Flowers Read online

  And the night was black and purple, a sprinkle of salt marking stars in the sky, Jeremy, lips, oh God, she couldn't breathe, this was so corny.

  Because she didn't want to kiss a guy. Who cared if Jeremy was a junior? She was fourteen and happy. She was out of it. She didn't even own a cell phone.

  Kate was the luckiest girl in the world, because she only owned the moon.

  "Come on," Jeremy said.

  Kate shook her head. Her back was against the bricks of the old movie theater, the streetlights as distant as the bright pinprick of Jupiter.

  Jeremy's breath was sardines. "Are you going to kiss me or not? Don't tell me you dragged me all the way out here for this?"

  "I just want to talk," she said.

  "Talk? I can talk with any girl. And do even more with some of them."

  "Jeremy. Don't pressure me."

  "Pressure you?" He kissed her again, his tongue like a frog's going after a bug. He pulled away and held Kate at arm's length. Under the moon, his eyes were as dark as beetles.

  "I need a little time," she said.

  "I'll give you all the time you need," Jeremy said, putting his arms around Kate and pulling her against him. She tried to go soft against his muscles. He was strong. He usually got his way with things.

  "Not like this," she said, but his hand was already on her bra strap.

  She looked past Jeremy's shoulder at the moon. A moon she had built from dreams and wishes. A moon so far away, yet all in her head at the same time. Kate the moonbeam queen, Mom had called her.

  Because she made the moon rise. When all the girls in her class were asleep, she closed her eyes and became far too awake and thought about the moon on its invisible string. She pulled the string and out came the moon, in different sizes every night without fail, except one night every four weeks when Kate was allowed to sleep.

  Tonight the moon was easy, a small sliver, just past new.

  And it would grow each night, swelling in inches and pounds and light, ever fatter and heavier, until by the full moon Kate would be dragging, with so much on her shoulders. Maybe not the weight of the world, but at least the weight of the moon.

  And now the moon watched without a word.

  "Give it up," Jeremy said. "You know you want to."

  His hug was awesome, his skin so warm. Most girls would give anything to do this. Some had. Brandi, Madison, and maybe Diane, if you believed the whispers in the locker room. Jeremy had stolen a lot of hearts and plundered other things.

  Jeremy's hand slid from her bra strap to something else. She shrugged away and faced the bricks. The moonlight filled the cracks, stitching the wall with white. He clasped her, squeezed her.

  "I'm not ready."

  "You're ready," he said.

  "No, really, I'm not."

  His hands slowed. "You mean you've never done this before?"

  Please don't laugh, she thought. All the other girls were doing it by seventh grade. But she had never been like the other girls. They threw pajama parties and went to restricted movies and lied to their parents and got in bed with boys. They were busy becoming women.

  And Kate was nothing but a moonbeam queen. Maybe not even a queen, only a princess. Even though she had the job of making the moon rise, she still didn't feel important. She wasn't one of the popular girls, and she clung to the corners. Which is why she nearly jumped out of her skin when Jeremy asked her out for coffee. Downtown, to the hangout, within walking distance of theaters and dark alleys.

  Two cups of decaf cappuccino later, Kate was breathless in his arms. Flattered, dizzy, but still not ready.

  The moon climbed higher, hung between the tall buildings. Cars throbbed on the streets, a siren erupted across town. Jeremy's breath drifted warm across her neck. Goose bumps rose despite her nervousness. "I want the first time to be special," she said.

  "This is special," he whispered. He pressed against her, and she didn't want to think of the mysterious hardness beneath his clothes. "Don't you feel it?"

  "I'm . . . not sure."

  "Honey, I've never felt like this about anyone else."

  "Not even Brandi and Madison and Diane?"

  Jeremy pulled away a little. "They're just friends."

  "That's what worries me. You and I haven't even been friends." Before he'd asked her out, Jeremy had spoken to her maybe three times. Usually when none of the prettier girls were around.

  "You don't have to be friends when it's something more than that."

  "What do you mean, something more?"

