But when I lift my eyes to Luna, she looks stricken, shocked. I cannot for the life of me imagine why.
“Nothing is easy,” she says. With the fingers of her right hand she’s worrying a thread on the chair cushion below her, making the same movement over and over until she finally rips it free. “Nothing.” Then she stands and turns and goes back into her bedroom. I expect her to slam the door, but she closes it quietly with the same click James made a while earlier.
The moment she’s gone I hear the rain, dripping on the fire escape, twangy and metallic. Its scent comes in on a whiff of air: green and wet, almost like seaweed. Maybe it’s been raining this whole time. I turn off the light and picture Archer coming up from the 2 train stop near his parents’ apartment, and later, making wet footsteps across the marble floor of the foyer. Now I know what his bedroom looks like, the walls and the bed and the chair over which he’d drape his wet jeans and T-shirt.
I lie on the couch until the record stops playing and the needle returns to its stand, and then I lie there longer, until it starts to rain so hard the street sounds like radio static, just a solid wall of hiss and fuzz. Then in the lull of that comforting white noise, I sleep.
thirty-nine
IN THE MORNING, LUNA SEEMS FINE. She’s awake before me again, putting cereal boxes on the table when I open my eyes. Her hair is still wet from the shower and twists in large curls down her back, dampening her shirt. She’s singing, but so softly I can hardly hear her. She’s mumble-singing. And I’m staring at her, which, eventually, she notices. She stops what she’s doing and looks at me.
“Hi,” she says. Then “Morning.” She stands there, holding a cereal bowl, as if she were posing for a painting.
“Hi.” I sit up and pull my legs underneath me, still wound in the sheet.
“Cereal,” she says, and motions toward the table. It’s like there’s a language barrier between us, as if I were an exchange student and it’s her job to make sure I understand the basics of life.
I run my fingers through my tangled hair. “Yep,” I say.
She pours some granola in her bowl and places the spoon on top carefully, like a garnish. “Are you coming to practice with us?”
This is a good sign, I figure, since she just spoke a full sentence to me. Also, she’s not trying to keep me as far as possible from Archer.
“Sure,” I say. “I’d like to see the place. And I think my schedule’s pretty free.”
I mean this last part as a joke, but Luna just nods. She winds her hair into a bun and secures it with a rubber band, so she looks like a ballerina or maybe a librarian. She looks like she means business.
Luna points past me, across the room. “You’d better get into the shower, then.”
She sits down at the table and I grab a handful of clothes from my suitcase near the door: a gray tank top and a navy striped skirt. When I close the bathroom door behind me I can hear Luna singing again, but through the walls I can’t make out any of the words.
The Moons share a practice space in Dumbo with two other bands, in an old paper bag factory a few blocks from the river. They have a complicated schedule worked out, written in blue and green and red ink on a piece of notebook paper and pasted up on the door, and they can’t practice late at night or people in neighboring buildings complain.
The stairway is dark and narrow, but their second-floor room has a huge iron-framed window looking out on the street. Josh and James are already there, Josh fiddling with his hi-hat cymbal and James unpacking his guitar.
“You know,” I say to him, “for a guy who lives where I’m staying, I see very little of you.”
“Early riser, most of the time,” he says, smiling. “And you are a sound sleeper.”
Luna unlatches her case and takes out her guitar, plugging it into an amp by the window. The amp hums softly like an insect.
“Where’s Archer?” she asks, which means I don’t have to. I try to read her, but she’s poker-faced.
“He’s coming from his parents’ place,” Josh says. “Be here soon.”
I sit down in a chair between the window and Josh’s seat at the drums, and put my feet on top of Luna’s guitar case, gently, as if it were fragile. As if it were a cocoon, maybe, or some kind of papier-mâché sculpture made of newspaper strips and dried paste.
Luna and James start trying to work out a melody, their heads bent together over their guitars. Josh looks out the window and then sits down again, drumming his sticks on his knees.
