Perigee Moon (3 page)

Joy. Curiosity. Genuine interest. 

It was nothing like my real first day of school. The day I realized that the things I had in common with the other girls ended at our matching pig tails and neatly packed pb&j sandwiches. By the end of that day I was a mess. Crying when I got near the kids with separation anxiety, laughing hysterically when I got near a teacher who’d heard a joke I couldn’t have possibly heard or gotten at the innocent age of five. By the end of that first day they said I was crazy and I believed them. I soaked mom’s pink button down shirt with tears.

“I’m never going back,” I cried. She smoothed my hair, her palm molding to the back of my head as if it were made specifically for that purpose. “They said I’m weird Mama.”

“Oh baby,” she said, soft, sweet. “You’re not weird. You’re special. You have no idea how special. They just don’t understand it. People are afraid of things they don’t understand. That’s all.”

“I don’t want to be special. I want to be the same as the other kids.”

She pulled away to wipe my tears with the pads of her thumbs. “Then be the same baby. The things that you feel… just push them away.”

I sniffled. “I can do that?”

“You can do anything you want to sweetheart. Anything.”

“You still with us Rowan?” Paige nudged my shoulder. I blinked away the memory and stared at a large table full of kids. Some of them looked like seniors, but mostly my grade, I thought. I recognized a few from my earlier classes. One boy in particular I remembered from Bio. He had short spiky sun-kissed hair and a light spattering of freckles along his cheeks and nose. He looked up at me through curious celery-green eyes. In another life I might have tried to talk to him, maybe even flirted a little. But this wasn’t another life, so I looked away.

“Hey guys. This is Rowan.” She sat my tray down and took the seat beside me, leaning back to put me on display for the entire table.

“Rowan? I’ve never heard that name before.” The cute blonde boy sitting across from me said. “I’m Tyler.”

“Most people haven’t,” I said.

“I like it.” He grinned at me before taking a sip of his coke.

“So why did you move here so late in the semester?” Paige said. Suddenly all eyes were on me waiting for an answer. It was the exact situation I’d been trying to avoid.

I floundered for an excuse that didn’t involve mentioning my dead mother or recent suicide attempt and found myself rubbing the bands around my wrists to make sure they were in place.

“My family went on a cross country road trip. I didn’t want to go so I came to stay with my grandparents,” I said, hoping my answer would suffice. I wanted to kick myself for not coming up with something better.

“The last month of school?” Another girl down the table asked. I didn’t know her name. “Why didn’t they just wait until school got out?”

“Ummm…they…Dad’s work schedule is pretty crazy,” I said.

“And they didn’t make you go?” Tyler asked.

I shook my head and sipped my drink. No way was I saying anymore. The lies were already getting all knotted up in my head.

Paige laughed. “Oh my God you’re lucky. My parents made me drive all the way to Yellow Stone with them last summer. It was terrible. You are so lucky you didn’t have to go. You’ll have a much better summer here.”

“Hopefully.” I smiled, feeling a little warmer inside. This wasn’t so hard. If I was being honest with myself this was a lot easier than being back home. At least no one knew me here. Here I wasn’t the crazy girl whose Mom had just died. Here I was just the new girl.

“So who are your grandparents?” Tyler asked.

“Um, Elinore and Walter Bliss.” I grabbed my water and took a sip. The tension in my stomach was slowly unraveling, letting the liquid take its course.

“Bliss? Ooh! Don’t they live in the old Foster place?” Paige scooted to the edge of her seat like she was ready to tell a story around the campfire.

I shrugged. I didn’t know anything about my grandparent’s house, besides the fact that it was huge, old, and hella creepy. 

“Yeah, yeah,” she went on. “That place is supposed to be haunted. Is it totally creepy inside?”

“Not really,” I lied. “It’s actually kind of nice since they remodeled it.”

“Have you heard anything? You know, strange whispers in the night, unexplained footsteps in the hall? Ghosts?” Paige pushed aside her mountain dew can and grinned.

“I heard that somebody died in there. Didn’t find the body for weeks.” A kid said from the other side of Paige.

“No, no, no. A bunch of witches used to live there.” A blonde girl said. “My Uncle said they used to do séances in the backyard.”

“I’ve only been there one night. But nope. No ghosts yet,” I said quickly. Anything to make them stop.

“Don’t let them get to you Rowan. I heard they wanted to turn that place into a museum, but your grandpa wouldn’t take no for an answer. He paid a crap load to get that place,” Tyler said. “I think it’s kinda cool.”

“Well still, it’s creepy that you have to sleep there.” Paige didn’t seem deterred. “If you ever get freaked out you can stay at my place anytime.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Not that I planned to take her up on it. For all I knew she’d be worse than Casper. I looked over her freshly manicured nails and her gloss coated lips. Yeah this chick would want to braid each other’s hair for sure. “Anyway, sounds like it should be an interesting summer.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided to skip the road trip.” Tyler smiled again, his affection swirling around me like smoke. I waited for the awkward butterfly feeling in my gut that would normally follow after a boy this cute would flirt with me, but it never came. I still felt empty. Just the faint echo of a fluttery feeling rattling somewhere in the distance, but never breaking free from whatever prison that was harboring my once normal emotions.

“Down boy.” Paige rolled her eyes and giggled. “Sorry Rowan. We haven’t had any fresh meat around here in a while. So I apologize in advance for the guys’ behavior. Most of them mean well. Well, this one probably does anyhow.” She motioned to Tyler with her salad fork.
Then her eyes darted down the table, focusing on another boy. “As for Max.” She hissed his name and rolled her eyes but the burly boy didn’t flinch. It was the first time I’d noticed him staring at me and my skin crawled the longer he held my gaze. The emotions coming off of him were like steam. White hot and enough to make me blush and cringe all at the same time
.

