Flower Moon

by Gina Linko

  Actual, physical work.

  I felt suddenly wistful for last summer. I had a memory, just a simple one, nothing special: just Tempest, Digger, and me hanging out at the St. Simons Pier, eating coconut shrimp from Daisy’s Diner, a double order wrapped up in a grease-stained brown paper bag. We’d leaned over the rail of the pier, looking down at the ocean, laughing hard about something stupid that Digger had said.

  I wanted that back. I threw the quilt over my head.

  “Tally, you listening to me?” Tempest asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered, my voice breaking. And right then, I was one second from tears. I missed my sister something fierce. I hid my face under my bedcovers and blinked hard.

  Tempest continued, “I’m trying to finagle some kind of invention to … I don’t even know yet. It’s just … I really … I don’t want us to have to get separated, Tally. Do you?”

  What a ridiculous question that was. I tried to answer, but I couldn’t seem to form the words around the lump in my throat.

  Tempest took my silence to mean something else. Her voice was a whisper. “Are you happier if you have an excuse to just leave me out of things? Is that why you haven’t even tried to fix this between us? You’d finally be rid of me. You could go live your life alone, happier than all get out. Like Aunt Grania.”

  “You’re not making sense,” I croaked. How could she think that? She was the one like Aunt Grania, going off and leaving me.

  I threw the quilt off of myself, sat up, and looked at Tempest. It struck me, the way she held her shoulder, her defensive posture, the way she blinked hard.

  “You hate my pigtails,” she said.

  “Tempest …” My throat pinched with something akin to guilt.

  “I embarrass you at school because I’m … odd.”

  “None of that is true,” I told her, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Feels true.”

  “Don’t say that. This is killing me, Tempest. I just wish that we could go back to how—”

  “Don’t,” Tempest said, her lips pursing in anger. “Don’t wish us back to how we used to be.”

  “Why?” I said, my tears turning to anger now.

  Tempest pushed her box of junk over, emptying the contents on her bed with a loud clanging crash. “Things are never going to go back to how they used to be, Tally Jo. Get used to it. It’s called growing up!”

  “No, I won’t get used to it.” I stood up, my arms folded across my chest, bracing for an argument. “Don’t you miss us?”

  She turned, her hands on her hips. “Of course I do. But things change. People change. Everything changes. The universe is in flux. Energy reinventing itself constantly.”

  “Great time for a science lecture.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry! You don’t want me, your stupid, nerdy sister, to embarrass you with my geeky habits.”

  “Tempest, come on. You’re the one who’s so busy with this techno-garbage. Admit it, you have no time for us any—”

  “You know what, Tally? Just stop. I don’t follow you around anymore and do everything you say exactly how you say it. So, what? You’re unhappy? Well, guess what, Tally? I couldn’t live my life just being your sidekick for all eternity just because it pleased you. Or because I was scared of everything and everyone. I had to get brave and become me. I had to reach deep inside myself and find out who I wanted to be. And I did that. For God’s sake, it was hard, and it was scary, but I became me. And then I wasn’t just your shadow. But guess what? I lost you!” She paused, and I could see she was shaking now, with fury or hurt. “I am me now, Tally.” She straightened her shoulders, composing herself. Then she said, in a whisper, “But I could still use a friend.”

  “Tempest, I—”

  “But you never really wanted me to be one, did you?” Her eyes flashed at me. “Not unless you could tell me exactly what to do, not unless I was nothing but your faithful assistant. You just want to pick and choose exactly how we change, and you don’t get to do that. Not everything about me is your decision. See, you went and grew up and away from me too, you know? Cooler, funnier, student council president, your head bent close to Digger Swanson over the campfire with no room for me to join in, you and Marisol going off with Elena to the mall, you and Seth Bowers going to Reed’s. See, stuff like that, if it’s your idea, it doesn’t count. To you, I’m the only one changing.”

  Something pushed me back on my heels, and it wasn’t the physical push that was always there between my sister and me now. No, it was more than that. It was the power of those words.