  "You know exactly what I mean."

  "No, I don't."

  Jeremy came close again, his arms around her, his hands busy. "I'm talking something really special. I’ve been watching you for a long time."

  She circled her fingers around his wrists, trying to slow him down. "I don't know," she said. "It's hard to think when you're doing that."

  "Don't think," he said. "Go for it."

  He kissed her again, and she closed her eyes and saw blue and saw sparks for stars and saw the night sky spinning and—

  She pulled away and looked at the moon.

  It had slipped lower in the sky.

  She was supposed to be raising it, tugging that invisible string so it made its way from horizon to horizon in synch with the sun. Because, somewhere, the boy who saw fire was hard at work putting the sun to bed and the star children were each winking a light to life and the Night Shifters were busy painting black from horizon to horizon. All the Makers were doing their chores, and the Mother Maker sang the soft and distant hymn that set the rhythm of the universe. All Kate needed to do was think, and the moon would move in its proper circle, its heavy face turned always to the Earth.

  But she couldn't concentrate, not with Jeremy so close and his breath against her cheek and his skin warm against hers and oh how she hated letting him go but she ducked under his arms and stared back down the long alley toward the street.

  "What's the matter?" Jeremy said.

  "I can't."

  "You can't." The rasp of a flint wheel echoed off the walls, and Kate smelled tobacco smoke.

  "I have homework," she said, a tiny lie, not a huge one, the splash of guilt swept away on the frothy tide of her emotions.

  "Homework." The word was spat with a lungful of smoke. Jeremy never did homework, not while Brandi was around to do it for him. Brandi was a C student, but she was nearly fifteen, went to the stylist, had seven shades of lipstick. She was wild, almost a real woman, and not afraid of doing it.

  "I'm sorry." Kate tried not to let her voice break. If she kept her back turned, Jeremy wouldn't see her tears.

  "No big deal," Jeremy said, in a way that meant it was probably the biggest deal possible in the entire universe.

  She turned to face him. He slouched against the wall, deep in shadows, eyes reflecting the red glow of his cigarette.

  The cigarette tip grew bright as he inhaled. She threw a quick look at the sky. Even with the city streetlights, the moon was visible, stuck in the sky like an earring. It hadn't moved in way too many minutes, and Kate's slackness was causing problems for the Night Shifters and the Dawn girl and the Makers who were responsible for sprinkling the morning dew.

  She said, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

  At last Jeremy moved. He flipped his cigarette to the pavement, crushed it out, and walked past her. "I'm not mad," he said. "I don't even care enough to be mad."

  He kept walking, and Kate almost ran after him. But what could she do? She didn't want her first time to be in an alley, even with Jeremy, who no doubt knew what he was doing. All the girls said so. All the girls.

  Then he was around the corner and Kate could only look at that cruel moon and cry. What was so important about the moon, anyway? Who cared what Mom said about all the bad things that would happen if the moon didn't shine, or slipped in its tracks, or rotated a few times? Who cared if she let Jeremy do all that wild and wonderful stuff? Nobody would know but the two of them and the w
atching moon.

  She ran to the end of the alley. Jeremy stood there, hunched, looking down the sidewalk toward the lights of the coffee shop. No doubt several other girls were hanging out, girls who might not be as stubborn and stuck-up as Kate.

  "Jeremy?" she said.

  "What?" He didn't turn around.

  "I . . . I changed my mind."

  He stood straighter. Two cars passed, one of them a cop car, but cops never noticed the kids unless they were smoking. It didn't really matter what the kids did, as long as they kept it off Main Street.

  Jeremy smiled, teeth yellow in the streetlights, then took her by the arm and led her back into the shadows. He kissed her, more roughly this time. He had just a little bit of fuzz on his chin, not enough to shave but enough to tickle. She giggled, and in her fright, the sound came out like the whinny of a sick horse.

  "Mmm, you're going to enjoy this," Jeremy said.

  If only she could believe it. She closed her eyes, hoping it wouldn't hurt. If she didn't watch, maybe she could pretend it wasn't happening. His fingers fumbled at the buttons of her blouse.

