Stranger Moon
A novel by Heather Zydek
Published by Moth Wing Press, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Smashwords Edition copyright © 2012 by Heather Zydek
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4524-3644-9
Cover art by Tiffany Bruett.
Stranger Moon is available in print at most online retailers.
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For more information, go to www.heatherzydek.com.
Table of Contents
"So many people living in plain tabernacles, and sometimes regarded homely by others, have something within waiting to give great surprise, when they shall have escaped through a narrow door into a world of wonderful light and beauty."
—Julia Perkins Ballard, Among the Moths and Butterflies, 1890
Prologue
One day I found a pale green wing pressed between the dry pages of a hundred-year-old wildlife field guide in my basement. When I opened the book, the wing fell into my lap. It was about the size of a small leaf, and had one half-moon eye outlined in black beneath a faded burgundy edge.
It took me a while to figure out what the wing had once belonged to. First I thought it was some kind of butterfly. On the shelf were some old butterfly books, so I flipped through a couple, looking for the right fit.
Then, in another old guide I saw them: giant moths. Not little brown pests that eat clothes and kill trees—these moths were beautiful, beastly things with wings the color of autumn leaves, the blue sea, green fields, and pink and yellow roses. My wing, I discovered, once belonged to one of these giant night creatures. It came from a Luna moth.
The Luna moth, scientific name Actias luna, is a faded emerald green. The wings are about four to five inches across, with unblinking, black-rimmed eyes that look like moons and trailing tails. They have "scales" on their velvety wings so fine it's like they're made of shimmering dust. Luna means moon, and the moths are called such either because they're night fliers as big and pale as the full moon, or because of the small moons on their wings.
I had no idea such things exist until I found those old books. That's when I learned that giant silk moths, family Saturniidae, are in most forests, hiding in treetops. They aren't rare, but rarely does a person get to see one.
I knew when I saw that pale green forewing that I had to find a living Luna.
Funny thing is, the night my friends and I went looking for Luna we ended up finding something much stranger. And that's really what this story is about.
CHAPTER 1
"Shhhhhh. Take your flashlight and hold it next to your eyes," I whispered to my friends. "No, not pointing down. Point it straight ahead, in the line of your eyesight. Now look with your beam at the tree trunks. Like the way Shayna's doing it." I was deep inside Firefly Woods after dark, Luna hunting with my friends Shayna and Kieran, and Kieran's little brother Quinn. We all live on the same block of Cynthia Lane.
"What's this do?" Kieran had his flashlight at the level of his shoulder instead of at his eye.
"Hold it at your eye level, Kieran. Not mine." I grabbed his elbow and pushed it up. "I read that if you do this you'll be able to see your flashlight beam reflect off all the insect eyes on the trees. It's a way to look for moths." I helped Shayna direct her flashlight. Then I lifted my own light next to my eyes and looked around.
"Wow!" Quinn gasped. His flashlight was pressed against the side of his glasses. He moved his beam slowly across the trunk. "There's a big white arachnid over there. No moths though. Oh wait!"
"What is it? What did you see?" I moved my flashlight in the same direction as Quinn's.
"Never mind." Quinn said. "I saw something big flying. It was just a June bug."
"I don't like this," Shayna whimpered.
"Don't worry, Shay. Those spiders are only interested in small prey," Kieran said. "The thing you need to worry about is hungry mountain lions."
"Are there mountain lions out here?" Shayna shrieked, grabbing onto my arm.
"There aren't any mountain lions out here." I narrowed my eyes at Kieran, but it was so dark I'm sure he couldn't tell, and probably wouldn't have cared anyway. "He's just trying to scare you, Shay. Let's just keep going. We're almost there."
"Yeah, you're right." Shayna still gripped me, so tight my arm started to tingle.
"It's the getting home part I'm worried about," she said.
Kieran and Quinn were the first to reach the foot of the thick oak that holds our tree house in its arms. The tree marked the farthest into the forest we'd ever wandered. None of us had ever gone beyond the shallow ravine that divides Firefly Woods in half.
