“Luna, come!” Caleb says. “Amelia, follow behind her, okay?”
Amelia nods. I whimper.
“Come, Luna!” Beatrice says, patting her leg.
“Come!” Caleb says.
I dip one paw in the water. It’s very different from the lake I swam in earlier. It’s cold, icy, and it pushes, like water from the hosepipe. It’s bossy water.
One step. Two. Just like grief.
It’s hard to stand in water that’s shoving me downhill with so much power. Amelia is right behind me, her skirt swirling in the current, and Beatrice and Caleb say, “Come!” So I keep trying. I am their dog. They are my duty. I whine louder, but the sound is swept away by the roar of the water around me.
I place a paw on something slick, metal.
My hurt back leg buckles. My paw slips between what feels like metal bars. It’s trapped!
I yank and pull but I can’t free my back leg. It’s stuck.
Water is everywhere. It rushes around me, pushing me downhill. My trapped paw aches with the strain. I have to stand on tiptoe on my other back paw and hold my head up as high as I can to breathe.
“Luna!” Beatrice shouts.
I start scratching and struggling. I have made it this far and I am not giving up on these kids. My kids. My duty. My heart.
But my paw is trapped tight. My other paw slips.
The water rushes over and around my head. I choke, find my footing, and push my nose into the night sky.
“Her leg is caught in the grate!” Beatrice yells over the roar of the water.
“Bea, listen to me,” Caleb says calmly. “Hold my ankles as tight as you can. When I yell now, you pull. Hard. Got it?”
My eyes flick in that direction. Beatrice nods once. She’s listening.
Caleb shouts across the roar of water. “Amelia, when I say now, push Luna from that side, got it?”
Amelia must nod but I can’t see her. I shift my weight on my one tiptoe paw. Breathe.
Caleb lays down in the mud, slides forward. He is coated in muck. “Got me, Bea?”
“I got you.”
Caleb crawls into the roaring water, elbow by elbow. I feel the water shift to rush around him as he approaches. His hands wrap around my trapped leg, just above where my paw is stuck.
“Ready?” Caleb shouts. “One, two, three—NOW!”
Caleb sucks in a huge breath, ducks underwater, and YANKS. My leg twists and pain shoots through it. I try to yelp but I get a mouthful of water. I choke.
And right after that, I hear it, just as the water pushes over, under, around:
“LUNA!”
I don’t know if humans feel this, but sometimes it’s like time slows. Each moment around you feels longer, thicker, gluier.
That voice.
I’ve never heard it before.
It’s as crisp as a church bell.
Amelia!
Amelia shovesshovesshoves and shouts my name. Caleb and Beatrice pull. We tumble and splash and crash and crawl.
We make it.
Me and Amelia and Caleb and Beatrice. We make it out of the waterfall.
I’m sucking in breath, lying in mud. We’re all sucking in breath, lying in mud. We’re on our backs in a pile of muck and wet about ten tumbles below the trail, chests heaving.
I didn’t have to give in to the water like I thought I might.
Caleb is covered in wet leaves and mud and sticks. He mutters, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” They stare at one another, eyes wide as night.
“We’re all okay,” Beatrice declares with a shiver. “We’re all okay.” Humans repeat things they need to believe.
But Amelia is crying. At first I think she’s angry. She burns white-hot. Then I realize: it’s pain. It can be hard to tell the difference between pain and anger; both burn white, because hurt is white. Pain is hurt in the body. Anger is hurt in the spirit.
Amelia blinks and blinks but the tears are still there. Her ankle is twisted at an odd angle. It makes my stomach lurch. I think of my trapped paw. The pain was the same.
“Are you okay?” Beatrice and Caleb say almost on top of each other. They pause. Wait for her to answer.
She used her voice once, but she’s not ready to use it more. Fat tears roll down her cheeks. She nods, sucks air over her teeth. That helps cool the white-hot a bit.
Beatrice and Caleb glance at each other. Did they really hear her speak?
“Luna?” They turn their attention to me, but I’m fine. My paw hurts and the scratch on my haunch burns but I stand and wag slowly to let them know I’m fine. Beatrice hugs my neck; Caleb scratches behind my ear. I pick my way over wet leaves and rocks and weeds to Amelia. She holds my face, stares deep into my eyes, like she’s making sure I’m really still here.
