The Storyteller

by Aaron Starmer

  Right, Stella? Are you ready for it? Will you protect it?

  THE PHOSPHORESCENT WOMBAT

  In a place where the pines were thick, along a country road with dandelions sprouting from the cracks, a wombat wobbled under the weight of a sign that hung around her neck.

  PERFECTLY FINE WOMBAT, the sign read.

  It was raining, the drops coming down hard, massaging the wombat’s head and back. It was a warm day, so the rain wasn’t a bad thing. It was quite pleasant, actually. A lovely sort of rain.

  Sprinting through the forest and down the road, with plastic tubs of wild black raspberries they’d picked, a girl named Rosie and her younger brother named Hamish came upon the wombat. “Well, look at that,” Rosie said.

  “Ugliest puppy I’ve ever seen,” Hamish said.

  “It isn’t a puppy,” Rosie said. “That there is a wombat.”

  “A womwhat?”

  “Wombat. From Australia. Like a koala that can’t climb. Or a kangaroo that can’t jump.”

  Hamish got down on all fours for a closer look. Water dripped from his floppy bangs. “Then what does he do?” he asked.

  Rosie didn’t need to get on all fours to answer. “First off, he’s a she. Notice the lack of dangly bits. And why does she have to do anything?”

  Hamish leaned in closer, until the wombat showed her teeth. He pulled back, pushed his bangs up, and said, “Everything needs a purpose. Guess hers is to be mean and ugly.”

  “You’re mean and ugly,” Rosie said, a comment that made the wombat smile. At least it looked like a smile. Maybe it was gas.

  Whatever the case, Rosie whistled a welcoming whistle and the wombat waddled over to her, stood up on her hind legs, and swayed because of the weight of the sign around her neck. Rosie bent down and picked the wombat up.

  “Show-off,” Hamish said.

  “Perfectly fine wombat,” Rosie said, bobbing her chin at the sign because she needed both hands to hold the slippery beast. “Means she’s fine and perfect and I’m taking her home.”

  “Means she’s perfectly fine,” Hamish said. “That’s entirely different. Might as well be spectacularly regular.”

  Rosie stuck out her tongue and set off down the road with the wombat under her arm. When Rosie was only twenty feet or so away, Hamish could barely see her, on account of all the rain. But he could see a faint glow.

  Yes, that perfectly fine wombat was glowing.

  * * *

  They took the wombat home. Well, to their summer home, a small cabin on the rocky coast of an island in the Atlantic. Their parents asked the standard questions:

  What are you going to feed it?

  Where will it sleep?

  Who’s going to clean up after it?

  Rosie gave three answers:

  Table scraps.

  In my bed.

  Hamish.

  Hamish didn’t object. He knew Rosie could convince their parents of just about anything, and if he was forced to live with this wombat, then he’d rather clean up her poop than have her sleep in his bed, especially since she glowed.

  “It’ll be like having a night-light pressed against your face while you sleep,” he told Rosie. “No thank you.”

  “Oh, come on, she doesn’t glow that much,” she replied. And she was right. At first. But, like a dimmer on a lamp slowly turned up, the wombat was getting brighter day by day. They didn’t notice the brightening during those first few weeks, but they did decide to name her Luna, on account of the fact that in the nighttime, she resembled the moon.

  Rosie gave Luna showers every day, hoping to wash off whatever it was that made her fur glow. Luna adored the showers, but no matter what or how much soap Rosie used, the glow remained.

  “Do you think she’s sick?” Hamish asked one afternoon. Though he’d been resistant to Luna initially, the boy had come to truly care for her.

  “Dr. Hoover will know,” Rosie replied.

  Dr. Hoover was a veterinarian who lived on the island with a menagerie of animals—dogs, cats, goats, parrots, ferrets, snakes, and other things. She had years of experience with all sorts of beasts, even a wombat or two. However, Dr. Hoover had no idea what was wrong with Luna.

  Standing back from the examining table where Luna sat and munched on a radish, Dr. Hoover cocked her head and shrugged. “Seems perfectly healthy. She’s small. A juvenile. Maybe she’ll grow out of it. Or maybe it’s some sort of genetic mutation.”

