The Summer of Moonlight Secrets (11 page)

29

Allie Jo

I almost have a heart attack when I spot two people huddled down the hall of the third floor. “Hey!” I yell. Clenching my fists, I march toward them, ready to give them H-E-you-know-what for being up here, so it feels like a punch in the gut when I get closer and see it's Tara—
with Chase.

My mouth drops. I look from Chase to Tara and back to Chase. “Hey, what are you doing?” I try to act casual; I thought she was just
my
secret.

He gestures toward Tara. “She just—” He looks at her. “What's your name?”

There's a moment, just a fraction of a second, in which she seems to measure him up. Then she says, “Tara.”

I breathe in shallow puffs. She told me not to tell anyone and now here she is telling Chase everything.

“Don't be mad, Allie Jo,” Tara says, her voice smoothing me over the way I smooth Jinx's fur. “You are both my friends.”

“You guys know each other?” Chase asks, his head tilting. He looks at Tara. “Where've you been? I haven't seen you since I broke my arm.”

My eyebrows flash up. “
You
guys know each other?”

Tara's laughter sprinkles over us. “
You
guys know each other too?”

Chase laughs, watching Tara with wide-open admiration. He's barely looked away from her since I got here.

I'm about to sit down when Tara shakes her head.

Standing, she says, “I must go. Too long in one place.”

It's been days since I've seen her. “I'm going with you,” I say.

“Me too,” says Chase, getting up on his feet. As we follow behind Tara, Chase looks at me. “Tara and I are both Irish,” he says, as if it's some exclusive club that only they are the members of.

“Tara and I go swimming at night,” I counter, even though, officially, I didn't swim.

Chase grins. “Cool! Next time, get me.”

I look sideways at Chase. “You can't,” I say, pointing to his cast.

He frowns, which makes me feel bad.

“His bones are healing quickly,” Tara turns around to say. “He will soon swim.”

“Tell that to my dad,” Chase says.

I know he's kidding, but Tara takes him seriously. She stops and draws us into one of the boarded-up rooms. The plywood over the window has split, so a shaft of light cuts in, dividing her from us in the shadows.

“I cannot speak with your father. You must not tell him about me.”

He seems thrown off by her words and by the way she watches him intently. “What … ?” He cocks his head.

“Your father knows many things,” she says. “He cannot know about
me
.”

Even I think it's odd that's she's so insistent about his dad. Then I remember his dad is a writer. A thought hits me. “Does it have something to do with running away?”

“You're running away?” Chase shouts.

“Shh!” I hiss.

“You're running away?” he repeats, this time more quietly.

His eyes are as big as pancakes as he waits for her answer. I stare at her too. I want to hear more.

She nods.

“Why?” He's asking the questions I'd like to ask but am afraid to. I don't want to scare her off.

She shakes her head. “Something happened.” A terrible, sad look takes over her face.

Fear strikes through my heart. My forehead wrinkles with concern and I lean toward her. “What happened?”

For a second, her whole face crumples, and she presses her eyes hard with both hands. “Ah,” she says, looking at her palms. “Tears.” She shakes her head again, takes a huge breath, and lets it out slowly while closing her eyes.

“Tara—”

“Trust me,” she says. “I'm trusting you.” Then she looks at Chase. “I'm trusting you too.”

He nods as if he knows exactly what she's talking about. She turns back to me and puts her hand on my arm.

That shiver again. Her touch. Questions crowd my mind: What happened? Did someone get hurt?

As if she could read my mind, she says, “No one was hurt. Things just … changed. I can never go home now.”

I wait, but she doesn't say anything else.

30

Chase

“Isn't that wild about Tara?” I ask, licking the chocolate ice cream as it melts. Allie Jo and I are sitting on a little porch in back of the hotel's ice cream place; we're taking a break from the brass. Some pigeons strut around, no doubt waiting on the bread Allie's brought in a bag.

“Yeah,” she says, eating ice cream from a cup. Her advantage: she can eat it slowly. My advantage: I can eat with one hand. She takes a spoonful, swallows, and looks at me. “Have you ever thought about running away?”

I was seven years old. We'd spent the whole week in school making stuff for Mother's Day. “Bring in your mom's picture,” Mrs. Harris, my first-grade teacher, had said, “and we'll paste it on the pots.”

I raised my hand. “What if you don't have a mom?”

Her face collapsed. I didn't know it then, but of course all the teachers knew about that; she'd just forgotten. Rushing to my desk, she put her hand on my shoulder and bent down to my level. “You can bring in a picture of your dad,” she said cheerfully.