I’m here. I don’t know how much longer I could’ve stood on tiptoe on one leg to breathe.
They worked together—a team—to save me. The knot pulled. The waterfall dove into the rush headfirst. The shadow shouted and shoved.
I lick the tears off Amelia’s face, like I’ve always done. Salty. Amelia is a rainbow, smiles through tears, and she hugs me.
Caleb, who is covered in sticks and muck and mud for maybe the first time in his life, gags. He’s watching me lick away Amelia’s tears and he gags. “I’m sorry, Luna. You’re great and all but ugggghhh. Face licking!” He gags again. Then grins. Winks. This makes Amelia laugh. If anything can outshine white-hot pain or anger, it’s sunny yellow joy.
How do humans do it? How do they feel all these confusing emotions, all at once? All one giant spill of feeling. Exhausting!
“Here,” Caleb says, helping Amelia stand. “C’mon.”
Amelia drapes an arm over Beatrice’s shoulder, and Caleb stoops so she can do the same with him. Gingerly, they hop her uphill. She sits on the trail when we reach it. I sit next to her. She hugs me tight. We are cold and wet and shivering and still flashing with white-hot pain, but this hug? It’s perfect. How can hugs do that? Overcome all the other things? Like a whisper can be louder than a shout.
Amelia sits up suddenly, juts a finger at the moontower.
“Keep going?” Caleb says. He takes a sharp breath. “Oh, Amelia, I don’t know. I guess . . . I could give you a piggyback ride the rest of the way. Do you really think . . . ?”
Amelia nods hard. She feels determination. It’s what I felt when I heard her shout my name.
I did hear her shout my name, didn’t I?
Beatrice, who had been pacing and cursing and cracking her knuckles and studying the moontower, stops short. “Uh, guys? About the tower.”
We all pause. Look at her. The four bright lamps of the moontower blaze behind her, making her silhouette look small and dark.
“We have a problem.”
24
Friends Don’t Let You Howl Alone
Beatrice points at the four round, bright lights at the top of the moontower. Then slowly, she lowers her finger, directs our eyes to the iron tower itself. Then lower still, to the tall hill the tower rests upon. Down the hill. And to the lake.
The lake.
The moontower is on the opposite side of the lake.
“Checkmate,” Caleb breathes.
“Yep.”
We four look at the nearby moontower, now with an inky-black stretch of water snaking across our path.
Amelia blows out a long, shivering breath. Caleb bites his lip. Beatrice cracks her knuckles, paces.
“We could maybe swim it? We swam earlier. . . .” Beatrice’s words fade away like the mist of the nearby waterfall. It’s a big stretch of lake.
Caleb shakes his head. “No.”
“I mean, I know Amelia is hurt. Amelia, do you think . . . ?” Beatrice’s voice, which is usually as strong as a braid of thick rope, now sounds like a shoestring. She’s trying to save our quest.
Amelia’s eyebrows furrow deeply. She doesn’t want to disappoint her friends.
Friends.
It occurs
to me that this is what they are now, and I watched it happen. They are friends. I watched them bloom together.
Caleb shakes his head more. “No. It’s not Amelia. It’s me. I don’t swim.”
Beatrice cocks her head at Caleb, the top knot of her hair tilting as she does this. It’s how she looks at her friend Caleb.
“You’re studying to be an Eagle Scout and you don’t know how to swim? That may be the most Caleb thing I ever heard.”
It’s funny, and I expect that to bring happiness to their faces, but it doesn’t. They are all so mad. Sad. Disappointed. Upset. Thwarted.
“It’s not that I can’t swim. I don’t. I don’t like . . .” Caleb pauses. Looks down at his chapped, raw hands. They seem to remind him of some other part of himself. “I don’t like the feeling of water all around me. I don’t like the feeling of my feet not touching the ground. I don’t like holding my breath.” He shivers.
Beatrice and Amelia and I all take a minute to realize: Caleb dove face-first into water to save me. And he doesn’t swim.
