The Next Full Moon (4 page)

He reached over and put his hand against her forehead, frowning. “Well, no fever. No body parts falling off. Maybe we should make an appointment with Dr. Rose.”

“I don't need a doctor, Dad, I can just stay in bed all day and drink lots of OJ.”

“Who is this Jeffrey fellow anyway?”

Ava felt herself blush from her forehead to her toes. Yet another weird way her body was betraying her. “He's just a boy at school, Dad.”

“Hmm. How very interesting.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows, his handsome face crinkling, and then pulled her in for a hug. “You stay in bed and you rest. I'll be home by dinnertime. Call me if you need anything at all, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, careful to keep her comforter wrapped tight around her.

She watched her father's old truck pulling out of the driveway and into the street. Outside, the sun was bright and shining. It would be an amazing day. When she was sure her father was a safe distance away, Ava threw off the comforter and ran into the backyard.

No matter how miserable her life was, and how freaky she was becoming, it was still a gorgeous day and one that she didn't have to spend in school like the rest of her friends. And the benefit of living in the middle of nowhere? Was that there weren't many people around to see you when you grew feathers all down your arms and across your back. She spread her arms and laughed. Hey, maybe she could fly. That might semi make up for being a freak.

She took a running leap into the air, but nothing at all
happened, and she tumbled onto the grass. The feathers stayed tight on her skin. Her arms remained regular arms. Just really really weird regular arms. She sighed.

Flopping over onto her back, she let the sun soothe her. Immediately she felt better. If only every moment could be like this one: the sun warm and lush on her skin, the earth soft underneath her. The vague sound of sprinklers and birds and cars driving by out on the main road.

The air smelled of freshly cut grass. Her dad must have been busy the day before.

She closed her eyes and dreamed. In her fantasy, she was at the lake wearing her bathing suit, and Jeff Jackson was there, smiling at her, taking her hand. They swam, hand in hand, laughing and pushing through the water. She imagined his wet face emerging from the water, him smiling and gazing at her with those blue eyes of his . . .

He was so cute!

That chin with the dimple in it, his super handsome face and blue blue eyes that made her swoon . . . In her fantasies, she'd laugh and tell stories and jokes that sent him howling with laughter. She was easy and normal and not even slightly shy. She was like Jennifer and the other girls who always looked so confident, like nothing at all bothered them, ever. She couldn't imagine any of them dying of embarrassment the way she, Ava, did every day of her life. She had never seen any of their faces turn pink, and then bright red, the
way hers did whenever a teacher called on her and made her speak in front of the class and all she wanted to do was curl up and hide. They were all pretty and perfect and had beautiful, radiant mothers who dropped them off at school and showed up at school dances to make sure no one did anything bad, like when Kyle Summerfield sneaked in beer one time and passed out in the bathroom.

She could practically feel his hand in hers. Her first kiss, her first boyfriend.

She thought about him buying her lemonade at the carousel, how he had looked at her, all the fascinating things she could have said to him.

But the fantasy didn't last. A bird cry snapped her out of it, and she remembered: She was not a girl who could have a boyfriend like Jeff Jackson, or any boy, really. She was a freak, with feathers growing down her arms. How could she ever show her face anywhere? How could she ever go back to school, or to the lake? What would she do tomorrow? She would have to spend her whole life locked up in her bedroom!

Above her head, a bird was swooping down. A swan. Its huge white wings spread out on either side.

Ava gasped, sitting up.

It was so beautiful, and its black, glittering eyes were staring right at her.

She sat as still as possible, afraid to breathe.

For a moment the bird seemed to be floating. And then
it let out a long, trumpeting sound, passing over her so close she could have reached up and grabbed it. She cried out and bent down, covering her head, and then, after a moment had passed, she looked up again as the swan disappeared in the distance, its enormous white wings sparkling in the sun.

It felt like she'd witnessed something magical. Like the time she'd come upon a great buck in the woods, its antlers rising up into the sky, and they'd stood there watching each other, only feet away, before the animal turned and bolted. Amazing.

She leaned back again, feeling happy suddenly. She stretched out her arms and realized they were sort of beautiful, the feathers. Weird, yes. But sort of beautiful.

In a weird way.

The whole day spread out in front of her. She could watch
Pretty in Pink
maybe, if her dad had Tivo'd it, which he probably had, to be nice. Watching Molly Ringwald make that cool pink eighties dress always made her feel better about the world. She could lay out some more, but was there really a point now? She could play video games, or give Monique a new hairdo. Monique hadn't really been looking so sharp lately.

What she really wanted to do, she decided, was see her grandma. It had been at least a couple of weeks since she'd seen her, and you never knew with old people. Grandma Kay was always saying she had one foot in the grave, which
made Ava imagine her with one foot in a big hole in the ground, her spindly legs stretching out like taffy. Ava loved her grandmother and her little house that always seemed to smell like gingerbread. Even if Grandma Kay was a little nutty sometimes, as Ava's dad put it, she was the one person who could make everything seem normal again.

When Ava stood, finally, there were white feathers all over the grass. From her or from the swan, she couldn't be sure.

“Great.” she said out loud. Shouting after the swan like a crazy person. “That's just great! Thank you!”

