by Brooke Moss
My mom was in a typical hurry. She never went anywhere at a normal pace. The Sandpoint traffic cops knew her by name.
“Hey, guys, hurry up,” she called out the window, adjusting her apron underneath the seatbelt.
For the last five years, my parents owned and operated the Deep Lake Coffee Company and proudly served the best coffee and specialty drinks in the Inland Northwest. They didn’t turn much of a profit and spent most of their time bickering because of the fact that they were living paycheck to paycheck, but they had a recipe for a chilled chai tea with nutmeg that could make your eyes fill up with grateful tears.
Evey opened the passenger side door and waited for me to roll over to it. After tossing my bag in at Mom, I placed one hand on the inside of the door and the other on the seat, then hoisted myself up. I felt my mom’s hand grip my elbow, but shook it off.
“I’ve got it,” I grunted, feeling sweat pique at my hairline. Pulling all of my strength from my shoulders and core, I managed to get my hip onto the seat and then shimmied myself the rest of the way by wiggling my hips and what little of my upper legs I controlled.
Evey climbed into the seat behind me and slid the door shut with a slam. “Luna’s got a boyfriend.” I could practically feel her smiling at the back of my head.
“Can it.” Folding my arms across my chest, I hunkered down in my seat and glowered at a couple of kids walking past the van. They’d stopped to watch me get into my seat.
My mom pressed on the gas pedal, and we lurched forward. “A boyfriend?”
The back of my head hit the headrest. “Don’t listen to her. She’s high.”
“She’s what?” My mom looked in the rearview mirror. “Evey?”
“I’m kidding, Mom.” I scanned the edge of the woods as we drove away, searching for a glimpse of black T-shirt, but saw nothing.
“Well, aren’t you starting to feel ready to date again?” My mom pulled the car onto the road. The enthusiasm in her voice made my headache. Sometimes I felt like if I scored myself a boyfriend, it would be the proof she needed to believe that I really was OK after all.
“Ugh. I don’t know.” I stared out the window and watched the buildings start to dwindle as we sped to the outskirts of town toward our house.
“I think you need to date again. It’ll be good for your confidence.”
“My confidence is fine, Mom.”
“No it’s not,” Evey called out in the backseat. “The new guy introduced himself to her, and she clammed up like…like—”
“Like you did when you saw Hayden?”
“Now it’s your turn to shut up.” Evey pushed on my shoulder playfully.
“Hayden? Hayden who?” My mom turned our car onto the winding two-lane road that would take us to our old house by the lake. “You mean Hayden McClendon? Didn’t you use to date his brother, Luna?”
I nodded, but remained silent and kept my gaze fixed on the scenery blurring past my window. Maybe if I kept quiet, my mother would drop the subject of dating, and I wouldn’t have the urge to whack my head against the glass.
“Luna says he’s a douche canoe, though.” Evey giggled.
“Hey. Language.” My mom steered us around an oversized puddle, making me sway in my seat. She glanced at me, her gaze heavy on the side of my face. “So starting next week, you’ll be home with Declan on your own.”
I didn’t look at her. “Yep.”
“Which means you’ll have to be better about answering your phone when I call.”
“Which means you’ll need to call less frequently and learn how to trust me.”
Evey sighed in the backseat. She knew when I was pushing Mom’s buttons and hated it. If it were up to Evey, we would all get along like a television family from the fifties, no matter how often we had the urge to punch each other.
The road thinned even more, and the trees connected overhead, creating a lush green tunnel we careened through. “I do trust you.” Mom flipped on the blinker. “I just worry.”
“What is there to worry about?” I picked at my black nail polish and grit my molars together. Even the mere sound of her worrying made my muscles tense up. “I don’t go anywhere. I don’t do anything.”
“You go down to the water alone all the time,” she pointed out, our van bouncing in the rivets and potholes.
I rolled my eyes. “The water is in our backyard. Which, I repeat, constitutes not going anywhere.”
“It is going somewhere. It’s going to the water without supervision.”
