The Summer of Moonlight Secrets

by Danette Haworth

  Tara said, “Oh,” and I realized they probably didn’t knit underwater.

  Now in the dining room, I push on the swinging door and see the kitchen is as busy as an ant colony. Cooks in white uniforms—I don’t know why they wear white; they should wear shirts with splotched-up colors so they never look dirty—glide across the floor with trays and some work over the grills. The walk-in refrigerator needs a revolving door for all the traffic.

  “Allie Jo!” Chef calls out. He glances at my clipboard and my jacket and pulls his fuzzy eyebrows together under his hat. “You’re not here to inspect, are you?”

  I laugh and introduce him to Tara and Sophie.

  He nods. “A committee, huh? Go around then, I’ll meet you in the break room.”

  Even though I do so much work around here, I’m not technically considered an employee, so Chef doesn’t like me to walk through the kitchen for insurance reasons. We walk around into the hallway and slip through an unmarked door.

  “Ooh,” Tara says, looking at the shrimp cocktail.

  Chef has outdone himself. Seven peach-colored shrimp curve over the rim of a martini glass. Thin ribbons of yellow squash and green cucumber cascade over the side, and he’s drawn a zigzag in cocktail sauce across the plate. It looks like a present.

  We sit at the table and I shove the shrimp over to Tara. “You first.”

  Lifting one from the glass, she giggles. “No shell!”

  “Of course not!” Chef says. “I peel them.”

  Tara crunches into one and savors that bit for so long, I get impatient. “Well—how is it?”

  Tara closes her eyes and smiles. Chef puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “We’re in the presence of a gourmet, not a gourmand like you.” By that he means Tara likes fine food, while I just like a lot of food.

  It hits me then that Chef would probably hire Tara. My plan is working out well.

  “You’re right,” I say. “Where are my pancakes?”

  He takes the cover off a buffet pan and serves Sophie and me blueberry pancakes, silver dollar size. They look like cookies. I pick one up with my fingers and eat it whole. “Excellent,” I say with my mouth full. “Doesn’t even need syrup.”

  Sophie laughs shyly and picks up a fork.

  Tara makes nice little comments to Sophie and Chef, and everyone likes her. I’m so happy. She fits right in. In fact, I don’t see why she has to hide upstairs—when the festival is over, we’ll have plenty of extra rooms. I’m sure Dad would give her one.

  Or—and my heart practically bursts with joy when I think this—she could stay at my house! My room is plenty big enough, and I don’t mind using a sleeping bag on the floor. Mom and Dad would get so used to her, they wouldn’t even want her to move out. Maybe they would adopt her!

  I plow through the pancakes, I’m so excited.

  A sister. A sister! Every night, we’ll stay up late talking. Probably she’ll go out on dates and I’ll be all mad because she used my nail polish or perfume or something, but then, when she comes back, we’ll lie on our beds and she’ll tell me everything. She’ll tell me who she went out with and what movie they saw and if they kissed at the end of the night. Our secrets will come out in the darkness.

  “Slow down, Allie Jo!” Chef says. “Slow down!”

  I laugh. “I can’t! Everything is too good.” And I mean it when I say, “This is going to be the best Taste of Hope ever!”

  The committee is doing pretty well eating, so I decide to check on Chase and the boys. Good thing too, because when I get there, all three of them are leaning against the wall.

  Chase gestures with a rag before I can say anything. “It’s that guy,” he says. “He’s keeps talking with Clay and your dad, and he’s all over the brass.”

  Probably looking for a room or something. Too bad. We’re full up. I wander closer in to overhear the problem.

  “Allie Jo,” Dad says. His face is very serious. Quickly, I review my day and decide I haven’t done anything wrong.

  I step up to the desk, careful not to put my shoe on the footrail in case it’s already been polished. Unlike some people, I think, looking down at the man’s sneakers.

  “This man, Mr.— Uh, what was your name, sir?”

  “Mr. Smith.” His voice is flat.

