Moonglow

by Michael Griffo

  Archie arrives first, acting as if he’s auditioning for a spy movie. He slowly comes around the corner and then presses his body close against the wall, every few seconds whipping his head to the left, as if convinced that he’s been followed.

  When he approaches the table, I say, “Will you sit down?”

  “With my back to the door?” he replies in a faux British accent. “Do you take me for an amateur?”

  Before he sits down, Nadine appears, looking a bit nervous and nothing like a wannabe spy. Her lace is a lot straighter than ours, so she’s afraid of getting caught. She hasn’t yet figured out that Mrs. O’Delia, the head librarian, is almost completely deaf and takes her hearing aids out before the school bells ring. Nadine also doesn’t know that Mrs. O’Delia retires this year and refuses to stay at her post a second longer than necessary. She’s put in forty-seven years of service, and she’s done.

  “Ma’am, you can chillax,” Archie says, speaking in his normal voice again. “Nobody tailed us.”

  “Sorry,” Nadine replies. “I get nervous when I break the rules, though it isn’t like we’re doing anything that could get us into trouble. Right?”

  I shake my head. “Not unless reading is no longer fundamental,” I say, holding up a thick volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. “I just wanted a place where we wouldn’t be overheard.”

  “Should I do a sweep for bugs?” Archie deadpans.

  “Quit it with the spy talk,” I say.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And stop calling everybody ma’am,” I add.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Finally, Nadine laughs, and I wonder how long it will take for me to turn her laughter into gasps of horror. Maybe I should back out? Maybe this was an incredibly stupid and foolish idea? Thinking that anyone other than me and my father could even entertain the idea that supernatural forces are at work right here in the heartland of America. But no, I made the decision to confide in them; I have to follow through. Enough of this back-and-forth ambivalence; I have to choose something and stick with it no matter what the outcome.

  “Thanks for meeting with me,” I start. “I, um, have something. . . extremely important to share with you.”

  “Me too,” Archie interrupts, pulling something out of his backpack. “Want a brownie?”

  “Archie, please!” I cry.

  “Oh I’d love one actually,” Nadine says, grabbing one from Archie. “Did you make them yourself?”

  “Nope, The Worm’s mother always bakes brownies on half days,” he explains. “Dom?”

  “No, thanks, I’m not hungry,” I reply. “I’m trying to share some important news with you.”

  Jovial expressions turn serious and then confused when I hold up the encyclopedia volume.

  “Today’s secret meeting is brought to you by the letter L?” Archie asks, chewing on a huge chunk of brownie.

  I open up the volume to the page that I previously earmarked so they can see the word that I’m not yet brave enough to say out loud in their presence.

  “You want to share with us the history of Lycra?” Nadine asks.

  “Oh my God, I love Lycra!” Archie shouts. “I bought a pair of jeans with just five percent Lycra in them. Ladies, you have no idea the difference five percent of Lycra can make; it’s like getting away with wearing leggings without the rest of the school beating you up.”

  “Not Lycra!” I scream. “The word before it.”

  Nadine and Archie peer in closer to the open page, scouring the text to figure out what I’m talking about.

  “Lycanthropy?” they ask simultaneously.

  A deep breath escapes from my nostrils. I’m so tense my lips are clamped shut. I inhale and exhale rapidly a few times, because I’m nervous and I need to work up the courage to speak. “Yes.”

  “Why did you bring us here to discuss . . .” Archie looks at the page again. “Lycanthropy?”

  “Because . . . because that’s what I have.”

  Archie looks perplexed, but I can tell that Nadine understands. At least she understands the words I’ve just spoken.

  “You think you’re a werewolf?” she asks.

  “A what?!” Archie cries.

  “I’m not sure,” I say meekly. “But there’s a very good possibility that I am.”

  After a slight pause filled with ear-shattering silence, the conversation resumes.

