Lunatic Fringe (11 page)

“
Like hell you are,” Dr.
Fern interrupted. She turned to Lexie. “Ms. Racine is an
artist.”

“
You’re too kind,” Archer
said.

Dr. Fern snorted. “Don’t tell the Board
of Governors.” With a wave, she hurried off to salvage what was
left of her Saturday morning.

Lexie walked with Archer back to her
truck, as a volunteer firefighter scraped mud from his boots,
waiting to escort her into her decimated room.

“
So what are you going to
do with the tree?” Lexie asked, not yet ready to call her father or
address her new series of woes.

“
I had an idea,” Archer
said, shaking her head. “But I may re-imagine it. I expect
something more interesting will take its place.”

Archer’s lips slid into that crafty
grin, and Lexie wondered if there were any other people in Archer’s
life like Dr. Fern, to whom she offered her wide smile. What would
it be like to be one of those people, to see all the faces of
Archer?

“
Do you need any more
help?” Lexie asked.

“
No, I’m good here. Thanks
for sticking around.” Archer slid her sunglasses in place,
reflecting Lexie’s face back at her. “Putting your life in order
might be a good idea. Don’t you have anyone to call?” She gestured
to the hole gaping in the side of the dormitory, as gruesome as a
head wound.

Lexie’s stomach twisted at the thought
of sorting out her life. She shrugged, feeling like an
irresponsible child for wanting to walk away from the
catastrophe.

“
I don’t want to stay with
some new kid in German House tonight. But I don’t want to stay with
my dad either. I don’t have anyplace to go,” she said before
recalling the Den. “Nowhere comfortable at least.” The truth of the
statement depressed Lexie as much as it surprised her to have said
it aloud.

Archer stared at Lexie, unblinking, for
a long moment. Finally, she spoke. “Have you heard of the Full Moon
Tribe?”

Lexie had. Growing up, every once in a
while she’d overhear a dreadlocked drifter mention the party. It
had been going on every month for at least the past twelve years.
In high school some of her friends tried to go, only to be foiled
by their parents. At the time, Lexie had been relieved; the party
sounded far too strange for her tastes. Stories would spring up
around her classmates of bad acid trips that left drowning victims
in the river, pagan orgies, and once, even a bear mauling. Lexie
suspected that at least the latter of these stories was an urban
legend spurred by excessive drinking and house music, but she was
intimidated nonetheless. That Archer was involved seemed doubly
strange and disconcerting.

“
It’s happening tonight,”
Archer continued. Lexie furrowed her brow. Hadn’t there already
been a full moon at the beginning of the month? Archer replied as
though she’d heard the unspoken question. “It’s a blue moon!” Her
face animated, as though she was a girl no older than Lexie,
excited and eager. “Only happens once a year. Got to experience it
when you can.” She winked with a sly grin. “Perhaps it’ll buy you
some time while you figure out where you want to be.”

“
What about the
rares?”

Archer just shrugged in response. First
Blythe and now Archer; no one seemed to be as concerned about the
beasts as she’d expected. Maybe Lexie’s father was right: the whole
town of Milton underestimated the animals.

Lexie’s first instinct was to say no.
While she had no legitimate reason beyond her own intimidation of
beautiful strangers and creepy folk tales, saying yes seemed
outside the realm of reality for her. Then Lexie cursed herself,
remembering her commitment to the “yes” game. So far it had gotten
her a kiss and a potentially life-saving sleepover, which was
powerful evidence of its efficacy. She was compelled to say yes,
but felt that in doing so, she would be taking the first step in a
direction she had never planned to pursue. She had just started
making new friends in the Pack, and following Archer felt like a
departure from them, though she couldn’t say why.

Archer broke Lexie’s hesitation by
lowering her chin to peer over the frames of her sunglasses. She
stared into Lexie’s eyes, her right eye shimmering like river
water, her left like polished bronze. “Meet me there?”

Say something, cried Lexie’s brain. She
swallowed. Archer is waiting for you. Say something! Archer stared.
Say! Something! her brain screamed. Like snow tires grasping
traction, she sputtered forward.

