Moon Spun (29 page)

My feelings must have been obvious. Faye sat next to me and stroked my hair. “It isn’t your job to make me feel better, Allie. I have to do that on my own.”

Unable to trust my voice, I nodded.

Faye said, “It was wonderful to see my mother again. It filled one of the empty places in my heart.”

“Just one?”

She bit her lip and whispered, “The other one is bigger. It’s been growing since the day you were 392

born.”

I caught my breath. “Oh my God, am I a changeling?”

Faye smiled. “No, you are most definitely not a changeling.”

“Then, what? Tell me!”

“It’s a long story, Allie. I’m tired.” She stood and kissed the top of my head. “Thank you for what you did for me. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Biting my lip in exasperation, I watched as Faye retreated to the back of the trailer and closed the sliding door. She was all done talking. I shrugged and picked up my book. No sense wasting my breath. Whatever her big secret was, she’d kept it for sixteen years. I could wait one more day. When I heard the high-pitched call of a red-tailed hawk, I set my book down and peered through the window. He flew in lazy circles over the pasture, backlit by a crescent moon. As I watched, he began to drop down. Lower and lower. Then, he wheeled, dipped a wing and swooped by the window. Ryker was telling me goodbye.

Before I could lift a hand to wave, I saw a flash of green. Was it . . .? Yes! It was Chad in his new faery form, hovering outside the window, his frilly wings flapping like crazy. He wore a huge smile and very little else. Extending one long, thin finger, he drew a big, glittering heart on the glass, blew me a kiss and darted away.

Smiling, I watched until Ryker and Chad disappeared into the night sky, swallowed up by darkness. I pressed my palm against the glass and whispered, “Catch a moonbeam, guys. You know where to find me.”

I stepped into the bathroom to brush my teeth. That’s when I spotted the paper Faye had slipped beneath the door. I sat on my bed and scanned it quickly. The paper was creased with age and the words blurry, as if they’d been smudged by tears. Written in Faye’s hand, it was a quotation by someone named Kalil Gibran.

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore . . . but let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of heaven dance between you.

The line, “let there be spaces in your togetherness,” had been underscored so many times, the pencil point had torn the paper.

My first instinct was to pound on Faye’s door, demand answers to my questions. But then, I remembered what she’d said. “It was never about Melia.” I thought about the empty place in Faye’s heart, how it was growing bigger every day. The hole she’d been unable to fill with bad relationships and booze. Something terrible had happened to Faye sixteen years ago. Something that involved Grandpa Claude.

I stared at the words, “You were born together and together you shall be forevermore,” until my eyes burned. Born together. Spaces in your togetherness.

In my mind, there was only one possible explanation for those particular words. I turned out the light and gazed at the moon through the faery-dusted heart, wondering if I’d reached the right conclusion. Was it possible, despite “the winds of heaven dancing between us,” somewhere in this big, wide world, I had a twin?

393

Where It All Began . . .

Moonstone

Excerpt

Chapter One

One minute, I was on a ten-foot ladder adjusting the TV antenna on the twenty-four-foot trailer behind Uncle Sid’s house, where I lived with my mother, Faye. The next minute, I sailed off the ladder, grazed an electric fence and landed face down in a cow pie. Swear to God.

Though groggy and hurting, I rolled onto my back. A window in the trailer cranked open and I heard my mother scream. “Allie! Ohmigod! Somebody call 911!”

I was surprised Faye managed to open the window. She’d spent most of the last two years in bed since, at age thirty one, she Retired From Life. But really, call 911?

We had no phone and I was the only other person in the area. Who was she talking to? Blaster the bull? I smiled weakly at the thought of Blaster in a phone booth, punching in 911 with one gigantic hoof. Okay, technically, I landed in a bull pie, not a cow pie. The mess dripping off my face was compliments of my Uncle Sid’s prize bull, speaking of which . . .

It was then my wits returned. I felt the ground vibrate, heard the rumble of hooves. I reared up to see a half-ton cranky bull racing toward me, head down, mean little eyes fixed on my prone body. Faye continued to scream shrilly. I moaned and crawled toward the fence, looking over my shoulder at Blaster who bore down on me like a runaway train. When I tried to stand, I slipped in the wet grass and landed on my belly. Oh God, he was just inches away. I wasn’t going to make it! I rolled into a ball and screamed, “No, Blaster! Go back! Go back!”

