Under the Dusty Moon

by Suzanne Sutherland

  “Huh,” Lucy whispered to me, “cool.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding, “totally.”

  There were three more presentations after that, and I was amazed at how many different kinds of stories were being told and how many ways there were to design games. One was a Twine game designed to show what it felt like to have an eating disorder, and another was about the origins of food and came complete with retro-style pixel art.

  There was a big round of applause as the Organic Trail group finished, and then Lucy and I were up.

  “Here goes nothing,” Lucy whispered to me as Sasha called us up to the front.

  “You’ll be great,” I whispered back. “Trust me.”

  Standing at the front of the room, I realized that the crowd was even bigger than it had been when we arrived. Smiling faces filled the space, and glancing to the side I saw the screenshot of Castle Forkenstein projected next to us.

  Suddenly all the blood in my body rushed up to my head and I felt high. I felt strong. This was awesome.

  Beside me, Lucy took a big breath and started her speech, just like we’d planned. She talked twice as quickly as she had when we rehearsed, and I stumbled over my words a few times and had to pause for encouragement, but we were done before I knew it, and then the room filled up to the ceiling with applause.

  I felt lightheaded as we walked back and took our seats in the crowd. Strangers on all sides of us smiled and nodded, high-fived us, and whispered, “Nice job!” before the next group got up to present their game.

  “You good?” I whispered to Lucy.

  “Oh yeah,” she whispered back, “real good.”

  Lucy and I were mobbed when the presentations ended, and we answered questions about how long we’d been using Twine, what else we were planning to do with the game and what projects we wanted to work on next. I gave Lucy all the credit to anyone who asked, but she insisted that I was the brain behind the castle, and that I would be illustrating whatever our next project was.

  “That was great!” Sasha said, coming over to us as the crowd slowly wandered off. “Did you guys have fun? I’d love to talk to you both some more about —” she broke off, recognizing a familiar face that was just behind us. “Hey, Ken! How’s it going?”

  I turned around. The guy behind me was almost six inches shorter than I was, and wearing a faded Black Flag shirt. There were grey hairs sprinkled through his otherwise black hair, with a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses perched on top. This guy was named Ken. But it couldn’t be …

  “Good,” he said, “nice to see you. Sorry I missed the big show.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, “you working late?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got so much transcribing to do. I’m way behind on my deadline on the …” he paused and turned to me. “Hey, we haven’t actually met yet, have we? It’s Vic, right?”

  Oh no.

  “No,” I said, “who are you?”

  “I’m Ken. I’m — well, I’m a friend of your mom’s.”

  Oh no.

  “You know Victoria?” Sasha asked, “She and Lucy here just gave a great presentation about a game they’ve been working on in Twine.

  “Yeah?” Ken said, “Wow, that’s awesome. Your mom didn’t mention that you, well …”

  “Just one second, all right?” Sasha said, interrupting the awkward pause. “I’m so sorry, but there’s someone else here I have to talk to for a second. I’ll be right back, though, okay?”

  And, as cool as Sasha was, in that moment I could have killed her with my bare hands.

  “So,” Ken said, trying to break the uncomfortable silence that was mounting around us, “you guys made a game?”

  “Yeah,” I said, offering him nothing to work with.

  “Yeah,” said Lucy, catching the vibe immediately.

  “Cool. Cool. I’m —” Ken said. He was sweating. “I really like your mom, you know. She’s a great, you know, interview subject.” I could tell that he immediately regretted his choice of words, but there was no way I was going to help him out of this mess.

  “That’s all she is to you?”

  “Of course not. That came out wrong.”

  “I bet. What are you even doing here?”

  “I’m a friend of Sasha’s. I work here sometimes. Out of this space, I mean. When I’m writing. It’s a shared working space — I spend a lot of time here.”

  Great, so there was no way that I could get rid of him.

  “Yeah,” I said, “whatever. Anyway, we’ve gotta go.”

