One Door From Heaven

twisted leg. Then Leilani might awake in agony, with obscenities cut into her face.
        This was why she made a joke of everything, why wisecracks and prayers were equally important to her. If she couldn't find a silver laugh, bright and sparkling, then she would find a dark one, cold but comforting, because if ever she failed to find a laugh of any kind, then she would be crushed by dread, by hopelessness, and it wouldn't matter if she was technically still alive, for she'd be dead in her heart.
        Laughs of any variety were getting harder to find.
        As the dream-racked hive queen whispered, whispered, no longer lying on her back, no longer face-to-face with the smiling sun god, but curled in the fetal position on the lounge floor, she seemed to be speaking in two distinct voices, though both were as hushed as lovers sharing intimacies. One whisper remained recognizably her own, but the other sounded deeper, rougher, strange, as though she were conversing with a demon that possessed her and spoke through her.
        Sitting in the co-pilot's chair with her back to the lounge, Leilani couldn't quite hear what old Sinsemilla said either in her whisper or in that of her alter ego. Only two words, repeated from time to time, rose out of the susurrant flow of dialogue and became distinguishable, although in truth Leilani was probably imagining them, translating meaningless babble to feed her growing paranoia. The girl, Sinsemilla seemed to whisper, and later the demon said it, too, with a hungry guttural longing, the girl.
        These words were surely just fumes of fantasy, for when Leilani listened, head cocked either left or right, or when she turned in the swiveling chair to face her mother's jackknifed form, she heard only meaningless murmurs, as though the hive queen had reverted to insect speech or, under the influence of the mushroom god, talked only in tongues impossible to interpret. Yet when she faced front again, when her thoughts sped forward to Idaho and to means of self-defense, when she didn't actively listen to old Sinsemilla, she either imagined or heard again what she dreaded hearing: the girl… the girl…
        She needed her knife.
        Lukipela had gone with Preston Maddoc into a Montana twilight, never to return, and in the first night that followed her brother's disappearance, Leilani had crept into the kitchen of the motor home to steal a paring knife from the cutlery drawer. Sharp and pointed, the blade measured three and a half inches from the haft to the tip. As a weapon, it rated less desirable than either a.38 revolver or a flamethrower, but unlike those more formidable armaments, it was available and easy to conceal.
        A few nights later, she had realized that Preston wouldn't send her to the stars anytime soon, perhaps not until the eve of her tenth birthday in February. If she tried to keep the knife hidden on her person for fifteen months, she would inadvertently drop it or be caught with it in one way or another, revealing that she expected eventually to have to fight for her life.
        Without the advantage of surprise, the paring knife would be only a slightly more effective weapon than bare but determined hands.
        She'd considered returning the blade to the kitchen. But she'd been worried that in a crisis, under suspicion and closely watched, she might not be allowed to get near the cutlery drawer.
        Instead, she'd hidden the knife in the mattress of the foldaway sofabed on which she slept each night. She lifted one corner of the mattress, and on the underside made a three-inch slit in the ticking. After inserting the weapon in the mattress, she had repaired the slit with two pieces of electrician's tape.
        Changing bed linens and doing laundry were her responsibilities. Consequently, no one but Leilani herself was likely to see the tape-mended tear.
        In the dead hours of the oncoming night, while Preston and old Sinsemilla were asleep, Leilani would turn up the corner of the mattress again, peel back the tape that she had applied nine months ago, and extract the paring knife. From here through Idaho-and into the Montana woods with Preston, if it came to that-she would carry the blade taped to her body.
        She sickened at the thought of stabbing anyone, even Dr. Doom, whose fellow high-school classmates had surely voted him "Most Likely to Be Stabbed" only because there had been no category titled "Most