The Group met in an abandoned Taco Bell. They were squatting in it, and they’d move to a new space soon enough. Toni wouldn’t say where the restaurant was, though how many could there be in Echo Park? Cal thought they were getting more careful, and from what Toni said, it sounded like it. Frida wondered when the other members would ask Toni to stop running with outsiders.
The Group had removed the restaurant’s bolted-in booths and tables for their meeting space; only a select few ever saw what was behind the counter in the defunct kitchen. “They’re building things in there,” Toni said once, at the very end of a run, and Frida noted that she’d moved from we to they. Frida hoped to get more information from her, but soon Toni was back to talking about the girls. She was tired of watching the proceedings from the Siberia of the outer circle, she said, and she refused to arrive early. “Whenever Micah takes the floor, the younger girls, especially the new ones, lean forward, as if they’re having trouble hearing him.”
Micah had grown so secretive about the Group that he would have killed Toni for telling Frida all this. Cal either wasn’t interested or he was derisive, and even if Frida had wanted to join the Group, Micah would have denied her entry. She had fallen in love with a man who had dismissed her brother’s passion, and for that, Micah withheld everything from her.
One day Toni showed up at Frida’s place and said she was done with the meetings.
“What happened?” Frida asked.
Toni said she’d stood to suggest an all-female delegation. She thought that might help things; let the older members tell the younger women how the system worked. She tried to present it as a way to strengthen bonds. No one seemed interested. Before Toni could even sit down, Leanne stood to ask Micah if he wanted her to mop the floors after the meeting.
Toni said she didn’t mean to plunge her sharp, rusty bobby pin into the bitch’s arm, it just happened.
After that, Toni was still a member, still involved, just not on a weekly basis. Or so Frida assumed, until the Group blew up the entrance to the county hospital. No one could prove they’d done it, but it was obvious to Frida it had been their work. The hospital had begun to charge for entrance into the emergency room—cash or gold only—and a man had died of dehydration in the parking lot. The Group had allegedly thrown a Molotov cocktail through the sliding glass doors. The man taking money at the entrance had been killed, and a nurse lost her hand.
Two days later, during a run, Frida asked Toni about their last stunt. “What the hell, you guys?”
Toni sped up. “I’m over it. The Group is Micah’s thing.” She didn’t want to talk about it. She was no longer a member. Just like that.
Micah also wouldn’t explain. “We’ve moved in a new direction” was all he’d say.
Not long after, Toni was supposed to meet her for a run, but when Frida opened the door, Micah was there. He’d shaved his head, and beneath a sharp stubble of hair, his scalp stunned white.
“Where’s Toni?” Frida asked.
“She’s gone,” he said. He was very calm.
“Where did she go?”
“She left.”
Frida thought he meant she’d simply moved out, but, no, she was gone. Frida never saw or heard from her again. Everyone guessed she had gone back to her grandmother in Washington after all. Sometimes, even now, Frida thought of Toni in one of the Communities. She was running down a smooth, paved road. There were cameras on every corner and uniformed guards, and she felt safe and clean. She probably had a baby.
Frida pulled the pants out of the bag again and shook them so they hung straight. She walked over to the big rock and lay them flat across its surface. It wasn’t time to go yet. She wasn’t finished.
Cal wanted Frida to be pregnant. And Frida wanted that, too, if she was honest with herself. It felt like a dare, the biggest, most important risk of all. Micah would think so. Before the Group ruined him, when his mind was still open, fluorescent as plankton, he might’ve written her a letter that said, Go ahead, believe in it. Don’t get all afraid on me.
“I’m not afraid,” she said aloud.
The way her voice sounded in the morning air made her turn around. Was it some desire for a reply? No one was there, just the trees. This didn’t surprise her, but she did feel disappointed, as if she’d been stood up. But by whom? The creek rushed along, oblivious, and across the water, the forest waited. She and Sandy used to go foraging there, but they always stopped before getting in too deep, before the land became alien.