Susan Pfeffer - Shade of the Moon

Jon nodded.

“You know how you can be hot? Every card you touch turns into a flush, an inside straight. You start with a pair and end up with a full house.”

“I’ve never had that kind of luck,” Jon said.

“It feels like it’s never going to end,” Carlos said. “It’s magic. You keep upping the ante, especially if you need the money for a truck. And then the cards go cold on you. So you keep betting more, figuring your luck’ll return, only it doesn’t. It never does.”

“You gambled away your share of the money,” Jon said.

“That’s Alex’s attitude,” Carlos said. “I prefer to think of it as an investment gone sour.”

Well, Lisa will be happy, Jon thought. Miranda will be her grub for a long, long time.

The line for the market was two blocks long. “They’ll be here till curfew,” Carlos said.

Jon nodded. It was lucky Mom shopped on Saturday.

He and Carlos walked to the head of the line. Jon showed one of the guards his claver ID badge.

“Come on in,” the guard said, escorting them into the store.

“I just need soap,” Jon said.

“Where’s the soap?” the guard shouted.

“Aisle four, on the left!”

The guard walked with Jon and Carlos to the shelf with soap. There were four bars.

“Take ’em all,” the guard said. “You’re entitled.”

Jon hesitated. He could get any girl he wanted in White Birch for a bar of soap. A quick look at Carlos showed he was thinking the same thing.

“Three’ll do,” Jon said. He left one bar on the shelf and walked out of the store escorted by the guard and Carlos.

“Here,” he said to the guard, handing him one of the bars. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir,” the guard said.

Jon handed the second bar to Carlos. “Have fun,” he said.

Carlos took the soap, then pulled out his knife and cut it in quarters. “Four quarters, four girls,” he said. “They’d probably take eighths, but I’ll be generous.”

“Just don’t tell Mom,” Jon said. “She sent me for one bar, and if she knew I took more, she’d get really mad.”

Carlos laughed. “I like your mother,” he said. “She’s got guts. I like Miranda, too. That kind of surprised me.”

“You mean because she’s Alex’s kind of girl?” Jon asked.

“I didn’t even know Alex liked girls,” Carlos said. “I always figured he’d bring some boy home to meet the folks.”

Jon laughed. “He’s crazy about Miranda,” he said. “And he’s never made a pass at me.”

“No, I know,” Carlos said. “I could tell how much he loved her when he saw me in Texas. Funny. He never needed my approval before, but he wasn’t gonna marry her without my okay. Not after what she did to Julie.”

Jon stopped, then clutched the bar of soap. If he asked what Miranda had done, Carlos would never tell him. And whatever it was Carlos knew, Jon had to find out.

“I didn’t know you knew,” Jon said, trying to sound casual.

“Oh yeah, I know,” Carlos said. “Alex told me. It threw me. It still does. Miranda seems so sweet. You wouldn’t expect her… Well, she’s your sister. You know her better than I do.”

“It surprised me, too,” Jon said, burning with the need to know what Miranda had done. “When I found out. But things were desperate.”

“That’s what Alex said,” Carlos said, rolling the soap quarters in his hand. “I gotta tell you, though. I’ve killed plenty of people, probably some kids, too. You get the order to shoot, you don’t look to see who you’re shooting. But I don’t think I could ever kill someone the way that sister of yours did. So cold. Alex said she did it to spare Julie. Sleeping pills, so Julie wouldn’t know what was gonna happen. Pillow over her mouth to smother her to death. Miranda swore to him Julie slept through the whole thing, that the last thing she did was pray, so she died in a state of grace. That kind of thing’s important to Alex. At least it used to be. Now, I don’t know. He married his sister’s murderer. Not what they taught us in catechism.”

“Alex would forgive Miranda anything,” Jon said slowly.

“He said she got the pills from him,” Carlos said. “The idea, too. You’re right about those times being desperate. My sister Bri, the way she died? Completely alone, no one rescuing her. Maybe it’s better what Miranda did. Julie paralyzed like that, she would have died anyway. Well, it’s water under the bridge. Alex and Miranda expecting a baby. He’ll get that truck eventually. Alex always gets what he wants.”

Jon nodded.

“You know what I want right now?” Carlos asked. “A girl. A nice quarter-of-a-bar-of-soap girl. Wanna join me, Jon? There’s four quarters here. I won’t miss one.”

Jon looked at his watch, hoping Carlos wouldn’t see how hard he was shaking. “Better not,” he said. “I want to get the next bus home, and I’ve got to drop the soap off with Mom.”

“Tell them I’m still breathing the fresh air,” Carlos said with a laugh. “Good knowing you, Jon. I’ll think of you four more times.”

Jon managed a laugh. He watched as Carlos walked back toward the center of town.

Five minutes, he told himself. Five minutes to go back to Mom’s, hand her the soap, kiss her good-bye, say good-bye to Alex and Miranda, and catch the claver bus home.

Five minutes. He’d survived three years of Julie haunting him. He could survive another five minutes.

Sarah was in his bed. They were holding each other tightly, shutting out the world with the power of their love.

“I love you,” he whispered to her.

“You killed me, Jon,” she said.

It wasn’t Sarah. It was Julie. And she wasn’t holding him because she couldn’t hold anything. She was lying there, still as a corpse. “You killed me,” she said. “You kill everything you love.”

Jon sat upright, his heart pounding. “You can’t haunt me anymore,” he whispered. “I didn’t kill you. Miranda did.”

He’d thought of little else since yesterday afternoon. He’d told Lisa about the visit, told her about Carlos gambling away the truck money. Lisa had tried not to seem pleased, but he could tell she was. She had a gift for knowing what was best for other people, and she knew what was best for Miranda and her baby.

He’d sat at lunch with Tyler, Zach, and Ryan and had hardly listened to a word they said. He’d bench-pressed, stretched, run, and practiced, his body knowing what to do while his mind was elsewhere, focused on Miranda, on Miranda killing Julie, on Miranda cold-bloodedly drugging Julie, then smothering the life out of her.

He’d tried to figure out who else knew and decided no one did. Dad and Lisa would never have forgiven her. Matt might have, but Miranda wouldn’t have wanted Syl to know. And Mom… Mom was closer to Miranda than she was to either him or Matt, but even if Mom could have forgiven her, she couldn’t have kept it a secret. If Mom knew, they’d all know, and since they didn’t, she couldn’t.

No, the only person Miranda told was Alex. She told him on the road to Sexton, and Alex left her. Carlos was right. Alex loved Miranda, but he’d loved Julie, too, and felt responsible for her. If Carlos had said no to the marriage, Alex wouldn’t have returned.

But Carlos had said yes, allowing Alex to marry his sister’s killer. And Jon spent three years feeling responsible for something that had never truly been his fault.

He thought about that final day harder than he ever had before. Yes, he’d wanted Julie. He was a teenage boy and she was a teenage girl, and that was the nature of things. If Julie hadn’t been so religious, or more to the point, if she hadn’t been so scared of Alex, who was so religious, she would have had no reservations about making love. It had been their last chance, probably the last time they’d ever see each other.