Caleb steals a look at his watch. “It’s ten after nine.”
Slicing the day into seconds instead of shades.
We are Almost. Almost to the tower, but not there. Almost in time, but too late. Almost to Hector, but not reaching him. Almost to answers, but left with questions.
I led my kids to almost.
Goliath was right. Almost is as good as I’ll ever be.
Almost washes around me, bowling me over just like that waterfall did. Along with running away from Tessa. Running away from my therapy dog pin. Hurting a bird. Crossing paths with dangerous humans. Sandpaper saving us from that rabid coyote. Sandpaper being the hero he said he’d be. Hunger and thirst and mud and blood and wet. Knots and shadows and waterfalls.
I look at the shine of the moontower. It’s not a real moon. It’s too bright, too electric. It’s almost.
All the guilt and hunger and fury and frustration of the group overwhelms me, and I know I’m going to cry. Duty tells me to serve silently, to never draw attention to myself. But I need to cry. It is my instinct. I am giving in.
It starts low in my belly, but it grows. And escapes: Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll!
I howl at the moon. The almost moon. Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll!
I cry out all the feelings. My feelings. Not theirs. I’m so used to feeling the emotions of others, I could no longer recognize my own. My own guilt and hunger and fury and frustration. But these feelings are mine.
Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll!
And then my kids, my friends? They howl with me. Friends don’t let you howl alone. We all howl at the moontower like wolves. Beatrice at first, and then Caleb. Even Amelia joins in. We four, we howl. Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll! Beatrice links her arm through Caleb’s. Caleb throws his other arm over Amelia’s shoulders. Amelia places her delicate fingertips on my head. We howl. Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll!
They do that confusing human thing where they laugh and cry at the same time. They smile with tears on their cheeks. Rainbows, each one of them. And they howl. Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll!
This howling, it somehow melts off a lot of the anger and aggravation. Mist from the waterfall. Light on the shadow. An untangling of knots. Letting it out helps. Tessa always said it would work and it does. We are a pack, howling together.
Hooow-Hooow-Hoooowwwwlllll!
The hill behind us rises into a flat parking lot. Car doors slam.
“Bea?”
“Amelia!”
“Caleb, son, is that you?”
“LUNA!”
25
The Debriefing of the Shadow
When you shine too bright a light on a shadow, it disappears. Tessa knows this. She knows that gentle candlelight makes a shadow dance, but lightning makes it vanish. So inside our trailer, Tessa has closed the thin lace curtains, dimmed the day. She even has fairy lights tucked inside gem-toned glass globes. It’s warm and colorful here. It says we’re not angry but we need answers.
Last night my pack of howlers were each taken to their own home, their own bed. Once I was dry and full of food, I slept, deep and dreamless. But Tessa asked them all to come back today. She has many questions. Questions crackle through the air inside the trailer like lightning. But Tessa knows that candlelight works better than storms, so she’s toned down the crackle to a flicker.
Tessa and Amelia settle into chairs. Tessa clears her throat. “Your parents were very nice to let me speak to you privately, Amelia. They didn’t have to do that, you know.”
Amelia nods. She feels a surge of sickly green guilt at the idea of her parents being mad at Tessa.
“But your parents said you were very responsive to their questions last night. You interacted with them more than they’ve seen you interact in a long time. So they let you return.”
Amelia swallows. Nods.
“Whose idea was this, Amelia?” Tessa asks. She has notecards that have words printed on them, and I guess they say Amelia and Beatrice and Caleb.
Amelia points to one of the cards. Tessa raises an eyebrow. “Running away was your idea?” I can feel Tessa trying to imagine how Amelia, silent Amelia, could entice others to follow her far away, into the woods. Amelia smiles, nods.
“Did you ever feel unsafe?” Tessa asks. Amelia’s head shakes, no. She looks at me, winks. I wink back. She did feel unsafe, at times. She doesn’t wish to share that with Tessa.
“Would you do this again, Amelia? If this group were to continue?”
Amelia pauses. My whiskers tell me that yes, she’d absolutely do this again, but she feels she shouldn’t say that. She shakes her head no. Tries to look sorry for what they did. But she doesn’t feel sorry. She feels sneaky and brave, and she feels proud of her sneakiness and bravery. This I know.