The boys climbed up the ladder leading to the dark, lonely fort. The glow of their flashlights from the windows made it look just the tiniest bit cozier. I'm not scared of the dark, mind you, but out in the woods at night, well, even a pretty brave person can start to feel a little vulnerable. I squeezed my flashlight under my arm as I balanced myself on each rung of the ladder, then poked my head through an opening in the tree house floor and lifted myself in. Shayna followed, breathing loudly as she heaved herself up. The air inside the house smelled like moldy wood.
Something fluttered from the ceiling of the tree house. It looked like a moth. My heart beat faster. I pointed my flashlight at the flapping wings. They were moths alright—small, grey-brown gypsy moths. Even though I know gypsies don't mean any harm, I dislike them because they're one of the reasons Luna and other giant silk moths are getting harder to find. Every spring the Mittleton forestry department sprays this supposedly harmless biochemical over the forests to kill gypsy moths. The stuff doesn't hurt people, they say, but I read somewhere that it's hurting Lunas and other giant silk moths, and even butterflies. Funny thing is, the city sprays every year but gypsy moths are still all over the place.
The moths flew out the window.
I sat down on the tree house floor and shrugged out of my backpack. Shayna pulled a chunky candle out of her bag. She set it on the wooden plank floor and lit it with a match. Quinn stretched out his scrawny legs and leaned against Kieran.
"Hey, move over." Kieran pushed his little brother so hard I thought he'd snap in half. Quinn readjusted and leaned against Shayna instead.
"Ahhh," Quinn said. "You're like a big soft pillow."
"Gee, thanks," Shayna muttered.
"So what do we do now, Gaia?" Quinn asked.
Yes, that's really my name: Gaia. Pronounced "GUY-uh." It means earth, or mother earth, or something. I don't like my name, mostly because it's so easily mispronounced—especially by people who love intentionally mispronouncing the names of nerdy girls like me.
"We wait, I guess."
I got up and walked over to one of the windows of the tree house. I read that female Luna moths will sit on the bark of a tree for hours, even days, waiting for a mate. They hardly move at all once they come out of their cocoons. I was hoping to maybe spot one on the bark of the big bough that is right outside the window. All I saw was a hairy brown spider weaving its web between two twigs.
I sat down on the floor next to Shayna.
"Maybe a moth will be attracted to our lights, if we're lucky. Did you know that male Lunas will fly miles to find a female?"
"Hmm. Well, while we're engaged in the thrilling activity of moth watching," Kieran said, brushing his long brown hair out of his eyes, "we can play cards."
"OK, but before we do that, let me get out my field notebook. If anything happens, I'll need to have it nearby so I can write stuff down." I dug into my backpack and pulled out the waterproof field notebook I bought at the science surplus store. It's the kind real naturalists use to take notes during field studies.
"Nice." Kieran said without looking at the notebook. He was rifling through his backpack for something.
"I'll help you identify things," Quinn offered.
"Great," I said. "But we have to use the scientific names. Real scientists don't use common names. They aren't as accurate."
"Obviously," Quinn said.
"Hey check out what I made." Kieran tugged a green rubber band off a deck of cards and splayed the cards in his hands, holding them out for us to see.
"What are those?" Shayna asked.
He passed a few cards to each of us. "It's a game I invented. It's called The Evil Emmas. It's like Old Maid, except that instead of getting the Old Maid there's a card with The Emmas on it, which is the card you try not to get. I think you have it, Gaia."
I squinted at the cards Kieran handed to me. The one on top was the dreaded Evil Emmas. I pointed my flashlight beam at the card so I could see every detail of The Emmas, tormentors of all seventh graders at Mittleton North Middle School.
Emma Pratt and Emma Foster were together so often they'd become one entity: The Emmas. They were both loved and feared by all who knew them. They had a way of making their victims feel like worms slithering on concrete after a rain storm—out of place and easy to smash.
On the card, Emma Pratt's hair was silky and black, framing her pretty face and piercing black eyes. Her lips were curled into a wicked smile. Kieran captured everything about her, down to the deceptive dimple in her cheek that made her seem sweet and approachable. Emma Foster's perfectly highlighted strawberry blonde hair swished around her shoulders as she hugged Emma Pratt's arm like a security blanket. Kieran dotted her nose with just-enough adorable freckles.
"Let me see." Shayna grabbed The Emmas from my hand.
