Luna (11 page)

“Is this me?” She unfolded a pink tee and held it up to her.

“It’s all over you,” I said.

“Hi.”

We both jumped. Oh, great. Another clerk had been lying in wait. “Can I help you?”

Luna looked from me to her. “Do you have this in teal?” she asked.

I died.

The clerk said, “No, just what you see here.”

“Darn.”

The saleslady shrugged at Luna. Then it happened. Her eyes expanded, took Luna in. She stepped back, away, and began to blink real fast.

I felt Luna shrinking in place, shriveling. I reached for her hand. It was trembling, cold.

“They don’t have your color,” I said. “Let’s go.” I tugged her out into the mall.

Hurtling away from The Gap, my heart in my throat, I croaked, “Have you had enough? Can we go home now?”

No answer. I turned to her.

“Not yet,” she said. “We just got here.”

Yeah, a year ago. I’d had enough. That clerk’s reaction made me feel like crawling into a hole. “Dad’s going to kill us. Or ground us for life. He’ll probably call the Y and figure out you were bullshitting him. We should go. Have you seen a phone? I better call him and check in. Breathe heavy in the background so it sounds like you’re working up a sweat.”

“Hey, Blockbuster.” Luna pointed. “I want to get the sound-track for
Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
” She hurried away.

Without me to protect her.

I raced to catch up.

Inside the music store Luna headed directly to the movie soundtracks in back, while I shadowed close behind, cursing under my breath. I just wanted out of here. As she passed the Pop and Rock section, this trio of guys appeared out of nowhere. One of them jostled his friend on the left and whispered under his hand.

They sniggered.

Thirteen, I figured. Going on six. Insignia jackets with matching baggy jeans. Oh God. They were following Luna.

I sped up and wedged between them. Closing in on Luna, I shoved her from behind around the end of the CD racks and back toward the entrance.

“What are you doing?” She tried to slap me off.

“Saving you.”

That’s when she saw them, over the median of CDs between us.

“Fag.”

My ears burned. Luna’s spine fused.

“Hey, fag!”

A girl in the rock section, reading liner notes on a CD, raised her head. She caught my eye. Did I know her? Keep moving, I thought.

“Yo. Fag.”

Move!

The lights flicker and the door to the basement slams shut. Liam pounds down the stairs. He flings his backpack over the sofa, where I’m sprawled out doing my homework. The backpack smacks the coffee table and knocks off my cup of soup.

“Liam! Nice going.” I retrieve the mug but not before the contents have bled all over my map assignment. “Look what you did!”

He throws himself into the overstuffed chair across from me, hugging his knees. I don’t catch whatever he’s muttering because I’m trying to salvage my homework. Shaking off the chunks of chicken and noodle and daubing the broth with my T-shirt, which is smearing the Magic Marker on the poster board where I’d just spent an hour delineating all the countries of Africa. “Dammit, Liam!”

“I am not,” Liam swears under his breath. “Don’t you
call
me that. You ignorant pissant.”

He’s talking to himself again. Conducting a conversation with an invisible being — someone other than me. He’s such a head case. I’m not sure when he started talking to himself, but I think it was the beginning of eighth grade. Last year. He seemed to recede more and more into himself all year.

Dad noticed. He asked me about it. I told Dad that was just Liam. He said he didn’t understand that kid. But then, he never had.

Then Aly noticed. She’d be having a conversation with Liam, or they’d be doing homework together, and he’d disappear. Mentally. Physically. He’d simply fade away.

“It isn’t you,” I informed Aly. She seemed so worried. “He does it to everyone.”

“Where does he go, Re?” she wanted to know. “He goes somewhere. In his head. I don’t know. He gets so... lost.”

I wish I could tell her. I want to tell her.

“Can
not
put up with that. I won’t. I am
not
a fag.”

“Liam, what are you saying? Who’s a fag?”

He snaps to attention, as if he just crash-landed to Earth. His eyes slowly focus on my face and he says, “I’m not a fag. I’m not gay. Tell him that.”

“Tell who?”

Liam shakes his head, looking straight at me. “I’m not gay. I’m trans.”

“I know that. Who says you’re gay?”

His eyes darken. He doesn’t have to say who. Hoyt Doucet. Was he on Liam’s case again?

