Man in the Moon Read online

  Man in the Moon

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Phase One—New Moon

  Phase Two—Waxing Crescent

  Phase Three—First Quarter

  Phase Four—Waxing Gibbous

  Phase Five—Full Moon

  Phase Six—Waning Gibbous

  Phase Seven—Last Quarter

  Phase Eight—Waning Crescent

  Dark of the Moon

  Moon Facts

  About the Author

  Copyright

  No writer does it alone, and I’m no exception. A lot of people helped make Man in the Moon shine.

  I’d like to thank Elaine Trull and Adrienne Enderle for reading it and encouraging me. A special thanks to Vicki Sansum, who explained to me exactly how Janine should relate to Mr. Lunas.

  Many thanks to my editor, Stephanie Lane. And multiple thanks to my agent, Erin Murphy, who helped me through those early drafts and put her faith in me and my work.

  Shine on!

  Phase One—New Moon

  I sat in the shadows of my bedroom, staring through the window screen. Except for an occasional lightning bug twinkling by, the night was black as molasses, and the air as thick. I prayed for just one breeze to blow through and cool the sweat on my face. But everything was still—dead still—like right before a storm.

  My dog, Buddy, was laying outside, just under my window. I could hear him panting. Poor dog. He had no spit at all left on that long rough tongue of his. He’d probably found a cool spot in the dirt, or maybe he just took comfort in lying next to me, even if the wall did separate us.

  I yawned. Buddy whimpered and rolled over. I could smell the dry dirt he’d stirred up from the flower bed. I leaned forward, pressing my head on the screen, trying to see what Buddy was up to.

  That’s when something moved in the cornfield. I heard it, just on the other side of the chicken coop. The corn shook for a moment, like someone trying to burrow his way beyond those giant stalks. I sat still as a possum, listening in that direction. Buddy stopped panting. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense he was alert.

  The only noises were the crickets, and the dryflies crying for rain. And that pesky mosquito buzzing and sticking to my sweaty hair. The cornfield sometimes swayed and crackled when a strong wind sang through. But there was nothing out there tonight to move that corn—no breeze. Nothing. Except an animal . . . or a person?

  It moved again. Buddy shot toward the chicken coop yapping and barking, his dry throat making him sound like an old man with the whooping cough.

  I slipped out of my room and hurried to the back door to see what it was. I had to tiptoe when I got to the screened-in porch. Mama and Daddy were sleeping out there again tonight. They’d propped a portable fan on one of Mama’s plant stands with a long black extension cord snaked under the back door to the kitchen plug. They could barely take the Texas heat during a normal summer, but this July had temperatures soaring higher than the stars. And the humidity had us all feeling like chewed gum. I had heard on the news a few months ago that President Kennedy wants to send a man to the moon. Daddy said if he does, he hopes he’ll install a giant air conditioner up there and point it straight at us.

  I tried to see out back, but the darkness blinded me. No porch light or moonlight. I heard Buddy roll off one of his low, menacing growls, telling whoever or whatever was out there that he meant to tear ’em up if they took another step. I heard the shuffling of the cornstalks again, then silence. A minute later Buddy came trotting back to the house like nothing was wrong.

  But something was wrong. I could sense it. Feel it. Someone was out there in the corn, all right. And I had a feeling he was staring right at me.

  After a restless night, I woke to a yellow sun slanting through the crevices. I headed into the kitchen, where Mama sat at the table, studying the wet brown leaves that had blobbed together in her teacup. Ricky was perched next to her, already dressed in blue shorts and a plaid cotton shirt.

  “You’s a sleepyhead,” he said, dragging his spoon across the sugar on his milky toast.

  I answered him with a yawn.

  “Janine?” Mama said, never looking up from her cup.

  I knew a question would follow.

  “Did you go outside last night?”

  “No.” That wasn’t a lie. ’Cause I only looked outside.

  “Somebody was out there.”

  The way she said it made my skin crawl. Then she sighed. “And we know it wasn’t Ricky.”

