Flower Moon

by Gina Linko

  I nodded. I did know that.

  “You okay?” he asked me.

  That was Digger Swanson. I had just ruined his dreams of his parents getting back together, and he was asking me if I was okay. And I was going to answer him honestly.

  “No, I’m not.” I pinched at the bridge of my nose. “Why do you put up with me, Digger?”

  “You telling me all this time I’ve had a choice?”

  I smiled. I even laughed a little, though I didn’t want to. I looked up at the sky, pointed toward the moon. “It’s darn near full.”

  “Yeah. Two days.”

  “It’ll be at its most powerful.”

  “You’re powerful. Even more powerful than the moon, I’d wager.”

  “How?” I sputtered. “Powerful, like I can tell my very best friend some terrible news that he surely could’ve waited for? I mean, what is this all for?” I ripped some grass out of the ground and threw it up in the air. “What’s this all for, Digger, huh? You tell me that.”

  Digger gave me another Digger smile, this one thoughtful and a bit sly. “What’s any of this for?” He motioned to the sky, the world around us. He shrugged.

  “That’s all you got?”

  “Yeah, that’s all I got.” He leaned forward though, like he was letting me in on a secret. “But who knows what you could do, Tally Jo? Don’t you want to find out?”

  I pulled my knees back to my chest, held them there, pressed against the emptiness in my breadbasket.

  “I don’t know. It’s scary. I get it now, why Mama and Aunt Grania—”

  “Oh, I see. You’re chicken.”

  “Digger—”

  “Squawk, squawk,” he teased, flapping his arms like a chicken, then elbowing me a bit.

  He expected me to argue. Instead I felt tears prick at my eyes again. “I just—” My voice caught and I had to fight a sob. I pressed my hands over my face.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, scooting closer, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “Jeez, Tally, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was just teasing. I didn’t mean anything.”

  I waved it away. “It just … everything feels enormous, Digger. Huger than me. I don’t know if I can do it. I am chicken. I’m scared of hurting my sister, or somebody else.”

  “I believe in you, Tally.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “No. Listen. You don’t have to use this thing—you really don’t. You can look it in the face and conquer it, wear that cuff and stick by your sister. You don’t have to do any more flying bugs or looking into the future. For real, you don’t. But … I don’t know. To me, it seems a little quick just to give up on all that magic.”

  “I don’t know, Digger.”

  Digger pulled up a blade of grass and chewed on it himself. He gave me a bit of the side-eye. I knew there was something else.

  “What?” I said.

  “Tally, your mama will be here soon. She’ll know what’s going on. And she’s going to separate y’all. She’ll feel it between y’all, fairly thrumming.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe Tempest can fix up that cuff right quick. Maybe things can go right back to somewhat normal between you two.”

  “I’m not ever gonna be normal again.”

  Digger sighed. He took his arm from my shoulders. Then he leaned over and took one of my hands between both of his. He waited until I met his eyes. “Don’t you get it, Tally? That right there.”

  “What?”

  “Normal. You want to be normal? You don’t see it. But I see it.” He chuckled. “Whether you’re making copper wires fly, or speaking to wolf pups, or … not. No matter what. To me, Tally Jo, you’ve always been magic.”

  Digger.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  What he said, it did something to my heart. It felt like he broke it in two jagged halves and healed it all at once.

  “What exactly are you scared of, Tally Jo?” He squeezed my hand in his.

  I squeezed it right back. Then I confessed, my voice nothing but a whisper, “I’m scared of not living up to what you seem to think I can be. Of letting everyone down.”

  “Impossible. Not in your nature.”

  And when I finally got the courage to peer up at Digger, the look in his eyes … it was so warm, so knowing, I wanted to curl myself up and live inside the way he was looking at me. Forever.

  I sighed. Digger had a way of making me want to be the best version of myself. “Digger, how long can Tempest and I go on with something like this. Something that we don’t truly understand?”

