Lunatic Fringe

by Allison Moon

  “Do you need any more help?” Lexie asked.

  “No, I’m good here. Thanks for sticking around.” Archer slid her sunglasses in place, reflecting Lexie’s face back at her. “Putting your life in order might be a good idea. Don’t you have anyone to call?” She gestured to the hole gaping in the side of the dormitory, as gruesome as a head wound.

  Lexie’s stomach twisted at the thought of sorting out her life. She shrugged, feeling like an irresponsible child for wanting to walk away from the catastrophe.

  “I don’t want to stay with some new kid in German House tonight. But I don’t want to stay with my dad either. I don’t have anyplace to go,” she said before recalling the Den. “Nowhere comfortable at least.” The truth of the statement depressed Lexie as much as it surprised her to have said it aloud.

  Archer stared at Lexie, unblinking, for a long moment. Finally, she spoke. “Have you heard of the Full Moon Tribe?”

  Lexie had. Growing up, every once in a while she’d overhear a dreadlocked drifter mention the party. It had been going on every month for at least the past twelve years. In high school some of her friends tried to go, only to be foiled by their parents. At the time, Lexie had been relieved; the party sounded far too strange for her tastes. Stories would spring up around her classmates of bad acid trips that left drowning victims in the river, pagan orgies, and once, even a bear mauling. Lexie suspected that at least the latter of these stories was an urban legend spurred by excessive drinking and house music, but she was intimidated nonetheless. That Archer was involved seemed doubly strange and disconcerting.

  “It’s happening tonight,” Archer continued. Lexie furrowed her brow. Hadn’t there already been a full moon at the beginning of the month? Archer replied as though she’d heard the unspoken question. “It’s a blue moon!” Her face animated, as though she was a girl no older than Lexie, excited and eager. “Only happens once a year. Got to experience it when you can.” She winked with a sly grin. “Perhaps it’ll buy you some time while you figure out where you want to be.”

  “What about the rares?”

  Archer just shrugged in response. First Blythe and now Archer; no one seemed to be as concerned about the beasts as she’d expected. Maybe Lexie’s father was right: the whole town of Milton underestimated the animals.

  Lexie’s first instinct was to say no. While she had no legitimate reason beyond her own intimidation of beautiful strangers and creepy folk tales, saying yes seemed outside the realm of reality for her. Then Lexie cursed herself, remembering her commitment to the “yes” game. So far it had gotten her a kiss and a potentially life-saving sleepover, which was powerful evidence of its efficacy. She was compelled to say yes, but felt that in doing so, she would be taking the first step in a direction she had never planned to pursue. She had just started making new friends in the Pack, and following Archer felt like a departure from them, though she couldn’t say why.

  Archer broke Lexie’s hesitation by lowering her chin to peer over the frames of her sunglasses. She stared into Lexie’s eyes, her right eye shimmering like river water, her left like polished bronze. “Meet me there?”

  Say something, cried Lexie’s brain. She swallowed. Archer is waiting for you. Say something! Archer stared. Say! Something! her brain screamed. Like snow tires grasping traction, she sputtered forward.

  “Where?” Lexie asked, her thighs seizing with terrified joy.

  Archer smiled and slid in behind the steering wheel. “Follow the river south of town. Then just follow the sound,” she said, and she was off, the dismembered tree rattling in her truck like a skeleton.

  Inside Lexie’s demolished dorm room, broken glass covered her faded quilt, and chunks of concrete and stray leaves littered the carpet. Her Abnormal Psychology text sat in a pool of water on the desk, soaking the night’s storm into each page of theory and conjecture. The text on the pages curved in slow undulations moving in three dimensions, like a thick paintbrush drawn across a rock face. The hamper, which in revealing its secrets brought Lexie to Archer’s hand, lay on its side like a binge drinker after a long night, its contents sprawled out in a colorful splatter from its mouth.