“Hoyt’s a pus pocket,” I remind Liam.

He jumps to his feet and storms off to his room. Funny thing is, I think, if anyone’s gay it’s Hoyt Doucet. He just won’t admit it. He even dates girls. I don’t care if he lies to himself; hates himself for being gay. He has no right making Liam’s life a living hell. Liam hasn’t done anything to Hoyt. He sure isn’t interested, if that’s what Hoyt’s afraid of, or wants. Hoyt’s not his type. Not even his species.

Liam returns a minute later with a slab of poster board, which he fwaps down on the coffee table. “We did the same assignment in Trumbo’s class.”

It’s my map. Beautifully colored in with pastel pencils, all the countries outlined in black pen. An A+ circled at the top.

“I’m not gay.” Liam spins away. “It’s not the same. I’m a girl.”

“Whoo hoo. Faggy boy.”

They were coming after us.

Luna forged ahead of me, almost knocking over this gorilla dude in a blue suit. A blue suit?

“Hey.” I wheeled around, snagging the suit. “Those guys back there? They won’t leave us alone.” I pointed. “I think they’re stalking us. Luna!” I called for her to wait.

All the security guard had to do was evil-eye the wastoids and they bolted. Punks.

“Thanks,” I mumbled to the guard before tearing off after Luna. She’d ducked into an alcove between a cigar kiosk and a frame shop, where she was doubled over, hyperventilating.

“It’s okay. They’re gone.” I rubbed her back trying to calm her. Calm myself. I scanned to get our bearings. “There’s a girls’ restroom down the hall by that shoe store.” I showed Luna. “Wait for me. I’ll go get your stuff so you can change and we can leave. Give me the locker key.”

She unlatched her purse with a shaky hand and dropped the key into my palm. Any second now she was going to disintegrate, implode, disembody. “Oh God. Luna.” I squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.” What else could I say? What could anyone say?

Chapter 12

D
ad grounded us for life. Until he decided we could be trusted, he said, which might be longer than life. He’d waited up. Probably called the Y. In addition to the prison sentence, he impounded Liam’s car — took away the keys and didn’t say for how long. Like that was going to work. Liam had that car wired with a fingerpad remote so that anyone who tried to break in would get electrocuted. At least, that’s what he’d told me. For years, though, Dad had been aching for any excuse to separate Liam from his beloved car. On Liam’s sixteenth birthday Dad had towed home this junk heap of a VW and said, “Hey, son. We’re going to rebuild this baby together. Won’t that be fun? I know it isn’t much to look at now, but wait’ll we get it running and do the body work. . . .”

Liam let him know how involved he was going to be in that little father/son project by going out and buying himself a Mit-subishi Eclipse Spyder. Brand new. Sterling Silver Metallic. Convertible.

He must’ve been saving up for years to buy that car, same way I’ve been for my own car. Except the current dollar amount in my savings account would finance, oh, a pair of Dad’s retreads?

Dad had never forgiven Liam.

Get over it, I thought. Who wants to drive around in a junk heap?

As Liam relinquished his keys to Dad, he didn’t even put up a fight. In his current state, Liam probably would’ve handed over his entire Dana International collection.

We shouldn’t have gone to the mall. It was a stupid idea. Dangerous. Liam must’ve realized it. I know he regretted it. The rest of the weekend he moped around the basement, incommunicado. I didn’t know what to do for him. Step up the suicide watch? I did, actually. I cleared the room of all sharp objects, which was dumb. If Liam was determined to do it, he’d find a way. Not without me, though. Never without me.

Monday morning Liam was back to his old self — hollow boy. I could deal with that. So could he. Hopefully he was over this whole transition phase.

Chris wasn’t in chemistry again, which should’ve been a relief. There was
way
too much chemistry between us and it took a lot of energy to keep my distance. The one bright spot in an otherwise dismal day was that Bruchac was off attending some teacher inservice, so we were treated to a sub. Which meant everyone screwed around. Which meant I sat in a corner by myself, pretending I loved to be alone.

Aly was hanging out in the basement after school, curled in the corner of the sofa watching
Judge Judy.
She motioned me over to her and I flopped down. “What’s with Liam?” she said.

Where was he? Nowhere to be seen. His bedroom door was closed.

“I know he’s in there,” Aly said. “I can hear movement.”