  Ricky squinted his eyes and gave me a gap-toothed grin. He knocked out his front tooth falling out of a tree two years ago, and Mama swears it’ll never grow back in.

  I grabbed a chair and plopped down. It made a grating screech as I pulled myself up to the table. “What makes you think somebody was outside?” I was careful with the question. I wanted to hear the answer, but at the same time, I was afraid it might scare me to death. I just knew Mama was going to say she saw some trampled corn. That would mean someone really had been snooping around our place.

  She shifted her eyes toward me. “When I went out to feed Buddy there were footprints on the steps. Footprints, not shoeprints. You’re the only one here that spends the entire summer barefoot.”

  “How come I can’t go barefoot?” Ricky asked, kicking a sandaled foot in the air.

  “You know why,” Mama answered. She stared back down into her cup.

  I’m not convinced Ricky really did know why. I know I didn’t! He was sick, that was for sure, but Mama never would let him do the things other kids did. He could only go outside at certain times, and he was never allowed to go without shoes. Mama wouldn’t let a fan blow directly on him, even when he slept. I guess that’s why he always looked like he had a fever. I asked Daddy once what was wrong with Ricky, and all he said was “He was born with his gizzard backwards.” That was Daddy’s way of protecting me from the truth, whatever it was.

  But when Ricky and I played together, he acted like anybody else. He didn’t faint or swoon or puke. Just an occasional nosebleed or cough. Sometimes he sat down tired. But then, so did I.

  Mama set the cup aside and rubbed her eyes.

  “What’d you see?” I asked, leaning on my elbows and gazing at her plump face.

  “Same thing I always see. No money. No jobs. The world going to hell in a handbasket. Oh, and a little girl who won’t admit that she went outside after bedtime.”

  “That’s bullcorn!” I shouted, slapping my hands on the table.

  “Watch your language,” Mama warned.

  “I swear, Mama, it wasn’t me.”

  She gave me that stare, like her eyes were firing bullets. No words, just a hard stare.

  “It’s not fair! I get blamed for durn near everything. How do you know it wasn’t Ricky? It coulda been!”

  Ricky’s head shot up from his breakfast and his mouth went slack. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me,” Mama said to me, her eyes still firing. “And apologize to your brother. He don’t need the aggravation.”

  “Sorry,” I said to him, not meaning it. I think I’ve spent most of my life apologizing to him about something. I can’t remember a time when Ricky wasn’t the favorite, but I did see a picture once, from when I was a baby. It was just me and Mama and Daddy. Everyone was smiling. More than smiling. Mama and Daddy were grinning like I was the best thing to happen since ice cream. But just like all little brothers, Ricky had to come along and ruin it for me.

  I forced my lip out of a pout and continued. “Anyway, I heard Buddy barking last night, so maybe it was a stranger at the back porch.”

  Mama let out a fake laugh. “What would a stranger want around here?”

  I shrug
ged.

  “Could’ve been a robber, huh?” she said. “Got up to the house and realized we didn’t have a danged thing to steal.” Mama shook her head and let out another phony laugh.

  I didn’t like that talk. Even in the stifling heat, a chill prickled me just thinking it could have been a robber.

  “You gonna eat anything?” Mama asked me, picking up Ricky’s plate. He’d eaten only the inside of his milky toast, leaving the soggy crust to wilt in the remaining milk.

  My stomach grumbled. “I’ll have a boiled egg, I guess.”

  I heard the clinking of dishes in the sink; then Mama turned on the faucet. “You better go gather some from the henhouse then, ’cause we ain’t got any in the icebox.”

  I suddenly lost my appetite for a boiled egg. That would mean I’d have to go out to our chicken coop, right there in front of the cornfield—a little too close to whoever was spying on us last night.

  The sun was unforgiving that day. If I’d taken a notion to eat an egg after all, I probably wouldn’t have needed to cook it. The earth was an oven, baking us to the bone. Mama let Ricky go outside with me late that afternoon on the condition that he stay in the shade, close to the house. But we knew Mama pretty well. Soon she’d be cleaning and sewing and she wouldn’t know what we were up to.

