“Well,” she says, “you have a whole city.”
“I know,” I say. “I love it here.”
She clears her throat. “Everything on schedule?”
“Yep,” I say. “I land around six.”
“I know that part,” she says. “The itinerary has been up on the fridge since you left.” I picture our kitchen: the window stuck half-open, the porcelain farmhouse sink, Dusty’s water bowl on the floor. It feels so long since I’ve been there. “How are you getting to the airport?”
“Archer is taking me,” I say.
“Who’s Archer?”
“Luna’s bassist,” I say. She must know their names by now. It’s as if she’s trying not to learn them, or pretending she doesn’t know. A new cat, black with white on its paws and its face, steps carefully across the fence.
My mother is quiet at first. “The one with the eyes?”
I laugh. “Yeah,” I say. I pick up my water glass and the ice clinks inside it.
“It would have to be either that one or the one with the smile. Though he’s the drummer, right?”
“Josh, yeah.” I’m smiling, and there’s no one to see it except that cat.
We don’t usually talk about boys, my mother and me, and it occurs to me that maybe that’s part of the reason she never talks about my father, or about Jake. I decide, in that moment, that maybe it’s time to ask. One thing at a time.
“You can tell me, you know.” I tip my head to the side as if she can see me, but she can’t, of course.
“Tell you what?”
“That you’re dating Jake.” I wait. “He’s your boyfriend, right?” I’ll see my mother in a few hours, but somehow it’s easier to say these things over the phone. I picture the satellites high above the earth, blinking away. Can it possibly be true that my voice will travel all the way up there before it reaches my mother?
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I guess you could say that.”
“So why don’t you ever talk about him that way?”
“I don’t know.” I hear her inhale. “Maybe it’s easier not to. I didn’t know what you would think.” She sounds, for once, like she’s the teenager.
“I think it’s fine,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Thanks.”
We’re both quiet. Luna comes out the back door of the restaurant and sits down at the table. Mom, I mouth to her, and she nods. The waitress appears for the first time in a long time to put our check at the edge of the table. Luna picks it up.
“Do you regret anything, Mom?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean all the stuff with Dad, and Shelter. Do you wish you hadn’t done it at all?”
Luna is watching my face, sitting so still I wonder if she’s even breathing.
“Of course I don’t,” she says. “It gave me you. And I loved your father, even if things didn’t work out.”
“I want to hear about it,” I say. “So does Luna. Will you tell us? Not now, but soon.”
My mother is quiet for so long I’m not sure she’s still there.
“Okay,” she says. More petals fall from the tree above us like pale pink confetti. “How is Luna?”
“She’s fine,” I say. “She’s good.” I look at Luna while I’m saying this and she looks right back at me, smiling a little. I take it as a sign.
“Do you want to talk to her?” I ask my mother.
“Yes,” she says, right away. She’s completely sure.
I hold the phone out to Luna. She waits a moment, her lips pursed the way they do when she’s thinking. She touches her empty cappuccino cup, closing her fingers around the white porcelain. Then she reaches out and takes the phone. She holds it up to her ear and takes a quiet breath.
“Hi, Mom,” she says.
fifty-three
TWO HOURS LATER, ARCHER TURNS the key and the van shudders a little, like something alive and sleepy and reluctant to wake up. The engine starts with a hum and a purr. I must look worried.
“Betty the Van is happy you’re here,” he says. “Especially since Luna avoids her because she doesn’t want to go all the way out to the practice space and unload in the middle of the night.” He pulls away from the curb and the van makes a groaning sound.
“Come on,” I say. “You’re the brawny men, right? Otherwise she might as well have an all-girl band.” This reminds me of my mother and the girl bands she never started, she and my sister as the sole girls onstage. I know that the guys in their bands must be good for something other than unloading.
Archer takes the first turn a little too quickly, and something large and heavy slides across the back of the van. My fingers clutch the sides of my seat.
“Are you sure you know how to drive this thing?”
He shakes his head, but he’s smiling, his eyes looking toward the street. “I’m not at all sure,” he says. “That’s what we have Josh for.”
In the sun, the street looks like a glassy black river. An old woman crosses slowly in front of us, singing as she walks to a small schnauzer by her feet.
“I talked to Luna,” Archer says. “This morning.”
I snap my head toward him. “You called her?”
He nods.
“About what?” I ask.
“I asked if she’d like to add a date in Buffalo.” He glides into a long, slow stop at a yellow light. “So Luna’s going to have our booker call.”
“Really?” I say.
“She thinks we’ll get one pretty easily.” He turns, and a couple of CDs go skittering across the dashboard. “I guess we’re a little bit famous now.”
I think of what my mother said, days ago, that being a little famous is the best kind. “Looks like it to me.”
“I hear Buffalo in December is just lovely,” Archer says.