  One undone, two, then his hand cold on her stomach. She giggled again, but this time no sound came. Why couldn't she breathe? This was supposed to be fun, all the girls said so. Relax and let it happen, everybody said.

  Everybody's doing it.

  Why couldn't she believe it?

  Kate opened her eyes and saw that the moon had slid so far down the sky that only a nip of it hung above the concrete horizon. The moon was sinking too fast, its arc accelerating with her heartbeat. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She decided that holding on would be best. She couldn’t hold on to the things inside, so she grabbed Jeremy’s shoulders and squeezed hard enough for him to yelp in surprise.

  "Take it easy," he said. "It won’t hurt a bit."

  Mom had explained to Kate about the moon and womanhood and the bleeding that made girls into women. Kate had never bled that way, and Mom said maybe she never would because she was the heart of the moon. The Makers weren’t like normal people, though they had to walk among them, go to school, eat, and sleep. And fall in love.

  That was the meanest part. Moonbeam queens should never have to love normal people, because normal people couldn’t understand the job of making the world work. Makers brought sunshine and rain, and Kate wished she could tell all her friends about her job dragging the moon, because then she’d be cool and popular and Jeremy would probably hang out with her even without the stuff he was doing now.

  He had the front of her shirt open and the night air was cool on her skin. She looked down at her own paleness, her belly slightly rounded like the moon. He kissed her neck. She could tell he’d had lots of practice, smooth moves, making her feel as special as he’d made all the others feel. His hands were crawling again, quick as spiders.

  She twisted and writhed, summoned air into her frozen lungs. "Jeremy."

  "Mmmm," he said. "That’s right, baby. That’s good."

  Baby. Mom said these things caused babies—

  "I’m still not ready. Can we just hold hands for a little while?"

  "This is the night, honey." His voice slid off the brick walls and clattered around the gutter pipes and fire escapes. "The one we’ve both been waiting for."

  His hands moved again, to the back pockets of her jeans, then quick around to the button. Jeremy seemed to have eight hands and three mouths, and she was lost, not knowing which sensation to focus on. He had somehow nudged and shifted her until they were deeper in shadows, and she lost sight of the moon.

  Kate found herself on her back, in the scratchy stretch of what had once been landscaping. The bones of dead shrubs surrounded them and the sounds of the street blended into a rough and distant whisper. Brick walls rose above her, windows black and rectangular, the tops of the buildings wore blue haloes of halogen light. Jeremy pressed on top of her, warm and strong and confident, an animal in its natural habitat.

  But Kate was cut off from her own habitat. She couldn’t track the moon, had no way of knowing whether it was on the horizon or over Japan, or whether it had completely slipped its tethers and drifted toward the black sea of deep space. She tried to sit up, but Jeremy was all over, his own shirt gone, and her bare belly sizzled with his heat. His hands moved over her again, and part of her wanted to surrender to their gentle roughness.

  "Jeremy, I’ve got to tell you something."

  "Let your body do the talking, honey."

  "No, really. I’ve never—"

  He paused in his serpentine writhing, and in the scant light his eyes flashed above her face. "First time, huh? That’s fine, baby. Just relax. First time for everything."

  And a first time for losing the moon. How could she ever explain it to her mom? How could she pick up the telephone when the Mother Maker called? What sort of apology could she make to the rest of the Makers, who had made their sacrifices and done their chores, who had kept the world right on schedule while she was off indulging in a selfish whim?

  Jeremy must have sensed her hesitancy, because he pressed his advantage, somehow managing to kiss her at the same time his arms were everywhere. She felt as if a large hole was opening underneath her, as if she were sinking into the Earth and would be forever cut off from the moon she had betrayed. Still, she clung to the piece of sky she could see, mentally hanging on as if it were a rope dangling down a well.

