“What? Shut up! This story just got interesting, dude.”
Amelia laughs. Fireflies are beginning to flash low and yellow between the trees, and my kids’ joy pops and glows like those bugs.
We pass a man meditating. We pass under a pair of shoes dangling in a palm tree. We pass a baby in a stroller wearing one sock. We pass a man carrying a small dog in a backpack—lazy! We pass a woman belting out a gospel song: “Glorious Moon!”
“It’s true,” Caleb continues. “Well, kinda. This guy was killing all these young girls at night, so the city ‘bought the moon.’ That’s what they called it—‘buying the moon.’ They said they were chasing away the darkness by having a full moon every night of the year. They actually thought they could hire fewer police officers if they bought these lights.”
“Hmmm,” Beatrice says. I can tell by her tone that she thinks this story is over, but Caleb is too excited to stop now. He crackles like static. Like an electric moon.
“But here’s the thing. The early bulbs were carbon, and they glowed so bright they sounded like a swarm of angry bees when they turned on. They’d drop ash on the people below. And the light was . . . funky.”
“Funky?” Beatrice asks, and I can tell she’s interested even though she’s still pretending she’s not. Very catlike, that Beatrice. “Funky how?”
“I think it was kinda blue or something? The light. Anyway, folks thought it was weird. Unnatural. They thought these moontowers would make crops grow too fast. And make hens lay too many eggs. And cause things like swarms of locusts to attack, like in the Bible.”
“Checkmate! That is crazy. People are dumb,” Beatrice says.
Caleb chuckles. We walk toward the light. Their human shoes crunch in the gravel. My paws would prefer mud, but I don’t complain. Amelia slips her belt back out of my collar, and I’m grateful for the freedom. Night soaks into the air.
Your humans are decent, I hear. Sandpaper. I see his big orange eye first, then the rest of him slides forward.
Decent. I smile. That’s pretty high praise for a cat. You might even call them “clean” or “suitable.”
Well, muzzle me. Sandpaper actually laughs.
Now, now, he purrs. I withhold any further compliments until I see how they fare at the climax of our story. One can truly see character once they’ve traversed the Dark Night of the Soul.
As usual, I don’t understand what Sandpaper means, but I don’t like the sound of it: dark night of the soul? I don’t care for the dark. It’s taking every bit of my gumption to stay out here now, with my kids, while thunder (THUNDER!) rumbles in the distance. But we’re walking toward light.
And so we walk.
There are fewer humans on the trail now. In fact—I look around—there are none. No one but us. It makes me feel uneasy. Uneasy is that jumpy feeling you get when your haunches twitch and you jerk awake and you can’t fall asleep. I scan. I sniff.
And . . . oh! OH. UGH.
I smell it before I see it. It’s overpowering, this smell. A mix of blue-smelling chemicals and . . . human waste? The scent makes me dizzy.
“Oh snap, is that a port-a-john?” Beatrice asks. She suddenly hops toe to toe on her toothy boots. “Just in time. I gotta go, man!”
Beatrice runs to the tall box, swings open a flimsy plastic door, and lets it bang shut behind her. Click!
I am shoved backward by the smell that comes with the open and close of that door. My eyes water. I shiver. It is overpowering to my sensitive nostrils, this scent. And Beatrice has locked herself in there with it?! I paw at the corner of the door, scritch scritch.
Amelia pats my head, bends to pet Sandpaper. Sandpaper lets her. Purrs.
I present myself for petting now, Sandpaper announces, for we have reached the fun-and-games portion of our quest.
Beatrice bursts forth from the plastic box in a cloud of blue stink and relief. “Whew, I feel better. Anyone else?”
Amelia shakes her head. And slowly, we all turn to Caleb.
He bites his bottom lip. Tugs at the neck of his bloody shirt. Shifts on his feet.
“I’ll be fine,” he squeaks.
“Dude, when you think about it,” Beatrice says, adjusting the knot of pink hair on top of her head, “the whole wide world is a toilet. Just ask Luna.”
HEY HEY HEY, I say, brow wrinkled. Did you not see how selective I was earlier in that park? I am very precise when I poo, thank you.
“What I’m saying is—you don’t have to go in there if you don’t want to. Pee anywhere,” Beatrice says, waving both arms over her head. “We won’t watch. Well, Amelia might.”