  Lexie peered out from the hole in the wall as if from the belly of a great beast. A breeze swirled through the gap, sending a chill across Lexie’s collarbone. She dug through her pile of laundry on the floor, locating her favorite red hoodie. She shook it, finding it dry and glass-shard-free. There wasn’t much left to survey. Strewn possessions all, none compelling her to claim ownership. Her computer was in her backpack, safe in her truck. Milton would outfit her with replacements for her academic essentials. The rest was lost to an act of nature. Lexie wondered why she had been so mortified earlier to see this space gutted in front of her peers. There was nothing of her here. She had no trouble walking away.

  She scanned for a belonging to tie her to this place, a proof that, even for a few weeks, she had once existed here and called it “home.” A glimmer of her mother’s spirit graced her. She realized that the accepted anchors of life were nothing more than circuitry, plastic and fiber, and that perhaps the only anchor that mattered was love, though she saw no evidence of that here. Lexie gazed on her crumpled possessions, seeing them as little more than flotsam on a beach, tangled bits of inessential life, purged to make room for something new. She grabbed a couple of t-shirts and pairs of underwear from the pile on the floor, some notebooks, and the one salvageable textbook, before slipping back out into the hall, abandoning the rest of the refuse for good.

  She was searching her pockets for her car keys when she heard a voice.

  “Lexie! Hey!” It was Duane. Just what she needed.

  “Hey.” She held her breath and smiled, shifting the weight of her bag from one shoulder to the other.

  “Oh God, I’m so glad you’re okay! Crazy, huh?” Duane was such a nice guy, she hated resenting him. Seeing him smile widely, his eyes bright and focused on her, Lexie truly felt he was a different species, one that was a native in any environment, while she didn’t even belong in the one she was born into.

  “How is everything?” Duane said, oblivious to her resentment.

  Lexie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking through the hole in her room’s wall to the lawn beyond, where she had just met Archer. She smiled and shrugged.

  “Oh. Right. Aside from the obvious, I guess.” His grin softened into sympathy.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was out on a run, and Brian texted me,” he said.

  “You went running at eight a.m. on a Saturday?”

  “I started at six-thirty. Getting to know the area. It’s really pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “It’s not Wolf Creek, at least.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, I like to think so. If you squint in the right way, you’d think we were in Amherst.”

  Lexie grinned despite herself, just as Brian reappeared like a greasy apparition and draped his arms around them both. The boys slapped each other’s chests in greeting and Duane said, “Hey Lexie, Brian and I are grabbing breakfast. You wanna come along?”

  Brian looked at Lexie. “Yeah, cutie. You can tell us all about the hot muff-dive that saved your life.” He winked in a way that Lexie only ever saw from Hollywood Lotharios. But here a real-life Lothario was, not nearly as charming as he thought he was. She wondered if he got away with the act because he was handsome or rich. It was probably both, and the cruel irony of an unjust world pinched her like a horsefly bite.

  “No, thanks. I have to figure out where I’m sleeping tonight.” Lexie shifted her bag to her other shoulder, ready to move for the exit.

  “Hey,” Brian said, setting his shoulders. “My door is always open. You can even be the big spoon.” Brian winked again and slapped Lexie on the shoulder, giving it a little squeeze before letting go. Unpleasant chills spread out from where he touched her.

  “Since when are you guys frie
nds?” Lexie asked Duane.

  “Duane’s one of us now,” Brian interjected. “Or he will be by the time the month is out. Phi Kappa Phi, brother!” He raised his hand for a high-five, which Duane met.

  “So you sure you’re not coming with, Lex?” Brian continued. “I’ll let you have my sausage.”

  Duane shook his head with a chuckle and patted Brian’s chest. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Duane led him away as Brian called down the hall, “And go easy on the lezzie stuff, Lex! Bi is great, just don’t go over the edge, for my sake!”

  They disappeared around the corner. Lexie exhaled and escaped in the opposite direction before anyone else could waylay her.

  Safe in the cab of her truck she breathed a relieved sigh and turned the ignition, the shudder of the engine stirring her awake. The heater blasted, drying the fog on the windshield. Lexie spun the dial of the analog radio, dowsing for stations between the static. She fell upon a plaintive solo guitar, resonating in the wide open space of an empty concert hall. The college station, she assumed. The guitar’s vibrations soothed her soul, beating back her yearning for a big room to curl up in, empty but for her presence.