Laying on the wet grass, trembling with terror, I watched as Blaster stopped on a dime, blew snot out of his flaring, black nostrils and released a thunderous blast of flatulence—that’s what my teacher, Mrs. Burke, calls farting—and, of course, is the reason Uncle Sid named him Blaster.

“Back off, Blaster,” I said between shallow, panicky breaths. “Good boy.”

I hoped the “boy” comment wouldn’t tick him off, what with his fully-developed manly-bull parts dangling in full view as I lay curled on the ground looking up. Yuck!

Suddenly my vision narrowed and grew dark around the edges. It was like looking down a long tunnel with Blaster front and center, bathed in light. A loud buzzing filled my head. The next moment, Blaster took a tentative step backward, then another, walking slowly, at first, then gradually picking up speed until he was trotting briskly backwards like a video tape on slow rewind. Mesmerized by the sight, I sat up and watched Blaster’s bizarre retreat back through the tunnel. At that precise moment, I should have known something strange was going on. But hey, I was a little busy trying to save my life.

As I crawled under the fence, my vision returned to normal and the buzzing faded away. I stood and swiped a hand across my sweaty face. At least, I thought it was sweat until a trickle of blood dripped off the end of my nose. Surprised because I felt no pain, I touched my face and found the 394

blood was oozing from a puncture wound in the center of my forehead. I glanced up at Faye, who continued to peer out the trailer window, her pale face framed in a halo of wispy blond curls, her eyes wide with shock. She inhaled sharply, and I knew another scream was on its way. I held up a hand. “Come on, Faye, no more screaming. You’re making my head hurt.”

“But, but, the bull . . . he, he . . . ” Faye began.

I wasn’t ready to go there. “I know, I know.”

I staggered around the end of the trailer and banged through the door. Two giant steps to the bathroom. I shucked off my clothes and stepped into the tiny shower.

“You okay, Allie?” Faye asked.

She peered through the open doorway, paler than usual. Her right hand clutched the locket that held my baby picture, the one that makes me look like an angry old man. The only time she took it off was to shower.

“I’ll live,” I muttered.

“Weird, huh? Blaster, I mean. I heard you yell at him. Bulls don’t run backward, Allie.”

When I didn’t answer—what could I say?—she waited a beat. “Use soap on your forehead. Did it stop bleeding?”

“Yes, Mother.” I reached over and slid the door shut.

Deep sigh. “You don’t have to be snotty. I told you to be careful.”

The TV blared suddenly. Oprah. Not that I’m a spiteful person, but I blamed Oprah for my swan dive off the ladder. Late last night, a sudden gust of wind knocked over our TV antenna. When I got home from school today, Faye insisted she had to watch Oprah. Like that was going to change her life. I finally got tired of hearing about it and borrowed Uncle Sid’s ladder. Moral of story: Never wear flip flops on an aluminum ladder.

I turned on the water, stood under the weak stream and checked for damage. Other than a slight tingling in my arms and legs and the hole in my head, I seemed okay. I toweled off my curly, dark-brown hair and pulled it back into a messy ponytail. When I wiped the steam off the mirror, I saw a dark-red, dime-sized circle the size in the exact center of my forehead. I touched it gingerly, expecting it to hurt. But it didn’t. Instead, a weird sensation shot through my head, like my brain was hooked up to Dr.

Frankenstein’s machine, that thing he used to make his monster come alive. I must have given a little yip of surprise because Faye said again, “You okay, Allie?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little sore.”

“Did you check the mail?”

“The first’s not until Friday. Today’s the twenty-ninth,” I said.

“Sometimes it comes early.”

The welfare check never came early. The state of Washington was very reliable when it came to issuing checks.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, not wanting to burst her bubble.

Wrapped in the towel, I took two steps into the living room/kitchen, reached under the table and pulled out the plastic crate containing my clean clothes. I dug around and found clean underwear, a tee shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts.

I slipped into my bra, once again thinking how cool it was I finally needed one. Though I hoped for peaches, I’d managed only to grow a pair of breasts roughly the size and shape of apricots. Oh, well, apricots are better than cherries. Our valley is called “The fruit bowl of the nation,” hence, my obsession with naming body parts after produce.