“Dads don't want flowers!” I knocked the pot off my desk. If it had been clay, it would've broken into a million pieces.

She picked up the plastic pot and said, “He'll love it.” Then she clapped her hands at some other boys who were fooling around.

The tissue paper was dumb, only girl colors—mint green, soft pink, baby blue. I took some sheets of green, darkened them with a marker, and carefully cut the edges into three pointy shapes. A black pipe cleaner served as the stem.

Mrs. Harris waded through our desks, making admiring noises. “Roses,” “daffodils,” “daisies,” my classmates answered brightly when she asked about their cotton candy flowers.

Then she arrived at my desk. “Chase!” She did not sound pleased. “You were supposed to make flowers. What is that?”

I looked around the room at their stupid flowers. “Poison ivy,” I said.

A few kids laughed. I squinted my eyes at them and made them shut up.

“No,” she said, lifting my perfectly made plant from the desk. “You need to follow instructions.” After putting my poison ivy in her closet, she came back to me with pink, yellow, and blue tissue paper. “Even dads like pretty things.”

On the way home, I threw it into a creek.

“Yeah,” I say to Allie Jo now. “I've thought about running away before.”

She's down to the bottom scoop in her cup. She plays with her spoon, then looks at me. “Did you ever do it?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

I shrug. “I didn't want to leave my dad alone.”

She seems to think about that as we finish our ice cream. She grabs the bag of bread, hands me a few slices, and we start tossing shreds out. The pigeons flock in, the bigger ones pushing out the smaller ones.

Leaning forward on her rocking chair, Allie Jo asks, “Why do you think Tara ran away?”

“I don't know.” I don't know why people run away.

A fat pigeon with angry eyes waddles closer. He looks like a general. I give him a piece of crust. Pigeons have pink legs. No wonder he's so mad.

“How come birds fly south for the winter?” she asks in a singsong voice.

I groan. “Okay, how come?”

She throws out a handful of bread, trying to reach the smaller birds in back. “Because it's too far to walk.”

I drop my head, shake it, then look at her. “Allie Jo, we need to get you some new material.”

31

Allie Jo

Instead of having us finish the brass, Dad sets a box of flyers for Taste of Hope on the desk and asks me to deliver it to Mrs. Brimble. “Here you go,” he says, handing me some money. I count it and see he's given enough for both Chase and me to ride the bus and get lemonades.

But Chase doesn't want to ride the bus. That's how I end up on his skateboard while he carries the box.

Why, oh, why did I agree to a skateboarding lesson?

“I can't do this!” I yell.

“Yes, you can!” he hollers back.

I'm riding the skateboard down the main boulevard. It's just a little bit of a hill, but, believe me, that's enough. Every crack and every stone in the sidewalk tries to bump me off, which they almost do, but even though I'm wobbling, I'm still on.

Finally, the ground levels out and I hop off.

“What are you doing?” Chase asks. He's not out of breath even though he's been jogging this whole time. A sheen of sweat covers his face, but if anything, he seems like he's got more energy, not less.

“I'm getting off,” I say. “There's no more hill.”

Chase grins. “You can't depend on hills for skateboarding. You have to make your own motion.” He hands the box to me, hops on the board, and pushes a few times with his foot; he's gliding. It looks so easy when he does it. Then he pops the board up, grabs it, and looks back at me. “See?”

He waits while I catch up to him. The bus passes us, blowing hot exhaust on me. I watch all those air-conditioned seats breeze by.

Boy, am I glad I've got that money. A tall glass of lemonade is what I'm after. “Are you supposed to be riding that skateboard?” I ask.

“I'm not riding it,” he says. “I'm just showing you stuff.” He takes the box back. “Try again.”

Sighing, I plant my right foot squarely on the board and pump with my left. Surprisingly, skateboarding over level ground is easier than riding down the hill. I think it has something to do with control.

“Doing good!” Chase yells behind me.

This is all right. Better than walking, for two reasons: number one, it's faster; number two, I'm making my own breeze by sailing on the board.

When we get up to the intersection, I put my foot down to stop, but my flip-flop curls under and I scrape my toes on the concrete. I stumble and fall off—visions of getting run over hit me—and the board skitters off the curb and gets stuck in a grate. Someone pounds their car horn at me while making the turn. It sounds like,
Dummy! You're a dummy!

“Idiots,” Chase says as he catches up to me. “You all right?”

My knee and ankle are scratched up, but there's only a little bit of blood. Now I can understand how he got hurt. “I'm kinda done with this,” I say. “Besides, Brimble's is right there.”

He glances across the street, and I grin, knowing I'm saved.