  She had two choices. Home or elsewhere. But the question wasn’t an honest one, for home felt less like home than elsewhere. She rested her chin on the steering wheel, wondering where a new home might be tonight. She cracked her knuckles and steered west.

  Chapter 7

  Blythe’s house was cold and dark, standing like a shadow at the edge of the woods. Even the early evening shouts from the student union, no more than a hundred yards away, could not shock this scene to life. A chilly autumnal wind chased crispy leaves down the center of the street: the Pacific Northwest tumbleweed. Somewhere in the distance, a bottle shattered.

  Lexie killed her headlights as she parked along the curb. Despite the dearth of souls, she walked to the front door and knocked three times. She adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder, shifting her weight from leg to leg. She heard nothing from inside the house: no bedsprings creaking, no whispered conversations on the patio. Perhaps she should have stayed at the library and dug into her required reading. No one was home.

  Lexie dropped her bag on the porch, developing a new plan. The full moon crested on the horizon, swollen and red. It illuminated the street, which still glistened from the rain the night before. Beyond the distant voices of the student union, where her peers smoked and drank in casual pre-party conversation, Lexie heard the Rogue River rushing through the forest behind the house. The river’s source was not far north of Milton, maybe a hundred miles, where a mountain rose near the coast. The river fed Milton and many other towns along its course, including Wolf Creek. Her hometown, like Milton and the others, depended on this river to power the mills at which most residents made their living. Tonight the river was ravenous, having been fed by the prior evening’s tempest. Lexie closed her eyes and tracked the sound of its rushing waters, so loud they overwhelmed the sounds from the union, from the leaves on the street, even the sound of her breathing.

  As if encouraged by the river itself, a warm wetness spread out of her. It felt sexy, for the briefest moment, before she jolted with panic. Lexie hastily inserted her fingers under her waistband and into her panties, pulling them back out when she encountered that wetness. The blood was black in the moonlight.

  “Shit, shit, fuck,” she cursed under her breath as her abdomen roiled. She hurried to her truck, thankful for the catastrophe that caused her to roam like a transient, her duffel bag stuffed with random clothes and toiletries. She dug in the bag for the small box of tampons, grazing the leather sheath of her mother’s knife. It was warmer than she would have expected, considering the chill of the night. Her finger slid over the moonstone inlaid in the handle and Lexie thought of Archer’s right eye, which shone an identical blue.

  Perched on the driver’s seat, Lexie maneuvered a tampon into place, cursing her body’s timing and her brain’s short memory. Crunched up in the seat, her breath glossed over the back window, appearing and dissipating, a visible reminder of her own vital rhythms.

  She caught her reflection in the rearview mirror, and noticed the subtle, rhythmic vibration of the glass. A drum beat. At first it was just a few isolated beats, but as she tuned her ears to their deep pitch, she heard more.

  The echo of drums vibrated the glass, shaking loose her foggy breath. It was unsettling, this rhythm, but Lexie knew what it was, and she knew she wanted to see it. Changing into a fresh, long-sleeved thermal t-shirt and jeans, she shook out her hair and glanced into the rearview mirror, then Lexie started up the truck and headed downriver towards the Full Moon Tribe.

  Nervous nausea washed through Lexie as she killed her engine at the forest’s edge. The rhythm that lured her here invigorated the gathering. People milled around the grass, mud clinging to their fashionable leather boots. The drum circle was ten strong--all fit, shirtless men, and one dreadlocked girl who stood with a djembe suspended from her neck. A small fire burned in the center of the circle, around which two women and a man danced in a near-trance. The man ran his hands over his naked, hairless torso with the care and passion of a new lover. The women swayed and swirled with their eyes closed, skirts spinning around their legs. One reached skyward, tracing the fire’s smoke with her fingers. She hummed tiny noises of pleasure and appreciation. The drummers whomped the skins, focused yet relaxed. Their hands moved so fast that Lexie couldn’t track them no matter how intently she stared. Some smiled great gleaming grins, some caught their lips between their teeth in concentration, some watched the dancers with soft eyes, as if it were the dancers that dictated the rhythm and not the drummers.

