The Next Full Moon (12 page)

“Really?”

“Of course. She was madly in love with you. Who wouldn't be?”

Morgan snorted.

“I thought you had to get home,” Ava said.

“I'm going! I was just trying some sauce. It's so good, Mr. Lewis, thank you!”

“You're welcome,” he said, ruffling Morgan's hair.

Ava knew she wouldn't let anyone else in the world do that to her, but Morgan loved Ava's dad and was always giddy and silly in his presence. He seemed to have that effect on most women, though he never seemed to notice.

“Dad,” Ava said, her mind whirling, after her friend had left. Her dad was frying eggplant and veal now, and the kitchen was even more of a mess than it had been before. “How come you don't date anyone ever?”

“Date anyone?” He turned and looked at her, a slice of eggplant in his hand. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Well you're not
that
old, right? And you're sort of good looking.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“And Mom has been dead for ten years.”

“Mmmmhmmm,” he said, pulling fried eggplant out of the pan and laying it on some paper towels.

“She is dead, right?”

He stopped what he was doing, turned down the burner, and leaned back against the counter. “Ava,” he said, looking at her intently, “why are you asking me that? You're not experimenting with drugs are you? Let me see your pupils.”

“How did you meet, anyway? You never told me how you guys met.”

“I haven't?”

“No, Dad! You never talk about her!”

He looked so sad for a moment that Ava almost wished she hadn't asked. His shoulders sagged, and his face, so handsome, seemed to break open.

“Dad–” she started.

“No, I should talk more about her to you,” he said. He looked far away then, his face softening as he remembered. Ava watched him, barely breathing, afraid to break the spell.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded. “It was summertime, and I was down by the creek with my rod. The fish back then practically jumped into your hands. It was twilight. There was a great big full moon, I remember, just peeking out. And then I saw a woman swimming in the creek with her friends and I'd never seen
anyone more beautiful, not even in the movies, or in the magazines, or in my dreams.”

“Then what?” she asked.

He shrugged. “We started talking. I don't remember all the details. I knew right away I would marry her. And that was that. There's someone for each of us, Ava, and your mother was the one for me.”

“Do you ever think about her now?” Ava asked.

He sighed. “Of course I do. I think of her every day. And I see her every day, in you.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. You're so much like her. It scares me sometimes, seeing you become so like her. You look more and more like her every year, too, even with that black hair. You even walk like she did. The same voice, everything. And now you're about to be a teenager. I can't believe it.”

Ava felt tears prickling at her eyes. “How come you've never told me that?”

He shrugged. “I thought I had.”

And then he turned around and fired up the burner again, absorbing himself in the veal and the eggplant. But before he did, Ava was sure she saw tears prickling in his eyes, too.

O
ver the next few days, Ava focused more on her birthday party than anything else. She and Morgan made up a list of kids to invite that started out small and ended up including practically the whole seventh grade, even Becky Rainer with her greasy hair and Jennifer Halverson and her crew. It didn't feel right to exclude anyone, and she figured no zombie would set a pedicured, kitten-heel-wearing foot in her house anyway. The girls planned out a menu, which Ava's father approved instantly as it featured his famous meatballs and spaghetti as well as Ava's (and his) favorite dessert, a pistachio ice-cream cake with Heath bars crumbled across the top.

Ava had never had a party before, and certainly not one on such a momentous occasion as her thirteenth birthday and in her very own house to boot. Before, even just a week ago, she would have been mortified at the idea of letting her classmates into the quaint little house with the wraparound porch and the basement full of handmade fishing rods, and she would have cringed at the idea of being the center of attention. She would have been terrified that no one would come or, if they did, that they would discover some new dorky thing about her that she'd forgotten to hide. But something big had changed since she started growing feathers, she realized, and she didn't have the same twisty feeling in the pit of her stomach when imagining a room full of her classmates in her own house. It would be fun. If anyone didn't like her house or her stuff or her cool professor dad with his salt-and-pepper hair and love of the Rolling Stones and fly fishing, it was, really, their loss.

She tacked up a ballerina calendar on the wall and started marking down the days. And that Friday night she counted down: just twenty-nine days until her birthday, her party, and the next full moon.

She woke up the next morning feeling wild with excitement. On top of everything else, there were only two more weeks of school left before the long summer, which stretched out in a perfect, blissful haze with no school, no
getting up before eight in the morning, just whole days at the lake and in the mountains. She wanted to jump up and down with excitement, thinking about the future. Becoming a teenager, going to the high school in another year, going to college, moving to a big city like New York and maybe working for a magazine, or being a famous artist, or opening a little store filled with candy cigarettes and jewelry made from orange slices.

And, of course, finding her mother, and learning about the swan maidens. That future stretched out in front of her, too, a sequence of full moons, waning and waxing and waning again. That's how it worked, right? No matter how tiny the moon became, it always became full again.

She stretched happily, twisting under the covers. Monique flew off the bed and landed on the floor.

“Oh, sorry,” Ava said, as Monique turned to her with an outraged expression.

But she couldn't stop smiling. She picked up the photo of her mother by the side of her bed, traced the lines of her mother's face. The new memory, of her mother and father cooking over the stove, stayed with her like a gift, and she clung to it, rolled it over again and again in her mind.

She must have been a baby, playing on the floor, with her parents laughing above her, the kitchen smelling like garlic and onion and frying things. Her mother had liked cooking, her father had said. How strange and wonderful it must have
been for her, living in this house, being a human woman, having a child.

