Neon holograms heralded the winter solstice in Laguna Beach. Mila’s mother decorated the walls around their Mystic Hills home with glow-in-the-dark red and blue tinsel.
“Patriotism doesn’t take a holiday.” She arranged the sweets for their rooftop party.
Mila bit into a tree-shaped cookie and looked below at the house next door, which, as usual, sat dark and unadorned.
“Why doesn’t Mrs. Pringle celebrate?”
“Why don’t they do anything like us?” Her father took a drink from the robo-maid.
“She’s one of them, honey,” her mother said.
“Them? Who?”
Mrs. Pringle looked like everyone else in town.
“If that prop passes, they’ll be gone by summer,” said her father.
“Where is she going?” Mila wanted to go to a forest.
Mila watched the fog creep up the Park Avenue wall. Thirty feet high, it ran from Alta Laguna to Main Beach, a concrete wave that branched off into other walls that neatly boxed up each house. Mila’s parents didn’t allow her outside their walls at night.
“Subversives everywhere,” her father said.
“Good riddance to all of them,” replied her mother.
Mila had never seen a subversive, but she had seen what lay inside her friends’ walls: wave pools, laser golf mazes, robotics labs. Below, Mrs. Pringle’s crumbling walls held sand and weeds.
Mila took a second tree-shaped cookie. Her e-tutor said it was called an evergreen, an ancient species with a pleasant aroma. She smelled only vanilla and sugar. Before she took a bite, she stopped. Floating across Mrs. Pringle’s yard was a golden light. Was it a fairy? A wayward solstice star?
Mila stashed the cookie in her pocket and slipped downstairs. Her heart pounding, she tiptoed through Mrs. Pringle’s broken gate. Laughter from the party drifted over the wall.
Mila wished the blue and red glare of her mother’s tinsel reached Mrs. Pringle’s pitch-black yard. She felt her way around the corner, and there it was: the light, a single golden star. And above it stood Mrs. Pringle.
“Goodness!” Mrs. Pringle jumped. “You startled me.”
Mila froze.
“I’m Mila. I saw a light…”
“You mean my tree?” At her feet sat a real evergreen in a ceramic pot. “Would you like to see it?”
The needles tickled Mila’s fingers, giving off a minty, earthy scent. How must a whole forest smell?
“Where did you get it?”
“From a seed my father gave me long ago,” Mrs. Pringle smiled.
“Was he one of them too?”
“Them?” Mrs. Pringle’s smile faded.
“My mother says you’re one of them.”
“I’m someone who speaks up.”
“About what?”
“The truth.”
Mrs. Pringle stared at the tree, the star’s golden light softening her lined cheeks. Mila wished she hadn’t asked so many questions. She pulled the evergreen cookie from her pocket and held it out.
“Happy Solstice, Mrs. Pringle.”
“A lovely treat! Share?”
She broke the cookie in half, and Mila ate in silence while Mrs. Pringle disappeared inside the house. When she returned, she closed Mila’s hand around something small and hard.
“What is it?”
“A seed.”
Mila watered the sapling in the ceramic pot on her windowsill. Outside, construction drones dug a hole where Mrs. Pringle’s house once stood.
“Just think! Pool parties every weekend,” her mother had said when the machines knocked down the wall separating their yard from Mrs. Pringle’s.
“When we are both grown up,” she told the infant evergreen, “you’ll wear a beautiful solstice star and I’ll plant you outside for everyone to see.”
The tree stretched towards Mila and the light, and Mila dreamt of crumbling walls.
Amy Francis Dechary is president of Laguna-based Third Street Writers and currently is working on her first novel.