“Archer said your dad is a musician too,” I say.
He squints a little. “Yeah,” he says. “You’d know his name, if you knew jazz.”
“I know Charlie Parker,” I say. “Miles Davis. Not new jazz.”
Josh nods. “I think my dad wishes I would just join his band someday, but it’s not my scene.” He reaches out to touch the edge of his crash cymbal. “He comes to our shows sometimes. I don’t hide in the back room like Luna does.” He taps his sticks against each other. “But it is a little awkward when he and I are the only black people in the room. It makes it hard to explain why I’m here and not with him.”
“That sucks,” I say.
“Yeah. He looks past me, then smiles. “And whenever I see him in the crowd, it throws off my timing.”
The door opens then, and Archer comes in.
“Hey,” he says to everyone. He kneels down to open his bass case and looks at me. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi.” I can’t keep from smiling, though I’m sure Luna is studying me.
“We’re trying ‘Open Road’ again,” James tells Archer.
“New song,” Josh tells me.
Luna sighs and slumps back in her chair. “I don’t even like this one anymore.” She holds up her rumpled notebook and looks at the page. “Is it lame to write a song about touring? I mean, is that too meta?”
“You’re too meta,” Josh says, and she sticks out her tongue at him. He does the same back to her.
“Glad to see you guys keep things mature,” I say, but it’s good to see Luna be silly.
She sits up straighter and sings the first lyric: “Lean back and see the star-strewn sky.” Her voice sounds so big in such a small room. She makes a face. “It’s not right,” she says. “Too many Ss. And the rhythm is off.”
“Star-bit,” I say.
Everyone looks at me, and Archer breaks out into a full-on smile. I’m not sure what made me think of it, or what made me say it, but I know it’s right.
“What?” Luna asks.
“Star-bit. Like, bitten by the stars? It’s surprising, a little startling. It’s a word you wouldn’t expect.” I look at James and then back to Luna. “When you put them together, those two words have . . .” I look for the right verb and then settle on it. “Fizz.”
It’s the kind of thing my favorite English teacher, Ms. Stanton, would say. I had her last year, and she was always trying to get me to work on the literary magazine. I haven’t yet, but I’m considering it for next year. Especially since I’ll have no friends at school and nothing to do. (Ha. Except seriously.) Anyway, what I like about songs is that the lyrics don’t have to make sense. They just have to sound good. It’s like poetry. The stars can’t bite the sky, I guess, except when it seems like they do. It sounds right.
Luna smiles, slow and surprised.
“Let’s try it,” she says.
James and Archer step into their places, the same spots as when they were onstage at the Tulip Club. Josh gets this focused look on his face, as if he were going to run a mile or fix a car engine, and he hits the first beats. And then, in front of me, they make a song.
It’s a quiet one, and Luna exhales the words like breath. She blows the song into the tiny room and it seeps out the open windows to the street. I think about all the people passing by and what they’ll hear of her, on their way to wherever they’re going. I wonder if they’ll stop to listen for a minute. And when she sings my line, it sounds perfect, as if the words were meant to
fit together just like that.
When they finish, Luna smiles.
“Yep,” she says.
“Yep?” I say.
She nods, still looking at me like she’s looking at something new. “Thanks, Fee.”
I can feel the smile on my own face. “Glad to be of service,” I say.
She looks down and fiddles with her guitar and Archer comes over to me. He crouches down next to me.
“Finally your lyrics got some music,” he says. He touches my bare knee gently, and the way it feels, he might as well have tiny firecrackers in his fingertips. “They deserve it.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” he says, his voice low.
I nod.
“What are you doing later?”
A sparkling feeling spreads up from my stomach. Really I just want to kiss him again, right now, but not in this room with my sister watching.
“We’re busy later,” Luna says, ten steps away.
I look at her. “We are?”
