There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (11 page)

“Wonder how your best friend is handling the memories? Buddy boy, too, for that matter.”

Betty Anne bent over and kissed her startled son on each cheek. It was spooky the way mothers sometimes knew exactly what you were thinking.

He grabbed his own considerable lunch bag from the table and his books beside it, making sure the DVD was on top. Then he slipped on his most prized possession: an old, green army field jacket with the nam
e
Gna
t
stitched defiantly over the right breast pocket
.
The Creep
s
over the left. As always, it made him feel two feet taller.

He was already out the door when his mom called out to him from the kitchen window. “There’s not but one way to find out, sunshine!
Ask them!”

Rusty threw up a hand in reply as he rounded the backyard and the sandy bluff, which overlooked the crescent shaped beach below. A buoy dinged cheerfully a couple hundred yards past the shoreline of Crater Cove, where his granddaddy had washed ashore, oh, these many years ago. Further up the shore, breakers crashed explosively against the manmade rocky beach, marking the end of the East Side and the beginning of the North.

To Rusty it was just white noise.

The distant horizon, curving ever so slightly, drew his eye, and not for the first time he marveled at the wonder of his own backyard. Rusty turned his back to the ocean and passed the little patch of ground his mother had literally built up from scratch for her vegetable garden. The ground this close to shore was nothing but sand and shells and hard red clay. Betty Anne had gone out in the woods by Lizard Lake to find suitable soil for planting. Then, with wheelbarrow and shovel in hand, she’d made countless trips, back and forth, until she’d had the necessary amount of earth to fill in the deep and wide hole she’d already dug out by the house. Even though Rusty loathed vegetables, he had to admire the end results. Tall stalks of corn rustled in the breeze as he walked by. They seemed to urgently whisper his name
:
Russsttyy! Russsttyy!

His mother’s tomatoes were also coming in nicely, giving the bright green garden a vibrant splash of contrasting color. He passed into the front yard, which was encircled by a waist-high picket fence (waist high to his daddy, anyhow). A fence that was his responsibility to repaint four times a year. Once for every season of the year.

The stiff, salty breeze blowing steadily off the ocean was murder on latex, and it seemed that he and his father were either repainting the cabin, the fence, or lighthouse on any given weekend. Work. Work. Work.

He went through the gate and crossed over the tidy front lawn of the lighthouse to get to the O’Haras’ unkempt yard next door. The O’Hara cottage had once been a picturesque Cape Cod style bungalow. As pretty and well maintained as the Huggins’s log cabin across from it. Since Mr. O’Hara’s death it had fallen into a sad state of disrepair. His dad tried to help out, but Mrs. O’Hara refused any aid that didn’t come in the form of a welfare check. She wouldn’t take dime-one from Ham Huggins, anyway. Even if it meant her children had to do without.

Which they most certainly did.

The paint on the front porch was peeling badly. The flecks rustled in the wind like his mother’s corn. Rusty picked at it while he waited on Big Red to come out.

          Josie “Big Red” O’Hara

Josie O’Hara kicked off the sheets and stretched out on her twin-size bed like a lazy cat getting up from a nap; her long, tanned legs fully extended, her lithe toes stretching out like claws. Her hands and feet pointing at opposite walls in her narrow bedroom. Unlike most seventeen-year-old girls, whose pink bedroom walls are covered with pictures of the latest boy band or heartthrob du-jor, Josie’s sense of style was a bit more masculine. Her pale blue walls were strategically adorned with movie posters. And not just any movie posters, either. One-sheets from specific horror films, adapted, of course, from her favorite author’s books. She lingered in bed, admiring the posters, wishing she could afford to have them framed. For now plain old thumbtacks would have to suffice.

It sucks being poor,
she thought, slouching on the side of her bed. Yawning, she pulled the sleep-shirt over her head, pausing for a moment to sniff the old cotton T. The
Billy Joel
concert T-shirt had once belonged to her father (when she was nine it dropped down past her knees; now the frayed hem barely covered her teasy, as her daddy used to say), and after all these years and washings Josie swore she could still smell him in its tired old fibers.

A comforting blend of sea salt, sun block, and Old Spice. A collage of scents, so specific to her daddy
.

She padded over to her private bathroom—a present her Uncle Ham had installed for her seventeenth birthday, last year—and closed the door behind her. Her little brother Joel was going through a bratty phase as of late, and like a Jack-in-the Box there was no telling when he might pop up.

             
She examined her boobs in the mirror with a frustrated sense of panic. She scowled, stamping her foot on the tiled floor. “Occh! Stop growing, will ya! If the damn things get any bigger I’ll topple right the feck over!”

Like tiny roses linked together on a floral chain, a light dusting of freckles bridged the upper slopes of her burgeoning breasts. Secretly, Josie thought her knockers very sexy. So did every hot-blooded boy on Moon. She hefted each breast in her hands to gauge their new mass. She still wasn’t used to the added weight. Lately her back had started to hurt. It mystified her how two lumps of flesh could be such boy magnets—yet there was no denying their power. Last year no one had given her a second glance; this term, the boys were practically tripping over their drooling tongues whenever she walked by—and for someone like Josie O’Hara, who placed the highest value on her personal space, the attention was a royal pain in the teasy.