“Hey Max! Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer,” she said. “Seriously Max. Chill out.”

This seemed to register with him. He returned his attention to his tray of food, picking it apart angrily with his fork.

The rest of the day went as seamlessly as lunch had. I didn’t like my math teacher, but then again I hated math, so she didn’t have much of a chance. The school was small, but not bad. Not as gossipy as my high school in Denver. Back home they were sharks. Here I was dealing with a school of curious fish.

By the time the sixth period bell had rung, Tyler had found me in the hall. “Hey.” His smile widened when he saw me. “Can I walk you out?”

I wanted to run. To jam myself inside a dark locker and escape the way he was looking at me, but instead I just smiled back and said, “Sure.” Tyler liked me. It was coming off of him in waves in an almost intoxicating, tingling heat. It’s not that he wasn’t nice. He was, and ridiculously cute with hazel green eyes, dimples, and a set of lips that Bevin would have called delectable. It was all me. I was irreversibly screwed up, virtually undateable. I wanted to tell him that he was wasting his time, but I couldn’t. He would want to know why and I couldn’t go into that. So instead I did my best to do what a normal seventeen-year-old girl would do. I let him carry my bag. I smiled, laughed, and nodded in all the appropriate places as he told me about a few of the cool spots to visit in pint sized town of Ipswich.. In truth I was starting to feel like a robot by the time I found my way out of the brick school building and into the sunlight.

 Grandpa was there waiting for me, the engine to his rusted 1985 Chevy truck rumbling like thunder as it idled by the curb. He gave me a suspicious smile when he saw Tyler carrying my bag.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Tyler.” I pulled my bag off of his arm and hopped into the truck before he could say anything else. “Thanks.” I called out of the open window as Grandpa pulled away. I watched Tyler shrink in the rearview mirror until he disappeared behind a pavement hill.

A few minutes later we coasted into the driveway next to my grandpa’s 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1. It was shiny black with red racing stripes and literally one of the coolest cars I’d ever laid eyes on. I wasn’t a car enthusiast or anything but this one was enough to make even me drool.

“Nice ride Grandpa.” I smiled as I hopped out of the truck wondering why the Mustang was out of the garage where it usually lived under the safety of a tarp.

“You mean
your
ride right?”

I stopped. No, froze is more like it. “What?”

“Well I was sort of hoping you’d help out at the Briar this summer, part time of course, and figured you might need a car for that.” He tossed me the keys and I almost forgot my name. This was the kind of thing that happened to Bevin, not me.

“That’s it?” I asked, incredulously checking the bushes for hidden cameras. This had to be a joke. Still not convinced, I opened myself to the love and sincerity coming off of him. It wrapped around me like a warm blanket on a cold winter night convincing me that I was indeed not being punked. I almost fainted
.

“Well we were going to give it to you as a graduation present next year anyways. No harm in having it early I suppose.”

I threw my arms around his neck, still in shock. “Thank you. I love it!”

“Well are you going to try her out or what?” Grandpa asked, his smile widening to match mine. I jingled the keys in my hand.

I ran my hand over the hood, admiring the way the sun reflected off of the red paint, a thousand shimmery facets of light bouncing off the surface. It was beautiful. It did very little to numb the ache though. I was starting to lose hope for that ever happening. If this couldn’t give me an escape from the pain then I wasn’t sure anything could.

“She sure it pretty isn’t she?” Grandpa said, his voice full of pride.

“Amazing,” I said. Cam was going to be so ticked off. Well, unless Grandpa had another classic car hiding in the garage. I hated to admit it but as much as I complained about being the oldest, at times like this, it rocked. “I love it Grandpa. Really.”

And that’s when it happened. The moment that would change my world forever. The hairs started to rise across the back of my neck and I felt it. Not just the unusual flash of recognition, but the pull. The kind you feel when someone is staring at you without your knowledge. I gave in and let it tear my eyes away from the car when a flash of white caught my eyes. 

There was a boy standing across the street just outside the tree line, his eyes burning into me with the kind of intensity that made my heart pound. I had to catch my breath as I let my gaze drift over him. His faded jeans and crisp white t-shirt clung to his thin athletic build. His coal-black hair was just long enough to fall artfully across one of his startling blue eyes. And those eyes, two quizzical oceans of wonder that refused to let me look away. They looked so sad. Like they had seen so much sorrow that it was just a part of them now. I imagined that’s what my eyes looked like, hollow shells staring back at a world. He was so…familiar. But I couldn’t place from where. How long had he been watching me?

I stumbled back and caught myself on the hood of the car when an earth-shattering jolt of recognition and warmth flooded me, consumed me. But I didn’t know him. Had never seen him. Which meant he recognized…
me
.  He quickly dropped his gaze to the ground and continued to trudge down the street. He didn’t look back. I stared after him, amazed at the warm fluttery feeling that bubbled through me and faded at the exact moment he disappeared over the hilltop.

“Boy from school?” Grandpa asked as he followed my gaze.

I ran through the list of faces I’d seen at school that day. None of them came close. I would’ve remembered someone that made me feel like that.

“Rowan?”

“Um, maybe. I’m not sure,” I said, still a little stunned. Boys like that didn’t exist back home. Up until this point, to my knowledge, boys like that didn’t exist period.

“Well are we going to take her for a ride or not? I want to make sure you can handle her alright before I hand you the reigns.” He smiled, his hand on the chrome door handle. I glanced back down the street one last time before shaking off the feeling.