“Hey,” I say. “All that snow and cold hype is exaggerated. It’s actually pretty nice in December.” I shrug. “Usually.” I think about Luna’s birthday snowstorm three years ago. I can still see my parents shoveling snow into the same pile in our yard.
“I’m willing to brave it.”
“So why didn’t Luna tell me about the show?”
“I told her I wanted to,” he says. “There’s this girl in Buffalo I want to see.” He sneaks a glance at me at the next stoplight, and I know what he sees: me sitting in the passenger seat, grinning. “Plus,” he says, “we’ll be driving through Buffalo in October on our way west.”
Just like that, I know I’ll see Archer again, and when.
Forty minutes later, we’re outside the airport, standing next to Betty the Van at the departures drop-off.
Archer pulls my suitcase out of the back and I wait. I can feel the heat rise from the asphalt like steam over a volcano. I won’t miss the inferno feeling of this city, but I’ll miss almost everything else.
“I’m not much for good-byes,” Archer says. He looks down at his feet. “Actually, I can’t believe I drove you.”
I laugh. “Thanks a lot.”
He’s shaking his head, smiling. “That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
“I did bring you something. I wanted to make you a mix for the plane, but it’s hard to do it now, you know?” He’s talking fast, and sounds nervous. “I’m sure your dad made actual cassette-tape mixes for your mom. I sort of wish I could do that. But I figured something out.” He hands me a tiny white iPod shuffle. I take it and it feels so small, so light, that if my mom and dad time-traveled here from 1994, I’m sure they wouldn’t believe there are songs in there.
“It was Natalie’s,” Archer says. “She left it, along with everything else. So it’s just a loan. You can give it back to me when I see you in Buffalo.”
“Okay,” I say. He hands me a piece of paper then, lined and torn from a notebook. In blue ink and perfect, tiny printing, he’s written out all the songs and artists.
“I had to write everything down because it’s a shuffle, and, um, things are going to come u
p in random order, so it’s not perfect.” He takes a breath. “It’s no cassette tape, that’s for sure. Sometimes I think we’re missing out on a lot.”
“I think my mom still has her old Walkman,” I say, “so next time you can make me a tape.”
“Meg Ferris’s Walkman,” Archer says. “My thirteen-year-old self would never have believed it.”
“In the meantime, I love it,” I say. “Thank you.” He’s put “Treetop” on there, my favorite song from the Moons’ last record. “Only one song from the Moons?”
“Haven’t you heard enough of us this week? That one’s my favorite right now.”
“Mine too.”
He points to the paper. “I put ‘Sea of Tranquility’ on there. It’s such a pretty song, and it didn’t seem right to leave Shelter off.”
He can’t possibly know that I listened to that song just last night, but it seems perfect anyway.
“You picked the right one,” I say. I run my finger down the titles. Here are the Lemonheads, Pavement, and Juliana Hatfield to round out the ’90s, along with Luna’s pretend dad Paul Westerberg. He has Otis Redding and Elvis Costello and David Byrne, whose stoop we’ve stood on together. Bands I’ve never heard of, like Radiator Hospital and Waxahatchee. And way down at the end is the Weakerthans’ “Left and Leaving,” a song that could break my heart. If I didn’t know I’d see him in a month and a half, that is.
I fold the paper and put it in my purse. I’m already thinking about the mix I’ll make for him when I get back home.
“Well,” Archer says.
“Well.” I try to keep my breathing even, but my heart has started beating faster. It’s amazing the way you can forget you have one at all, until it kicks up to its highest setting.
“This is not what I expected to happen this week,” he says. He puts one hand, palm flat, on the van’s door, and I do the same thing. The paint is hot and smooth.
“Me neither,” I say.
“I’m glad it did.”
“Me too.”
Archer laughs. “This is really an awesome conversation.”
“We’re so expressive.” I look around. “I hope someone’s writing this down. Pure gold.”
“I have an excuse.” Archer leans his hip and shoulder on Betty the Van. “I’m not a word guy,” he says. “But you are.”
I smile. “I’m a word guy?”
“Word girl.” He stands up. He actually seems a little flustered, and it’s adorable.
“Oh, right.” I nod. “Wait. Does that mean I have to offer some big pronouncement?” I arc my hand through the air like a game show hostess and I feel like Luna, always gesturing, always moving my hands through the air.
“No,” Archer says. “Not unless you want to.”
I think for a minute, and I remember Jackie’s inscription in Michael’s copy of Catcher, which I still have in my bag. I can see the blue-inked cursive when I close my eyes. “‘I’m glad that some days of our lives were spent together,’” I say, quoting Jackie.
Archer looks at me, a half smile on his lips, and I try to memorize the exact way he looks right now: his sea-blue eyes, his long lashes.
“Just go with it,” I say. “I’ll explain sometime.”
“Okay,” Archer says. “Though I’m hoping for more days together. Can we have more days?”
I laugh. “Definitely.”