“Amelia, I have to ask. Caleb told his parents that you guys were trying to meet up with Hector at Zilker Park based on an Instagram post he’d made. Is that right?”
Amelia shuffles in her chair. Nods.
Tessa turns on her blue screen, shows it to Amelia. “Was this the post?” On the screen, a tiny Hector poses with a piece of plastic next to a huge metal tower. Hector! I wag.
Amelia’s jaw shifts. She nods again.
Tessa sighs. She reads something on the screen out loud. It’s a language I don’t fully know, but Tessa speaks it with some of her clients: “Voy a faltar la reunión mañana. Vida larga y próspera, pilotos. #badtothe drone #badtothedronepilotingclub”
Tessa looks over the top of her tiny glasses at Amelia, but Amelia doesn’t shrink like a shadow sometimes does. “Amelia, you speak Spanish, don’t you? Your abuela lives with you, and your father says she speaks Spanish at home.”
Amelia smells hesitant. Hesitant is like a hiccup. She nods slightly.
“So you know that this post says that Hector wouldn’t be at Zilker.”
Amelia’s eyes are on the floor. I expect to feel guilt with her, but I don’t. Instead we feel . . . boldness? She grins ever so slightly at the worn carpet. She could’ve stopped their adventure, even without words. But Amelia needed adventure more than she needed routine. Shadows are easier to see when they’re in motion. For one evening, Amelia was an in-front-of-you shadow.
And Tessa? She’s not angry. If I’m not mistaken, she even feels a little proud.
“I can’t guarantee this group will continue, Amelia,” Tessa continues. “You guys made a terribly dangerous choice. Do you understand that?”
Amelia nods yes. And she means yes. That, she agrees with.
“Would you still want to be a part of this group, if it continues?”
Amelia nods, big and fast. She nods so emphatically the whole trailer bobs and nods too. Yes!
“Okay, Amelia. Thank you. You may join your parents outside.”
Amelia wisps out of the trailer, and Tessa beams at me.
“Luna, did you see that? How well she communicated? Wow. I’ve never seen Amelia do that!”
I wag
at Tessa’s wonder. If you only knew.
26
The Debriefing of the Knot
So yeah, listen. It was my idea.”
Beatrice’s knees bounce, and the whole trailer bounces with them. “Am I in trouble?”
Tessa’s eyes widen. Beatrice isn’t demanding anything; she’s asking a question. This is new to Tessa. “Should you be in trouble?”
“I mean, no.” Beatrice grins like a cat. Glances side-eye at me. She totally thinks she should get in trouble. I cough.
“Why, Beatrice? Why run away?”
Beatrice stops bouncing and leans forward, elbows on knees. “We weren’t running away, Ms. Tessa. We were running toward something.”
She shakes her head. “That might sound stupid but it’s the truth.”
Tessa doesn’t like the word stupid, so I’m as surprised as a pug in a pack of Pekingese when she says, “That doesn’t sound stupid at all.”
Here’s the thing about knots: the things that weaken other items—water, weather, force—somehow only make knots stronger.
Beatrice and Tessa talk more. A long time. Tessa laughs and says, “Caleb? Used a port-a-john?” She makes a note on her notepad.
“I thought he might die,” Beatrice says, but I know from a whisker twitch that she didn’t really think this. This is a joke. Hyperbole, Sandpaper called it.
I miss Sandpaper.
“Did Amelia . . .” Tessa is itching like fleas to say speak, but instead she says, “. . . do anything special too?”
Beatrice glances at me, purses her lips. “Nope.”
I don’t know why Beatrice would keep Amelia’s one word a secret. But she does.
“Were you scared?” Tessa asks at last.
“Naw,” Beatrice says, and I feel like she means it. “We had Luna the whole time.”
My soul sings and skips while Tessa writes something in her notebook. Beatrice cracks her knuckles. “But listen, Ms. Tessa. I have a question for you.”
Tessa leans back in her chair. “Shoot.”
“There at the end, when we were all howling? How did y’all find us so quickly?”
Luna Howls at the Moon Page 12