  “Dom, that’s ridiculous!” Archie cries. “And not even that funny. Is there like a punch line that I’m missing? Some really obscure eighties movie reference or something? ’Cause I just don’t get it.”

  “There’s no punch line,” I reply. “Just the truth about who I am or at least who I might be.”

  I know it’s only my imagination, but it sounds as if the clock in the library is actually a ticking time bomb. Someone or something is going to spontaneously combust if I don’t make them understand everything, and quickly.

  “It all has to do with the curse,” I blurt out.

  My two friends, one old and one new, look at each other, their expressions changing rapidly and ranging from disbelief to fear. They look exactly how I feel. That is until Nadine starts to laugh again, louder than I’ve ever heard her.

  “Now I get it! This is some hazing ritual you guys perform on the newbie,” she declares. “Where’s the webcam? This is being streamed live to everybody’s e-mails right? Or do you have a fan page on Facebook where everybody can download you pulling a fast one on me?”

  I reach out to grab Nadine’s hand, but when I do she flinches. Can’t blame her; she thinks I’m playing her, setting her up to be Two W’s latest fool. “No, Nadine, I swear to you this isn’t a joke,” I say. “I’m serious. I think someone put a curse on me.”

  “Dominy!” Archie finally says. “Since when have you become delusional?”

  “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “Crazy?!” Nadine cries. “Talk like this will get you thrown into The Dungeon.”

  Okay, now who’s talking crazy? “The dungeon?”

  “Official name is the First Ward,” Nadine shares. “But unofficially the staff at The Retreat calls it The Dungeon, complete with initial caps.”

  “Part of me seriously doesn’t want to know why,” Archie says. “But the other part will absolutely not rest until I know how the First Ward got its nickname. Spill it, Jaffe.”

  She’s reluctant to reveal classified information, but she relents. “Three floors below the main level is an area reserved for the true, well, the truly disturbed,” she explains. “The criminally insane, mega-violent patients, they all live down in the proverbial padded cell that’s locked with a deadbolt so the psychopaths can’t get in contact with the, um, more normal population.”

  For a moment I don’t believe Nadine. I’ve been going to The Retreat for years; certainly I would have heard about such a place. But she isn’t laughing or smiling or amending her comment with a lame “just kidding.” She’s serious.

  “Right below where my mother sleeps is a dungeon?”

  It’s Nadine’s turn to sigh deeply before she speaks. “Figuratively speaking, yes.”

  “Oh my God, have you ever been down there?” Archie asks the same question I’m thinking.

  She shakes her head. “Strictly off-limits to volunteers and visitors,” she replies.

  Before I can dwell any further on the secret lair that lies underneath my mother’s hospital room, Archie gets us back on track.

  “So, Dominy, let me get this straight,” he begins, once again speaking like a Brit. “You asked us here so you can confess that you think you’re a werewolf because someone put a curse on your head?”

  “Correct,” I confirm, not even bothering to tell him to drop the accent.

  “Absurd,” Archie counters.

  “Let me explain, and you won’t think it’s so absurd after all.”

  Crossing his arms, Archie leans back in his chair and scrutinizes me harshly before speaking. “What do you say, Nay?”
r />   Shrugging her shoulders, Nadine replies, “Well, we already missed the bus.”

  That’s enough for Archie. “You got three minutes, Robineau. Go.”

  A minute ago I didn’t think I’d have the courage to share everything with them, but now my father’s story pours out of me as simply as if I had lived it. Uninterrupted, I convey what my father told me—secret hunting trip, accidental shooting, vindictive pregnant woman, curse of the firstborn. I can’t tell if they believe me or think that I’m still playing some sort of practical joke.

  “And that’s why she put a curse on my father’s head,” I say, wrapping up the tale. “A curse on his firstborn child, me, so she could destroy his child’s life the same way he destroyed hers.”

  When I’m finished we’re all speechless. Did I just make the biggest mistake of my life trusting these two? Did I just ruin any chance I had of convincing them to join me on this journey to wherever it might lead? Did I just seal my fate and condemn myself to being known as the village idiot?