A plane roars above us, and I look up at its silver belly slicing through the sky. Then I look at Archer.
“You need to go get on the plane.” He steps forward and slips his hand into mine, pulling me closer. “But first you should probably kiss me.”
“Probably,” I say, shrugging, like it’s no big deal. And then I do.
When I walk away from Archer, I don’t turn around at first. I pull my suitcase all the way to the terminal door, and then I take out my phone. I want to send him one last text while I’m here in the city, one more before I go. So I type out the lyric that’s been circling my head all day. I finally know how it goes.
Just when you’ve lost yourself, wherever you’ve been,
You’ll reach the end and find yourself ready to begin.
I look at the words on the glowing screen for a second, and then I press send. I know when I turn around to take a last look, Archer will be standing next to the van, watching me, and we’ll both lift our hands and wave.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE BEST THING THAT CAN happen to a writer is for everything to come together like a really good song. I’m here to tell you: this book is that song. So it’s time to thank the members of the band.
Thanks to my agent, Jay Mandel, who is kind and funny and generally fantastic, and the rest of my team at William Morris Endeavor: Laura Bonner (who has taken Girls in the Moon international), Janine Kamouh (who gives great notes), and Lauren Shonkoff (who is just plain great).
I feel lucky to have my fierce and fabulous editor, Kristen Pettit. She was the one who first wanted to hear from Meg, and once I started writing those chapters, the book clicked together. Jenna Stempel designed the cover of my dreams. Thanks to Elizabeth Lynch, who keeps things running with a smile, and the rest of the excellent team at Harper: Alexandra Rakaczki, Gina Rizzo, Janet Rosenberg, and Elizabeth Ward.
I’m grateful to the New York Foundation for the Arts for fellowships in 2008 and 2015. This early support and encouragement was crucial.
So many friends have helped me while I wrote this novel. Anne Marie Comaratta read along with me as I revised the first draft, chapter by chapter. Her enthusiasm never dimmed, and it helped keep mine alight. Sherry Taylor understands what I’m trying to say, even when I’m having trouble getting it on the page. Thanks to my friends who read the manuscript: Angela Hur, Kristin Jamberdino, Caitie McAneney Klimchuk, Courtney Smyton, and Missy Zgliczynski, and to Brian Castner, my writer friend. Jodi Bryon and Brett Essler are stellar humans and my home base when I’m in NYC. Jaime Herbeck is always on my side, and Kathleen Glasgow helps keep me sane. Jim Pribek gave me a whole collection of possible names for the boys’ school in this novel. I chose Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit member of the resistance to the Nazis, because his bravery deserves to be honored.
Mick Cochrane, the world’s best mentor and friend, always helps me find my way. My life would look very different if I hadn’t ended up in his classroom years ago, and I like my life just the way it is. Thanks, Mick, for always believing in me.
I’m still learning from Eric Gansworth, fifteen years later, which is why I’m really lucky he’s my friend. Plus, he’s a great reader of my work, and he always makes me laugh.
Many thanks to my teachers in the MFA program at the University of Notre Dame: Valerie Sayers, Sonia Gernes, William O’Rourke, and Steve Tomasula, and to my talented cohort there. Thanks, also, to my colleagues and students at Canisius College. I’m so happy to be a part of that community. Speaking of community: hugs to my fellow debut authors in the Sweet Sixteens. I’m grateful for their honesty and humor. Thanks, too, to the book bloggers who do so much for all writers and readers.
All of the songs I’ve ever loved run like a current through this book, so I should thank the musicians and songwriters who have inspired me over the years. This seems as good a time as any to mention that the Weakerthans stopped playing shows together a few years before Luna could have skipped school to go to their last concert, but if I’m creating my own universe, the Weakerthans are going to stay together as long as possible. Special thanks to John K. Samson for his kindness.
Thanks to my whole family, and especially to my parents, Mary Beth and Dennis McNally, who read me approximately a million books during my childhood, and who have supported me no matter what paths I’ve taken. My brother, Patrick, has always been my fan. I’m his fan, too.
To Juno, Daphne, and Luella, who made me want to write a story about sisters and mothers and daughters. And to Jesse: So much of the music I love comes from you, so I’m certain this story started with us. I couldn’t do this without you.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Jesse Mank
Though her family is not rock-and-roll royalty, JANET McNALLY has always liked boys in bands. (She even married one.) She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and her stories and poems have been published widely in magazines. She has twice been a fiction fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Janet lives in Buffalo with her husband and three little girls in a house full of records and books, and teaches creative writing at Canisius College. Girls in the Moon is her first novel, but she’s also the author of a prizewinning collection of poems, Some Girls. You can visit her online at www.janetmmcnally.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art and design by Jenna Stempel
Microphone based on photo by Andy Crawford / Getty Images
COPYRIGHT
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
GIRLS IN THE MOON. Copyright © 2016 by Janet McNally. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016949903
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