"Wow – these are great!" Shayna said. "Look at you, Gaia!" she passed a card to me.
Kieran called me "Moth Girl," The Emmas favorite name for me.
"Those are Io moth wings," Kieran said. "I looked that up."
"Actually, I looked it up," Quinn interjected.
"Pipe down, little bro," Kieran said. "I picked that moth because of the huge eye spots on the lower wings. Aren't they cool?"
"They're called hindwings, Kieran. Not lower wings."
"Oh, you're so smart, Quinny," Kieran mocked.
"Moth Girl" wore a cape and had a big "M" printed on the front of her superhero suit. Giant speckled yellow moth wings jutted out of her back. Her long brown hair, along with the cape, flew behind her. Normally I despised being called Moth Girl by The Emmas. It made me feel strange and ugly. But this Moth Girl was a superhero, which was kind of nice.
"Hey!" Shayna shrieked. "You made me look like a fat witch, Kieran."
"I made you a good witch, though," Kieran said.
"It's kind of hard to tell that from this picture." Shayna looked down at her legs criss-crossed beneath her on the floor. She pulled at her shirt and put her bag on her lap to hide her waist.
"At least you're not SuperNerd. That's how he made me," Quinn said. He pulled off his glasses for a second, squinted, then put them back on.
"Give the cards back now." Everyone passed the cards to Kieran. He shuffled them carefully. "I'm working on a comic book with the same characters. If I get it done before school starts, I'm going to make copies of it and spread it around school. Maybe I'll even sell it, if it's good enough."
"Let's try playing the game," Quinn said.
"OK." Kieran re-distributed the cards until we each had a full hand.
We played for a few minutes, occasionally swatting at a few mosquitoes that found their way into the fort. I kept looking up at our flashlight beams on the tree house ceiling. No moths.
"Aaaah!" Shayna said when she drew a card from Kieran's hand. "I got The Emmas!"
Kieran laughed wildly.
"Oh noooo," Quinn said. He was sitting on the opposite side of Shayna. "Just when I got rid of them."
We kept playing. A few minutes later, Quinn perked up. "Hey, look!" he said, pointing out the window.
"What is it?" I jumped to my feet.
Quinn went to the window. I walked up next to him and looked.
"Never mind," he said. "It was just a leaf blowing in the breeze."
I sat back down. Quinn stayed by the window.
"It was a leaf, Quinn," Kieran said. "There's nothing out there."
"Ummmm," Quinn's voice sounded weird.
"What do you see?" I went back over to the window. "If this is another false alarm, I'm gonna—"
"There IS something out there." He pointed through the window.
"Where?"
"Over there."
Kieran and Shayna came over to the window, too. Kieran grabbed his flashlight and waved the beam of light in the direction of the ravine.
"My flashlight's pretty weak," he said. "I don’t see anything."
"I'm telling you, there's something out there," Quinn whispered.
Somehow I knew it wasn't a moth that he saw. I could tell by the way his voice scraped out of his throat, like it had just gone dry.
"Let's go see." Kieran turned from the window and climbed down the rungs of the ladder.
Shayna, Quinn and I watched as Kieran appeared on the ground below. He crept to the edge of the ravine.
"I'm not going down there. Are you?" I asked Quinn.
"No way! If my brother wants to get himself killed that's his prerogative."
"I think I see something!" We heard Kieran hiss down below.
Then I saw it, too. It looked like a human in the shadows across the way. Shayna grabbed my arm.
Next thing I knew, Kieran was flying up the ladder. He collapsed on the floor of the tree house, panting. "We—we," he gasped, "We gotta get out of here!"
"What is it?" Shayna whined. "Tell me what you saw. You’re scaring me!" I was frozen in the window, staring at the unearthly being across the way.
"Do you think it’s—" The end of Quinn's sentence seemed to be stuck in his throat.
"Think it’s what?" Shayna asked.
"A ghost?"
Shayna squeaked.
I watched in horror as the dark figure moved toward the edge of the ravine. Kieran came up behind me. Shayna wedged between us.
"That can’t be a ghost," Kieran whispered. "Looks too solid."
"It—it does look three dimensional." Quinn was hanging on to Shayna the way Shayna was hanging on to me.