  Dad turns to me. “Mr. Smith here is looking for his niece. She was staying with him but—”

  “She ran away.” The man turns his watery eyes to me. They’re cracked with red lines. “She … has some problems.” His eyes droop; his shoulders sag; everything about him is pulled down.

  He flashes a picture. “Have you seen her?”

  Fire alarms ring in my ears. My mouth drops open and my eyes pop out. It’s Tara, inside a messy living room. Beer cans and peanut shells litter the room; the TV’s on, but she’s not watching it. She’s staring into the camera like a wild animal. My breath comes out in short bursts.

  His eyes focus. “You’ve seen her.”

  “No.” My heart bangs so loud I’m sure he can hear it. But I’m not ready to say yes. I stare at the picture. It’s Tara, all right, and she’s got on the same outfit I first saw her in. “I’ve never seen her,” I say.

  My heart hammers and I turn away, but he grips my wrist. “Are you sure?” He slants his eyes. “It looked like you recognized her.”

  “Let go of my daughter,” Dad orders. He comes around and inserts himself between me and Mr. Smith.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mr. Smith says, lifting his palms up. Then he raises glum eyes to Dad. “I’m sure as a father you can understand how upsetting this can be. She’s been with me since her parents died.” He presses his palms against his eyes. “Pamela’s very special to me, but she’s not quite right in the head. She lives in a fantasy world. I’m afraid someone could hurt her.”

  “Have you tried the police?” Dad asks. He leans over the counter, pulls up the phone, and is about to dial when Mr. Smith shakes his head and waves his hands.

  “Police, private detective, shelters—everything. They haven’t found her. That’s why I’m out here on my own.” He swipes another look at me. “But if she’s not here, she’s not here.” His shoulders slump and he heads toward the front door.

  Thoughts dart in my head like tadpoles in the water. I feel all hurly-burly. Maybe I should run after that man and tell him what I know. I don’t know what to do. My eyes well up.

  Dad puts his arm around my shoulders. “Are you okay? It looks like he scared the heck out of you.”

  I turn my face into the crook of Dad’s arms, and big, fat tears roll down my face. I know he’s got to get back to the guests, but I need him right now. After a minute or so goes by, I mumble into his chest, “I’m okay.”

  He holds me by the shoulders and looks at me. “Are you sure?”

  I nod and smile. It’s always the smile that convinces them.

  After he returns behind the desk, Chase rushes over. “What’s the deal?” he asks in a low voice. He lasers in on me.

  I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and sniffle.

  “Did you get in trouble again?” He’s talking very gently, like you would to a cat you were trying to get out from under a bush.

  Dazed, I turn past him, walk around the grand staircase to the parlor, and drop onto a couch. Nicholas, Ryan, and Chase follow me.

  “You guys play cars,” I say. Like magicians, they produce cars from their pockets and race them along the banister.

  Chase sits beside me. “What’s wrong?” he asks again.

  I turn to him in a trance. “That was Tara’s uncle.”

  His face contorts. “What?”

  “He said her name is Pamela and that her parents died, which is why she lives with him, and she’s sort of … sort of …”

  He leans in. “Sort of what?”

  My eyebrows pucker and the corners of my lips turn down. “She’s sort of crazy.”

  49

  Chase

  “Crazy?” I breathe like I just ran
five laps. “What did he say?”

  She tells me the whole thing, how sad the man looked, and that he was worried someone would hurt Tara—Pamela—because she lived in a fantasy world.

  “He said she’s not quite right in the head.” Allie Jo’s eyes ask me to agree or disagree, but I’m still reeling from the word crazy.

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes, shut out the hotel and all these people and even Allie Jo.

  “Chase?” She nudges me in the ribs. “It makes more sense, right?”

  I bow my head. “Yeah … it makes more sense.” I mean, a seal that can turn into a human? My heart falls into my stomach. She’d made it seem so real, with the moonlight swimming and calling to manatees. And how she likes fish, and how she talks, and even her long, dark hair that dangled almost to her waist like seaweed. I press my fist to my chest; there’s that pain again.