  “That is absolutely the best story ever!” Archie exclaims. “It should be front page of the Three W!”

  Or did I just become Lars Svenson’s next headline.

  “No!” I shout. “No one can know about this except us.”

  “Unless we change all the names to protect the innocent,” Nadine suggests.

  “Dom’s the only innocent one in the story,” Archie points out. “Her father’s a juvenile delinquent, and prego is a vindictive bitch! Seriously Joan Crawford and Joan Collins all rolled up into one.”

  Clearly Nadine doesn’t get the specifics of Archie’s gay references like I do, but she gets the gist of his comparison. She also gets the gist of the crazy woman’s actions.

  “Well, can you really blame this woman?” she asks. Even if it wasn’t intended to be a rhetorical question, it turns into one, because neither Archie nor I respond. “C’mon, think about it! You’re pregnant, out with your husband on a hunting trip, and before you know it he turns into the day’s bounty instead of some deer. What mother-to-be wouldn’t want some kind of revenge?”

  This is amazing! I’m not going to have to go through this alone. “So you believe me, you believe that I’m cursed!”

  “No, not at all,” Nadine replies. “In fact, it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  So much for finding a new soul mate.

  “I understand why this woman would put a curse on your dad’s head, and she probably imagined that she was successful,” Nadine explained. “But no, I do not believe that you really are cursed. That stuff’s not real.”

  She sounds just like me when I first heard the story. I bet in a day or so she’ll come around. Archie, of course, comes around a lot sooner.

  “I believe it,” Archie declares.

  “You do not!” Nadine scoffs.

  “I do too! For the past several months Dominy hasn’t been acting like herself. She’s been angry, aggressive, violent, not the frilly Domgirl we all know and love,” Archie details. “And let us not forget the hair spurt incident.”

  “So her hormones were out of whack and she got some unsightly hair on her upper lip,” Nadine says. “Big deal.”

  “You both know about that?!” I shriek.

  “It happened in my house,” Nadine reminds me. “The lighting’s not great in my basement, but, Dom, you practically had a moustache. If Caleb hadn’t been so freaked out thinking we had a rat infestation, he would’ve noticed it too.”

  “So you see it really does make sense,” I declare. “My body was starting to change as the day of the curse got closer.”

  “And when exactly was that day, Dominy?” Archie asks.

  Here comes the tricky part. Asking them to believe in a wild story is one thing. Asking them to accept that it may be connected to Jess’s death is another.

  “My sixteenth birthday,” I reply warily. “The same age my father was when he killed that man.”

  Before Nadine speaks, I can feel the silence invade our space. It’s not just that we’re probably the only three students left in the school; it’s the feeling you get just before your innocence is taken away, just before you hear your first bad word or the first time you see something sexual in a movie. You can never go back; you can never return to who you were before you were soiled. That’s how I feel right now. And that’s how Archie and Nadine are going to feel once she asks the question she’s contemplating.

  “Isn’t that also the same day Jess was killed?”

  There’s no backpedaling; there’s no starting over or calling for a time-out. I have to move forward. That’s the only way I’m going to reclaim my life and my sanity.

  “Yes.”

  It takes a moment for the implications of this one word to sink in. But soon they do.

  “Dom, what are you saying?” Archie asks in a soft, scared voice.

  I close the book in front of me. If I’m going to continue, I have to do it on my own. Even if Archie and Nadine and everybody else in the world turn their backs on me and leave me to fend for myself. I owe it to my best friend.

  “I killed Jess.”

  “Dominy!” Archie screams. “That isn’t possible!”

  I reach out to grab his hands, but he slaps my hands away. Awkwardly, I fold my hands and place them on the table. “Archie, I think it’s the truth,” I plead. “I don’t remember much about that night, but I do know I was in the hills with Jess on our way to my house. Then it all gets cloudy, and the next thing I know I’m awake and Jess is lying next to me . . . dead.”