The strange figure looked like a woman in a black dress. Her long, messy hair was a black river going down her back. I couldn't make out her face in the darkness.
She stopped at the edge of the other side of the ravine. It was hard to tell, but it looked like she was watching us watch her.
Shayna blew out her candle and stuffed it in her bag while the wax was still soft. "Well, that's it. I'm leaving."
"Good idea." I crammed my field journal into my backpack. Kieran grabbed his Evil Emmas cards. We climbed down from the tree house. Before we ran back, I looked across the ravine again, shining my flashlight into the darkness. That was when I saw the stranger climbing down into the ravine. She was coming closer.
"RUN!" I screamed.
CHAPTER 2
I ran as fast as I could toward the edge of the forest. There was almost no light in the woods, other than the bobbing beam of my flashlight and the sparkling of a gazillion fireflies between the trees. I hurtled over a big branch on the ground when I felt something fall from my half-zipped backpack. I heard it slap against dead leaves on the forest floor.
I stopped and looked over my shoulder. I didn't know what fell, but I had a feeling it was my notebook. The sound of rushing blood filled my ears. I froze and shot the beam of my flashlight in every direction.
Everyone else ran ahead of me as I searched for my field notebook. Soon I couldn't even hear them. I imagined everyone relaxing in Shayna's bright kitchen, safe and sound.
I searched more frantically.
Finally I spotted the notebook leaning against the trunk of a tree. I pointed my flashlight at the notebook and crept forward. I didn't notice the huge, knobby tree root jutting out of the earth until it was too late. It caught my foot, causing me to stumble into the darkness.
I landed on my hands and knees in the dewy leaves. The force of the landing caused me to roll onto my back. I lost my grip on the flashlight. It rolled away. I groped to the left and right but couldn't feel it. Then I saw the beam of light, pointing at a tree several feet away from my path.
For just a second, I closed my eyes and froze. A sense of danger crushed my bones. The stranger might have stayed behind. But what if she followed us—me—from the ravine?
I opened my eyes. The light from my flashlight was gone. I about peed in my pants. I squirmed around, trying to lift myself off the ground. That's when I felt a hand touch my arm.
"Shayna?" I whimpered.
I knew it wasn't Shayna. The hand wasn't warm and pudgy, like my friend's. It was bony. Bony
and strong. There, stooped over me, was the stranger. In the darkness I could see nothing but the whites of her eyes, round and bright against shadowy skin, and a shroud of black hair falling around her shoulders.
Her cold fingers gripped my sweaty arm. I opened my mouth to squeak "help!" Nothing but air came out. I felt the strange woman pull me up. She put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me near, like she wanted to tell me a secret. She smelled like mud after a rain storm.
I wanted to run screaming, but my feet wouldn't move.
She picked up my shaking hand and closed my fingers around the cold spiral of the field notebook and gave me my flashlight, too. I just stood there, shaking like the wild rabbit I once forced to swim in my baby pool. Then she did something I never would have expected.
"BOO!" she shrieked.
She pushed her face forward until it was only a few inches from mine.
I practically jumped out of my skin, stumbling backward.
The woman giggled insanely, like a girl who'd just played a prank on her sister.
Or like a maniac killer.
My feet came back to life. They started running, so fast it was like they were guided by a force outside my body. I glided over broken tree limbs, under giant spider webs stretched between branches, around small shrubs. I leapt past the lone three-trunked white birch tree that marked our secret trail into the woods. My heart beat as fast as a caged squirrel's. I collapsed on Shayna’s lawn, gasping for air. The moon was as bright as the sun compared to the darkness inside the woods.
CHAPTER 3
Shayna walked over and picked a twig out of my hair after I escaped from Firefly Woods and the mysterious stranger who lurked there.
"Oh my gosh, Gaia! I didn't know you were so far behind us. Are you OK?"
I saw Quinn laying on the grass panting. He rolled over and looked at me.
"What happened to you?"
I just shook my head as I tried to catch my breath.
"You're lucky I'm still alive," I said finally. "I fell, and that zombie you left me with almost got me. I might have been turned into a zombie, for all you know. Maybe I am a zombie." I lay dead in the dewy grass and stared at Quinn without blinking.