“What’s the big deal?” My voice rose, and I heard Evey squirming around in the backseat. I turned my upper body so that I was facing the side of my mom’s face, which was pulled downward in a tired scowl. “A few years ago, you didn’t care if I swam, and now you act like I’m a three-year-old who still needs swimming lessons. What the hell, Mom?”
She looked at me. “Watch your mouth, Luna.”
“I can still swim! I swim every week in therapy, for Pete’s sake! I’m not going to drown. What’s so different now?”
“You’ve got Conus Medullaris Syndrome, Luna. That’s what’s different now. If all you’re using to swim is your arms, and you got a cramp or were too fatigued, you’d sink right to the bottom. And we live on the deepest lake in the state. Do you understand me? If you went under, we would never find you.”
My heart pulled when I saw that my mother’s green eyes had filled with tears, so I fisted my hands and tucked them underneath my thighs. Much like when she used my whole name, it usually meant business when she used the full name of my injury. Like that was enough to rattle my cage enough to make me back down.
I remembered every word the doctor had said and every detail of the moment. I even remembered that he’d had a small shaving scab on his upper lip. As he talked about my spinal cord being compressed by a hematoma, resulting in paralysis of my leg muscles from my knees down, and the damage likely being permanent, I’d watched as that scab bounced up and down on his face. Even now, when my mother pulled the medical terms out for impact, I instantly pictured the doctor’s scabby upper lip.
“You’re probably thankful I’m stuck at home all the time.” My voice was quieter now. Our house peeked into view through the trees. Suddenly my legs felt even heavier and more useless than before. “I know you don’t like to be without something to freak out about.”
We came to a halt in the driveway, right at the end of my wheelchair ramp. Evey slid open the door and climbed out wordlessly as the van rocked back and forth. My mother didn’t look at me as we sat there. She just stared at the lake between the house and the garage, twisting her wedding rings around her finger.
“I’m not thankful for any of this.” She spoke quietly. Evey pulled my chair out of the back of the van and unfolded it outside my door. The silence between my mother and me stretched into what felt like forever before she drew in a cleansing breath. “Dad will drop off Declan after scouts. Please try to have your homework done by dinner tonight. You have therapy.”
Closing my eyes, I swung open my door and lowered myself into my chair. I knew I had therapy. I’d been going to physical therapy on this night every week for the past twenty-five months and two weeks. I wasn’t stupid.
Evey waved as the red van sped off, spitting gravel behind it as Mom rushed to her next destination. “Dude. Seriously. Would it kill you to try to get along with her once in a while?” She took the handles at the back of my chair and started up the ramp.
I didn’t try to shoo her away. I just fixed my eyes on the trees and ferns that covered the hillside behind the garage. “She’s so high strung. It drives me crazy.”
“She’s high strung because she loves you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh Lord, you’re kidding me. Am I going to get lectured by you too?”
“No.” She grunted as we crested the top of the ramp onto the back porch. “I’m not blind and deaf. I know Mom’s annoying. But can’t you cut her some slack? The rest of us have to listen to your argumen
ts, you know.”
“Plug your ears then.” I slumped in my seat.
“Don’t be a rag to me. I’m not the one you’re mad at.” She fished her house keys out of her pocket, her movements jerky and irritated.
A flash of black peeking through the damp fern below caught my eye, and I yanked on Evey’s sweatshirt. “Look!”
“Whatever.” She shoved the key in the lock.
“No, seriously,” I hissed, cranking on her arm to turn her around. “It’s him!”
She looked down at the slope, and her eyes widened behind her glasses. “Holy crap, I can’t believe it.” She ducked down so that she was as close to the porch floor as I was.
There, below our house, was The Pretty, stomping through the woods, his brown hair damp against his head, his shirt soaked with sweat, and his brow furrowed as he glared over his shoulder.
“What is he doing here?” I pushed my chair to the edge of the porch to watch him lumber down the slope.
He moved fast, more adept on his feet than I’d ever been. He took swift and confident steps, but he looked paranoid as he glowered over his shoulder. He was pale, and pit stains were under his arms, like a junkie in need of a fix.