  “Okay, cool,” he said, smoothing back his hair that wasn’t long enough to be smoothed. “Well, it was great to meet you. Tell your mom I said hey.”

  “Hey?” I said incredulously.

  “Yeah. I mean, if you want to.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go, Luce.”

  And as disappointed as I’m sure Lucy was to not stick around and talk more to Sasha and the other members of She Shoots, I was grateful that she followed me without a word as we power-walked out of the place and headed back toward home.

  We didn’t talk much. We were just trying to process everything that we’d seen. Our first-ever taste of being, well, popular. People wanted to meet us and help us and work with us. Who cared if Lucy’s LoA friends didn’t like me — here was a whole room full of people excited to meet me just because I was there. It was hard to believe how good it felt.

  On the other hand, there was Ken. He seemed okay in a dorky Mom’s-boyfriend kind of way. I hated to admit, but he was pretty good-looking and clearly indie-game-maker-approved cool, but there was no way that I could make the group something all my own if he was constantly going to be on the periphery.

  “So,” I said when we finally stopped in front of Lucy’s house, “that was something.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “No kidding.”

  “Back to work tomorrow?” I asked.

  “We don’t want to disappoint our fans.”

  Sixteen

  Finally the day I’d scheduled to have my cast taken off arrived. Mom and I went back to the hospital, and, after checking that my arm had healed up all right, they took this weird little saw and cut it off.

  It felt strange to see my right wrist again as they peeled the cast away. I held my arms up next to each other, and the left one made me look like a tanning-bed addict compared to how pasty white the right one was. I even had a tan line around where the cast had been, like a farmer’s tan, only ten times worse.

  “Hahaha, whoa! Bet you didn’t think of that, huh, sweets?” Mom said as I noticed how brutal my tan line was. “Maybe if you ask nicely they’ll put it back on for you.”

  I tightened my hand into a fist and then stretched out my fingers. It was so amazing just to move my hand again that I could almost tune out her terrible joke.

  “Guess it’s about time we got your bike fixed up, eh?”

  I rotated my hand around slowly to test my wrist, it was still pretty tender. “Yeah, soon,” I said. I missed PYT but I had to admit that the idea of getting back on my bike still spooked me. “I don’t think I’m ready just yet.”

  “Guess it’s about time I bought a minivan to drive you around in then,” she said.

  “Oh sure,” I said. “And knowing you, it’ll be a VW van that smells like some hippie dude’s armpit.”

  “Sounds great,” she said, “sign me up.”

  From the hospital, Mom had to rush off to band practice. The big Island show was happening the next day and the band had been kind of slacking off since they’d gotten home from Japan.

  “I was thinking we’d have dinner together tonight,” Mom said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s what we usually do.”

  “No,” Mom said, “but I mean you and me and … well, I want you to meet Ken.”

  She didn’t know, of course, that I’d already met him. I didn’t know how to explain our run-in without telling her all about She Shoots and our game, too, and I’d been putting that off as long
as I could. Tonight was going to be the end of all that. I felt instantly depressed.

  “I think you’re really going to like him,” she said. But I didn’t buy it.

  “I doubt it,” I said, my mouth a perfect flat line. A dead heartbeat.

  “I know it’s not convenient that I fell for him,” Mom said, scanning for a streetcar to take her south to the Rehearsal Factory. “It’s terrible timing. And it’s weird for sure that we met because he’s writing this book, but that’s just the way it happened. I really like this guy. And I think you will, too.”

  “He’s seriously coming for dinner tonight?” I asked.

  “I invited him and he said yes,” Mom said, still barely looking at me. “Why don’t you invite Shaun over, too?”

  I thought back to Shaun’s Dusty Moon shirt, to the fact that I’d finally gotten comfortable being my real self around him. No way was I going to let Mom get in the way of that, to let the fact that I was Micky Wayne’s daughter override everything that Shaun and I had already shared. She was already going to find out everything about She Shoots from Ken. Shouldn’t I get to keep at least one secret? The lie came out fully formed before I’d even had a chance to think about it.