"Very funny," he said.
"I don't believe it," Kieran sat next to me. "You were probably distracted by a moth or something."
"I wish."
Kieran looked me in the eye. "For real? I mean, you really saw something?"
"Why would I lie?"
"Gaia doesn't lie," Shayna said.
"So what'd you see?" Kieran asked.
I sat up and picked bits of grass and dead leaves that were smashed into the skin on my knees. "Let's go back to the house. I'm dying of thirst."
"Oh, come on," Kieran said. "You need to tell us."
We picked ourselves up and tramped back to Shayna's. The halogen flood lights fixed to the back of her house warmed the grass and made it so bright it almost felt like daytime, which made the dark of the forest feel like a million miles away.
"So what do you think it was?" Shayna asked. "You gotta tell us!"
I looked behind me, just for a second. In the darkness, I thought I saw the shape of a person standing between the trees, surrounded by fireflies. I wasn't cold, but my teeth started clattering uncontrollably. I walked faster.
"I don't know." I stepped onto Shayna's flagstone patio, where I could feel safe inside her thick lilac hedge. "She was a she. I mean a woman. Or something. I don't know. She smelled like mud. She was kind of nice. I mean, she helped me up. I was sort of kidding about the zombie thing. But she did scream 'Boo!' in my face, like to scare me away or something."
Kieran busted out laughing. "Seriously! We should go back and find her."
"Ummmm…no."
Shayna's mom threw open the screen door.
"Hurry hurry, before the bugs get in." We pushed through a cloud of gnats swarming around the doors that led to the light of the kitchen. We sat down at the oblong dining table set for four. Shayna's mom had already poured us four glasses of lemonade. Each glass had a little lemon slice floating in the top and was filled with crushed ice. Kieran slumped into a chair and grabbed the nearest glass, gulping it down in ten seconds flat. Quinn and I lunged at the same time for the plate of peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies on the middle of the table.
"So how was it?" Shayna's mom asked. "Did you find any moths?"
"Not really," I said. "I mean, not the kind I wanted to find." No one else said anything at all.
"You guys are quiet," Shayna's mom said as she poured herself a glass of lemonade. She stared at each of our faces as if she were searching for clues that would unlock our secret silence.
"Wanna help me write in my field journal?" I asked Quinn, who was cramming cookies into his mouth. I pulled out the notebook, plucking a few wet leaves off the cover.
"Shhhuuuhh." His mouth was stuffed with about three half-chewed cookies.
I opened up my insect and arachnids field guide. Quinn and I started looking up some of the creatures we encountered. After I was finished, Kieran stole the journal and drew a picture on the grid to the right of my notes.
"What are you drawing?" I asked. Kieran scratched his sharp black pencil quickly, back and forth across the page. I glanced at Shayna's mom. She was across the room, wedging the half-full pitcher of lemonade into the overstocked fridge. When Kieran was finished, he passed me the book. He gave me a glare that told me to keep my mouth shut.
On the page was a sketch of a woman in a black dress with black hair, standing between trees that stretched into the night sky.
DATE: Saturday, May 25
WEATHER CONDITIONS: about 69 degrees, partly-cloudy sky, full moon
REPORT: At about 9:30 p.m. we went into Firefly Woods to hunt for Actias luna. The forest was crawling with all sorts of life, but, sadly, there were no Saturniidae to report, including Actias luna. We tried the flashlight trick discussed in the book Discovering Moths, which revealed about a million species of the order Araneae (spiders!). Also spotted two Lymantria dispar (gypsy moths) mating inside our tree house lab. Some other stuff we saw: Bufo americanus (American Toad), Photinus pyralis (fireflies). We heard the call of unknown species of the order Strigiformes (owl). Side note: despite the fact that we didn't find any Saturniidae, we did spot a mysterious woman in the woods, on the other side of the ravine. She pursued us. We escaped unharmed. Perhaps at a later date we'll be able to determine who—or what—she is.