At Amelia’s scowl, Beatrice flattens her lips. “Kidding! I kid.”
But Caleb hears none of this. He’s shifting and biting and tugging at the hem of his shirt. “Everyone is always telling me, ‘Get out of your comfort zone, Caleb!’ And I’m all, ‘Comfort zone? There is one?’”
Beatrice laughs.
“But when you get out of your comfort zone, you push into somebody else’s comfort zone. Nobody ever talks about that part, do they?”
I’m not sure if he’s still talking about using this port-a-john or not. A whisker twitch tells me Beatrice is unsure too. “Dude,” she says, “you don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, but I do!” Caleb bellows. “Don’t you see? This is my Mount Everest! This is my white whale! This is my passing-the-driver’s-test!” He jabs a finger skyward. “If I can do this, I can do ANYTHING!”
Beatrice breathes in deeply. I don’t understand how; we are RIGHT NEXT TO THE WORST STINK IN THE UNIVERSE. “We seem to be spending too much time talking about this but not doing this.”
Tell me about it, Sandpaper says, lifting off his front feet to nudge Amelia’s hand for more pets. This is one dragged-out plot point.
“Go! Now!” Beatrice orders Caleb. She points at the door of the god-awful plastic box. Caleb looks from Beatrice to Amelia, lip in teeth. Amelia nods once, points at the door as well.
Caleb strides up to the box, sucks in a huge breath, holds it, and ducks inside.
Click!
Beatrice and Amelia crackle with laughter, but it’s not cruel; there’s a warm, jolly undertone to it, like jingle bells.
“It’d be terrible of us to shake the thing, wouldn’t it?” Beatrice asks, gesturing at the port-a-john.
Amelia scowls. Nods.
“Okay, okay,” Beatrice says, palms out. “Just checking that that was definitely a bad idea. My meter can be off on that kind of thing.”
We wait.
Caleb is still inside.
It smells like all the human waste in Austin is inside that plastic box that bakes in the sun all day.
I hork.
“My grammy, she used to go to this place where they play chicken poop bingo,” Beatrice says. It feels like she’s pulled the thread of that thought from between the early stars. “The chickens would walk around on this big floor, and wherever they pooped—bingo! That’s where you’d lay a chip.” She pauses. “I don’t know why I just thought of that.”
A twitch of my whiskers tells me Beatrice’s throat is closing; the tip of her nose is tingling. This is a feeling called nostalgia. It is grainy and tingly and a bit yellowed, like an old photograph. And she misses her grammy. I nudge her shin with the top of my head. She turns glassy eyes to me, crinkles her nose, winks.
“You die in there, dude?” she yells toward the port-a-john, blinking back her tears. “I hope not. They wouldn’t find your corpse for a week in all that stink!”
Blam—bam!
Caleb kicks the door. It flings open and whams back closed.
He opens the door more slowly, steps out, and sucks in a deep, heaving breath, hands on knees.
Is he okay? We are WILD AS WOLVES out here. I rush to his side, sit.
He lifts his head. Grins.
“I did it. Take that, Moby Dick.”
There is a moment that seems to swell before Beatrice and Amelia both explode with laug
hter. “Uh, dude, I’m not sure if you meant to make that joke right next to a port-a-john, but it was”—Beatrice touches her fingertips to her lips and kisses them, then blooms her fingers out like a flower—“perfection.”
Caleb sizzles with a mixture of triumph and embarrassment. “What? Oh! No! What I meant was . . .” His voice falters. I worry that he’s going to be upset with himself, but he collapses into laughter too. They laugh so long they suck in air, clutch their stomachs. Their joy sparkles like stars. Eventually, for Caleb, his snickers turn into shivers.
“Ugh. That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done. I wish I had my backpack.”
Amelia rummages around in the tiny pouch strapped across her chest, pulls out a tube of goo. The goo that Caleb loves. He grabs it, smears it on his hands, all the way up to his elbows. “Ahhhhh. Why didn’t you tell me you had this earlier?”
“Go on. Bathe in it,” Beatrice says with a grin. “But quickly, dude. Clock’s ticking. Hector won’t be there all night.”