Safely behind closed doors, Josie felt secure enough to examine, even admire her own figure. She’d hit maturity late, and her body had grown from the scrawny scaffold of a tomboy, to that of a curvy woman almost overnight. Deep down she liked her new lush lines, but practically speaking her big tits had made her a social pariah. The few female friends she’d once had at the Academy had stopped speaking to her as soon as they noticed her new developments at the start of the recent school year. Some had even accused her of getting implants! Claiming that her new tits were as fake as her silly Irish accent, the catty lot having always believed Josie’s brogue was more affectation than authentic. When Josie told her mom of the accusations, Shayna had set her straight.

“
Honey doll, they’re just jealous of your jugs. Believe me, as soon as they grow a pair of their own they’ll forget all about it. And those that don’t,
won’t
, and by god never will! You may not know it yet, baby, but when used properly, those things can make men jump through hoops!”

Her mother’s candor caused Josie to blush. Especially after her little brother, caught eavesdropping, ran out of the house, squealing an inscrutable declaration: “
Josie’s got jugs! Josie’s got jugs! Hide your milk and cookies, cause Josie’s got jugs!”

Josie knew Shayna was on to something, though. After all, she’d seen pictures of her mother as a teenager, and even back then Shayna had bigger knockers than Josie! And even though Shayna was the town “Otis” these days, drunk more often than not, she could still make men jump through hoops for the chance to see what was underneath her tight sweaters and clingy halter-tops.

              Joe wasn’t sweating the loss of her girlfriends, anyway. These days they only had boys and texting on their minds, subjects that bored Josie to tears. Besides, her
best
friends hadn’t deserted her—nor were they preoccupied with her current bra size. At least she didn’t think Bud and Rusty noticed that sort of thing. Although a part of her wouldn’t have minded it if Bud Brown started to look at her
Thatway
! Then again, she wouldn’t know what to do if Bud started drooling over her bod.

Jaysus pleezus! That would be so feckin’ weird!

She wished she could go back to the days when boys still looked her in the eyes—not like she was a pair of walking, talking tits.
Especially that asshole, Lester Noonan
, she thought, stepping into the shower. He made her skin crawl the way he looked at her.

Like he had X-ray vision or something.

              After a hurried shower, Josie pulled back the curtain and squeeged the water from her hair with her hands. A plastic dart hit her smack in the forehead, where it stuck and quivered like some Indian Brave’s favorite arrow.

She screamed, pulling the curtain over herself. Her little brother, eight-year-old Joel O’Hara, ran giggling from the room like an escaped lunatic.

She yanked the
suction cup from her forehead with a loud pop.
“JOEL! YOU FECKIN’ BRAT!  JUST YOU WAIT, BOYO! I’M GONNA
CLOBBER
YOU!”

             
With visions of homicide in her head, she dressed quickly, slipping into a bra that was too tight and too lightly padded. It had seen better days and smaller boobs. Unfortunately it was the only one she had that came close to fitting her anymore. The rest were just taking up space in her undies drawer. She couldn’t borrow one of her mom’s. Shayna was touchy about that sort of thing. As always, Josie chose to wear her only pair of khakis and a blue polo shirt, the school’s pink crest straining over her left tit.

She left the shirt un-tucked, even though that was a violation of the school’s dress code. Like her bra, her khakis had seen better days (her bust wasn’t the only body part expanding). The threadbare fabric, literally bursting at the seams, was holding on with a hope and a prayer. When it was necessary to bend over, Josie did so
very
carefully. Still, the pants were better than the alternative, the short uniform skirt, shoved all the way into the corner of her closet, where all the other useless clothing items resided.

Damn thing might as well be a string bikini, for all the reactions it provokes!

Something about the “Little Schoolgirl Look” drove older men into drooling sex fiends. Even more so than their idiot sons. Didn’t they know she was still just a kid? Or was
that
the attraction? Except for some notable sluts at the school, like the infamous Tansy Wilky, none of the girls would be caught dead wearing that plaid prick tease.

Josie laughed out loud, recalling how Tansy had recently been booted from the cheerleading squad. Tansy had worn thong panties underneath her cheerleading skirt at the Homecoming game, causing a near riot when the boys (and some full grown men, too, it must be noted) in the stands rushed down to get a closer look. 

“Now
that
was most definitely a violation of the dress code,” Josie said, zipping up her pants.

The school did allow students to wear an outer garment of their choice. It was the only outlet left to them to express their individuality and most of the kids at the Academy had embraced the opportunity in all sorts of creative ways. Josie wore a green army coat, like the ones her friends wore every day, unless it was too damned hot, in which case they tied the jackets around their waists.

Bud called them their “Go-to-Hell Coats.” As in, ‘if you don’t like ‘em, you can go to hell.’ They had bought them together at an Army/Navy Surplus store in Beaufort. Stitched over the upper left pocket, in heavy black thread, was the presumably pejorative
:
Th
e
Creep
s
. Over the right coat pocket was her old nickname
:
Big Re
d
.
Joe had considered replacing it with
Tits
—
the name the Assholes were currently calling her, but didn’t think that would go down too well with the Moon River faculty.

The Creep
s
was what the kids in school
used
to call Josie, Bud and Rusty. For their over-the-top love of horror novels and movies. Weird thing, though…as soon as she and the boys began referring to
themselves
a
s
The Creep
s
,
no one bothered calling them that anymore.

Assholes were funny that way.

Nowadays the other kids mostly ignored them, which was fine by her and Rusty.

Bud couldn’t have cared less either way. That big damn boyo was in a world of his own!