  “Cooool,” Hamish said, because all the genetic mutations he knew about were from comic books and resulted in superpowers.

  It was hard to say whether Luna’s glow counted as a superpower, but it certainly got her plenty of attention. Rosie and Hamish would walk her on a leash along the roads of the island, where cars and bikes would stop and people would gawk.

  “She’s a wonder, isn’t she?” Rosie said to a man who slowed down his convertible to have a look one afternoon.

  “She most certainly is,” the man replied, and he handed Rosie a business card.

  Rosie read the writing aloud. “Hal Hawson, Hollywood Producer.”

  “I’m heading back to LA tomorrow, but call the number on the back. That … whatever that thing is … needs to be on TV. And I’ve got the perfect project in mind. It might mean your parents can quit their jobs.”

  Before Rosie could flip the card over to read the phone number, the convertible was speeding away.

  * * *

  A week later, their family was in California. Luna was fitted for a tuxedo and scheduled to appear on Pocketful of Hullabaloo, a daytime variety show popular with folks who thought women in leotards juggling chain saws was the height of human achievement. Luna’s job there was a simple one: sit at the back of the stage, tuxedoed and atop a Grecian pillar. And glow. That was it.

  It became a regular gig. There was a promise of paychecks that Hal Hawson honored with a wink and a smile. And for one hour a day, Luna wasn’t Luna. She was a wombat lamp known as Mr. Nickelsworth.

  Sometimes, one of the performers would turn to Luna and say, “What do you think about that, Mr. Nickelsworth?”

  Luna, being a wombat and all, couldn’t reply, so she simply sat there on the pillar glowing, and the performer would invariably make some joke like, “Well, you’re very bright, Nickelsworth, but you aren’t very bright.”

  The studio audience found these jokes hilarious every time.

  The family bought a house near the TV studio, and Rosie ferried Luna to work in the basket of her bike. Every other Tuesday, they’d stop to deposit Luna’s sizable paycheck in the family account at the Sunfirst Bank, where Rosie always told the teller, “Soon as this wombat can talk, we’ll cut her in on the dough.”

  Without fail, the teller would chuckle and shake his head and stamp the receipt.

  But back at home, Rosie’s father was noticing something. “Is it just me, or is Luna not growing?”

  Her mother was noticing something too. “Is it just me, or is Luna’s fur getting even brighter?”

  It wasn’t just them. Luna was the same size she was the afternoon they’d found her, which was tiny for a wombat, but her fur, once mocha-brown, had more of a shine to it every day, a neon green tinge.

  It hardly mattered, though. Luna was famous, or as famous as a wombat could be. The studio audience at Pocketful of Hullabaloo would hold up signs that said things like A NICKELSWORTH IS WORTH A DOLLAR, AT LEAST! And after each taping of the show, they’d ask for autographs. Hamish would take the scraps of paper, the photos of Luna, and anything else the fans wanted signed and he’d bring them backstage, where he’d sign them himself.

  Shine on! Love, Mr. Nickelsworth, he’d always write. And people were more than grateful. All things considered, there were worse fates than being a shiny runt of a wombat.

  No one ever asked Luna how she felt about her life, though. If they had asked, she might have wiggled her feet and showed her teeth, which was the only way she knew how to communicate. She would have tried her best b
ut failed to explain that she enjoyed wearing the tuxedo and bicycling in the wind and falling asleep when rain was pattering on the roof, that she liked the feeling of Rosie’s sharp—but not too sharp—nails on the soft spot behind her ear, that she adored it when Rosie would give her a shower because the water on her head felt like liquid sunshine and always reminded her of that day along the road when Rosie first found her, that she didn’t care much for the taste of radishes but loved how they crunched, and that she didn’t remember where she lived, or who with, or what she did in those days before Rosie and Hamish spotted her along the side of the road.

  As for not growing, and as for the glow in her fur, she would have said that this worried her. She would have confessed that deep down, she knew something was wrong. But she also would have said that she didn’t think about it too much. Mostly, she thought about food.

  That’s right. Luna had ideas and emotions, but there was no way that anyone could tell. To the world, she was simply a dim-witted, dimly lit marsupial. Little did they know, she was so much more than that.

