Susan Pfeffer - Shade of the Moon

He told them he’d come home from the soccer match too keyed up to stay at home. He wanted to celebrate, and the best place to do that was White Birch. He caught the last grub bus in Sunday night, and after that, he admitted with chagrin, he wasn’t too sure what had happened except that it involved a lot of potka and any grubber girl he could find.

Mr. Hughes, the police, Luke, Luke’s father, Ryan, Reverend Minter, the people Lisa worked with, and even the people at Lisa’s funeral laughed at that. Getting drunk and enjoying yourself with grubber girls was what claver boys were supposed to do in White Birch. No one was expected to remember all the details.

School was out until September. So Jon stayed in White Birch an extra night, an extra day. The potka didn’t run out, and neither did the girls.

But by Tuesday evening he’d run out of money for the potka and the girls. Besides, Lisa might be worried. So he took a claver bus to Sexton and made his way home.

As soon as he got there, he passed out. If he had given it any thought, and he wasn’t sure he had, he must have figured that their grub had taken Gabe to the market. Lisa would have been at work.

When he came to, it was night and he found he was alone. He searched for the grub, for Lisa, for Gabe, and found only Lisa, dead in her bedroom. He’d called Dr. Goldman first, because he lived nearby. Then he called Mr. Hughes.

Yes, he’d seen the note, but no, he didn’t know what it meant, or where Gabe was. Maybe the grub had run off with him after she found Lisa’s body. Maybe Lisa had sent him away with the grubs she’d mentioned in her suicide note.

No, he didn’t know the grubs. All he knew about them was that when Lisa had gotten her promotion, she’d been told she could have a private greenhouse and another domestic. Lisa had told him she found the perfect girl, someone who could work in the greenhouse and help with the housework as well. Lisa seemed very interested in the grub, to the point that she had Jon visit her in the hospital a couple of times. So at some point, he must have learned her name was Miranda and she was expecting a baby.

Miranda was dropped off at their home after she’d had the baby, which had died. Deformed, Jon remembered. Deformed and dead. This was after the riots, and Lisa’s greenhouse had been delayed, so they sent Miranda back to White Birch, leaving them with just one domestic, Ruby.

He didn’t remember Lisa seeming upset about anything, except training Ruby. And he didn’t remember Lisa mentioning that she knew Miranda’s husband. Now that he thought about it, he knew Miranda had a husband, because Lisa had mentioned that Miranda would go back to him. He didn’t remember the husband’s last name. Why should he? Who bothered remembering their grubs’ last names?

He’d known Lisa since he was a little boy, and he’d lived with her for three years. It never occurred to him that she would violate the laws, do anything that might put him and especially Gabe at risk. He didn’t know anything about the Stockton baby or who the Stocktons were. He’d been in White Birch getting drunk and having as many girls as he could.

Jon made it through the funeral, listening to everyone saying how brave he was and how difficult they found it to believe that Lisa would do something like that. Not the suicide, he knew, although that was included in their shocked remarks. It was that she had turned against the clavers, helping out grubs based on some long-ago relationship. Everyone knew what animals grubs were. Everyone knew that baby would have been much better off with clavers. Now that baby was lost and so, presumably, was Gabe, kidnapped by the grubs, lost to Sexton forever.

Jon nodded and agreed with them and said how shocked he was, too, how sad at Gabe’s disappearance, and how guilty he felt because he hadn’t been home, hadn’t talked Lisa out of that crazy plot. And all of them, even the police, told Jon it wasn’t his fault, that Lisa had been keeping many secrets from him, that if a claver boy couldn’t go into White Birch and have a good time, what was the point of this whole crazy world?

Jon said he didn’t know, but he would always feel terrible about what had happened, and all of them said that proved what a good boy he was, how brave and honest.

Luke skipped the funeral. “He feels responsible somehow,” Ryan told Jon. “If he hadn’t told you about the grubber baby, none of this would have happened.”

“He shouldn’t blame himself,” Jon said. “I’m the one who told Lisa. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me.”

Ryan shook his head. “It’s not your fault, either,” he said. “Those grubs probably had something on her. It wouldn’t surprise me if they murdered her and forged that note.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jon said. “Nothing matters. Dead’s dead.”

The days leading up to the funeral had been punctuated with phone calls. But now the house was quiet, and the ringing of the phone startled him.

“Jon Evans?”

“Yes.”

“This is Sergeant Hawkins at the police station. We found your missing grub.”

“I’ll be right there,” Jon said, hanging up the phone.

He raced to the bus stop, but when he didn’t see any buses coming, he began running to the station. It wasn’t until he was almost there that he realized he could be running into a trap. Sarah’s father wasn’t the only one who knew Miranda was Jon’s sister. Ruby knew, also. And if she’d told the police, they could be waiting for him.

I’m a claver, Jon thought, rehearsing his arguments for the police. She’s a grub. There’s no proof Miranda and I are related. Ruby was lying. All grubs lie. Or maybe, to be charitable, she misunderstood something Lisa had said. Or maybe she was making it all up because she hated Lisa, hated Jon.

The important thing was what had she done to Gabe. That was what the police should be concentrating on. Where was Gabe?

When Jon walked into the police station, he saw the police had been trying to find that out without his prodding. He winced at the fresh bruises on Ruby’s face.

“What’s she told you?” Jon asked. “I’m Jon Evans. It’s my half brother who’s missing.”

“I’m Sergeant Hawkins,” the police officer said. “I called you a few minutes ago, Mr. Evans. You sure this is your grub?”

Jon nodded. “Her name’s Ruby,” he said. “She used to look prettier.”

The sergeant laughed. “This is Officer Summers,” he said. “He’s been having a little talk with the grub about everything she knows.”

“Mr. Jon,” Ruby said, “I don’t know where Gaby is. I swear I don’t. I woke up with a terrible headache, and the gun went off and Gaby was gone. Honest. I looked all over for him and I couldn’t find him. I went outside to look, and I kept looking and looking, and I never could find him. You believe me, don’t you, Mr. Jon? You know how much I love that little boy.”

Jon could see the terror in her eyes. He only hoped no one could see the fear in his.

“Why don’t I take her home?” he said. “I might do better getting the truth out of her there.”

“Sorry, Mr. Evans,” Sergeant Hawkins said. “No can do. This little grub’s a runaway.”

“I understand that,” Jon said, the way a friend of Tyler Hughes’s would. “She ran away from my home, and that’s where I’ll take her back to.”

The sergeant shook his head. “Grubs don’t contract to people,” he said. “They contract to the enclave. She didn’t run away from you. She ran away from the enclave. Grubs that do that get punished. That’s the law.”