It was slow going, trying to shower. Feathers kept clogging the drain and she had to scoop them out and throw them into the toilet so the shower wouldn't overflow. Plus the whole feathers-in-the-drain thing might look sort of funny when her dad got home, she thought. Monique didn't make it any easier, perched the whole time on the toilet, eyeing Ava suspiciously and occasionally voicing her discontent.

It felt surprisingly good though, the water moving over her, and she couldn't help but notice how clean and bright the feathers were after. Even cleaner and brighter than they had been before, which was sort of crazy.

She dressed quickly, tearing through her closet to find the hoodie she'd worn all winter and throwing it on. It seemed to cover everything all right as long as she kept the sleeves down and the hood on her head. Which might look strange to
anyone else, wearing long sleeves and a hood in the summer sun, but not as strange as it'd look to be covered in feathers. She could just pretend she was delicate and cold all the time, like Grandma Kay was. Though Grandma Kay was, like, a thousand years old.

Luckily, Grandma Kay wouldn't notice anything; that she could be sure of. Grandma Kay had started losing her sight some years before and by now was nearly blind. Grandma Kay might be her only friend from now on, come to think of it. Though maybe, Ava thought, it would be possible for her to meet other blind people who would accept her. Blind people! The thought was heartening.

Ava felt like a spy as she cut through the woods and took back roads to Grandma Kay's. She loved this route: the wildflowers growing along the sides of the roads, the sweet little houses with porches wrapping around them, the big swaying trees. It might have been a nowhere town, but it was awfully pretty. She loved the little park on her grandma's side of town, with the treehouses and the merry-go-round covered with pictures of snails.

Grandma Kay lived in a house that felt more like home than anywhere Ava had ever been. As she approached, she already started feeling like everything would be all right. But how could it be, really?

“Grandma!” she called, pushing through the screen door in back, which was never locked.

There was no answer.

“Grandma!”

“Is that you Ava?”

“Yes, where are you?”

“In here!”

Ava followed her voice into the den, where her grandmother sat in her old chair, rocking back and forth. A small, elegant woman, she was beautifully dressed in a filmy top and skirt.

“What are you doing, Grandma?” Ava asked, concerned.

“Just sitting here, thinking about your grandfather.”

“Oh.” Ava sat down on the couch. “Don't be sad, Grandma.”

“I'm not sad at all honey. How are you, doll? Shouldn't you be at school?”

“I stayed home sick today.”

“Is that right? And yet you managed to make your way here. I'm so impressed!”

Ava laughed. “Well.” Her grandma always seemed to know when she was lying. She seemed to know lots of things.

“Is everything all right with you, Ava? Your grandfather seems to think that you're having a hard time right now.”

Ava hesitated. “But, umm. Grandpa is dead, Grandma.”

“I can still talk to him, though, dear.”

“Really? How?”

“He lives in here.” Grandma Kay pointed to her chest,
where her heart was.

Ava felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh. Well. I just . . . I don't know what to do. Something is . . . happening to me. Like, with my body.”

Her grandmother smiled, fixing her pale blue eyes on Ava. “You're becoming a young woman, dear. Your body does all kinds of things at this age. Don't be afraid of what's happening. It's natural. More natural than you think.”

Ava looked at her grandmother. Did she know? She had the oddest expression on her face, as if she were looking at a ghost. It was the same kind of expression she'd had when she read Ava's palm or laid out her tarot cards, when Ava was a kid. Grandma Kay had always been funny like that, and Ava and Morgan had loved to spend afternoons over here when they were little, listening to Grandma Kay talk about love lines and hangmen and magicians. But that was before Grandpa died and Grandma Kay started losing her vision and Ava's father told Grandma Kay to stop with the kooky stuff altogether. “You're corrupting their pure young minds,” he'd said.

Ava shook her head.

Of course Grandma Kay didn't know.

She sighed. “It's not natural, though, what's happening. It's . . . weird. And gross.” Ava almost took off the hoodie to show her grandmother the feathers, or at least let her feel them, but then she stopped herself. What could her
grandmother, a blind old woman, do to help? Grandma Kay might have been kooky (and wonderful!), but she couldn't make miracles happen. Ava just wanted to see her, be here. Lie for a while on the couch and talk to her grandma while eating ginger snaps out of the box.

Forget, and feel like everything would be fine.

“Honey, you're becoming who you're going to be. That I know. And you're going to be wonderful. All you have to do is sit back and let it happen.”

“Sure,” Ava said. “Just let it happen.”

What other choice did she have?

W
hen Ava tried to stay home from school a second day, her father would have none of it. Especially when she'd acted suspiciously normal the night before as they sat together watching a movie he'd Netflix'ed for her. An old Ava Gardner movie that actually wasn't too bad for being black and white.

“You should really get to know your doppelganger,” he'd said.

“Doppelganger?”

“Your twin.”

She was certainly regretting watching that movie now
and letting her father see her acting so healthy and un-sick. But it was hard to spend hours on end pretending to be sick in bed when it was so beautiful outside, when she'd just spent a long lovely afternoon with her grandmother, and when her father insisted on making his famous Italian meatballs that he rolled by hand, plus a big salad with artichoke hearts and olives, two of her favorite things, and
then
put on a movie with a gorgeous old movie star he claimed was her twin. The movie star she'd been named after, no less.