“Now suddenly she’s interested in the time?” Caleb jokes.
More yellow joy rises into the night like steam, and we’re all delighting in its warmth. I wag. We are all okay. I am keeping my kids safe. This is my duty.
See? Sandpaper says. Fun and games. He nudges Amelia’s hand. Keep scratching the ears, kid. There you go.
Up the hill, in a parking lot just above us, a car swerves. Screeches to a stop. Faces us.
We are blinded. We’ve been looking for light, and light found us.
Headlights.
18
Pebbles for Hearts
The rude smell of gasoline burns my nostrils. Two car doors slam—blam! blam!—and I squint through the purple air to see a car with triangle shapes painted on it. Mr. Red Hat and Mr. Dark Glasses slide down a steep, muddy hill to get to us. Red Hat trips and muddies his knees. A whisker twitch tells me Beatrice is mashing her lips, trying hard not to comment on that. Sandpaper disappears with a hiss.
“If it isn’t those Meddling Kids,” Dark Glasses says, and Red Hat snorts.
“What are you doing here?” Beatrice says. She—we—feel confusion, nervousness. That mix of feelings makes for one tight Knot.
Mr. Red Hat licks his teeth. “Y’all take my gas cap?”
Beatrice scrunches up her face too much. “No. What’re you talking about?”
Caleb is silent. He’s terrible at lying. Tessa always knew this.
Mr. Red Hat nods, then strains his neck side to side. It pops loudly, crack crack, like Beatrice’s knuckles. “You owe me a gas cap. They’re not expensive, but I’m not paying for a new one.”
“We don’t owe you jack,” Beatrice says. The Knot is tightening: jaws, eyes, fists. “Run along now.”
I feel Caleb shift behind me. “Look, I’m sure we can work someth—”
“NO!” Beatrice shouts over her shoulder at him. “These two don’t get to march around being jerks and not ever answer for it, okay?”
“Jerks?” Red Hat spits to the side. “Okay.” He takes a step closer to Beatrice. She does not take a step back, and this surprises Red Hat.
“Chill, both y’all,” Dark Glasses says. To his friend he says, “They’re kids, dude.” Red Hat immediately drops his shoulders, but Beatrice does not listen to this guy. She is still tight.
“My dad is a cop,” Beatrice spits suddenly, chin in the air. “Officer José Ramírez.”
My head cocks. That was the name of the officer who told us we needed a leash. I don’t think it was her father. A whisker twitch tells me Caleb and Amelia are both thinking this too.
Dark Glasses smirks. “Really.” It’s not a question.
“Go on, look him up. I’m telling you. You don’t want to mess with us.”
Dark Glasses has a toothpick in his mouth, and he shifts it to the opposite jaw. He ignores Beatrice’s threat. “Right after y’all left that gas station, this group of, what, Luke? Five adults came up to us.” Dark Glasses tilts his head, and I catch a flash of his eyes behind the shades. They are small and tight. “They showed us your pictures. Asked if we’d seen y’all.”
The Knot tenses. The Shadow thins. The Waterfall’s head rushes with noise.
“What did you tell them?” Caleb asks, his voice cracking.
Red Hat snorts at that. “Dude. We didn’t rat you out, if that’s what you’re asking. But that was before we knew y’all stole my gas cap.”
I can’t grasp what these two guys feel. They seem numb to me. Dulled. And their hearts seem small, hard, like pebbles. It’s like trying to read gravel. I don’t trust people I can’t read. My stomach tightens, ready to growl.
“But listen.” Dark Glasses crosses his arms, leans against a tree. “They said they’d do anything—anything—to get information on you. We figure y’all are worth at least a gas cap.”
Beatrice breathes out a word that makes Caleb blink.
Dark Glasses smirks, flicks a pointed finger between Amelia and me. “So y’all just load up your dog and your dumb friend here and we’ll take you to Mommy and Daddy.”
“Dumb?!” Beatrice’s knots pull taut in all directions, fraying like a spray of fur in a dogfight. She steps farther forward, fists knotted.
Dark Glasses spits a brown stream of goo right next to Beatrice’s boot, forcing her to step back again. “She doesn’t talk. That’s what they call those people. Dumb.”
