Moonglow (27 page)

The same forced smile appears on both my face and Archie's in response to hearing about how law-abiding and crime-stopping my father is. If Arla only knew.

 

In my room, I'm devouring page after page of Jess's diary. It's like she's sitting in bed next to me whispering in my ear, gossiping, confiding in me, still treating me like her best friend and not her murderer. The words on the page become blurry, and I have to close my eyes because I feel like I'm going to faint. When I open them I automatically shove the book under my covers because I think I see my father standing in my doorway. I'm wrong.

“I knocked, Domgirl, but you didn't answer.”

I smile because it's a lot more refreshing to see Caleb staring at me than my father.

“Whaddya got there?” he asks, jumping on my bed next to me.

I shield the diary from his eyes until I know we're safe.

“Close the door.”

“Your father'll kill me.”

Head tilt complete with sarcastic smirk. “He brought you into the inner circle and heard all those beautiful things you said to me,” I remind him. “He's not going to kill you if you're behind closed doors with his daughter.”

Obedient, but wary, Caleb hops off the bed and closes the door. Before he sits back down, I add: “Without reading you your rights first.”

“What?!”

“I'm kidding,” I say, then add quickly, “Arla swiped Jess's diary from her father's stash of contraband.”

His response is exactly what I expect. Out of all of us, Caleb is the most straightlaced when it comes to anything to do with criminal activity or unscrupulous behavior. Sometimes he acts like
he's
the child of a law enforcer.

“You could go to jail for that,” he whispers.

When he realizes petty theft would be the least of my crimes, he blushes.

“Sorry.”

“Don't be,” I say, meaning my words.

We're fully clothed, but I feel incredibly sexy and as if I'm doing something incredibly wrong. Not regarding the diary, but having Caleb in my room. He puts his foot in between mine and the pressure of his leg on my calf makes it difficult to concentrate.

“Arla thought there might be some clues in here to tell us what happened to Jess,” I explain. “She doesn't know that we already
know
what happened, but even still, there's some interesting stuff in here.”

“Really? Like what?”

Caleb's sneaker rubs against my stocking feet, and I close my eyes because it feels so good. It's like tugging on our invisible string. When I open my eyes Caleb's lips are pressed against mine. One sweet kiss, that's all. For now that's enough.

Clearing my throat and smiling a very grown-up smile, I turn from one page to the next, showing Caleb that Jess was a few shades away from obsessed with Nadine. Whereas I think she's odd and—what's the right word? Melancholy?—Jess thinks she should be a patient at The Retreat instead of a volunteer.

“
I wish twinemy would shut up
. . . Oh that's Jess's nickname for Nadine,” I explain.

“Of course it is.”

“I wish twinemy would shut up about her grandmother. All she does is talk and tell stories, my grandmother this and my grandmother that. The woman is old; that's all she's got going for her. I met her once with Nap, and the lady was nassty,”
I pause. “Jess added an extra
s
to nasty in the middle of the word so it spells out . . .”

“I get it,” Caleb says, interrupting me. “I didn't know Jess hated Nadine so much.”

“Me either. I thought they were friends,” I comment.

“Maybe she was just putting on a show to score points with loser twin,” Caleb suggests. “Who would be Nap.”

“Subtle, Caleb,” I remark, tweaking his chin.

“Thanks, Domgirl,” he replies, sliding a finger down the bridge of my nose.

Before our play-touching escalates to something my father
would
kill Caleb over, I continue reading words out of Jess's mouth.
“ ‘My grandmother's led an amazing life; I wish I could be just like her.' And that, dear diary, is a direct quote from twinemy's mouth.”

“What's wrong with Nadine's admiring her grandmother?” Caleb asks. “It's kind of sweet.”

“It doesn't add up,” I reply. “The few times I've heard Nadine talk about her grandmother, she's always complaining about her, wishing she didn't live with her family. Remember the post-season party at Nadine's house?”

A lightbulb is turned on. “Oh yeah!” Caleb exclaims. “She does hate the old lady.”

“Exactly,” I say, accidentally placing a hand on Caleb's chest. Feeling adventurous, he leans back against my headboard and puts his arm around me. It feels wonderful, and I lean my head against his broad shoulder.

“Maybe Nadine was simply venting at the party,” Caleb says.

“So she didn't come off as some sort of a Grandma's girl?” I add.

Nodding, Caleb agrees. “Yup, plus you know how Jess loved to exaggerate things.”

Nobody knows that better than I do. Which means all her diaramblings could be nothing more than figments of her imagination. Then again, why would she harp on Nadine? And if she genuinely disliked the girl, there's enough quirky stuff about her to make fun of; Jess didn't have to go after the grandmother.