“And anyway . . .” Luna stands up. “She’s seventeen, Archer.” There’s a hard edge to her voice, a broken asphalt heat and scrape.
I step toward her, and I can hear my sandals on the wood floor.
“And you’re nineteen,” I say. “And living with your boyfriend.” But Luna isn’t looking at me. She’s standing with her shoulders angled straight at Archer, and now he’s standing too.
“I know she’s seventeen.” Archer is shaking his head slightly, as if he can’t believe they’re having this conversation. “I’ll take care of her, Luna.”
Luna purses her lips. “She’s my sister. I’ll take care of her.”
I look at James, who is sitting, but still clutching his guitar as if he’s afraid to put it down.
“I can take care of myself,” I say, but no one is listening to me. I feel invisible and mute, and if I’ve slipped through a doorway to some other dimension. I don’t know how to make this stop.
Archer’s shoulders are straight and square in his T-shirt. “Have you thought about what Phoebe wants, Luna?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re so mad at your dad, but maybe Phoebe wants to see him.”
“What?” She turns away from him, shaking her head. “Our father isn’t interested in us.”
“Luna, this is crap,” Archer says. “Your dad wants to see you.”
I’m trying to catch Archer’s eye, trying to stop this, but he won’t look at me.
“You act like he couldn’t care less, but he does. He’d be happy to see you.”
Luna won’t stop shaking her head, her hair brushing her shoulders. She looks fierce but small, and she’s starting to look a little less sure. “If that were true, he’d have made it happen.”
“He tried, Luna! He came to our show.” Archer doesn’t say: and you hid in the back room. He takes a breath and lets it out through his nose.
Josh is watching the conversation like a tennis match, following Luna and Archer with his eyes. James puts his guitar in a stand and sits down on a folding chair near the window.
Luna kneels down by her bag and starts rummaging through it, but what she’s looking for, I don’t know.
“This is a guy who has been gone, completely missing from our lives, for three years,” she says. “Now I’m in the city and it’s convenient enough to see me? Because he only has to take the train?”
“Fine,” Archer says. “Be mad. I get it. But we could use his help. He’d record us, for free, I’m one hundred percent sure.”
I gasp without meaning to, but Luna doesn’t hear it.
“How?” Luna asks. “How are you so sure?”
Archer looks at me. Finally. But now I don’t really care anymore. I throw up my hands.
“Why the hell not?” I say to him.
Archer turns his head toward Luna. “Because I know,” he says.
“You’re going to have to elaborate,” James says. He’s sitting up straight in his chair.
“Because we saw him,” I say.
Luna snaps her gaze toward me. “Who did?”
“Archer and me. I was the one who wanted to go. I convinced him to come with me.”
“I’ll bet,” Luna says.
“Hey,” says Archer. “This isn’t even about me.”
She whips her head toward him. “I say no, so you go through my sister?”
“I wanted to go!” I say. “It was me!”
Luna shakes her head. She’s pacing now, like a wild cat, near the window. I can see a strip of sky over the roof of the building across the street, glossy blue like bright tile. Like the skies children draw in their pictures. I figure it’s time to tell the truth, or whatever part of it I can get out right now.
“We went to his show last night, Luna. He invited us.” I’m trying to get her to look at me. “He put us on the list.”
Luna opens her mouth and then closes it. She blinks.
“Okay,” James says, and his calm voice sounds like river water. It runs over stones; it rounds sharp edges. “Let’s all take a breath.” He says this and I do, but I might be the only one in the room who’s breathing.
“Archer has a point,” James says. “We’re working really hard, Luna. And you have this connection that could make everything easier. It’s frustrating sometimes.” He presses his lips together and waits for her to say something.
“So you want me to call up my dad, who basically abandoned us, who doesn’t give a shit about us—”
“He does,” I say. And it’s true, isn’t it? He must care, at least a little. He was glad to see me. I know he was.