A chain of bells tinkles as we open Brimble's door. Ah, air-conditioning. The bells are really Christmas décor; so are the white lights lining most roofs and porches downtown. It's part of what gives this place so much character.

“Hello, Allie Jo.” Old Mrs. Brimble comes out from her sitting area. She's got a TV back there and a couple of comfy chairs. “You have something for me?”

“Yes, ma'am.” I hand her the box with stuff for the festival.

“I don't believe I've met you before, young man.” Her eyes twinkle at Chase.

He cocks a smile and looks at her through his hair, which he flips out of his eyes.

“I'm Chase,” he says, extending his hand across the counter.

“Oh, well”—Mrs. Brimble stretches her own hand and shakes his—“aren't you something?”

Chase laughs and looks down at his feet before looking up. “Thank you,” he says.

I tell her we want two ice-cold lemonades, but before I can pay, Chase pulls some bills from his pocket and puts the change in the tip jar.

“Well!” Mrs. Brimble says; then, in a stage whisper, “I like your young man!”

“What? He's not my—”

“It's okay, honey. You enjoy those lemonades!” Her eyes sparkle like she knows something.

I frown as I turn away from the counter, but Chase smirks.

“It's not funny,” I say. “She thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“That's why it's funny,” Chase says.

He starts for a table, but I head for the door. “Let's sit outside,” I say. I don't want any more of Mrs. Brimble's lovey-dovey talk. The bells tinkle after us.

We sit on white rockers and sip our lemonade. Fans spin lazily over our heads. One thing about Mrs. Brimble—she's a hard worker. None of her tables or chairs are sticky, and that's a challenge when you're running an ice-cream store.

A few cars pass through the light as it changes. People, mostly ladies, stroll along the sidewalk with fancy boutique bags.

“Uh-oh.” I shrink into my rocker.

“What?” Chase leans forward. “What?”

“Don't look at them,” I say. “But see those three girls coming? They're from my school.”

Chase looks confused. “So? Don't you want to say hi to them?”

Jennifer, Heather, and Lori—the top girls in school. “I can't say hi to them—they're the
popular
people.”

He shakes his head like I'm the one confused. So I say, “They kick my backpack and one of them slapped my shoulder because I sat in the bus seat she was saving. I didn't even know she was saving it.”

They're getting closer. Too late to run back in; I turn my head to Chase. “Pretend like we're talking, okay?” I put my lemonade down. I don't want to be sucking on a straw when they pass.

“I hate people like that,” Chase says.

My whole body tenses. “They might hear you!”

Then he laughs like I've just told the funniest joke he ever heard in the whole world. He flashes his eyebrows at me, and then I realize he wants me to laugh too, so I do. Except I make my laugh not as loud as his, since I am the one who supposedly told the joke.

“Hi, Allie Jo,” Jennifer says. She's talking to me? They stop dead in front of us. Jennifer smiles like she's in a toothpaste commercial.

I narrow my eyes. “Hi.”

“Who's your friend?” She turns her Medusa eyes on me.

I hate giving information to the enemy. I mutter, “Chase.”

Her face becomes as sunny as a daisy and she turns it, probably trying to show her best side—not that she even has one—and says, “Hi, Chase!”

“H'lo.” He acts polite but NOT INTERESTED.

Then she starts talking, sweet like syrup, as if she and I have always been friends.

Heather and Lori get in on it too, all
How's your summer?
and
What have you been up to?
like they've never snickered behind my back.

“You should invite us up sometime,” Jennifer says. She looks directly at Chase. He tosses the hair out of his eyes, and I swear, those girls practically melt.

“Well, I—”

“We have to go now.” Jennifer links arms with Heather and Lori, and they fall into each other, giggling as they walk away. Jennifer looks over her shoulder at Chase, probably knowing how her long, blond hair spills just right over her bare shoulder. “See you later.”

He nods at her, which sends her into titters, and they disappear around the corner.

I cross my arms and slam back into my rocker. “I hate them! They're so fake.”

“Who cares about them?” Chase asks.

“Not me,” I say. And I don't. What bothers me is the way Jennifer acts like she's got a big secret over us mere mortals.

Mrs. Brimble comes out holding a glass of iced tea. “You wouldn't mind if an old lady joins you, would you, now?”

We laugh.

“You're not an old lady!” Well, she is, but still, I would rather be sitting with an old lady than be put down by a bunch of stuck-up girls.

She sets herself down beside us. “You're not from here, are you?” she asks Chase.

I watch him as he gives his carefully worded answers about his family. His face does not give him away at all, like he's had lots of practice lying about his mom. Though when he looks back at me, his eyes glitter with the truth.