Had it been hard for her to leave? Had she missed her other life? Did she miss this life, now?

And if she was really alive, where was she?

She closed her eyes and imagined: riding over the treetops with her mother the way she had with Helen, leaning down and holding her mother's swan body, her fingers burrowing into soft feathers, her mother's wings stretched out and flapping on either side. Feeling her mother's heart beating under her fingertips.

Or: the two of them, flying next to each other, her mother leading her to another, better world. Or up into the stars and to the moon, where Ava had watched for her so many nights. The two of them, flying past stars whirring in the sky beside them, passing through black holes, sliding down the Milky Way . . .

Her phone buzzed loudly.

“Yesss??!!” she answered, knowing it was Morgan, making her voice as goofy as possible.

“Um. Ava?” It was a boy's voice.

Her mouth dropped open. She sat up in bed. “This is Ava,” she said, trying to sound normal.

“This is Jeff.”

“Jeff?” she repeated.

“Um. Jeff Jackson?”

“Oh. This is Ava.”

“I know. I called you.”

“Oh.” She caught herself. She was the new Ava here, not the old one. She just had to remind herself. “I mean, hey. How are you?”

“Great. I'm just . . . wondering if you were planning to meet me at the lake today?”

“Sure,” she said, smiling into the phone. Grandma Kay always said you could hear a smile. “Yes.”

“I thought maybe we could go together? Ride our bikes?”

“Oh! Together?”

“Yeah. I could come by your house?”

“Okay.”

“Maybe in an hour?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

She stared at her phone in disbelief, as if it had just grown a mouth and started talking to her all on its own.

Then it hit her, and she screamed. Jeff Jackson was coming to her house! “Oh my god!!!” she cried.

A second later, her father appeared in her doorway. “What's going on?” he asked, his voice and face panicked. “Are you all right?”

“Yes!” She bounded off the bed and leapt across the room and into his arms. “Dad!!! Jeff Jackson just called me!
He's coming here in an hour!”

“Who's Jeff Jackson?”

“Only the love of my LIFE,” she said, pulling back and giving him her most serious expression.

“Well, that's great. I was hoping to have a few more years before this kind of thing came up, but . . .”

“Dad, I'm about to turn THIRTEEN. I'm practically an adult.”

“Ava, you are not even close to being an adult yet. What are you and this Jeff Jackson planning to do together, if I may ask, only being your father and sole caretaker?”

She rolled her eyes. “We're riding our bikes to the lake.”

“Ah.” He scratched his chin and pretended to contemplate. “That means I don't have to give you a ride, doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that sounds like an excellent plan. I like this Jeff Jackson fellow already.” He pointed his finger at her. “But ride carefully and make sure you have your phone with you.”

“I will, Dad.”

“And call me when you get there.”

“Okay. I have to get ready!”

He sighed. “Maybe we can order a pizza tonight and you can tell me all about it. I'll spend the day emotionally preparing myself.”

“Sure,” she said, pushing him out of her doorway. “Now let me get ready!!!”

She shut the door and turned back to her room, and stopped.

Everything was so . . . lovely all of a sudden. The sun shining in through the windows, split by the tree branches outside. The perfume smell of the flowers in full bloom along the side of the house. Her sweet white bed and pink pillows and there, out of sight, under her bed, the feathered robe that seemed to fill the room even when she couldn't see it. The black-and-white photo of her mother. Her computer screen blinking with messages from her best friend, who was really very lovable despite being incredibly annoying. And the pretty sundress hanging on her closet door right next to her new bathing suit.

It was summer. Her thirteenth birthday was in less than a month.

And she was a SWAN MAIDEN.

Ava slipped into the bathing suit and the sundress, which was an off-white cotton with ropy lace around the edges. She turned to the mirror and for the first time in forever wasn't even partially horrified by what she saw: herself, standing there, her long black hair cascading down dramatically against the pale fabric, the way it did against the white feathers of her robe. Her fair skin looked okay to her now. She kind of even liked it. It was who she was. Ava Lewis. Tall and pale, with black hair, twelve years old. And even if everyone loved Jennifer Halverson and the other zombies
with their tan skin and blond hair—okay and the one black zombie, Barb Freeman, who looked like Tyra Banks—it was also true that Jeff Jackson, Morgan, and a bunch of swan maidens liked her just the way she was.

Jeff Jackson!

She screamed again and checked the clock. Now that she was ready, the half hour she had left seemed like an eternity.

She sat down in front of her computer then and typed an IM to Morgan: “Jeff Jackson on his way HERE NOW! We're biking to the lake!”

“OMG” came flashing back onto her screen.

“I KNOW!”

“HOW AM I GONNA GET 2 THE LAKE?”

Ava moaned. She'd forgotten all about her plans with Morgan, of course. She was just like one of those lame girls in one of those cheesy teen movies, dropping everything the moment a boy came around.

“I'm sorry,” she typed, adding in a stupid unhappy face emoticon. “Can't your mom take u?”

“NO SHE'S WORKING!”

“But it's a date!”

Ava's phone rang. “Ava!” Morgan's voice cried out, as Ava opened the phone several inches from her ear, knowing what was coming. “You cannot do this to me.”

“Morgan, this is my first date with Jeff Jackson!”

“But we had plans! And I need to see Josh Kirschner,
who by the way said I looked nice yesterday, which you would have known if you weren't all obsessed with boys and swans and actually cared about your BEST FRIEND for once.”