  “There are lots of things we don’t understand in the world, Tally.”

  “Like?”

  Digger scratched at the back of his neck, thinking. “What about people who lift whole cars to save a loved one? Or Bigfoot sightings? The pyramids?”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Those are different kinds of things.”

  “Are they? I think they’re the same. It’s a Flower Moon, Tally Jo. I think some things—great things, awesome things—only come around once in a long while, and you gotta snatch ’em up. Hold them close. ’Cause you won’t get anything quite that rare and special again anytime soon. Like the Flower Moon. Like the fun we have at the carnival every summer.” His voice dropped. “Like the kind of friend you are to me.” He yanked on some grass then, studied it closely.

  “You’ve always been the most fun part of my summers, Digger. You know that, right?” And right then, watching the magical way the moon lit up Digger’s profile, watching the way a smile played at the corner of his lips, I realized something.

  What was happening between Tempest and me, all of it—the magnets and poles, power and electrical charges—was science that just didn’t have an explanation yet. But it would. Equations would be solved, hypotheses proven.

  But what was between Digger and me, the feeling welling in my heart, the love I had for him, for this ramshackle carnival, for my dear, dear sister … that was magic.

  Maybe that was what growing up was, understanding where the real magic lived in this world. Inside our very own hearts.

  Learning to hold on to it. Cherishing it.

  Because that was another thing about growing up: you realized there wasn’t anything you could do about some things. Terrible things, awful things were going to happen: Digger’s parents’ divorce, my granny passing before I really got to know her, Mary Anning dying out by the chicken coop. All those things were coming for us; no one was getting out of here without a little of that pain.

  You couldn’t stop these things.

  But you could be there for each other in those moments. There was magic in making sure that the people you loved never had to feel alone in any of it. Magic in holding someone’s hand through the pain, healing their hearts with a kind word, or soothing with a soft smile.

  Wasn’t there?

  “Come on,” I said, standing up and offering Digger my hand.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “Well,” I said, pulling Digger up from the ground. “First things first. We have to get Tempest to make Aunt Grania a bracelet.”

  20

  Digger sat next to me on my bed, following Tempest’s instructions. “You gotta hook it as tightly as it will go,” she told him.

  Digger fumbled with the new wrist cuff on my arm. Tempest let out an annoyed sigh from her perch just outside the door of our pod, our tiny trailer full and pulsing with pressure. She didn’t dare come any closer—not yet, anyway. We had to get the new cuff working first.

  “There,” Digger said, finally catching the latch and pulling the two halves closed. It settled onto my wrist, and if anything it was lighter, but more tightly fitted, than the last one. I felt the throbbing around us dwindle.

  I took a good, deep breath. “It works.”

  “I knew it would.” Tempest pulled on her eyelashes as she stepped into the pod.

  “Okay. What exactly does it do again?”

  “Reverses the polarity. S
o we can be together. Attract, not repel.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know the exact science of it. Not yet.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  Tempest shrugged. “The real question is, are we going to try and doing anything with what we’ve got, Tally?”

  “Hey, I think I can give this cuff a second chance,” I said. “But I don’t know about flying those bugs around, or—” Digger had stood up and was drifting toward the door. “Don’t you dare leave, Digger Swanson,” I told him.

  “You two have a lot to talk about, Tally Jo.”

  “I need someone on my side, Digger.”

  “Then I better leave, because you already know I agree with Tempest.”

  I glared at him. “You’re right. You should leave.”

  Digger leaned on the doorjamb. “Tally, you can’t be scared to try again. Are you going to spend your life wondering what would have happened if you’d given y’all a second chance? Like when I pitched against Thornton Middle School last year, I never got the chance to—”

  “I said leave, Digger! You aren’t helping my cause.”

  Digger shook his head and left, the screen door to our pod clanging loudly behind him.

  I turned toward my sister.

  She sat on her bed across from me. “I still can feel it, you know,” I told her.