“Think about it this way,” James says. “We’re planning on recording in some crappy little studio, when your dad is Kieran Ferris.”
“So that’s why you want me around?” Luna says this, but I can’t believe she really thinks it. It’s so obvious James would love her no matter who her father was.
“No,” James says. “I think it should be pretty clear that that isn’t why I want you around, since I’ve never even met the guy. I want you around for yourself. But it pisses me off that you won’t even consider it.”
Luna stands and faces him. “Well, then you’ll just have to be pissed.”
James looks at her then, a long look like he’s trying to remember who she is just then. Then he stands up too.
“Okay,” he says. “But you should think about telling the truth.” He turns and walks out the door.
Luna’s face is still stony, but I can see her mouth start to crumple. The room is so quiet we can hear James’s steps as he walks down the hall and down the stairs. We hear the door shut.
Josh clears his throat. “I’m hungry,” he says. “Anyone feel like tacos?” He waits for a moment and when no one says anything, he turns and follows James out the door.
“No one’s asking you to make a decision today, Luna,” Archer says. He’s right, he’s being reasonable, but I can’t stand the way she looks right now, lost and sad. And right now, I can’t stand the fact that some boy thinks he knows what’s right for me—for Luna, too—even if he’s right.
“Let her be,” I say to him. “If she doesn’t want his help, then she doesn’t.”
Archer puts his bass back in its case. He clicks it shut: one, two, three latches.
“Sure. What do I know?” Archer says.
He stands up then, leaving his bass on the floor, and steps over it. He walks through the doorway to the hall, to the street, to wherever.
The whole time, he doesn’t look at me once.
forty
LUNA DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING FOR the whole walk back to her building. She carries her guitar case without swinging it, most of the time managing to keep it parallel with the sidewalk. It keeps bumping my leg until I move a little closer to the street. I touch some of the lampposts as we walk, for luck or out of nervousness, I’m not sure which. I try not to look at Luna. I look at the sky, clear and blue, golden light collecting around the tops of buildings. I haven’t che
cked my phone, but it has to be close to dinnertime, since the subway was full of commuters in sneakers or flip-flops with their skirt suits. When we pass people, I make eye contact because I know she won’t. I imagine her gliding along next to me like some kind of hovercraft, fueled only by her anger.
At the corner of Court and Schermerhorn, a tall, thin guy with a few days’ worth of beard leans against a newspaper box across from the bookstore.
“Hey, girl,” he says to Luna. “Smile a little.”
Luna stops. She turns toward him, standing flat against the window so I can see the reflection of the back of her head. She angles her shoulders in his direction and it seems like the air shifts around us, whirling in a miniature tornado. I hold my breath. I’m waiting to see an impromptu demonstration of the famous Luna Ferris Fury.
But then she whirls back the other way, the air shifts back, and she keeps walking. It takes me a couple of steps to catch up.
She glances at me sideways, looking at me for the first time on our entire trip home. “I really fucking hate it when guys tell me to smile.”
I sidestep behind her to avoid a garbage can on the sidewalk.
“They never tell me that,” I say. “Which can only be because I’m always smiling, or because no one notices I’m not.” I look at Luna and I can tell I’m chattering to no one. She unlocks the front door to her building and swings her guitar and herself inside the foyer, then starts to climb the stairs. I just follow.
Upstairs, she opens the door to her apartment, sets the guitar case on the floor, and sits down on the couch. I figure that since she’s lounging in what’s basically the middle of my bedroom for the week, she doesn’t want to be alone. So I take off my sandals and walk over to sit down in the armchair across from her. I pull my legs to my chest. She doesn’t look at me, just keeps her eyes trained on the ceiling.
I think about putting on a record, but I don’t want to move from this spot until she talks to me.
“Maybe you can tell me how you do it.” I run my fingers over the arm of the chair.
“How I do what?” She sounds tired, and her voice is so quiet I tip my ear closer to her without meaning to.
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