  “We’re breaking up,” I said. “I’m dumping him. Tomorrow. It’s not working out.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweets. I know you really liked him,” she said, pulling me in tight for a hug. And for the first time in six weeks I was able to give her a real one back, though I didn’t feel like it.

  “Yeah,” I said, “so maybe it could be just us for dinner tonight? I’m feeling kind of, you know, fragile.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mom said, “sure, it can absolutely be just us for dinner.”

  Her streetcar was just pulling up in front of us and she was checking to make sure she had enough change.

  It was childish, I knew, but I just wasn’t ready to have the leech in our apartment. To have him prowling through our stuff, looking for weird tidbits to make his book even juicier. As if the rumour that Dennis was alive and well in Mexico wasn’t enough.

  “Look, sweets, I have to go,” Mom said. “We’ll talk more about this Shaun stuff when I get home, okay?”

  She climbed the steps to the streetcar, and, just as it pulled off, she yelled out one of the barely cracked windows, “Can you make dinner?”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at home. Our ancient air conditioner had finally kicked the bucket, but fortunately since it was the end of August the heat had dulled just enough that it wasn’t totally suffocating.

  I painted my nails highlighter yellow, but then messed them up and had to start all over. It felt so good to have two hands again. Everything was so much better. How had I taken an entire hand for granted for so long?

  I pulled out my phone and texted Shaun. Right-handed, what a luxury.

  Whats up, big boy?

  Nothing, he replied a few minutes later. Just wishing you were here.

  Oh yeah?

  Oh yeah.

  Sooo, I texted, I got my cast off today …

  Oh really?? His reply was almost instantaneous.

  Yup.

  Does your arm feel weird?

  Yeah, I texted, kinda. But it’s awesome to have the cast off.

  Yeah I bet, he texted.

  Then a second message: Oh! I almost forgot!

  And a third: I won us 2 tickets to that big show on the Island tomorrow. Micky Wayne is playing! You know, from Dusty Moon!

  If I’d felt depressed before, this was my rock bottom. I was keeping Mom and Shaun separate, in different compartments of my life, for their own good. Why were they both trying so hard to ruin everything?

  I couldn’t turn down a sweet date like that with Shaun, but there was no way I could avoid him figuring out who my mom was if we went together. But it was also Mom’s biggest show of the summer, the biggest in-town show she’d had in ages, and she’d be crushed if I didn’t go.

  There was basically no way I could make it work. I couldn’t avoid going to the Island, and I wanted to go with Shaun. Maybe, I thought desperately, I could convince him to hang out far away from the stage with me, and then just tell Mom that Lucy and I wanted the full crowd experience instead of watching from backstage like we usually did. Mom would be hurt, I knew, but she’d forgive me. And then I’d just have to get Lucy to pretend that she’d been with me if Mom ever asked.

  Then I remembered: I really had told Lucy that we’d go to the show together, back when Mom first booked it back at the beginning of the summer. How had I forgotten? I really had been a bad friend. I was going to have to hang out with Shaun and Lucy together. The compartments of my life were seriously falling to pieces. But the three of us could find a spot in the crowd, somewhere far from the stage, somewhere Mom would never see us. It could work. As long as Lucy promised to keep quiet about who Mom was.

  It was a weak plan for sure, but it was the best I had.

  Oh, cool, I texted Shaun. Sounds good.

  Back to the island, he replied. Just like our first date.

  Haha don’t remind me.

  Lets do it right this time.

  Was that even possible? There was no way. But I couldn’t tell Shaun that.

  Oh yeah.

  Mom came home late from band practice, and since the only real food left in the fridge was eggs, half a can of beans, and the end of a jar of salsa, I made us a weak approximation of huevos rancheros. I imagined for a second what the real thing might taste like if I’d just woken up in Mexico. And if there was no one around who knew who I really was.