  "I love you," Jeremy said, and she released the rope, and she fell, and the blackness swallowed her, and she saw what a night would be like without light, saw the moon eaten by the Night Shifters like so much marshmallow pie. This was a night that had no dawn, and her failure would disrupt the stars and tides and the dreams of sleeping children. She had lost that white and glowing part of herself. A suffocating fear swept over her, and she knew she could never give away that part where her soul and the moon connected.

  Kate yelled at the sky, wanting to stop the crazed and aimless arc of the moon she had abandoned.

  She pushed and clawed and screamed and wriggled, and the next thing she knew she was sitting up, drawing her shirt closed over her chest.

  Jeremy was some distance away, wiping at his face. His shirt askew, his hair mussed, and hunched in the darkness, he seemed smaller and less physically imposing. "Hey, you bloodied my nose," he said, in an adolescent whine.

  "I’m sorry," she said, and she really meant it, because she had desired nothing more than to give herself to him. Except the moon needed that secret place inside her that Jeremy demanded. She was a slave to two masters, and both were selfish.

  Or maybe she was the selfish one.

  "What the hell was that all about?" Jeremy asked from the shadows.

  "The moon," she said.

  "Huh?"

  "A stupid, bleak chunk of rock."

  "Have you gone nuts?"

  "It’s me. Or maybe not me, only a reflection."

  Jeremy wiped his nose again and slipped his arms into his shirt sleeves. "If you didn’t want to do it, why didn’t you just say so? You didn’t have to be a tease."

  "Oh, I wanted to do it, more than anything in the world."

  Jeremy sulked past her, stabbing a cigarette in his mouth. "Maybe you didn’t screw up my whole night. Brandi’s probably at the coffee shop."

  Kate wanted to shout at him, beg him for one last kiss, a fleeting thing to hold in her memory. But he had already turned the corner.

  Kate looked up at the slim wedge of moon, her Sisyphus stone. As she looked at that distant face, the one the normal people called "The Man in the Moon," she thought she glimpsed herself. The moon’s light was nothing but a reflection, all of its power and magic only an illusion for poets and lovers. A trick of timing and position.

  In every mirror, you give half of yourself away.

  But she still had the other half. She was a Maker.

  Kate adjusted her clothing and headed for the bright and noisy streets.

  ###

  WAMPUS CATr />
  Susan should have known better than to head south with a man, especially to the place her grandmother called "the land of legends."

  This was the dark heart of the Alleghenies and dusk was pumpkin-colored and the mountains stood like giant petrified beasts against the mist. Trees mingled, black sticks intersecting. The fallen leaves were as sodden as a fraternity carpet. October's rot filled the air.

  And Barry was lost. Barry, with a forty-dollar compass and LL Bean hiking boots and a copy of Thoreau's "Walden" in his backpack, was so lost that Saturday morning looked like Tuesday night.

  Susan should have said something. Maybe Saturday afternoon, when Barry eased his hook into the Shawneehaw. Barry had read a book on fly fishing, and Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in baseball history, was also a fly fisherman. Barry talked about Ted Williams so much that Susan wished Williams had been a Yankee instead of a Red Sock.

  Because Barry was Yankee. Maine Yankee, the worst kind. She was Jersey Shore college by way of Piedmont Carolina, and much of her blood was rock-deep Southern Appalachian, Scots-Irish and paranoid, a little free-spirited and flaky, but that was no excuse to fall for him. He had passed himself off as a real man and reality was subject to change.

  Not that all men should automatically be able to kill bears with a hatchet.

  But they could at least take a little time and get things right. Like where they were. And who they were with. To Barry, Susan might as well have been AnnaBeth-Mary, the previous temporary girlfriend to follow him on these Appalachian journeys. At least she had her own tent, so she could turn in early every night.

  Doubtless, others had preceded AnnaBeth-Mary and Susan. All of them falling in lock-step with Barry, because when the sun hit his hair just right, he glowed like a lion. Tall and tan and crisp, with muscles and a toothy smile.

  But after a while, Barry's little flaws started to show. His confusion. His forgetfulness. His obsession with fly fishing. His play-by-play of the year Ted Williams hit .406.