That word, used like that, reeks like sour milk. Plus, Tessa would buzz as mad as a hornet at hearing his words, those people. She hums with fury when folks sort humans into these and those. Into us and them.
“I believe we all know who is dumb here.”
I cringe at Caleb’s cracking voice behind me. Red Hat—Luke—steps up to Caleb, and as tall as Caleb is, Luke is taller. “What did you say?”
Caleb flinches. I can smell how awful Luke’s breath is from here.
Amelia’s anger flares white-hot at being defined by these people she doesn’t know. They did that to me too—made me feel less. How do some people do that? And why?
Amelia does what she did on the bridge. She screams at these two boys with the fury of a whole house burning: “AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Her face reddens, her fists ball. She screams until, my whiskers tell me, her lungs sizzle. “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Red Hat reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small metal thing. He flicks it open, then strikes his thumb across the top of it, scritch. A tiny flame bursts from it.
Red Hat thrusts the flame at Amelia, who immediately stops screaming and folds into herself. Deeper, deeper. A small, dark, tight shadow. She whimpers. Her eyes glass over.
My heart leaps into my throat and my every strand of fur stands on edge. My back arches. I growl.
“Just get in the car,” Red Hat says through clenched teeth. The flame colors his face an evil orange, and the shadows leaping from below make him look like a skull.
“Checkmate!” Beatrice spits at them. She puffs, and the flame disappears. I can tell my humans’ eyes struggle with this sudden darkness, but Caleb knows what to do. He pushes Dark Glasses Bryce, who falls backward over a tree root. Beatrice kicks Red Hat Luke in the shin, grabs Amelia’s hand, and shouts, “Run!”
We run. But I flash my teeth at the pebble-hearted guys as I pass.
19
Should’ve
They chase us for a bit, those two teens, but they quickly stop. Turn back. So we slow.
“Beatrice, stealing that gas cap was a stupid idea. I should’ve told you not to take it. Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Caleb pants. He kicks at a rock on the trail.
Each stupid makes Beatrice clench tighter. “You didn’t even see me take it! You couldn’t have stopped me.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly.”
They glare at each other so hard it feels like they’re shoving each other. Amelia looks from Beatrice to Caleb and back again. I echo her feelings: both are right, and both are wrong. They don’t teach you about th
ese tangles of thorny emotions in school. I don’t know what my duty is here.
Beatrice is the first to speak. “I’m sick of the jerks always winning.” She turns and walks.
So we walk.
Night presses down on us. Stars wink between the leafy trees, but I can’t find the moon. Tessa likes to take me outside at night to show it to me. “That’s what your name means, Luna. Moon.” Over the course of many rainbow days, the moon changes shape. The moon can be a sliver, a strong claw across the night, like power. The moon can be wide and puffy, a chest swollen with held breath, like anticipation. The moon, when it’s full, is the ever-softest pillow, its light a slow-drifting feather falling to earth.
I can’t find the moon now. It unsettles me. Unsettling is a gray floaty feeling, fur and dust shaken off a favorite blanket. When a blanket like that is cleaned, it loses its scent, its story, its past. Unsettling.
Thank goodness for the moonlight tower. It pulls us like moths.
Caleb sneaks a peek at his wrist-collar. “Eight twenty . . .” he mutters.
We walk. We don’t have flashlights or water or food, and it’s not cold, but these kids of mine aren’t dressed for a walk this far. We’re dusty and sweaty. Green grumpiness begins to settle over us like fog.
I realize how thirsty I am. I pant, but I try not to let the kids see me breathing heavy. They don’t need to worry about me. And I can’t worry about my own needs. These kids. They’re my duty.
Nearby: rustling. A stick breaks. Leaves crackle. My fur tingles, rises.
“Do you hear that?” Beatrice says, stopping short and grabbing Amelia’s elbow. Amelia listens: more rustling.
“There’s coyotes around here,” Beatrice whispers toward the direction of the noise.
“There are not coyotes in Austin,” Caleb says. But he stoops to pick up a sharp stick.
The rustling grows louder. I growl.
A pair of eyes!
I grumble. Sniff the air. Musky. Nutty.
Twittering whiskers poke out of the underbrush, followed by an adorably hooked tail. Nutsnutsnutsnutsnuts . . .
Luna Howls at the Moon Page 9