okay. Bye Mom.”
Amanda took a breath. The dog was a kink in her plan, but not a fatal one.
“If it’s quiet it can stay. But keep it out of sight. And you keep out of sight, too. And it’s Ms. Cooper, not Mom.”
The kid smirked. “You didn’t tell your family about me?”
Amanda put her hands on her hips. “My husband’s incredibly busy, and the twins are too young to understand our arrangement. It’s only for three weeks. Besides, if you’d just honored the side agreement—”
“That agreement’s not worth shit and you know it. Hey, the line was down at Canoga and me and Luther had to walk. Can we get some water?”
Damn it! She’d meant to buy wastewater. Now she’d have to give the kid water from her desalinated stash.
She’d pick up a few bottles that afternoon, along with a case of Squirmix, a powdered worm-molasses mix that Astrid Poulsen had told her about at yoga. Apparently, it was incredibly nutritious. More importantly, it cost only two credits a gallon. Astrid fed it to little Freya’s nanny, a thin, despondent woman from the camp down in San Ysidro, whom Amanda suspected Astrid of having secretly adopted.
“How am I supposed to entertain myself?” the kid said as Amanda hustled them off to the garage.
“I don’t know,” Amanda huffed. “Read recipes.” She gestured to the paperback: The Anarchist Cookbook.
#
It took a week for the twins to discover the kid. It was Saturday, and Amanda was livestreaming, feigning delight at the gelatinous disk of scoby she was detaching from a batch of kombucha. She’d made up a storyline about concocting meals with ingredients from the back of the freezer and the pantry: jars of pickled beets with bulging lids, three-month-old kimchi, freezer-burnt tofu dogs. A countdown on her stream showed the number of days until D-Day—13—and the number of credits remaining to be hoarded—2,350. The number, of course, was a fiction. By taking the kid’s phone, confining them to the garage, and feeding them a diet of Squirmix and pee water, Amanda had retained a comfortable margin.
As for CUWTC, it had attracted 22,000 new followers in the last week alone.
“Mommy, why’s there a person living in our garage?” Lauren said, running into the kitchen, trailed by Jack.
“Ha ha,” Amanda said, making an exasperated face at her viewers. “Very funny.”
“They have a dog!” Jack squealed.
It wasn’t the first time the twins had interrupted her livestream—heck, sometimes she even scripted it—but now a cold panic washed over her. “Are you trying to trick Mommy?” she said, juice from the forgotten scoby dripping down her arm.
“No!” Lauren and Jack shouted in unison. And then Jack, his face contorted with glee, added, “His name is Luther. He’s a pitty!”
Amanda bugged out her eyes, leaned toward her phone, and in a tremulous whisper, said, “Oh my gosh, y’all! I think a hobo broke into my garage. I’m going to jump off and call the police.”
“Don’t call the police on Luther,” Jack shrieked, looking directly at the camera the way Mommy had taught him.
#
On Sunday, instead of her usual Prayers and Pilates livestream, Amanda spent the morning recording an Intruder Situation Update. She barely registered the warning from the LA County Fire Department that popped up on her phone during the seventh take. Fires were always burning in Topanga and Malibu.
She went downstairs to find Jack, Lauren, the kid, and the dog sprawled on the couch, playing on the PS8 and eating Choco Puffs.
“Get that dog off the couch!” Amanda said. “And what are you even doing in here?”
“We let them in, Mommy,” Lauren said. “Quill was coughing so bad we could hear them. And Luther was hungry.”
“What did you feed it?” Amanda asked in alarm, thinking about Dex’s steaks in the freezer.
“We walked to Heavenly Harvest and bought dog food!” Jack said, his chest puffed out in pride. “I pulled the wagon.”
“And Quill let us buy Choco Puffs.” Lauren suddenly looked uncertain. “I hope that’s okay, Mommy.”
“No, it’s not!” Amanda shot Quill a look of hatred and rushed to the kitchen, pursued by Lauren’s sobs.