  Oh, man. Why couldn’t there be one cool thing this summer? But the knot in my chest unravels when I remember Sophie. The green heart ring is upstairs on my nightstand. I’m just trying to plan the right time to give it to her.

  For now, though, I’ve gotta find out what’s going on with Tara. “Come on,” I say to Allie Jo. “Let me do the talking.”

  When we knock on the door of the employee break room, Chef ushers us in with the boys. “More testers!” Chef says. “I have no more shrimp, no more pancakes!” He looks at Nicholas and Ryan. “But I do have chocolate chip cookies!”

  That’s all they need to hear. They follow him to the door of the kitchen; Allie Jo and I sit at a table with Tara and Sophie.

  “So,” I say to Allie Jo. “Maybe you should get an extra cookie for Pamela.” I’m expecting a knee jerk, a gasp, or something from Tara, but her expression stays the same.

  “Yes,” Allie Jo says. “I’m sorry her parents died. I wish she would’ve told me.”

  Someone does gasp, but it’s Sophie. She asks Allie Jo, “You have a friend whose parents died?” Her eyes widen. “That’s terrible.”

  “She doesn’t want anyone to know,” I say.

  “She’s pretending it didn’t happen,” Allie Jo adds.

  Sophie breathes out a quiet Wow. We all sit there, silent, thinking.

  “Cookies!” Nicholas and Ryan come running back in. Ryan eats by smashing the cookie into his mouth.

  Tara runs a hand over her hair. I can tell she wishes Allie Jo hadn’t dyed and cut it.

  She looks straight at me, her eyes deep and endless. Chills crawl up my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  Pamela or Tara?

  We can’t ask her right out because of the boys and Sophie, or maybe that’s a secret we don’t need to keep anymore. But it doesn’t seem like a good idea to bust out with the news. If she does have something wrong with her, it might send her off into the deep end.

  I want to find out more from Allie Jo, but the only second I’m alone with her is at the sink, when I pretend I need to wash my hands.

  “I don’t think her name’s Pamela,” I say under my breath.

  “Why would he lie about her name?” she asks.

  Then everyone’s at the sink, washing their hands, getting ready for the next task. Allie Jo still has to babysit the boys, and I don’t want to leave Sophie, so the afternoon turns into evening with all of us working for Taste of Hope.

  I’m actually bushed after Dad and I get back to our room after supper. He flips through his notes and turns on the typewriter.

  “You get a lot of stuff for your article?” I ask.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Lots of good photos too.” Then he turns, leaning one arm over the back of his chair. “I saw manatees in the springs today—manatees!”

  My ears prick up, but I shrug to act casual.

  “Usually you only see them here in the winter,” he explains. “But I took a whole roll of film on them.”

  I hesitate before replying. “That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?”

  Dad’s face breaks into a big smile. “Yes! The photos are going to be incredible.” He describes the manatees to me, their walrus shape, the way they float through the water, big yet graceful.

  Yeah, I know, I want to say. I swam with one. He has no idea.

  “Dad, remember last year when they discovered that giant squid?” With tentacles almost fifty feet long, the squid made all the papers.

  “Yeah?” He’s loading the typewriter with a piece of paper, not really listening now. That’s okay, because I don’t want what I’m about to say to seem important.

  “Well, before that, people just thought it was a legend, right? Like something out of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?”

  “Guess Jules Verne knew what he was talking about.” Dad starts pecking. For a guy who uses only two fingers, he’s pretty fast.

  “Do you think there’s other stuff like that, stuff that could be true?”

  Tap, tap. “Sure, why not? We’ve got men flying through space, black holes in the universe, and supernovas—who knows what they’ll discover next.”

  “I mean more like legends. You know, Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot—”

  He chuckles. “I want the first scoop on those stories.”

  I think of more legends. “Trolls … mermaids … Selkies—”

  Dad spins around in his chair. His gaze is open but penetrating. “Why are you asking me this stuff?”

  I mask my face really quick. “No reason. Just … you were talking about the manatees and that made me think of the squid, that’s all.”

  He stares at me for a moment, a moment I have to get out of. He looks like maybe he thinks I’m nuts.