“
Where?” Lexie asked, her
thighs seizing with terrified joy.

Archer smiled and slid in behind the
steering wheel. “Follow the river south of town. Then just follow
the sound,” she said, and she was off, the dismembered tree
rattling in her truck like a skeleton.

Inside Lexie’s demolished dorm room,
broken glass covered her faded quilt, and chunks of concrete and
stray leaves littered the carpet. Her Abnormal Psychology text sat
in a pool of water on the desk, soaking the night’s storm into each
page of theory and conjecture. The text on the pages curved in slow
undulations moving in three dimensions, like a thick paintbrush
drawn across a rock face. The hamper, which in revealing its
secrets brought Lexie to Archer’s hand, lay on its side like a
binge drinker after a long night, its contents sprawled out in a
colorful splatter from its mouth.

Lexie peered out from the hole in the
wall as if from the belly of a great beast. A breeze swirled
through the gap, sending a chill across Lexie’s collarbone. She dug
through her pile of laundry on the floor, locating her favorite red
hoodie. She shook it, finding it dry and glass-shard-free. There
wasn’t much left to survey. Strewn possessions all, none compelling
her to claim ownership. Her computer was in her backpack, safe in
her truck. Milton would outfit her with replacements for her
academic essentials. The rest was lost to an act of nature. Lexie
wondered why she had been so mortified earlier to see this space
gutted in front of her peers. There was nothing of her here. She
had no trouble walking away.

She scanned for a belonging to tie her
to this place, a proof that, even for a few weeks, she had once
existed here and called it “home.” A glimmer of her mother’s spirit
graced her. She realized that the accepted anchors of life were
nothing more than circuitry, plastic and fiber, and that perhaps
the only anchor that mattered was love, though she saw no evidence
of that here. Lexie gazed on her crumpled possessions, seeing them
as little more than flotsam on a beach, tangled bits of inessential
life, purged to make room for something new. She grabbed a couple
of t-shirts and pairs of underwear from the pile on the floor, some
notebooks, and the one salvageable textbook, before slipping back
out into the hall, abandoning the rest of the refuse for
good.

She was searching her pockets for her
car keys when she heard a voice.

“
Lexie! Hey!” It was Duane.
Just what she needed.

“
Hey.” She held her breath
and smiled, shifting the weight of her bag from one shoulder to the
other.

“
Oh God, I’m so glad you’re
okay! Crazy, huh?” Duane was such a nice guy, she hated resenting
him. Seeing him smile widely, his eyes bright and focused on her,
Lexie truly felt he was a different species, one that was a native
in any environment, while she didn’t even belong in the one she was
born into.

“
How is everything?” Duane
said, oblivious to her resentment.

Lexie shifted her weight from one foot
to the other, looking through the hole in her room’s wall to the
lawn beyond, where she had just met Archer. She smiled and
shrugged.

“
Oh. Right. Aside from the
obvious, I guess.” His grin softened into sympathy.

“
What are you doing here?”
she asked.

“
I was out on a run, and
Brian texted me,” he said.

“
You went running at eight
a.m. on a Saturday?”

“
I started at six-thirty.
Getting to know the area. It’s really pretty, isn’t it?”

“
Uh, sure.”

“
It’s not Wolf Creek, at
least.”

“
I guess.”

“
Well, I like to think so.
If you squint in the right way, you’d think we were in
Amherst.”

Lexie grinned despite herself, just as
Brian reappeared like a greasy apparition and draped his arms
around them both. The boys slapped each other’s chests in greeting
and Duane said, “Hey Lexie, Brian and I are grabbing breakfast. You
wanna come along?”

Brian looked at Lexie. “Yeah, cutie.
You can tell us all about the hot muff-dive that saved your life.”
He winked in a way that Lexie only ever saw from Hollywood
Lotharios. But here a real-life Lothario was, not nearly as
charming as he thought he was. She wondered if he got away with the
act because he was handsome or rich. It was probably both, and the
cruel irony of an unjust world pinched her like a horsefly
bite.