  Outside the circle another woman hula-hooped. A man sat in the dirt, just beyond the perihelion of her hoop, studying her movements like an acolyte. Beyond them all, at the edge of the woods, a girl Lexie recognized from the dining hall twirled two glowing balls at the end of chains. She bent and leapt, keeping the balls chasing after one another in great, glowing arcs. Her bra, trimmed with metal disks, chimed as she danced.

  On the other side of the clearing, a pair of young men in feathered fedoras hooked up two stacks of speakers to a mixing board. Though the combined populations of Wolf Creek and Milton totaled no more than five-thousand people, Lexie only recognized a handful of the attendees as fellow students or townies.

  She scanned the scene for Archer, both excited and terrified of finding her face among the rest. Deeper in the glen, close to the edge of the forest, burned another campfire. A small group of people sat around it on thick logs and canvas camp chairs. It looked warm and calm, removed from the center of the party, a good place to gather her nerve.

  Lexie ventured in that direction. As she approached, she noticed a young man who cradled a guitar in his lap. His black hair gleamed in the moonlight, an obsidian blade down his back. He balanced the guitar on his thighs and held his red guitar pick in his lips as he gathered his hair in a fist at the back of his neck, pulling the length over his shoulder to braid it as deftly as a mermaid might. When he finished the braid, he wound it into a bun and eased a rubber band on to secure it. He looked like an Elizabethan princess, the braid curled as it was on his head. Plucking the pick from between his lips, he began to play. It was a simple, gentle melody, lilting over the urgent drums; it made no attempt to compete with them, nor did it need to.

  From her vantage in the shadows, Lexie scanned the other firelit faces. Two people had their backs to her; the rest she did not recognize. She walked ahead, trying to stoke her confidence, reminding herself that she had been invited. The melody rose as the thud of drums waned. She smiled. The guitarist nodded at her with a crooked smile, inviting her to join and listen.

  A boy in the camp chair next to her passed her a frosty can of beer, which seemed like an unseasonable choice, considering the nip in the air. She took it and clipped the top open. As she took her first sip, a figure emerged from the woods, lean and strong, a splendid woman�
��s silhouette. Broad shoulders slid down a powerful rib cage, easing in to a narrow waist and then out to full, sturdy hips. Archer.

  Lexie’s breath caught in her chest, and she looked back to the fire, wondering if Archer had noticed her staring. Unable to stand not knowing, Lexie looked back up. Archer raised her open palm in greeting. Lexie’s face flooded with warmth; she hoped the fire would hide her blush. She scooted to the edge of her log, making space, and Archer sat. A fine sheen of sweat covered her bare arms and sternum. Her forehead glowed golden in the firelight, as if she had just been running. Their eyes met, the only noises Archer’s heavy breath, the distant din of drums, the crackling fire, the rushing river, and the guitar’s lilting melody. Archer’s eyes danced like gilded jewels, hot and cold, fire and stone. Spectacular.

  Just as Lexie thought her heart could seize no further with the dazzling terror of their meeting, Archer placed her hand on Lexie’s and leaned into her ear.

  “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  The heat of Archer’s breath washed down her neck. Lexie was silent, afraid this was a backhanded criticism, until Archer continued, “but I’m really glad you did.”

  She pulled back to look into Lexie’s face again. Their eyes locked. Lexie wanted to look away, but she couldn’t and Archer wouldn’t. They remained gaze-locked for such a long time that Lexie was sure people had noticed. She tore her eyes from Archer’s, glanced around the fire circle, and saw that each of the fire-gazers were deep into their own stories, no one noticing her moment with Archer. Lexie removed her hand from Archer’s to grab the beer from between her knees. She took a swig, her feigned confidence shredded.

  Archer broke the tension, “I like that you’re okay with silence.”

  Lexie laughed as she took another sip of beer, “Yeah, people think I’m shy.” She shrugged, “I just think most people talk too much without having anything to say.”

  Archer nodded. “In my experience, the things that are most worth saying are those that need the fewest words.”