I slipped into my treacherous flip flops, headed out the door and spotted Uncle Sid darting 395

behind the barn. Faye says Uncle Sid is not a people person but I thought he was just trying to avoid Aunt Sandra and her constant nagging. That woman’s voice could make a corpse sit up and beg or mercy.

I trotted down the driveway, stopping suddenly when I spotted a pair of denim-clad legs sticking out from under the Jeep Wrangler parked next to Uncle Sid’s house.

Legs that belonged to Matt, Uncle Sid’s son and older brother to spoiled brat, Tiffany.

How can one kid—Tiffany—be so annoying and the other—Matt—so totally hot? I tried to avoid Matt because of the way I got when I’m around him. Though I’m normally loquacious (last Wednesday’s vocabulary word that I copied and vowed to use at least three times,) one look at Matt and I lost my power of speech. My jaw dropped and my mouth went dry. There’s just something about him—sleepy blue eyes, light brown hair that usually needs combing, a crooked grin and a sculpted, rock-hard body.

It wasn’t some creepy, incestuous thing since Matt and I weren’t real cousins. Sid was Faye’s step brother. Nope, we didn’t have the same blood coursing through our veins. Matt’s was probably blue, while mine came from the mystery man Faye refused to talk about.

I tiptoed past the Jeep to spare myself further humiliation. I’d almost made it when he rolled out on one of those sled thingies and grabbed my ankle. “Hey, kid, how ya doin’?”

The warmth of his hand against my bare skin turned my normally frisky brain cells to mush. Sure enough, my lower jaw was heading south. “Uh, just great, Matt,” I said, averting my eyes and licking my suddenly parched lips.

He released my ankle and stood up. “Good,” he said. “Your mom still got that . . . whaddaya call it?”

“Fibromyalgia.” As I said the word, I felt my upper lip curl in a sneer. “So she says.”

“She getting better?”

“She’s trying to get social security benefits, you know, the one for disability.”

The words tasted bitter in my mouth.

“Oh yeah,” Matt said. “I saw Big Ed’s car here the other night. He’s her lawyer, right?”

My hands automatically curled into fists. I narrowed my eyes and studied Matt’s face, looking for a smirk or maybe a suggestive wink. Even though I didn’t want to punch him, I could and I would. I knew how to punch. Faye had made sure.

No problem. He’d moved on. Wonder of wonders, he was looking at me. I mean, really looking at me with those sexy blue eyes. His gaze lingered for a long moment on my chest. Whoa! Was he checking out my ’cots? I was suddenly aware I’d outgrown my shorts and tee shirt. Not knowing what else to do, I shoved my hands into the pocket of my cut-offs and took a step back.

“Well, hey, I gotta go check the mail. See ya, Matt.”

His voice followed me as I headed down the driveway. “Hey, kid. If you ever need a ride somewhere, let me know. I got the Jeep running real good.”

Because my mouth had fallen open once again, I settled for a casual wave of acknowledgement even though I wanted to pump a fist in the air and scream, “YES!”

As I trotted to the mailbox, the late April sunlight warm on my shoulders, I pondered this strange turn of events. Even though he called me “kid,” clearly Matt had noticed a couple of new bulges on my formerly stick-like body. Hmmm. Had my tumble off the ladder, followed by the electric fence zapping, released some sort of male-a couple of new bulges on my formerly stick-like body. Hmmm. Had my tumble off the ladder, followed by the electric fence zapping, released some sort of male-attracting hormone?

In spite of my mini-triumph, Matt-wise, a dull headache began to throb painfully at the back of my skull. I opened the mailbox and, as predicted, Faye’s check had not arrived. There was, however, a familiar tan envelope from the Social Security Office of Adjudication and Review. Probably another 396

form for Faye to fill out asking questions like, “Are you able to push a grocery cart?” And, “Can you walk up a flight of stairs?” Questions Faye had already answered

“No” and “No.”

When I handed her the envelope, Faye sighed and dropped it, unopened, onto the pile of similar tan envelopes stacked between the bed and wall.

“Big Ed’s coming tomorrow. I’ll let him deal with it.” She looked pointedly at her watch. I took the hint. It was time for Fay’s nightly ritual, two slices of peanut butter toast and two cans of Busch Light. The menu varied only on Thursday night. Big Ed night. He always brought burgers, fries and a fifth of Stoli. Not that I’m around on Thursdays. No way. But, when I come home on Friday, the place smells of grease and vodka.