Curious, Caleb grabs the diary to get a closer look. He flips through some pages, and when he stops he's not looking at the words, but the pictures.

“Why does Jess have a drawing of Orion's constellation in her diary?”

Orion? I've heard that name before, but where, I can't remember.

“That?” I reply, pointing to the scribble. “I thought it was a doodle.”

“Nope, see how the three stars are close together in one straight line,” he says, his index finger tracing over the drawing. “That's Orion, the hunter in Greek mythology.”

I'm starting to feel nauseous, and it takes me a second to realize it's because the smells in the room have become magnified. Something about what Caleb's saying, something about this Orion is making me sick.

“Orion's a hunter?”

“According to legend,” he replies. “Does it mean something to you?”

“I don't know, but according to my own family legend my dad used to be a hunter.”

“So's my uncle,” Caleb says. “And most of the men over thirty in these here parts.”

True, but why do I get the feeling that my father is somehow connected to Jess's diary. “Oops! Sorry, Domgirl, I'm wrong,” Caleb says.

Guess not all my feelings amount to anything.

“Jess says here that the drawing is Nadine's tattoo.”

Suddenly inspired, Caleb whips around to the opposite side of my bed to face me. He looks like he's had his very own aha moment. “That's why it looks so familiar,” he says. “It's Napoleon's tattoo!”

“Twin tattoos?”

It was weird when we thought they both had tattoos; it's downright gross that their tattoos are the same. Reading my mind, Caleb agrees.

“That's really gross,” he says.

Actually that's ultra gross. And once again another reason to question what the hell is going on with Nadine. My gut instinct tells me that I need to widen my pack and trust—not doubt—myself. Tomorrow, I'll fill Arla in on everything I've been keeping from her. Another ally will make me feel a lot safer, because dealing with a curse is one thing, but I have a strong suspicion that dealing with a twinemy is going to be a heck of a lot harder.

Chapter 20

For someone whose ancestors gave voodoo dolls to children instead of Barbies, Arla is having a difficult time accepting the fact that I'm now only part human.

“You're a
what?!
” she exclaims, her skin color lightening so it turns dangerously close to Archie's pigment.

“A werewolf,” I reply.

Once again Arla looks at me the way we used to look at Jess when she would recite full sentences in Japanese. “A what?!” she repeats.

“The scientific word for the lady's malady is lycanthropy,” Archie offers.

“Not helping,” I say, slapping him on the shoulder. “I know it sounds like I've lost my mind.”

“Like?”
Arla corrects. “You most definitely
have
lost your mind if you believe what you're telling me.”

Trying another tactic, I spell out for Arla how the changes I've been going through these past few months have all been a direct result of the curse. She still doesn't buy it and claims that hormonal imbalance is a more likely culprit than a supernatural hex on my head. Then I confess that my college expedition was just a sham so I would be in a safe setting in case I transformed, which I did, and that despite our precautions things almost ended with a tragic twist.

“Arla, I didn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes,” Archie declares. “It's the truth. Dominy's a she-wolf.”

Shocked, I want to tweak Archie's fanciful description of my current physical situation, but unfortunately he's nailed it. As horribly bizarre as it sounds, that's what I am.

“Oh my God!” Arla squeals. “This is a hazing! You guys punked me. Where's the video cam?”

Arla looks around my bedroom in search of something that doesn't exist. She picks up one of Jess's old Hello Kitty stuffed animals and asks it a question. “Did you swallow a video camera, Miss Kitty? Are you streaming my pretty face out to all of Two W?”

“Wow! That is exactly what Nadine thought when you told her,” Archie says.

Suddenly Hello Kitty is tossed to the floor.

“Y'all told Nadine?” Arla asks, her voice about an octave lower than normal.

Quickly, I explain how coincidence and circumstance led me to confide in Nadine before telling Arla, and I can see that she is more upset by being left out of the inner circle than she is that my life has been irrevocably changed. But I can't blame her; if the roles were reversed I would feel the same way. It's never fun to be snubbed.

“So that's why you've been buddying up to Ms. Jaffe and giving me the cold shoulder?”

And it's less fun to be misunderstood.

“No, Arla, that isn't it at all,” I say firmly. “Nadine happened to be in the right place at the right time and stumbled upon the truth. I
chose
to tell you. Big difference.”

And from the way Arla's eyes moisten, I can tell she finally gets it.

“Oh bless your soul. You are philanthropic!”

“Lycanthropic,” Archie corrects.