  “You guys ready for tomorrow?” I asked as we dug into our slightly scorched meal.

  “Yeah,” Mom said, “I think it’s going to be great. We’re going to be heading out there pretty early for sound check, so you might just want to head over on your own later. Is Lucy coming with you?”

  For once it was like Mom had actually read her lines.

  “Yeah,” I said, “we’ll probably go out a bit later. And, uh, we might just, like, hang out with the main crowd. You know, not come up on stage or anything?”

  “Aw, really?” she said, “I love having you up on stage with me. Gives me that extra bit of confidence before I go on, you know? You sure you guys just want to be in the crowd? There’s going to be a ton of people there. You probably won’t be able to see very well.”

  “It’s fine. I think some other kids from our school are going to be there. I just want to be, you know, normal tomorrow, okay?”

  “You are anything but normal, my dear,” Mom said, taking a big bite of her eggs. “That’s the price we both pay. Anyway, you know you can always come on stage with me. And Lucy, too. Just think about it.”

  “Okay,” I said, her words stuck on repeat in my head. The price we both paid. Was it worth all of this?

  “Oh my gosh,” Mom said, interrupting her own loop, “I haven’t even asked you about what happened with Shaun. I thought you guys were getting along so well. Was it something at the Fan Con? Did something happen?”

  “Uh-huh, yeah,” I lied. “He just kept, you know, walking ahead of me like he didn’t even care that I was with him. I don’t know, I guess it just wasn’t as good as I thought. Like, if he doesn’t care about me, whatever. I can do better.”

  “You sure he just wasn’t really excited to be there? Did you tell him you thought he was ignoring you?”

  She wasn’t helping. I should’ve come up with a better reason, but I didn’t want to paint Shaun like a total ass.

  “Yeah, no, it’s, like, it’s a lot of things,” I said. “I just don’t think I want to have a boyfriend right now. It’s too much.”

  “Is it sex?” Mom asked. “Is he making you feel like you have to —”

  “Mom!” I said, dropping my fork.

  “What? He’s a teenage boy. You think I didn’t have sex before I was ready just because my idiot boyfriend wanted to?”

  “What are you talking about,” I said, “you mean with D
ennis?”

  “No, this was Davey. My first boyfriend. I was fourteen. I wasn’t ready, he was. Get it?”

  “Didn’t you say you were fifteen?” I asked. This wasn’t exactly the wildly romantic story I remembered Mom telling me. About the beach, the sand, everything.

  “I lied,” she said. “That story I told you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah?”

  “That was my second time. I didn’t have sex for six months after the first. Until after my birthday. I was surprised that Davey stuck around that long, but he did. And eventually it got better and I started to like it. That first time sucked, though. I mean, it wasn’t traumatic or anything, but I wished I hadn’t done it. And that’s why I don’t tell it.”

  “You were fourteen?” I asked, still hung up on this particular detail.

  “Fourteen.” She scooped up her last mouthful of eggs and chewed thoughtfully. “Anyway, I’m glad you’ve got more sense than I ever did. I always knew you were smarter than me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “sure.”

  I picked up our plates and dumped them in the sink. I ran hot water over them for a minute, but figured that I’d leave Mom with the dirty dishes. It was the least she could do since I’d cooked.

  “Oh, sweets, I know it’s a pain, but I’ve really got to look over some of these event details for tomorrow. Would you mind cleaning up?”

  “Can’t we just do them tomorrow?” I asked. What was I, her maid now? I’d only just graduated from being her shadow.

  “I know, but we’re going to be so busy tomorrow and the salsa totally cakes on the plates. I hate when that happens. Could you? Just this once?”

  And just as I was about to tell her off for passing the buck on the tiniest of household chores and therefore totally sucking at being a mom in general, something way worse came knocking.