  “Let’s go out to the truck and dig through the junk,” I said.

  Ricky lit up like a sparkler. “I’ll race ya!”

  Before I could protest, he was flying across the pasture, his arms flapping like wings. Buddy chased at his heels. I ran too, but even though I have tough feet, I had to dodge the cow pies and bull nettles, so Ricky beat me by a mile.

  “Loser!” he said, leaning against the old flatbed truck.

  I couldn’t let him get away with that. “I let you win.”

  “Yeah, you say that every time.”

  “ ’Cause it’s true every time.” Actually, it wasn’t. For a kid with a backwards gizzard, Ricky could run like the wind.

  We walked around the truck and started digging through the heap of trash. We didn’t know whose truck it was, but someone had abandoned it on the property next to our farm. The cab was rusted out and filthy, and the tires had been taken off ages ago. But the wooden bed in the back had a mountain of trash just waiting for us to explore. We’d found some pretty neat stuff here before: old dishes, a rickety baby carriage, a dirty coin purse with a nickel caught in the lining. It seemed like Christmas every time we came out here. We even found an old wooden leg once. It was splintered and worn, and the pointed leather foot had some dark stains. But it was an awesome find. I wanted to bring it home to make a spook house in the barn, but Mama said to leave it be. A wooden leg would bring bad luck.

  I climbed on top of the truck, then pulled Ricky up. We had to be careful not to step on anything rusty. Mama said we’d get lockjaw and starve to death from not being able to open our mouths. A heck of a way to die.

  It didn’t take long for us to find something to play with. Ricky dug out a broken swim flipper, and I found a greasy tennis ball. I wiped it off on the wooden truck bed as best I could; then Ricky and I played a long game of Swat. I pitched the ball to him and he swatted it with the flipper. Sometimes he’d hold it to the side like a baseball bat, and sometimes he’d hold it flat out in front of him and swat the ball straight up. No matter which way, he was pretty good at it. When it was my turn, I barely hit the thing—maybe once out of ten times. When I’d miss, Buddy would grab the ball, and we’d have to tug it out of his slobbery mouth.

  “You swat like a girl!” Ricky yelled.

  “Well, you look like one!” I yelled back.

  Ricky tossed the ball up high and caught it himself. “Guess what?” he said. “I’m going to ask Daddy if I can have a go-cart.”

  That was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. “Uh-huh. And I’m going to ask him for a mansion in Hollywood.”

  “No, really,” Ricky said, tossing the ball toward me.

  I swung and missed . . . again. “You’re full of beans. Daddy won’t buy a go-cart unless we can eat it for supper. Or did you forget? He ain’t got a job!”

  “I’m going to ask anyway,” Ricky said.

  “What do you want a stupid go-cart for? You ain’t got nobody to race.”

  “Ain’t you ever heard of racing time?” he asked.

  How fast did he think a go-cart would move? “You ain’t got a stopwatch, either.”

  He looked down at the ground and kicked the dirt. “I just want a go-cart, okay? I want to zoom . . . like a rocket.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it probably had a lot to do with being cooped up on this farm. At least he had an excuse. But why on earth did I have to be stuck here all the time? My gizzard was just fine, thank you. Only I knew the answer. I was stuck here because of Ricky. Everything is because of Ricky. I don’t think I could count all the days I wished I could just take off running and never stop.

  I picked up the ball and threw it back to him, but it dropped at his feet. His eyes bulged and he froze where he was. A second later he started to cough.

  I knew I should’ve brought a jar of water! He heaved and wrestled with a dry cough that sounded like sand might come poofing out of his throat.

  “Ricky, are you all right?”

  He dropped the ball and took refuge under the truck bed, where it was nice and shady. He continued to hack like something was stuck in him. I wasn’t sure what to do. This was one of those times when I wanted to help, to make things all right, but as usual I was nothing but a helpless lump.

