Read The Next Full Moon Online
Authors: Carolyn Turgeon
The Next Full Moon
Copyright © 2012 Carolyn Turgeon
All rights reserved.
Cover and interior designed by Georgia Rucker
Photo credits: girl, © Dmitriy Shironosov/Shutterstock.com;
cover background photo, © Jaroslaw Grudzinski/Shutterstock.com;
feathers, © Potapov Alexander/Shutterstock.com.
January 2012
ISBN 9781935703723
Downtown Bookworks Inc.
285 West Broadway, New York, New York 10013
www.downtownbookworks.com
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or
are used fictiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1-9357-0372-3 (eBook)
To my mother, father and sister
This book would never have come into being if not for Julie Merberg asking to me to write something for her new children's book publishing company while I was Skyping with her gorgeous family from Berlin, Germany (while they were in Berlin, New York) one autumn afternoon a couple of years ago. I am eternally grateful to Julie for this, and to her brilliant husband, my good friend David Bar Katz, and their wild, beautiful, mop-headed boys Morris, Nathaneal, Kal, and Mac, who were all so much a part of this process. Thank you, too, to everyone else at Downtown Bookworks, especially to Patty, Georgia, and Sarah, as well as to everyone at Simon & Schuster. It's a wonderful thing, when someone offers you the chance to go back in time and be twelve again.
My agent Elaine Markson and her fabulous right-hand assistant Gary Johnson.
Miss Hannah Kurtz, who sat down one day and told me
all about the secret lives of adolescents.
Hannah Stout, who's in love with all insects but with mayflies
in particular and made me (kind of) love them, too.
Olivier Georgeon, who discussed this book with me endlessly
and suggested, in his French and scientific manner, that
budding swan maidens would shed their robes.
My uncle, John Krinbill, who took me to a city full of swans.
Max Spiegel, Chantelle Hodge, and Jim Downes, who
all generously taught me about fly fishing.
Eric Schnall, Jeanine Cummins, Laura Carleton, Mary McMyne,
and Valerie Cates, all of whom read early drafts of this book.
Jill Gleeson, who was there with me as I finished this book, in a 12-hour writing
session at an unglamorous fast food chain, and endured me reading pages and
pages of it out loud to her over the course of that day and several others.
My sister, Catherine, and parents, Alfred and Jean, for being
so supportive and generally being the best family ever.
And, finally, I'd like to thank the real Jeff Jackson, who was the most
popular boy in the 7th grade when I went to MacDonald Middle
School in East Lansing, Michigan in 1983. I don't think I ever actually
spoke to him, but you really never forget your first crush.
Love, Carolyn
I
t started with a feather. One little white rounded feather resting on her pillow. Ava didn't think much of it, though, considering that it was a bright Sunday morning and there were only three weeks left of school and in just over a month she would turn thirteen and the whole summer stretched out before her like a long, shimmering gift. She jumped out of bed, letting the feather blow to the ground, where it landed on the dark wood floor and, after skittering a few inches in the faint breeze, came to a stop. Any passerby might have thought it was a bit of fur and indeed the cat, Monique, eyed it suspiciously as she slinked past Ava's room and to the kitchen.
Ava stepped over it as she rushed to her bathroom, to the big mirror. She'd spent the day before lying in the backyard on a towel and hoped that for once her skin might have turned tan and smooth, like Jennifer Halverson's, who, with her sun-drenched blond hair and brown skin, looked like she spent her whole life at the beach even though she lived right smack in the middle of Pennsylvania like the rest of them. Ava half expected to have turned blond and dark-skinned herself overnight, but there she was, staring back at herself, the same as ever. Pale, though now more pink than white, and dark-haired, with navy blue eyes. Boring. She sighed and turned away.
Ava Gardner looks
, her grandmother called them.
Like the old-time movie star
.
Women used to walk around with umbrellas to have skin as beautiful as yours
. Ava would roll her eyes. “That was like a thousand years ago,” she'd say. When she looked in the mirror, it was like a ghost girl looking out.
But this morning was too beautiful for a little paleness to ruin it. Summer was almost here! The windows were wide open and the air smelled like grass and flowers and trees. The white curtains on her windows fluttered in the breeze, which felt warm and wonderful against her skin. Not too hot, just warm enough.
She clicked on her computer and saw that Morgan was already on IM. “Ready to go?” she typed. “We can work on our tans before anyone else gets there.”
“Sure,” MORGANISAWESOME typed back. “Come'n get me.”
“Be there in 10.”
Ava pulled off her nightshirt and shimmied into her new bathing suit, which she'd been saving. It was the first day her friends and classmates would be going to the lake, where they'd spend the rest of the summer hanging out, day after long blissful day. Ava loved it down there: the trees hanging over the water, the canoes and paddleboats whirring in the distance, the long line of beach, and of course the old carousel next to the stands selling flavored ice and lemonade. She could hardly wait. And she knew that Jeff Jackson would be thereâshe'd heard him and all his friends planning it the week before.
Even thinking about him here, alone in her room, made her blush.
She wondered what Jeff would think when he saw her in her new suit. Nervously, she examined herself in the mirror, twisting this way and that, worrying that he'd think her stomach wasn't flat enough, that her thighs were too big. She had to admit that the suit looked good on her, that the red was striking against her long dark hair.
Lately, she was sure that Jeff had started noticing her. He'd smiled at her in the hallway last week, and she hadn't been able to focus on anything for hours after. But of course she was far too shy to talk to him. In her imagination, though, she'd smiled back and leaned on a locker alluringly. “Going to the lake this weekend?” she'd asked, giving him a wink.
“Maybe I'll see you there.”
Now she shook her head and pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt, grabbed her bag and some flip-flops. She should be a little more brave, she thought. After all, she was about to be a teenager.
“Dad, I'm ready!” she called out, rushing to the kitchen to grab a banana and a granola bar.
No answer.
“Dad!”
Monique stood by the kitchen window and even she ignored Ava, glancing over her shoulder once and then turning back to the hummingbird fluttering about the birdfeeder outside.
Ava rolled her eyes and stomped down to the basement. Her father would be in his workroom, of course. If he wasn't teaching or out in the creek fishing, he was there. She couldn't understand how he could pass hours happily sitting in one spot, making bamboo fishing rods by hand. But he loved itâworking with wood, putting together rods and lures that he'd give away or use to fish in the creek. They didn't even eat the fish he caught! Her dad could spend all day catching fish after fish and then tossing them back into the water. What was the point?
Crazy.
“Dad!”
She rushed down the stairs. Loud jazz was playing behind his shut door. She banged on it, then pushed in.
“Dad!”
His head shot up in surprise, and he looked even more out of sorts than ever, with his wild salt-and-pepper hair and crooked glasses, a mess of bamboo spread out in front of him on the table. The room smelled like wood and varnish.
“Are you trying to give your dad a heart attack?” he asked.
“Your music was on. And you promised to take me and Morgan to the lake.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten a.m. The sun is shining, and I should be outside. So should you!”
“Ten already, huh?” He sighed and grabbed the car keys lying on the table. As he stood, his hand reached out to grab something floating down in the air.
“What's this?” he asked. He opened his palm. One white feather with blood on the tip. He looked at it and then up at her, his face suddenly worried.
Ava shrugged. “How would I know? You're the one who spends your whole life down here in the dark. Come on, Dad, we're late!”