CHAPTER 4
Moth expert John Himmelman wrote in Discovering Moths that the Luna moth hits him "deep down in a place where I accept the existence of magical things." I wanted to see one so badly that I wasn't about to give up my search, despite my first failed attempt. Complicating matters was the fact that adult Lunas don't eat, so they only live about a week. In my part of the world—Mittleton—they have about two "broods," or generations, per season. My chances of spotting one of the first brood were running out. Most of the May Lunas were probably dead. Once their eggs hatched, the caterpillars would be so high up in the trees there was no way I'd be able to find them. I'd have to wait until the second brood emerged from their cocoons later on, in July maybe.
The strange thing is that I did end up seeing two giant silk moths, though they weren't Lunas. I spotted them when I least expected it: in broad daylight, on my way to school.
It was nearly the end of the school year. That alone put me in a good mood. I was alone, walking down Cynthia Lane toward school, and then there they were.
No, not the moths. The Emmas.
I heard them before I saw them. A high pitched laugh, more like a squeal, pierced the air. I looked behind me, over my shoulder, and then quickly sucked in all the air around me and held it in my lungs. I looked around for a hearty shrub with soft leaves to hide in. But I figured it was too late to make myself disappear. So I decided to at least try not to make eye contact. If you make eye contact with an Emma, you invite them in. To an Emma, eye contact is a challenge, an opportunity to assert their authority over their sad minions.
Pratt and Foster wheeled past me on their bikes. I looked at my shoes as I walked—faster. I swear I heard one of them say "Moth Girl." That was Pratt's favorite name for me. Previously she enjoyed simply pronouncing my given name in creative ways. Guy-UH. GAY-uh. Gee-uh. But ever since the day she caught me reading Among the Moths and Butterflies in homeroom she'd been calling me that stupid, stupid name. Moth Girl.
I tried so hard not to look at them. I slowed down, thinking it might be safer to walk slowly so they'd have a chance to ride ahead.
It got quiet, so I glanced up, just for a second, and saw them standing about a half-block away. Their bikes lay on the side of the street, almost as if they'd just thrown them down. They were pointing at something, a nearby tree, maybe, and smiling. At me.
"Gaia! Come here, quick!" Pratt said. "You need to see this."
I was trapped. I couldn't run back home—then I'd be late for school. I had to pass them. And I admit I was curious. It’s not every day that Pratt pronounces my name properly.
"Come on! Hurry!"
I couldn't help myself. I jogged over to the tree, my backpack rattling awkwardly behind me.
"Hey, Guy-Uh." Foster had a weird look on her face—a look that said "I’m mocking you, but you're too dumb to tell." My stomach turned.
"Check it out," she said, smiling just a little crooked.
My gaze followed Foster's pointing finger to the trunk of the monster Maple in front of our neighbor Iris's house. There, right at eye level on the tree, were two Polyphemus moths. They were mating. Polyphemus moths are Lunas' cousins. They're big—bigger than most insects, certainly bigger than dainty butterfly princesses. Each one had about a five or six-inch wingspan. The wings were a mouse-brown color, kind of like my hair. The hindwings had black rimmed, deep blue and yellow eyespots on them. They look like owl eyes, kind of. They were the eyes of a predator, used to frighten away creatures that enjoy eating insects.
The moths were camouflaged on the tree. I had no idea how The Emmas had noticed them. I might not have. But there they were, these mythical creatures—almost invisible, yet shockingly majestic and awful. The sight was one part frightening and one hundred parts amazing. It was like spotting a unicorn in the forest behind your house, or seeing a real live guardian angel standing at the foot of your bed.
"Polyphemus moths!" I heard my mouth say, against the strict orders of my mind. I started to get a panicky feeling inside, trying to calculate how I could get to school on time AND capture the moths, or at least let them finish mating and then take the female and save her eggs.
I almost forgot that I was standing before my own predators. I looked up at Foster.
"Pretty amazing, huh Em?" she said to Pratt.
Pratt was stooped over, and for a second I had no idea why. She seemed to be fixing her sandal or something. Then she tore off her leather sandal and whipped it at the two moths. The male fluttered into the air and escaped into the leaves of the maple above. The female fell to the ground, one wing twitching. The other wing was severed. It lay alone on the sidewalk.
"Awww," Pratt said. "Poor little mothy."
She giggled a little, then sighed contentedly, like she'd just finished a hard job. Then she slapped me on the back.