“He doesn’t look so good.” Evey chewed on a fingernail as she observed The Pretty approaching the waterline.
My lips twitched. “I was just thinking that myself, super sleuth.”
“Well, why is he on our property?” She asked this as if she were completely scandalized.
I pretended not to notice when Evey stared at the side of my face. “I have no idea.”
“I told you he liked you,” she whispered.
“Good Lord, you’re still on this?” I watched as The Pretty stopped walking and hunched over with his hands resting on his knees. Though we couldn’t hear it, he appeared to be panting heavily. His shoulders rose and fell with tangible effort and occasionally jerked as though he were coughing hard. “He does not. He doesn’t even know I live here. He’s probably trying to go home and decided to cut through the woods.”
Evey’s gaze rolled back to him. “He looks like he needs an inhaler.”
“He looks like he needs a shower.” My stomach started to undulate like the water in the lake. Up and down, up and down, building in excitement as it rocked. Geez, how long had it been since I’d crushed this hard on a guy?
There had been a kid, a junior, who’d acted as if he were interested in me at the beginning of the school year. He’d sat next to me at lunch a few times, and we joked about the principal’s comb-over a few times. But just when I was sure I was going to get asked out to homecoming, he’d stopped talking to me and become one of the many people who chose not to notice me anymore. Jerk.
It wasn’t like I was repugnant to look at. I still had the same face. Wide hazel green eyes and full lips that made Angelina Jolie’s look amateurish. And other than the fact that my legs were useless from the knees down, my body wasn’t a monstrosity, either. I was still thin, thanks to all of the exercise I had to do just to move myself in and out of my bed and the car, not to mention my swimming. When my picture was taken from the waist up, I didn’t look any different from any other funky teenager out there. Yet people, namely boys, ran away from me as though I were covered in manure.
“Do you want me to push you down there so you can say hi?”
“No way.” The last thing I needed was to roll up in the brush behind this guy with my sister in tow. It was hard enough getting down the ramp to the small dock we had on the water. I didn’t want to have my first conversation with The Pretty happen while my younger sister acted as chaperone.
He stood upright, and Evey and I both held our breath. Looking in all directions, he swatted at the branch of a thick evergreen tree and resumed his walking. We watched in revered silence, my hands trembling again as I gripped the armrests of my chair, until he was swallowed by the trees.
I blinked at the green a few times, trying to catch sight of his black clothes again. I wasn’t ready to be done watching him yet. I mean, I didn’t want to have a convo with the guy, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to enjoy the view. “We have to follow him.”
“What?” Evey hissed.
“Let’s see where the hell he’s going.” I turned my chair around on the porch and aimed it at the ramp. “Come on, we can take the path to the Rogersons’ place.” There was a dirt path that ran the quarter mile between our house and the neighbors’ house, owned by an elderly couple, the Rogersons, who insisted on giving us a fruitcake every Christmas.
Right after the accident, Mr. Rogerson had gone out to the path with a shovel and spent the next three weeks widening it just enough for a wheelchair to pass through easily, citing that I needed to have a way to get to their house in an emergency. I usually stayed off of the path, unless I was particularly pissed off at my parents and needed to get away somewhere where they wouldn’t call the National Guard to come look for me.
“You’re crazy.” My sister dropped her backpack in front of the backdoor and took hold of my chair. “You’re becoming a stalker.”
“No, I’m not.” I bit the insides of my cheek to keep from smiling. “He’s on our land, you know? And headed for the Rogersons’. Let’s think of it as a neighborhood watch system.”
She snorted and pushed me down the ramp. “You’re certifiable.”
“That’s what they tell me.” I shoved my wheels. We bounced across the gravel driveway, Evey groaning as she rolled me over an underground root that blocked the entrance to the path. “Hurry, or we’ll lose him.”
“He’s still there.” Her voice was hushed as she crouched down next to my ear. “You can see the black of his T-shirt through that tree.” She pointed down the hill. Sure enough, there was The Pretty, his shoulders hunched as he tromped along.