  The sun was an orange blister hiding behind the summer haze. It had to be close to dinnertime. I reached under the truck to pull Ricky out. I figured I could carry him back to the house. A thin line of blood oozed out of his nose.

  “It’s okay,” he said, pushing me away. His cough had slowed to an occasional spasm. He wiped his bloody nose on the back of his hand. “It’s okay,” he said again. I wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

  Buddy was pacing and whining. He could sense that something was wrong.

  I reached in for Ricky again, and this time he let me help him out from under the truck. “We better get back.”

  We limped across the pasture, him from his illness, me from just being worn out.

  I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, and by the time I got to the back steps, there must have been at least fifteen sticker burrs stuck in my feet. Some were poked in pretty deep. I sat down and started picking them out. I noticed Ricky tiptoeing away, craning his neck to see behind the chicken coop.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  Ricky whipped around real quick and looked back at me. “Nothing. I thought I saw something in the corn.”

  I plucked the rest of the stickers out real fast, stabbing my fingers on a few of the prickles.

  Mama came out on the steps and gave us a suspicious look. “Ricky! You’re as red as blazes, child. And I bet you’re just as hot, too. Weren’t you staying in the shade like I said?”

  I could tell that Ricky’s brown eyes were searching for a lie, but he never was any good at fibbing. And besides, what difference did it make? Mama never had the heart to punish him because of his gizzard. I would be the one to get a whupping with a switch. Before he answered, she noticed the smeared blood under his nose.

  “Lawsy! You’re bleeding again, baby. Let’s get you to bed.”

  Ricky didn’t say a word as Mama threw her arm around his shoulder to lead him inside. Just then, Daddy’s old blue Chevy came crunching down the gravel drive. Ricky broke loose from Mama, and we hurried to greet Daddy as he stepped out of the car. He squeezed us both up in a tight bear hug and gave us each a big kiss on the cheek. The kiss was one of those loud smacks that ended with a puckered pop! I could smell beer on his breath and knew he hadn’t spent the whole day out looking for work.

  He walked to the house with his head hanging a bit. That was his way of telling Mama that he hadn’t had any luck. />
  We all headed in for dinner, first Mama, then Ricky, then Daddy. I was the last one to go in, but not before I heard something moving in the cornfield again. I looked back to see Buddy disappear behind some tall stalks.

  Phase Two—Waxing Crescent

  The next couple of days were pretty quiet, except for all that rustling in the corn. I thought maybe an animal had gotten trapped in there and was trying to get out. Buddy spent a lot of time snooping around, but he always trotted back from the field with a satisfied look, like someone had just fed him a T-bone. I wondered why Mama and Daddy didn’t hear the rustling. It got louder every day. I thought about going in to investigate it myself but was just too doggone scared. It might be one of those weird things like on The Twilight Zone, and I sure didn’t want Rod Serling introducing a show about me.

  I decided I’d just spend my days inside. Ricky couldn’t go out anyway, and I hated always playing by myself. Mama was still in a tizzy over him getting overheated and would barely allow him near the window. I stayed in my room mostly, listening to the marches of John Philip Sousa and twirling my baton like I was one of those glittery girls during the halftime show at a UT game. They’re lucky, getting to perform at football games in places like Arkansas and Oklahoma. That’s why I practice a lot. I couldn’t throw the baton in the air or over my shoulder because if Mama’d found out I was twirling in the house, she’d have switched me good. I just wish we didn’t live so far out in the country so I could practice twirling with my best friends, Debbie and Cheryl. But Daddy’s gone all day in our car, and it takes forty-five minutes to get to civilization. And they can’t come visit me because Mama said they’d just be spreading germs to Ricky. Ugh! They’re probably having a hi-ho time this summer doing fun stuff like painting their nails or going to the drive-in movie. I’d give anything to go to the drive-in.

  It was late in the day when Daddy came home, his Chevy kicking up dust with its back tires. He sat down to dinner with that downhearted look on his face.

  “How was job hunting?” Mama asked. “Any bites?”