"Well, see ya later, Moth Girl!" She tossed her silken black hair behind her, adjusted the spaghetti straps of her burgundy shirt and swiveled around, pulling Foster's arm as they walked back to their bikes.
I imagined myself bludgeoning Emma Pratt with my own shoes.
Instead, I picked up the dying moth and its severed wing. It was so soft and fragile and ripped in the most awful way. The legs kind of twitched a little. I lay the moth pieces under one of Iris's Juniper shrubs as I tried to stop the sickening scene from replaying in my mind.
* * * * * * *
I never go anywhere without my yellow field notebook, so in homeroom I scribbled out an entry about the morning's tragedy while Mr. Stanko, our principal, droned over the loudspeaker about lunch menu options and summer school, blah blah blah.
DATE: Thursday, May 30
WEATHER CONDITIONS: about 78 degrees, clear skies
REPORT: At 7:05 a.m., on my way to school, my attention was drawn to two mating Antheraea polyphemus (Polyphemus moths) on side of Acer saccharum (sugar maple) on Cynthia Lane. Tragically, one was destroyed by mutant Homo sapiens twins of the Emma malus variety; destroyed moth was unable to be preserved, so I gave it a proper burial. No live specimens or other information could be collected, as it became necessary to flee dangerous situation.
I closed my notebook just as Mr. Stanko said for the hundredth time that we should remember to read every day during summer vacation to keep our "mental balloons from deflating." I glanced three rows over at Emma Pratt. She was passing a neatly folded note to Jack Staniscewski in front of her. Her tan, bare legs were neatly crossed at the ankles. She sat up straight. Not a shiny black hair was out of place. She was so pretty it was almost hard to believe she was a ruthless killer.
If I were a real superhero, I could fly above the world on my own giant wings. My hair would be shiny and smooth instead of weird and scraggly, and even in the wind it would fly gracefully behind me. I wouldn't need any superpowers, other than being able to fly, because I'd be a peaceful hero. I'd rescue innocent creatures in peril by lifting them into the air before predators could overtake them. Of course, I'd also have a ray gun, but only for emergencies. The gun would stun villains until we could safely escape. But it would also be programmed to kill my two archenemies, the Evil Emmas, in order to avenge my fallen Polyphemus brethren.
* * * * * * *
That night I couldn't help but feel so angry about the moth tragedy. When I finally did fall asleep, I dreamt about Emma Pratt. I was in a dark forest, alone and scared to death until I noticed a tree in front of me. On the trunk was the most beautiful, gigantic Luna moth I'd ever seen. Its wings were spread out across the bark. They were at least a foot and a half across, which is way bigger than an actual Luna wingspan. I walked up to the tree and stared at the moth for the longest time. Its wings were a little bit fluorescent, like they were made of neon.
Then I saw that Emma Pratt was standing next to the tree. The moth took flight and landed in her hands. She pet it as if it were a bird, running her hands gently along the wings. Then she looked up at me and smiled. Nicely. I mean, there wasn't a trace of that "I'm actually making fun of you" on her face. She smiled at me the way Shayna would. As if we were friends.
That's where the dream ended.
I woke up and looked at the clock. 3 a.m. I lay in bed for a while but couldn't get the image of Emma's smiling face out of my mind. I hated that because the dream was now a false memory, a memory of Emma being my friend, which she was not. As much as it would help me to be real friends with the most popular girl in school, who was also my across-the-street neighbor, it was NOT going to happen. EVER.
I knew I'd have trouble getting back to sleep. I'm kind of an insomniac. So I dropped my legs over the side of the bed and then fell to my hands and knees on the hard wood floor. I reached under the box spring and pulled out my little lacquer box. Then I crept down the stairs and through the dining room, my workaholic dad's cluttered home office. I glared at his sleeping computer—my other worst enemy—then unlocked the front door and stepped outside into the night. My lungs were hungry for the cool fresh air and I sucked it in. Night air is my life force. I let it fill me up.
I sat down on the concrete stoop, right next to our overgrown yew. I could smell its rich sap. There was Shayna's bungalow across the street, quiet and dark. Beside that, just to the north, was the Pratt mini-mansion, a brick monster that took up every inch of their small property.