  I pick up the remote, settle on a game show, and pretend to be absorbed.

  After a few minutes, the pecking starts up again. Clack, clack, clack. Clack, clack, clack. Clackety-clack, clack, clack. Ding! Clack, clack. Then the carriage return zips back to the left margin.

  If Tara’s crazy, we need to find her uncle. But if she’s not crazy …

  Clack, clack, clack. Clack, clack, clack. Clackety-clack, clack, clack.

  50

  Allie Jo

  When I see Sophie at breakfast the next day, she looks positively terrible. Her eyes float in their sockets; her nose runs; even her hair looks sick.

  “Don’t sit too close!” Mrs. Duran says. “Sophie’s got a cold.”

  Sophie sneezes five times in a row as if to prove it. My own sneezes come in sets of two.

  I sit in a chair across the table from Sophie, the one Mrs. Duran has pulled out. My science teacher told us last year that the air and moisture, by which he means spit, from an average sneeze travels at around sixty miles per hour.

  Sophie starts to say hi but sneezes again. I’m sure one of them was a direct hit—these tables are only four feet across.

  “Hi, Sophie.”

  “Hi.” Her voice sounds gunked up and plugged. The only time I like to be that way is during the school year.

  Mrs. Duran rises from her seat. “I’m going to use the restroom. Be right back.”

  Sophie wads up some tissue to her nose and blurts into it.

  “You don’t sound too good,” I say.

  “I don’t feel so good either,” she says, except her don’t sounds like dode. “Um … ,” she starts.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was wondering, like, um …” She shrugs one shoulder, laughs at herself, then looks away before looking back at me. “You and Chase—”

  “What?” It comes so fast out of my mouth that I almost hit her with it. “What about me and Chase?”

  “The way you guys were talking yesterday …”

  “Yeah?”

  “And how you guys hang out a lot …”

  Oh, my gosh—does she know? My face tenses. “Yeah, yeah?”

  “Well … what I mean is”—she curls up on her chair and leans forward—“do you guys … like each other?”

  I almost fall out of my seat, half laughing, half relieved.

  She looks confus
ed. “It’s okay if you do, you know.”

  “NO! I don’t like like Chase!” I give a little shudder. Puh-leeze!

  She brightens. “Really?”

  “Really!”

  She sighs. “Thanks, Allie Jo.”

  Then she sneezes big-time; I count seven in a row. Yep, this would definitely be a free day out of school.

  She’s still snorkeling into her tissues when a voice comes up behind me.

  “What a surprise,” a man’s voice says. As he comes around, I see it’s Mr. Smith—Tara’s uncle. He has a sour smell even though he’s wearing different clothes. A Meriwether cup steams in his hand.

  I jolt upright in my seat. “Are you a guest here?”

  “Just here for breakfast,” he says. Even though his eyes are still red and glazed, he hones in on me. He plants his coffee cup on our table and reaches into his shirt pocket. “Thought you might have had time to think about that picture I showed you.”

  Sophie shrinks back when he steps up between us and snaps down the picture of Tara in front of me. I don’t think her name’s Pamela, Chase had said.

  Mr. Smith kneels to my height in the chair. “Remember, she needs help. I’m her only family.” He spouts out the same words as yesterday, but it’s like he’s reciting them. Leaning closer, he mutters, “You’ve seen her.”

  My body revs up like a race car at the starting line.

  His voice comes out rough. “Tell me.” Then he takes a big breath and blows it out. His eyes soften. His voice is gentler, but he speaks through clenched teeth. “Please. You have a father and a mother. She lost hers—that’s why she’s so mixed up.” He licks his lips. “I need her back.”

  Heart pounding, I open my mouth. “I—I—”

  “Excuse me!” Mrs. Duran calls out from the hostess stand. Her face is set like stone as she makes her way briskly toward the table. Her blue eyes are cold as ice.

  Mr. Smith snatches up the picture, slides it into his shirt pocket, and presses his fingers into my shoulder. “Think about it.” He scowls, leaving before Mrs. Duran reaches our table.