  There was some truth there.

  And I had to sit down onto the bed just to keep from losing my balance. Because what Tempest said was bowling me over.

  I sat there, dumbfounded. Was that all true? I didn’t say anything; I was too busy trying to process her words.

  Tempest laughed, this sad, lonely sound. “Forget it. Just go back to blaming me. Seems like the only thing you’re really putting all your energy into.”

  “Tempest, I—” I stood up, wanting to grab her arm, keep her here. But I didn’t.

  “Right. I’m leaving.” Tempest threw a few things back in her cardboard box, but then she stopped. Her body went rigid, and she balled her fists at her sides. She screamed—a tiny, raspy noise of frustration. It hurt me to hear it.

  Then she spun around and she stuck her chin out at a defiant angle, shoving her feet into her flip-flops. “Maybe if I was one of your animals, maybe then you might take a minute to consider what it feels like to be me.”

  My voice came out all strangled. “Tempest, I just want—”

  “Stop!” Tempest’s shoulders fell, her fury seeming to disappear in an instant. She just looked tired and sad. “Listen. If you’d quit trying so hard to hold on to what we were, you might see what we—each of us, alone and together—can become.”

  I didn’t answer.

  She left me standing in the little space between our beds, in our pod, confused, so very sad, and somehow a little guilty.

  I scowled at myself and grabbed my inhaler. I gave myself a puff. Two. Still, I couldn’t get ahead of it.

  I sat on the bed, laid back on my pillow, trying to relax my diaphragm like the doc had told me, and I took two more puffs.

  I wondered if guilt could make your lungs tighten up. It sure as shampoo felt like it.

  I lay on my bed for a while just feeling sorry for myself, until I spied the red-framed silhouette garland on the wall. Those two little cut-out girls were bent toward each other, frozen together for all eternity, happily so.

  I didn’t have time for wallowing. I had to do something.

  It was time for Aunt Grania to come clean, and I intended to make her. But I’d have to be smart, use enough finesse so I didn’t get her too worried about Tempest and me. She couldn’t go calling Mama. Not yet.

  So I went hunting for my aunt. I looked in her trailer and the animal tent, and I was halfway out to the old airplane hangar where Fat Sam said she’d gone to do yoga when I saw her leaning against the Candy Wagon, eating a slice of watermelon like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  I marched right up to her. “Tell me about what keeps you and Mama apart.”

  She started to deny it, but I just shook my head. “No. The truth. No more half-truths and avoidance, Aunt Grania. I know there’s something between you and Mama, because there’s something between Tempest and me.” The words were jarring, said out loud like that, and I had to fight for breath around them. “I need to know everything you know, and everything you’ve tried. Right now.”

  Sometime during my speech, she’d dropped her watermelon rind right onto the midway and didn’t even seem to have noticed. Her mouth was hanging open. She brought one startled hand to her cheek, her bracelets jangling as they dropped to her elbow. “It’s already starting?” She took a step closer to me, fear in her eyes. “What’s happened?”

  “I think you know. There’s something pushing us apart. A force. I’m su
re you’re familiar with it.”

  She turned so pale then, and she started to ask something, but I held up my hand. “I’ll answer all your questions, but first, please, please, can you just give me some answers? What happened with you and Mama? Did you try any way to fight it? I need to know.”

  I watched Aunt Grania process it all, and she took an agonizingly long time before she said, “You’re only just turning thirteen, right?”

  I nodded. “In a couple days.”

  “It can’t be coming to a head yet. Not until you’re eighteen. That’s when it happened with us, and with our mother and her twin.”

  “Maybe we’re just … getting some early warnings.” I wanted to believe that. I considered it, letting the idea roll around in my noggin for a moment. Could we possibly have a few years still?

  I tried to believe it. But it felt foolish to doubt the strength of what was growing between Tempest and me. It lived deep beneath my ribs, constant now and growing. I could feel it even with Tempest halfway across the carnival lot. That throb of pressure, always there, told me it was in charge. And that we did not have years at all.