A huge bag of kibble sat on the island, along with two dozen cans of Meaty Boi Organic Dog Food. The kid had marked each with a Sharpie so they weren’t returnable. Amanda picked up a can. Ten credits. Plus the bag of kibble: 40 credits, and the Choco Puffs: 20.
The urge to scream was overwhelming. But she had a livestream in 12 minutes and screaming would wreck her face. She marched back to the den. “Stop blubbering,” she said to Lauren. “Jack, get dressed. We’re on in 10.”
“I don’t want to.”
“But it’s time for math homework,” Amanda said through clenched teeth. Jack’s struggles in math and the friction it caused with his smarty-pants sister had provided high-quality content ever since Montessori preschool.
“I already finished. Quill helped me.”
“And Quill helped me select a subject for my Women’s History Month podcast,” Lauren beamed. “I’m doing Emma Goldman.”
“Quill helped me with my science project, too!” Jack screeched, trying to one up his sister. “I’m doing across tricks.”
“Acoustics,” Lauren corrected.
“Well now she’s going back into the garage or she won’t be getting her allowance.”
“Aw!” Lauren and Jack said in unison. Then Lauren added primly, “It’s they, Mommy.”
Amanda grabbed the kid’s arm and began dragging them toward the adjoining door to the garage. The dog went nuts, barking and growling.
She’d padlock the door between the den and the garage, Amanda decided. And install a lock on the garage door’s overhead latch.
Doggy had officially lost yard privileges.
#
The following Monday, as Amanda was exiting yoga, Astrid Poulsen informed her that she was pulling little Freya out of school and heading to Solvang. The smoke was so unhealthy, Astrid said, as if Amanda wasn’t aware that breathing in polycyclic hydrocarbons was bad for the human body. Amanda stared at Astrid’s Johnny Shoo espadrilles as she spoke, estimating how many credits they cost. The next day, she went to Dieman’s and splurged on a pair. She’d tell her subscribers that she’d found them at the Renaissance on Ventura. You couldn’t believe what people dumped there.
The next day, schools closed, and an alert was issued to stay inside.
#
Amanda spent that week scripting D-Day, researching the best locations to shoot from, choosing the soundtrack she’d lay over videos, deciding on outfits, and devising storylines, including one where she’d refuse to allow Jack to ride Love Monkey’s Human Trebuchet and Jack would melt down accordingly. Jack’s meltdowns were golden.
The twins stayed mainly out of sight, holed up in Jack’s room, going silent whenever Amanda walked past the closed door. Normally Amanda would have mistrusted the show of dizygotic solidarity, but now she was too busy to notice. On Tuesday, Jack came down to breakfast with black-varnished fingernails. On Wednesday, Lauren crept into the kitchen during a livestream and absconded with a gallon of oat milk and a container of granola. On Thursday, Amanda found a ratty newspaper called Black Mask on the kitchen island. She glanced at the headline—They Traffic in Human Misery: Carbon “Parents” Against the Wall!—and chucked it into the recycling.
On Friday, two days before D-Day, Amanda stepped in dog shit.
She’d gone outside to check on the fire situation, squinting at the angry orange horizon to the north and wondering if she should stock the evacuation kit in the Micro. She decided not to bother. The fire would be diverted; it always was. Plus, evacuating would cost credits she could no longer comfortably afford. After the Choco Puff fiasco, her shoes, and new outfits for the twins, there were only 5700 credits left.
As Amanda turned to go back inside, she put her brand new espadrille down on something squishy and a horrible smell wafted upwards. She stared at her ruined shoe in disbelief. Then she noticed dog shit everywhere: piled among the agaves and euphorbias, studding the cracked soil of the raised beds, smeared across the bottom of the Cooper’s empty pool. She also noticed a wire—fishing line—slanting upwards from a crack beneath the garage door to Jack’s second story window.
Pulsating with rage, Amanda forced the garage door up and ducked inside. A pair of bolt cutters lay discarded on the floor. The garage was sweltering, smoke-clogged.