“A she-wolf!” Arla simplifies.

Luckily Arla keeps her always-brightly-colored fingernails short, or else they would dig into my skin when she holds my face in her hands. She's looking at me tenderly, and before she speaks I know that she's channeling her grandmother's spirit.

“My nana is jumping for joy on the other side right now,” she says. “You, Dominy, are living proof that the woman wasn't a crazy old banshee like my grandpa always claimed.”

As I said, both Arla's parents have Creole blood in their veins, which means Arla can trace her roots back to a heritage of relatives who believed in the paranormal and worshipped magical gods. Clearly, her nana would consider me a patron saint.

All talk of mysticism must be put aside though, and I need to make Arla understand this curse is more than a gift that proves her ancestors sane. I have to admit the role I played in Jess's death. Once again the response to my confession amazes me.

“At least now we know, Dom,” she states soberly. “We don't have to invent stories; we know Jess died because of this Luba bitch.”

Just like my father, Archie, and Caleb have already done, Arla reminds me that I am not responsible for Jess's death; the true culprit is Psycho Squaw. I've already come to believe this, but it's reassuring to know Arla has joined the club. The only wildcard remaining is Nadine.

“If we're to believe everything Jess wrote in her diary,” Arla begins, “Nadine may not be trustworthy.”

A mental image of silver smoke wrapping and undulating around Nadine's body pierces my mind.

“I think it's more than that,” I say. “I think in her own way Nadine is like me.”

“Please, please, please tell me you think she's Lady Dracula!” Archie begs.

This time Arla slaps him in the shoulder for me. “No! But I do think she's full of secrets that she doesn't know how to deal with.”

“Then as Nana Bergeron would always say,” Arla declares, speaking in her best Creole accent, “let's help dat chile see da light!”

We all agreed that the plot of the first episode of
The Secret Life of Nadine Jaffe
needs to deal with uncovering the truth about the tattoo she shares with Napoleon. There's just something wrong and ickilicious about twin tattoos, and it has got to be a clue to some deeper secret.

After some debate and discussion we decide that the only real way to confront Nadine about her twattoo is to catch her half-naked. (
Twattoo
is Archie's word, not mine, and even though it's kind of gross, it made me smile, because I think he might be a worthy successor to Jess and a new partner in my never-ending quest to bastardize the English language.) But since none of us wants to stray from our innate sexual identity and undress Nadine in private, we're going to have to go public. Or as public as the girls' locker room.

Luckily, Archie hangs out with us there so often he knows exactly where Nadine's locker is. Unluckily, he has a not-so-happy history of spending time in a girls-only facility.

“Before I evolved into the buff gay jock you see before you,” he says, “I was the scrawny geek that the older kids in grammar school used to handcuff to the toilet in the girls' bathroom.”

His voice sounded brave and not as if he were concealing any repressed pain; it was a period of his life that he's definitely moved on from. But we had never heard this story before and were not prepared for it. Even though Archie had already confided in me that he once thought about running away, I never took a moment to consider the specific events in his life that would have made him come to that decision.

“The first couple of times I just waited until the janitor found me and broke the lock,” he explains. “But when he realized this fad wasn't going to end quickly, he taught me how to pick a lock with a straight pin. Let's just say I've had a lot of practice fine-tuning my lock-picking skills.”

At the same time Arla and I reach out and hold Archie's hands. Nobody says a word, and the only response Archie gives us to indicate that he is grateful for our friendship is that he allows his smile to fade and shows us another piece of his true self. He shows us that even though he's cheerful and confident now, he wasn't always that way.

 

Halfway through our kickball tournament in gym class the next day, our plan was already in motion. While Arla, Nadine, and I were changing into our gym clothes, Archie was telling Mr. Lamatina that he was sick and needed to skip world history to see the school nurse. Lamatina hates interruptions to his daily routine, but he's also a hypochondriac, so Archie was convinced he wouldn't be able to deny him the necessary hall pass to get a medical diagnosis.

After the tournament, which incidentally my team won, we retreated into the locker rooms to undress. En route to the showers, I pulled Nadine aside to ask her if anyone at The Retreat suspected an insider had lifted syringes, while Arla lagged behind the crowd to prop open the back door that leads out to the baseball field. Since the field is unused at this time of day, Archie was planning to have a miraculous recovery about ten minutes before the end-of-class bell rang, tell Nurse Nelson that he wanted to return to class to make sure he got the night's homework assignment, and instead would sneak out of school and into the girls' locker room. Once inside he would break into Nadine's locker, take her clothes out, and hide them. Hopefully, she would be too distracted looking for her clothes, let her guard—not to mention her towel—down, and I'd be able to get a good look at her as-yet-unseen tattoo. It was a risky plan, but since Archie is the unofficial risk taker of my Wolf Pack, we all thought it was a risk worth taking.