  We had days.

  But I didn’t tell that to Aunt Grania. No, I kept it to myself. And let me tell you, that felt reckless. Reckless, but necessary—I needed every last second I could get with my sister.

  “How long did it take? When did you first notice it?” I asked.

  “It started gradually, took about a year. How long has it been for—”

  “Not long. Weeks.”

  “Your mom and I, we didn’t tell anyone at first. In fact, I made your mother promise she wouldn’t.” Aunt Grania cringed at her own words, and I thought of the note on the back of the silhouette garland, their shared secrets. “It was a mistake,” she finished, quirking an eyebrow at me, as if she was prompting me to confess.

  I held my tongue.

  Aunt Grania shot me a grave look. “Does your mother know it’s started?”

  “No.”

  “Go find your sister, Tally Jo. Then we’ll have a talk. But Tally?”

  I had already turned to leave. I looked back at Aunt Grania. “What?”

  “I don’t have a lot of good things to say. I don’t want to give you hope. This—whatever this is—it’s bigger than us. Bigger than you.” And Aunt Grania’s face crumpled, as if she was fighting tears. It was just a second before she composed herself again. But I’d seen it. In that flash, I’d seen her pain.

  That look—her defeatedness—it made me mad all of a sudden. I turned back without so much as a nod. And inside I thought one word.

  Coward.

  I knew it was uncharitable. I didn’t care.

  Aunt Grania had just given up. She had left Mama. I knew it for sure now.

  And I knew another thing.

  Maybe she couldn’t figure out how to fight this thing. But I could.

  I would.

  I was Tally Jo Trimble. Fearless, like my granny.

  I was not scared.

  I mean, I was. But not too scared to try. I was powerful. And I was not just going to accept that I had to live a life without my sister in it.

  I needed to go get Tempest.

  And there was no time to waste. I looked up into the early morning sky, the orange sun already blazing hot, though hazy behind a film of clouds. I squinted as I looked in the opposite direction, toward the west—and just like I knew it would be, it was there. Just a shadow of itself, white and washed-out like a cloud, translucent like silk, but nearly full and round.

  A reminder. A ticking clock.

  An hourglass nearly full of sand.

  The moon. Fading from sight, surely. But always there. Throbbing like a pulse.

  Counting down.

  16

  I found Fat Sam behind the animal tent, crouched down and working on one of his refurbished 1950s bicycles, sparkling red with a jaunty silver stripe.

  “Can I borrow one of your bikes again, Fat Sam? I need to get to the beach.”

  “Of course.”

  But then I had a better idea. “Actually, can I take Antique?”

  Fat Sam looked up from polishing the fenders. “Kiddo, no, that’s not safe.”

  “Just a short, little, tiny ride?”

  “Tally Jo—”

  “It’s early. Nobody’s quite up and about on the island. I just want to take him for a trot on the beach. Real slow-like and safe. I’ll take the old trail through the meadow, down by the Coast Guard, and use the public beach access on Dovetail Road. I won’t go near streets or people or the pier.” I crossed my fingers behind my back. This was an emergency, after all.

  Fat Sam wiped the sweat from his brow with a gingham handkerchief. “I suppose I do owe you, after what you did for that little pup.”

  “You do. Absolutely. You owe me big time.” I smiled and bounced from one foot to the other.

  “Okay, but don’t make me regret this, Tally Jo. Be back in one hour,” he called after me. But I was already halfway into the animal tent, where I grabbed Antique’s saddle off its peg and whistled for my horse.

  I knew where I had to go. It was like always. Hide-and-go-seek.

  Tempest was upset with me; I knew that. She wanted to think, somewhere quiet. The beach was a good spot for that.

  But it wasn’t really logic that led me to Tempest.

  I just had a built-in Tempest compass. I always had.

  And Digger Swanson was right. I had to dig in and try. I had to show Tempest that I was not okay with the idea of us being separated.