  TO BE CONTINUED …

  THURSDAY, 11/30/1989

  AFTERNOON

  To be continued is a terrible thing, I know. But life is to be continued. You want to be continued as long as possible. Which makes me sad about my walk to school this morning. As I rounded the corner toward the parking lot, I saw a dead baby bird on the sidewalk. It’s almost December. I didn’t know birds had babies so late in the year. But there it was, nearly see-through and dead. Tiny. A baby hummingbird.

  Sure, it reminds me of the story I wrote about the jogger named Justine Barlow, and I want to say it’s only a coincidence. And it probably is. But maybe it’s also an omen. Telling me that good news might not be good news after all. Because there was good news this morning. Plenty of it.

  Before leaving for school, before the baby bird, I called Mandy and told her I was dating Glen Maple. Instead of telling me I’m crazy or pretending to throw up, she said, “That is so awesome. I am so happy for you.”

  Which was … good.

  A minute after I hung up, just as I was about to step out the door, the phone rang. I figured it would be Mandy calling back to say, “Ha, ha! It’s Opposite Day! Glen Maple is gross. Why would you ever want to date him?”

  But it wasn’t. It was Mr. Dwyer. Charlie and Kyle’s dad. He had some even better news. Or so it seemed.

  Kyle Dwyer is awake.

  THE STATEMENT OF KYLE DWYER

  It wasn’t too late, but it was dark out. Sunday, November nineteenth, right? Yeah, had to be. Because Saturday was the eighteenth. I know because Saturday was Jared’s birthday, and he couldn’t celebrate on Saturday because his parents had a whole fancy dinner for him with his grandma and grandpa and everyone. So that’s why we went out on Sunday. Had a few beers by the silos at the Finnerman farm. Didn’t get plastered or anything. Played the radio, sat in the back of the van as the rain came down. Four of us. Kim and Heather were there too.

  We talked about stuff, Fiona Loomis mostly. She’d been gone for at least two weeks, I think, which is, like, forever for a kid to be missing. Seemed even longer because we actually kinda knew her. We polished off the twelver around, I don’t know, seven thirty or eight, and I was feeling really bummed out. Been a rough month around here, ever since Charlie blew his fingers off.

  I dropped everyone back at their places and I felt like driving to clear my head, but the rain was coming down harder and it was a bitch to see out the windshield, so I headed home.

  A couple of weeks before, on Halloween actually, Alistair Cleary told me that he was afraid that Fiona’s uncle was some sort of psycho, the type looking to hurt kids. It’s funny, I thought the guy’s name was Damien for the longest time, which is totally a psycho name. But it’s Dorian. Close enough.

  I couldn’t be sure that Alistair’s suspicions were true, but after Charlie lost his fingers, I wasn’t taking any chances on any other kids getting hurt. So I drove to Syracuse a few days later, to this street I heard about, a place where people score. Salina? Yeah, Salina. Like salt. I started asking around about getting a piece, and a guy shows up in a red Trans-Am. Skin was a little dark. Maybe Mexican, I don’t know. Didn’t ask. Didn’t care. Didn’t even get a name. In the parking lot of a hot dog place, he sold me that pistol. Two hundred bucks. Money I’d saved for a rainy day.

  How ’bout that? A rainy day.

  (Laugh)

  Anyway, reason I bought it was because we have Neighborhood Watch here, but has that ever amounted to anything? Think of all the stuff I’ve gotten away with over the years.

  (Laugh)

  Actually, don’t.

  Point is, if there’s some psycho roaming our streets and the cops aren’t doing anything about it, then it’s on people like me to keep the peace. I told Dorian as much. Out in that field where he flies his toy planes. But then you know all that, right? We went over this before when you were looking for Fiona.

  Best place I could think to hide the gun was in my old clubhouse. No one uses that shack but stray cats. So I put it in a crawl space underneath some old signs. Anyway, on that night, Sunday the nineteenth, I got home and I went to check on the gun, make sure it wasn’t getting soaked by the rain. Not sure if that would ruin it, but what do I know?