  “I know.”

  “We’re learning how to deal though.”

  Tempest smiled at me. “We are.”

  My sister. Tempest.

  “You think the cuff stopped working last night because I quit, you know … believing in it?” I asked her.

  Tempest considered this. “Is some of this ruled by emotions? I don’t know, maybe. Probably. But, Tally, that’s easily fixed. Just do me a favor and believe in it, okay?”

  “Got it. Will do.”

  “Good.” Tempest eyed me like she wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t sure either.

  “On the beach,” I said. “What almost happened … That really scared me.”

  “I know. But that wasn’t us.”

  “No, I know—”

  “It was you.”

  “Yeah. I was trying to do it all, just overriding you, and … I’m sorry, Tempest.”

  “Don’t. That’s over. We know how to work together now. It’ll only get better. And—”

  “Is that what it’s always been like?” I asked, my voice a whisper. “Me bossing you, never—”

  “Tally, no. For a very long time, I needed you to do that for me. I needed you. And I still do—just in a different way.”

  “You don’t need me being the protector, trying to fix things.”

  “I need you on my side.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Mary Anning. I kept you from being with her when she died. I was wrong.”

  “It’s okay, Tally.” Tempest pulled a few of Digger’s copper bugs from her pocket. “I was thinking. Maybe if we—”

  I shook my head. “Why can’t we just—”

  “Go back to how we were?”

  “No. That’s not what I was going to say. Just maybe … maybe we should just be glad that we can be near each other.”

  “Remember in kindergarten,” she said, giving me a look, “the mirror in the bathroom?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “I was so afraid of being without you. I was scared to death, but every morning, when my class would go to bathroom break, I’d find a little note taped to the mirror. A picture, a word or two. Always from you.”

  “My class had bathroom break first so I would just—”

  “Growing up, you taught me how to believe in myself, Tally. How to be strong.”

  “Oh, come on now. I just—”

  “Don’t make light of it. You did. But now I’m asking you to believe in us. Okay?”

  I wanted to agree. I did.

  “Think about it.”

  I nodded, lifted up my wrist cuff. “Should we keep a safe distance between us tomorrow?” I asked my sister. “It’s our birthday, and the Flower Moon, and all.”

  Tempest threw up her arms. “I don’t know, Tally. It’s hard to know. I’ll tell you what—either that, or we never leave each other’s side. Stick together like glue.”

  “Well, either way, we’ll face tomorrow together,” I said, trying not to sound scared.

  “We’re going to face everything together, from now on,” she said, and she reached across the small space between our beds and grabbed my hand. I flinched, afraid of what would happen. Nothing did.

  I grabbed her hand right back.

  It was such a simple thing: my sister’s palm against my own. How many times had we held hands growing up? Hundreds? Thousands? But right then, I didn’t take it for granted.

  And seeing Tempest take that chance, reaching for my hand—well, it had filled me with hope. It made me want to be brave.

  21

  I still didn’t sleep in the pod with my sister. Even with the cuff, it felt too dangerous. I nestled down on a bale of hay in the animal tent, and the next morning I woke with a start, startling Pork Chop from my lap. He let out a little bark of displeasure when he tumbled to the floor of the stall.

  And that’s when Digger walked in, banging on one of Molly-Mae’s kitchen pots with a giant wooden spoon. “Happy birthday to you!” he sang, his rhythm all off. And, jeez, he had an off-key voice, like Bones trying to howl with the coyotes.

  Pork Chop growled at Digger’s singing. So did I.

  “Get up, you lazy bones!” Digger said.

  “I’m awake.” I rubbed at my eyes.

  “Let’s go get your sister. Molly-Mae made Tempest’s favorite French toast for her birthday breakfast. I love that stuff, smothering it with syrup and powdered sugar.”

  “Oh, okay,” I grumped.

  “And of course she’s frying you up some hash browns.” He chuckled then, like he knew that was what I was waiting for.