“Did you knock?” I asked.

“Yeah. Twice. He wouldn’t answer. That was a while ago.”

At that moment his door opened and he emerged. Without a word, he walked over, retrieved his PDA from atop the TV, and returned to his crypt.

“Hel-loo,” Aly sang, widening her eyes at his retreating back and closing door. “God. He hasn’t been this weird for a long time. What happened?”

He was born, I thought. “I have no idea,” I lied.

“Guys.” She shook her head. “They’re so moody.”

Were they? I wouldn’t know.

Aly returned to feigning interest in
Judge Judy,
concentrating more on the show and less on me. The TV screen suddenly became a mirror. I imagined the three of us reflected in it — our eyes, wide open, gazing into the unknown. Searching, seeking, longing.

What did each of us long for? Liam, of course, longed to be free. To be Luna; to be loved and accepted for the person she was inside. Good luck.

Aly? She longed to be with Liam. She wanted him to be something he never could be. A boy. The man of her dreams. Good luck.

Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life. I saw Liam and Aly and me, peering deeper into our futures. This terrible sense of foreboding seeped up through my core. One of us, or all of us, was going to take a fall.

Mirelle and Cody both rushed me at the door, throwing their arms around my legs and cheering, “Regan, Regan.” A wave of love washed over me. My body took form, shape. A life materialized in front of me — mine. At times I felt guilty for taking money from the Materas. They were my lifeline, my only connection to a world outside my brother. A world I could only imagine.

Thank God Dad hadn’t grounded me from working.

Mirelle laced her tiny fingers in mine and said, “Come see my mural, Regan.”

“Come see mine first.” Cody grabbed my other hand and they yanked in opposite directions.

I laughed. So did David and Elise. “Okay, okay. Let me get Ty first. Is it okay?” I queried Elise, motioning to Tyler in his baby swing.

“Of course,” she said, continuing to rub in hand cream. It smelled good. Sweet. Same as her.

I retrieved the baby and trailed the kids to their rooms. In her spare time — when she wasn’t working at her
important
job of being a mother — Elise freelanced as a graphic artist. She was really good. She’d been working for months on these bed-room murals for the kids. Cody’s mural was a baseball player winding up for a pitch. Number four, his jersey read. If that was someone famous, I wouldn’t know. Liam would hate this wall. Mirelle’s wall was a magic castle with a knight stationed beside his trusty steed, bowing to a fairy princess. The princess’s outfit resembled a costume I’d worn for Halloween one year. Or was that Liam? It was more him than me. I think he tried it on when we got back from trick-or-treating. After Mom and Dad had gone to bed, of course. I never did see that costume again. It was probably at the bottom of his treasure chest.

David and Elise left for their dinner date — they actually called it a dinner date — and the four of us watched the last half hour of
Spy Kids II
on
Nick at Nite.
I put Tyler to bed, then Mirelle and Cody coerced me into a game of
Chutes and Ladders.
It didn’t take much coaxing. Around the fifth time I fell down a chute, my mind began to wander. I couldn’t stop thinking about Liam and what had happened Saturday night.

He hadn’t said a word about it. As if it never happened. No doubt he was traumatized and blocking it out. He’d resumed his midnight forays into Luna land, playing dress-up in my room. Nice and safe.

I wished I could forget. Those punks. The clerk. The punks’ reaction could almost be expected. It didn’t prey on my mind so much as the clerk. The moment she saw what Luna was, when she physically repelled away from her, that feeling seared a scar on my soul. She was actually repulsed.

Luna saw it. She felt it.

I couldn’t bear for my brother to be viewed as a freak. It hurt him; I know it did. He didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserved that kind of pain. If he decided to live the rest of his life as Moon Girl, he could trust me to keep his secret. He could trust me to keep him safe.

“Seems your lab partner jumped ship,” Bruchac informed me the next day as he handed back last week’s problem sets.

I glanced up at him. “What?”

“He dropped the class.”

My heart plunged through the sink.

“Since Mr. Doucet’s partner doesn’t feel the need to make it here most days, why don’t you team up with him?”

I glanced over at Hoyt, who flared nostrils at me. No way. Never. Where was the leftover person, the twenty-third? Every-body had partners. Had another person dropped? Atchinson, where was he?