  I was the girl sheltering her sister in Mama’s silhouette garland. The protector.

  I was the leader, the twin in charge. And did I ever feel like it, trotting toward the shore on my glorious horse.

  The tide was coming in, the whitecaps breaking over the black sandy beach, then retreating again, leaving the strange, black-and-silver grains glinting in the morning sun.

  Antique shook his head, whinnying with sheer joy. He loved the beach. I stroked his neck and laid my head against his silky mane as he trotted along the shoreline, his hooves kicking up the sand and surf.

  I spied Tempest on the stretch of beach just past the ancient lighthouse. The pier wasn’t far off in the background, white picket railings against a now-darkening sky. Storm clouds were rolling in fast.

  Tempest strolled away from Antique and me, her face tilted toward the ocean as she watched the waves.

  Her gait was unhurried, with no destination. I watched as she bent to pick up a shell or a rock or some such oddity. She studied it closely, then pocketed it in her cargo shorts. Her posture though, it looked so defeated. Lonely.

  It hurt me.

  I protected my sister. It’s what I did.

  I had to fix this.

  I hopped off Antique, led him up to the boardwalk near the lighthouse, and tied his reins to a rusted-out bike rack. I palmed a peppermint to him and he nuzzled my hand. But when I moved to leave him, he let out a high whinny, a nervous sound, and blew air out his nostrils all forceful-like. I turned back.

  The wind seemed to pick up just then, with a rumbling roll of thunder off in the distance. “I won’t be long,” I told Antique, and I caressed his nose. He let out a huff of air through his nostrils again. He wasn’t pleased.

  He didn’t want me to go. Maybe he wanted a longer ride. Surely that’s all it was. But it somehow seemed like more, like he was warning me off.

  I ignored Antique, letting him humph and neigh and complain as I turned for the beach. The first of the storm’s raindrops plummeted from the sky, and I picked up my pace, jogging toward Tempest.

  It was still awfully early, so there were only a few other people on the thin strip of beach. A small redheaded kid wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whities dug in a tidal pool at the water’s edge, his mother sitting cross-legged not far from him. She waved hello absentmindedly as I hurried past.

  An older couple with matching green windbreakers walked hand in hand toward the pi
er, their bare feet splashing in the tide. The woman pointed toward the horizon and the man’s eyes followed, tracking the path of a pelican as it dove toward the water. They both pulled up their hoods against the gray drizzle.

  I was running now, past these people, watching Tempest ahead of me. I could tell the moment that she realized I was there. She didn’t turn around, but I could see it in her posture, feel her awareness inside my own. My flip-flops crunched against the black sand as I closed the gap between us.

  Of course, the push between us was there.

  The closer I got, the stronger it registered, until it felt almost like a concrete thing between us. When I was a few yards from my sister, it actually hurt. It wasn’t just a little bother anymore. No, now it had moved fully into the territory of pain, producing a terrible pounding in my head, red and orange stars blooming in the edges of my vision. It was a gnawing kind of thing with teeth and claws, digging its way out of my skull from the inside.

  Tempest turned now, her pigtails flapping into her face because of the wind. “Don’t come any closer,” she said.

  We stood there, ten or fifteen feet away from each other. I shook my head against the pain of being near her. “Tempest. I’m fighting this.”

  I took another step toward her. I tasted iron. I’d bitten my tongue without realizing it, clamping my jaw against the throbbing. It unnerved me, this feeling. It grew from my skull, took root in my chest, prickled under my fingernails, and scratched against my eyelids. It made me want to turn away, to retreat, truly. But I had other ideas.

  “Why is it so bad?” I said, aware now that I had to raise my voice above the crash of the wind and surf, the rhythmic pitter-patter of the raindrops.

  “It’s the black sand. I’ll explain later. We really shouldn’t be together right now. Not here. I think that—”

  “You were right, Tempest. I got something.”

  Tempest nodded. “I heard. You saved that wolf pup?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t really put words to it. I reached out, and it’s like I could feel him, Tempest.”