  Fists clenched, arms stiff, Archie jumps up. Nadine has to grab the back of his chair to stop it from toppling over. He talks while circling the table. “That . . . no! That can’t be true! You’re just upset because she died on your birthday,” he stammers. “The police said an animal killed Jess.”

  “And who’s in charge of the police, Archie?” I remind him. “My father made it all up because that animal was me.”

  Suddenly I’m reminded of geometry class because the three of us—me, Archie, and Nadine—are forming a triangle. I have no idea what kind; that’s not important. What is important is that we’re three separate people who have been joined together by the same continuous line. They may not believe what I’ve said, they may hate me, but they know as much as I know, so that means we’re all connected. Which means the next few days will be bearable.

  “So your father actually believes this curse is true?” Nadine asks.

  “He does.”

  “But there’s part of you that still doesn’t,” she adds.

  Like I’ve always said, she’s got incredible instincts. “Even if I am this thing, this werewolf that this woman cursed me to become before I was born,” I reply, “I just don’t think I could do something so horrible to my best friend.”

  Suddenly, I’m yanked up out of my chair. Archie lifts me up by the shoulders. “That’s it!” he cries. “If you are this thing, this she-wolf or whatever, then you didn’t do anything. This creature did.”

  He sounds just like my father. “I know, Archie, I get that, but regardless, Jess is still dead.”

  My tears come at the same time as Archie’s. Four lines of silent sadness. “I know, Dom, but at least we’ll know what happened to her and . . .” Before I can interject, Archie cuts me off. “And we’ll know that you had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t you; it was this curse.”

  We hug tightly, and I’m acutely aware that Nadine is watching us. She doesn’t look jealous, but I don’t know exactly what she’s feeling or thinking. When she speaks, she makes her thoughts very clear.

  “If this is true, and that’s the biggest if in the history of ifdom,” she says, “you do realize that being a werewolf isn’t a one-time event?”

  My fingers graze over the hard cover of the encyclopedia. “I’m fully aware of that, Nadine,” I reply.

  “And when’s the next full moon?” she asks.

  “Day after Christmas,” I reply.

 
“So the werewolf inside of you could rise up and strike again,” Archie announces.

  “It could,” I say.

  Even though I’m in the company of these two, I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life. Maybe this was just a colossal mistake; maybe I should have weathered the storm on my own? Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut? No, very little is accomplished alone, very little can be achieved when you act like you don’t need help or guidance or support. I did the right thing. And once again Nadine does something that offers me confirmation.

  She comes around the table and grabs both Archie and me by the hand. The triangle has become a circle with no beginning and no ending. “Well then, in three days we’ll find out if this Indian woman’s curse really has power and has indeed come true,” Nadine says firmly.

  It’s only later that night as I’m about to fall asleep that I realize I never mentioned Luba by name or that she was an Indian.

  Chapter 14

  “I don’t trust Nadine.”

  Archie can’t respond immediately because he’s too busy chewing two-thirds of a snowman cookie. He brought over a tin filled with an assortment of holiday cookies his mother made for our private Christmas Eve gathering. Gingerbread men, sugarcoated snowflakes, Santa and Mrs. Claus, and, of course, vanilla-dipped snowmen complete with chocolate top hats. She also made oatmeal raisin reindeer cookies, but Archie picked those out of the tin thinking it might be kind of weird to eat reindeer in light of the story about my father and the curse. When his mother asked why he was taking out the reindeer, Archie said that I was a vegetarian. His mother is a member of PETA, so she totally bought it.

  When he swallows he finally answers. “What do you mean you don’t trust Nadine?” he asks, waving the plump bottom-third of the snowman cookie in my face. “She’s part of Operation Big Red.”

  Now I can’t respond immediately because I don’t know what Archie’s talking about. “What’s Operation Big Red?”

  “You,” Archie replies.

  “Me?!”