  I pulled it out and I was sitting in the clubhouse with it in my hand and I was pointing it at the cats and going blam, blam, blam, pretending to pick them off one by one. Kinda sick, I know, but I was trying to get my mind off what I really was thinking about. Which was … shameful. We all have our problems. Some of us, me at least, aren’t always the best at dealing with them.

  I don’t know what Alistair and Charlie were doing, but they showed up in the yard. To feed the cats, I guess. Or maybe collect rainwater. They had a glass pitcher with them. Or maybe a vase. I don’t know, something glass. They’re goofy kids like that. Always have been.

  They must have heard me in the clubhouse, because Alistair slipped in right as I was turning the gun to my head. Not my proudest moment. But, you know, I was bummed, it was raining, and I had a few beers in me.

  Alistair, being, like, the best kid there is, tried to stop me. Instinct told him to grab the gun, and so he went for it. He pulled it down, and I pulled it back. It went off.

  Now Alistair is going to tell you that he pulled the trigger, maybe even that the gun was his, but it’s only because he’s covering for me. Because he knows I’ve got a record, what with the knife thing and all that other business.

  Or maybe he’s confused. Craziness like this happens and a kid like him won’t know what’s what. His brain will start making things up. Trauma will do that to people.

  Truth is the truth, though. It was me. It was always me.

  The shot didn’t take me out, obviously, so I stumbled into the yard to lie down. Alistair ran off to call 911, and Charlie was crouched by my side, trying to help. He’s a good kid, Charlie. He cares a lot. Really does.

  That’s all I remember. I blacked out after that. I have no idea what happened to Charlie. I wish I did. Man, do I wish.

  FRIDAY, 12/8/1989

  EVENING

  Sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all. I close my diary and stuff it under my mattress and I ask myself why I even bother. It seems so selfish, writing.

  Look at me, look at me. I’m interesting! Stop what you’re doing and look at me, for I have tales to regale you with! Hark, hark! Look at me!

  I avoid writing until I can’t avoid it anymore. Until writing comes knocking at my door like a friend I’ve neglected.

  Oh, Stella, you again? You’re so damn needy.

  Alas, I have returned because I had to share Kyle Dwyer’s “statement.” I found it in Dad’s briefcase yesterday. I know I wasn’t supposed to see it, but the briefcase was next to the couch and Mom and Dad and Alistair were in the kitchen and …

  Okay. I’m lying again. Why do I lie to you, Stella? Because you’re judgy, Stella. You judge.

 
; The truth: Late last night, I was curious about what was going on with Alistair, so I got up, went into Dad’s desk, found the statement, and copied it down. It’s a transcription of what Kyle told the police a few days after he woke up. Ms. Kern must have made a copy for my parents. It’s called a statement, but I guess it’s also sort of a confession, though I don’t know what crime Kyle is confessing to. Being a suicidal dope?

  Okay, that’s not cool. I shouldn’t joke about that. I’m sorry. Just because I write something doesn’t mean that I mean it.

  Seriously, though, owning an illegal gun is probably the crime. There might be some other technical stuff that Kyle is guilty of. Endangering the welfare of a … little brother? I don’t know. The point is, Alistair is off the hook and Kyle is on it. And Kyle is the one with the hole in his belly, the one who may never walk again.

  Man oh man.

  So things have calmed down. A little. Alistair has been relatively quiet. Or he hasn’t been saying outlandish things, for what that’s worth. Of course, I haven’t told him that I’ve listened to his tape. I’m not sure what good that would do. If things are going better for him, then I should make sure they keep going better. No reason to derail any progress. Maybe the tape was some sort of inside joke. Maybe it was …

  It was weird, and I prefer not to think about it.

  There’s still no Fiona. Still no Charlie. I see the missing posters for Fiona at the post office and on utility poles outside the Skylark, and they’re already faded and brown from the weather. You know how you can make a piece of paper look old by dipping it in coffee and leaving it out in the sun? That’s how the posters look, and they’re not even a month old. The snow has been especially heavy, and we’re hardly into December.

  Glen and I have been “dating” for over a week now, and it’s actually pretty cool. We’ve had lunch together every day. We know each other’s locker combinations, so we can slip each other secret notes and gifts between classes. Glen has already given me chocolates in a heart-shaped box. I know that’s a bit of a cliché—but come on, chocolate.