The kid and the dog were in the Inferno. Judging from the way their hood was rippling, the AC was running at full force, draining electricity from the grid like a lamprey sucking juice from a trout. An empty Squirmix can rested in the kid’s lap, attached to the fishing line. Some primordial, childhood memory of a TV show featuring a treehouse and a gang of spunky kids enabled Amanda to identify the contraption as a tin-can phone. As in, Jack’s science project. As in, across tricks. Devised so the kid could communicate with the twins and conspire against her.
Well, she’d show that sneaky little ingrate a trick or two!
Amanda pulled at the locked door. “Get out!”
The kid didn’t react. But the dog went crazy, barking and scrabbling on and off the leather seats, ripping holes in the upholstery with its claws.
Amanda sprinted to the mudroom and flipped the breaker to the garage. Then, heaving from smoke-inhalation, frenzy, and rage, she assessed the damage. Her shoes were ruined. The Inferno would soon be drained. And—most importantly—their electricity consumption would be through the roof. How many credits had the little psycho burned through?
Amanda marched to the kitchen and removed one of Dex’s T-bone steaks from the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw. Then she went looking for the rat poison.
#
The evacuation order came early the next morning.
Amanda was streaming the procession of Lurids, Teklas, and Porches crawling toward the freeway when Dex wandered in.
“Hey babe,” he said. “Thinking about heading to Palm Springs to blow off some steam.”
As the fire closed in on the Cooper home, subscriber engagement on CUWTC had peaked. Consensus was that Amanda was criminally irresponsible for not evacuating immediately.
Had Dex just said something about Palm Springs? Amanda looked up. Dex was wearing his lucky golf hat.
“Change of plans,” Amanda said. “We’re going to Dizzyland this afternoon. And we’re taking the Micro because the Inferno is drained.”
“So charge it,” Dex said. He opened the fridge and gazed into it, oblivious to the fact that Amanda had cut the power to the kitchen appliances hours earlier.
Amanda stared at his back. “I can’t. We’re out of credits.”
“I thought you said we were flush.”
“Miscalculation.”
She had 637 credits left. Enough to get the Coopers to Dizzyland and onto one ride. With some careful editing, it might be enough.
Dex took out the orange juice and drank it straight from the carton, bracing himself against the still open fridge. “Wes is picking me up in two hours.”
“That’s fine, honey,” Amanda said, thinking quickly. “Why don’t I whip up some breakfast for you? It’s a long drive to Palm Springs. I’ll even make you a Bloody Mary for the road.”
Dex gave her a playful smack on the backside. “That’s my girl.”
Five or six Ativans should do the trick.
#
Half an hour later, the Micro was packed. Amanda summoned the twins.
“Change into your outfits. We’re going to Dizzyland now.”
“What’s wrong with Daddy?” Lauren said, pointing to Dex who was slumped over the island.
“Daddy’s resting. Now hustle up!”
Jack glowered. “I know what you did,” he said. His voice was the voice of the possessed kid in a horror movie.
Lauren grabbed his hand and pulled him upstairs.
A moment later they stood before her in their new Roxy and Ricky Rat shirts.
“What did you do?” Amanda shrieked.
Lauren had modified Roxy’s bouquet into a glittery hammer and sickle. Jack had given Ricky Sharpie devil horns and a raging hard-on.
“Quill’s been encouraging our artistic expression,” Lauren said.
“Just get in the car,” Amanda hissed.
“We’re not going anywhere without our sibster,” Jack said.
“That commie hobo is not your sibster!” Amanda unlocked the interior door to the garage and flung it open.
The smell was like a blow to the head: burning plastic, marzipan, and the earthen stink of worms. Cans of Squirmix and empty bags of fertilizer littered the ground.
No kid.
Amanda backed out of the garage. “Where is she?”
“They, Mommy,” Lauren corrected. “And Quill identifies more closely with communalism than communism.”
Quill sidewinded out from beneath the car, streaked with soot and yellow powder.
“Is it done?” Jack asked solemnly.
“Yep,” Quill said. They muscled open the garage door and stepped onto the driveway. “Lezgo.”
“Is what done?” Amanda said. She was losing control.