“
No, thanks. I have to
figure out where I’m sleeping tonight.” Lexie shifted her bag to
her other shoulder, ready to move for the exit.

“
Hey,” Brian said, setting
his shoulders. “My door is always open. You can even be the big
spoon.” Brian winked again and slapped Lexie on the shoulder,
giving it a little squeeze before letting go. Unpleasant chills
spread out from where he touched her.

“
Since when are you guys
friends?” Lexie asked Duane.

“
Duane’s one of us now,”
Brian interjected. “Or he will be by the time the month is out. Phi
Kappa Phi, brother!” He raised his hand for a high-five, which
Duane met.

“
So you sure you’re not
coming with, Lex?” Brian continued. “I’ll let you have my
sausage.”

Duane shook his head with a chuckle and
patted Brian’s chest. “Come on, let’s go.”

Duane led him away as Brian called down
the hall, “And go easy on the lezzie stuff, Lex! Bi is great, just
don’t go over the edge, for my sake!”

They disappeared around the corner.
Lexie exhaled and escaped in the opposite direction before anyone
else could waylay her.

Safe in the cab of her truck she
breathed a relieved sigh and turned the ignition, the shudder of
the engine stirring her awake. The heater blasted, drying the fog
on the windshield. Lexie spun the dial of the analog radio, dowsing
for stations between the static. She fell upon a plaintive solo
guitar, resonating in the wide open space of an empty concert hall.
The college station, she assumed. The guitar’s vibrations soothed
her soul, beating back her yearning for a big room to curl up in,
empty but for her presence.

She had two choices. Home or elsewhere.
But the question wasn’t an honest one, for home felt less like home
than elsewhere. She rested her chin on the steering wheel,
wondering where a new home might be tonight. She cracked her
knuckles and steered west.

Chapter 7

Blythe’s house was cold and dark,
standing like a shadow at the edge of the woods. Even the early
evening shouts from the student union, no more than a hundred yards
away, could not shock this scene to life. A chilly autumnal wind
chased crispy leaves down the center of the street: the Pacific
Northwest tumbleweed. Somewhere in the distance, a bottle
shattered.

Lexie killed her headlights as she
parked along the curb. Despite the dearth of souls, she walked to
the front door and knocked three times. She adjusted the strap of
her bag on her shoulder, shifting her weight from leg to leg. She
heard nothing from inside the house: no bedsprings creaking, no
whispered conversations on the patio. Perhaps she should have
stayed at the library and dug into her required reading. No one was
home.

Lexie dropped her bag on the porch,
developing a new plan. The full moon crested on the horizon,
swollen and red. It illuminated the street, which still glistened
from the rain the night before. Beyond the distant voices of the
student union, where her peers smoked and drank in casual pre-party
conversation, Lexie heard the Rogue River rushing through the
forest behind the house. The river’s source was not far north of
Milton, maybe a hundred miles, where a mountain rose near the
coast. The river fed Milton and many other towns along its course,
including Wolf Creek. Her hometown, like Milton and the others,
depended on this river to power the mills at which most residents
made their living. Tonight the river was ravenous, having been fed
by the prior evening’s tempest. Lexie closed her eyes and tracked
the sound of its rushing waters, so loud they overwhelmed the
sounds from the union, from the leaves on the street, even the
sound of her breathing.

As if encouraged by the river itself, a
warm wetness spread out of her. It felt sexy, for the briefest
moment, before she jolted with panic. Lexie hastily inserted her
fingers under her waistband and into her panties, pulling them back
out when she encountered that wetness. The blood was black in the
moonlight.

“
Shit, shit, fuck,” she
cursed under her breath as her abdomen roiled. She hurried to her
truck, thankful for the catastrophe that caused her to roam like a
transient, her duffel bag stuffed with random clothes and
toiletries. She dug in the bag for the small box of tampons,
grazing the leather sheath of her mother’s knife. It was warmer
than she would have expected, considering the chill of the night.
Her finger slid over the moonstone inlaid in the handle and Lexie
thought of Archer’s right eye, which shone an identical
blue.