We moved along the path, almost parallel to his movements, with the exception of a hundred feet of trees and foliage separating us. Every three or four steps, The Pretty would stop for a beat, look over both of his shoulders. Then, after his shoulders would hunch up, and his arms would clench around his middle, he would knock branches out of his way and continue.
“He’s almost to the mouth of the bay,” Evey whispered.
The tiny bay our old house overlooked had been named after my great-great-grandmother Luna, who’d drowned in it as a young woman. She’d been swimming late at night in the summertime, and they’d found her nightgown floating in the weeds at the edge of the bay two weeks later. She was presumed to have drowned, and the bay—which was just a small, rock-lined notch in the shoreline—was called Moon’s Bay after that. My parents bought the old farmhouse on the hill from my mother’s great uncle while she was pregnant with me, and when I was born three months later, they named me Luna, after the drowned relative and the water that took her.
“Come on.” I rolled myself forward. At the bottom of the slope, the Pretty stood at the edge of the dark, midnight water, panting. He was right at the edge of Moon’s Bay, at the open mouth of the great Pend Oreille. “What is he doing?”
Evey stooped down next to me and blew into her cupped palms. “I have no idea. But it’s freezing out here.”
I looked down at my hoodie and zipped it up. I hadn’t noticed the frigid temperature outside, because of that pesky molten lava thing he did to my stomach. It was like having a space heater inside of my gut.
“Maybe he really is lost.” I watched as his arms went rigid, then relaxed, then went rigid again. The sweat mark on his shirt had grown, despite the fact that the weather was cold enough to dump early spring snow on our heads. Now his black T-shirt looked heavy. “Maybe he needs help. He looks sick or something.”
“Should we call 911?” Evey twiddled her hair.
Shaking my head, I pulled my hood up. “I don’t want to embarrass him. If an ambulance comes, everyone will know by dinnertime, and he’ll never live it down. It’s hard enough sticking out like a sore thumb at our school.”
“Even when he sticks out
for being hot?”
I glanced at my sister. The only sound between us was the sound of the lake water lapping against the rocky beach. “If he falls into the water, we’ll call 911, deal?”
“Fine.” Evey’s voice cracked. “Hey, what’s he doing?”
My head snapped back in his direction just in time to see him peel his shirt over his head, then fold it carefully before resting it on a large boulder. I sucked in a sharp breath and held it. He was beautiful. Every muscle in his back was visible and subtly defined, much like his arms. When he started to unbutton his jeans, I was immobile, no longer just paralyzed from the knees down. Now it was from the eyes down.
“We should stop looking,” Evey said, unmoving.
“I know.” I didn’t attempt to cover my eyes. It looked as though the buttons were a struggle. He jerked forward and paused between each one. At one point he lurched as if he were going to throw up.
“He’s sick. He’s gonna pass out.”
I nodded. “Get out your phone.”
Evey scrambled to tug her phone free from her pocket. He dropped to his knees on the rocks. Ghost pain shot through my kneecaps as I watched The Pretty struggle to stand back up. He clawed at the trunk of a nearby tree, his fingernails digging so deep into the bark that slivers and chunks fell to the ground. I couldn’t be sure, but I was pretty sure I heard him groan.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
Next to me, Evey nodded her head. Her cell phone was in one hand, with the index finger of her other hand poised above the keyboard. “Should I call?”
He stumbled to the left, and the jagged trunk of a fallen tree obscured our view of the lower half of his body. Which was probably a good thing, because his torn black jeans were promptly thrown onto the rock with his shirt.
Evey gasped and covered her mouth. When she spoke, her voice was muffled by her own palm. “Dude. He’s naked.”
“No…” I leaned forward in my chair.
“No, really. He is. His pants just came off.”
His body, crisp white against the dark water, straggled to the edge of the lake. I shook my head. He wasn’t crazy enough to jump in. There was no way. It was March, and the weather reports were predicting several more weeks of winter-like weather. The water would be thirty-five degrees at the surface, and only God knew how bitterly arctic it would get several feet down. He would be hypothermic within minutes.