“Quill, Jack, and I have been working on something,” Lauren said. “A memorial.”
Amanda waited for Lauren to add, I hope that’s okay, Mommy. She didn’t.
“We’ll talk about this later, young lady. Go wait in the Micro while I find you brats new shirts.” She tossed Lauren the key.
When Amanda reached the car a few minutes later, pulling a stumbling Dex alongside her, the kid was behind the wheel and Lauren and Jack were squished together in the passenger seat. Amanda propped Dex against the car and banged on the driver’s side window. The kid rolled it down a crack.
“Stop fooling around and get in the back!”
“You get in the back,” Jack snarled. “We’re not going to Dizzyland.”
If only she’d known what a dud Jack would turn out to be.
“Lauren, sweetie,” Amanda pleaded, changing tack, “You’ve always wanted to go to Dizzyland, remember? Dizzyland is the place where dreams come true.”
“Actually, Mommy, if we think of Dizzyland as the locus of the culture industry, all it really offers is a limited set of cliches that justify the suppression of the working class. So, in a way, Dizzyland is where dreams go to die.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Ricky Rat sucks ass.”
Amanda glanced at her phone. No bars. A psychopath was kidnapping her children and she couldn’t even livestream it.
“Come on, Mommy,” Lauren said, popping the locks. “Get in the back.”
Amanda balked. “Where are you going?”
“We are going,” Jack screeched, “to adopt a new dog!”
She could hear the houses groaning and collapsing in the distance. It was tempting to get in the car. But a beautiful new storyline was blossoming in her mind. She and Dex would travel to Dizzyland alone and renew their vows!
“Go ahead,” Amanda said, addressing Quill, “Take these little brats to the pound. But you’re not getting another penny from me.”
The kid shrugged and started the car. “Okay. Bye, Mom.”
“It’s Mrs. Cooper!” Amanda hollered, watching the Micro’s taillights disappear into the smoke.
Sparks and ash trailed through the air. The house was going to burn. But there was a bright side—and oh, what a bright side! Wildfire survivors were awarded a year’s worth of triple credits so they could rebuild.
Amanda could picture their gleaming new home: its ensuite bathrooms, its walk-in closets.
She deposited Dex on the sofa in the den and headed to the breaker box. She just needed enough juice to make it to Anaheim.
While the Inferno charged, Amanda rested her head on Dex’s shoulder and dreamed about her shiny new life. One she would share, of course, with her subscribers.
Maybe she’d even adopt one of those yucky old men. In secret, of course.
Amanda checked her phone. Still no service.
#
It looked like the funeral tableau of a Viking king.
The dog had been arranged on the folded-down seats of the Inferno and surrounded with objects: friendship bracelets and potholders the twins had made at camp; Dabney, Lauren’s favorite ‘Murican Gal doll; Jack’s Nurd guns and Transformists; six cans of Meaty Boi; and, nestled between the dog’s front paws, The Anarchist Cookbook.
Amanda wrestled the corpse out of the car and dumped it unceremoniously among the debris. The she wrestled Dex into the car, slid behind the wheel, and pressed the start button.
Nothing happened.
She pressed it again.
Still nothing.
She checked her phone.
Like a miracle, three bars had appeared.
A sense of calm and purpose descended on her. Amanda patted down her hair in the rear-view mirror and went live.
“Hey y’all,” Amanda said to the 7241 subscribers who immediately joined. “Me and Dex are headed to Dizzyland early! We figured it’d be more romantic without the twins.” She panned the camera to a drooling Dex, then turned it back on herself. “Things have been kinda rocky for us lately. But get ready, because y’all are in for a BIG surprise!”
At that moment, an errant spark floated through the open door of the garage and settled on the deadly mixture of ammonium nitrate, molasses, and powdered worms packed beneath the Inferno’s lithium-ion battery. A moment later, Amanda Cooper’s livestream abruptly ended.
Jennifer DeLeskie (she/her) is a writer based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), on the traditional and unceded land of the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka people. Her writing has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Exile Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for awards such as the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Award and the Fish Short Story Prize.