When Nadine opens up her locker and screams, I know our instincts were right.

“Who took my clothes?!” Nadine shouts.

The voice doesn't belong to the Nadine of The Retreat, but to the Nadine of her basement. It's loud and angry and pompous. She isn't getting ready to administer some TLC to a needy patient; she needs an answer to her question, and she expects it ASAP. To the surprise of everyone except Arla and me, she doesn't get it.

“Who took my clothes?!” she re-shouts. “You have five seconds to give them back, or so help you, you will be dead.”

A few of the girls gasp, others start to snicker, but I remain silent because I've seen Nadine flip out before, at her brother. Unsettling yes, but unpredictable, no.

“Is this yours?”

Standing barefoot in her bra and panties, Rayna Delgado holds up a white polo shirt, the two embroidered
W
's on the left chest pocket giving it away that it's part of our school uniform. There's nothing on the shirt that identifies it as Nadine's, but since no one else has been robbed, we all know who it belongs to.

“It was sticking out of the trash,” Rayna says.

Lunging toward Rayna, Nadine clutches her towel to her chest with one hand, and with the other reaches out to grab her shirt. “Give me that!”

Like a slinky matador, Rayna steps out of the way at the last second and raises the polo over her head like a red cape. “You didn't say if it was yours,” she says, “Garbage Girl.” Her lips form a triumphant sneer as the crowd cheers the impromptu bullfight.

Instead of answering Rayna's question, which would be the easiest route to reclaiming her clothes, but I guess would also be like admitting defeat, Nadine lunges at Rayna again. This time she forgets about her current attire and flails both arms into the air to retrieve her shirt, the awkward action leaving Nadine not only empty-handed, but empty-toweled too. She's so livid at Rayna's defiance that it takes Nadine a few moments for her to realize she's standing naked in the center of a rowdy group of girls. It takes me less time to see the tattoo just underneath her left hip bone.

Less a cluster and more of a horizontal line, the three stars are in descending size order, the largest being on the outside of her thigh. The tattoo looks exactly like the drawing in Jess's diary and I assume, with mild revulsion, exactly as it appears on Napoleon's body as well. Watching Nadine standing there, exposed and defeated and mumbling, the only thing I find more revolting is me.

Unlike when I acted involuntarily under the control of Luba's spell, this time my actions were calculated. And worse, I made Arla and Archie my accomplices. Together, we reduced Nadine to the broken girl standing in front of me. I can't change what happened, but I can stop it from escalating.

“That's enough!” I shout.

My voice doesn't end the taunting chatter, but it puts a wrinkle in it, so by the time I pick up Nadine's towel off the floor and wrap it around her, most of the girls have gone back to their lockers to finish getting dressed.

“Give me that,” I say.

Shrugging her shoulders, Rayna hands me Nadine's shirt. “All Garbage Girl had to do was say that it was hers.”

Digging through the trash bin I find the rest of Nadine's clothes that Archie put there. I'm so busy examining them to make sure nothing got stained and I'm so disgusted with myself for what I just put Nadine through that I don't hear Rayna scream until Miss Rolenski barges into the locker room.

“What's going on in here?!”

I whip my head around expecting to see Rayna and Nadine in a catfight on the locker room floor, but instead several feet separate them. Nadine is standing off to the side next to Arla, while Rayna is sitting on a bench, her leg crossed so her ankle rests on the opposite knee to reveal a bloodied foot.

“I cut myself,” Rayna says, her face wincing in pain.

“On what?” Miss Rolenski asks.

Looking all over the floor, Rayna shakes her head. “I don't know, but it must've been sharp; look at the blood!”

Our gym teacher is young, but she's tough and was a former all-state softball champion. She's often shared stories of how she got a black eye or bloody nose from a fly ball or a thrown bat, so she's far from squeamish. In fact, she appears to be thrilled that it only seems to be a mild injury caused by carelessness and not the result of a squabble that would require a formal visit to Dumbleavy's office and most likely filling out a ton of paperwork.

“I've seen worse,” she says, grabbing a clean towel from the rack and placing it under Rayna's foot.

Turning her back to leave the room, Miss Rolenski orders, “Now put some clothes on and let's get you to Nelson.”

While some of the girls help Rayna hobble over to her locker, I give Nadine her clothes back. Watching her pull up her khakis, I remember the real reason we staged this whole break-in in the first place.