  “Now you’re talking.” I stood and stretched, finally smiling.

  So it was official. Tempest and I were thirteen years old.

  We spent a lot of the morning around each other, at breakfast and after, fielding hugs and birthday wishes from the rest of our carnival family. The air was fairly churning around us. I felt it, and I’m sure Tempest did too. And Digger. Probably everyone. My sister and I crackled every time we came within a few yards of each other, even with me wearing my wrist cuff. But it was bearable. It was. For now.

  The Flower Moon would be full tonight, high and glowing in the sky, pulling all our power to the surface.

  For sure, something was gathering up steam, coming for us.

  We just didn’t know what it was, exactly.

  Tomorrow the carnival would be loading up and moving to Ambersville for Pa Charlie and Molly-Mae’s wedding and our birthday celebration, meeting up with Mama and Daddy. Molly-Mae was aflutter with talk of all the treats she’d been baking: petit fours, tiramisu, a three-tiered cake. But that all seemed a lifetime away.

  Tonight was it.

  Every second that ticked us closer to the moonrise felt longer than normal, loaded and slow. Every movement I made, every breath I pulled in, carried a weight with it.

  Tempest and I stayed clear of each other.

  I kept touching the cuff on my wrist, just to check that it was still there.

  With it being our last night here on the island, the carnival was less crowded than usual. When we ran out of work to do in the animal tent, Digger and I rode the Spaceship 3000 three times in a row. I screamed myself hoarse, and I tried to forget for a little while. Not that it worked.

  The evening seemed to move along more quietly than usual. As though everyone—all the carnies, even the customers—were holding their collective breath. And maybe they didn’t even know why.

  There was something in the air that seemed poised, ready to explode.

  I mean, the carnival still produced its usual noise. But after a while I noticed there
was something strange in it, and that pricked at the back of my mind. At first, I thought it was just a horde of evening-time crickets chirping in the background, an even three-note, screechy rhythm.

  As I was working with Molly-Mae, spinning the cotton candy, I started to become more and more conscious of it, as the sound deepened and filled out.

  “You hear that?” I asked Molly-Mae.

  She stopped what she was doing at the cash register. “Hear what?”

  “That ba-dum-clunk noise.”

  We stood still and listened. Molly-Mae shook her head. “Tally, you have better ears than me. I don’t hear anything like that.”

  “I need just a minute,” I said, and I untied my apron and washed my hands. I stepped outside of the Candy Wagon, and I reveled in the cool air. The temperature had dropped considerably. It was just the right kind of weather for a storm, something big and hairy like in the jigsaw puzzles that Pa Charlie used to do with us. We’d put together a whole series of them one summer: a tornado, a hurricane, and even a tsunami.

  No wonder there weren’t many people out tonight.

  Goose bumps rose on my arms, and I perked my ears to find where the noise was coming from. It thumped against my eardrums, reverberated into my teeth.

  The noise grew, and the little baby hairs on the back of my neck lifted up. I turned toward the Iron Witch.

  I took a few steps toward the ride, and I knew that was it. The Iron Witch, grinding and clanking, like it was working too hard.

  I hurried closer.

  The ancient Tilt-a-Whirl was silhouetted against the horizon. The blood-orange moon, too large, too imposing, in the storm-darkening sky. Menacing, powerful. Near.

  The Flower Moon.

  The wind kicked up and blew the flyaways around my face. And instantly, I knew. This was what we were waiting for. The disaster. I moved toward the Iron Witch.

  It was going fast now, the cars spinning at their highest speeds in their elliptical orbits, looking as if they might crash, but barely missing each other. Car after car whizzed past the onlookers, creating a wind that blew back my hair, even from ten feet away.

  “Fat Sam!” I yelled.

  He was bent near the controls, pouring barf dust on a newly minted pile. “Sam!” I tried again, but he didn’t look up.