Flower Moon

by Gina Linko

  I liked it and I didn’t.

  I tried to summon all my mental powers and laser beam them over to Tempest. Force her to throw the blankets off and sit up to talk to me like she used to. Have her come over into my bed, snuggle right next to me, face-to-face, and talk till Mama and Daddy would yell at us to just, “Go to bed already!”

  Nothing happened though. Nothing at all. She didn’t obey my mind powers. She didn’t even twitch.

  How had she done it earlier, with Bradley Ballard?

  And how in the world did she get to have this power over me? I mean, if anybody was going to discover a secret superpower like that, surely it was supposed to be me. I was the leader, wasn’t I?

  I was the bold one, the brave one. How many times had I come to Tempest’s rescue? On the playground, in the lunchroom. Heck, just a few weeks ago, I’d dressed up in a pair of her cargo shorts and her favorite roller-skate tank top—plus the pigtails, of course—and pretended to be her so I could perform her part in a group-project-turned-song-and-dance about the Bill of Rights in Ms. Schwartz’s history class. Seemed Tempest could only locate her bravery for science things.

  But I didn’t mind. Usually. That’s how we worked. Tempest liked to keep to herself. I dealt with the worst of things, sheltered her from the world when necessary.

  Mama liked to say that I was born kicking and screaming, looking for a fight, and Tempest was born wide-eyed and silent, looking for me.

  I stared up at the ceiling of our bedroom, at all of our glow-in-the-dark stars shining a yellowy-white. The soft purple light of the moon shimmered through our curtains.

  I turned onto my right side, curled up. And I pictured what we’d look like if you could see us from above: two sisters, sleeping across from each other, same position, just flipped. Back to back.

  Tempest and I were mirror twins; our cells had decided at the last possible moment to divide into two people in the womb. So that meant we shared everything, but flipped. The part in my hair was on the right; hers was on the left. I was right-handed; she was a lefty. That kind of thing.

  Opposites.

  She’d been smaller than me at birth. She had trouble breathing, with a hole in her heart that meant surgery when we were not even a year old. She had a scar on her chest that I didn’t have. It was pink and raised, a bit shiny, but faded so many years later. She breathed just fine now.

  I was the one who developed asthma as we grew up.

  Opposites, but more than that: Connected. Intertwined. The same.

  But things had changed this year somehow; a weird friction had crept in between us. And I didn’t like it.

  I heaved a sigh and heard the sound of Bones’s paws thumping on the bedroom’s wooden floor. He jumped up and found his spot on the foot of my bed, but not before he pressed his wet nose into my face and held it there. “Good night, boy,” I told him, scratching the scruff of his neck, sleep nudging in around my thoughts.

  I dreamt of the pleasant snapping sound the peachy-orange canvas of Pa Charlie’s carnival tents made in the wind, and the sweet smell of Molly-Mae’s Georgia-famous kettle corn, and of course, the droning, whirring, buzzing bells and horns of the carnival rides.

  And then I saw something that looked like a bracelet or a watch made out of paper, the stiff kind like index cards. It didn’t quite make sense. It was yellow and ragged, flipping over in the breeze, dancing and turning across a field of milkweed. I watched it for a good long time, until it fluttered high on a gust of wind, and it floated up into the sky, toward darkening purple clouds and a too-large blood-orange moon.

  3

  Even Bones was still asleep when I woke the next morning. Glory, hallelujah, how did a dog snore so loud? Like a warthog working a buzz saw.

  I looked over at my still-sleeping sister. She had kicked all the blankets off her bed, like she always did.

  When I flipped over to go back to sleep, Bones woke up and then whimpered all pathetic-like right in my ear.

  “Okay, okay,” I grumbled. I got up, slipping my feet into my flip-flops.

  I threw on a semi-clean flannel shirt and took Bones out into the backyard. The dew was cold on my feet, and a little sliver of moon—a hangnail moon, as Pa Charlie always called it—was high in the lavender sky.

  Bones went on his morning walkabout: through the vegetable garden and around Mama’s rusty weather vane collection. He sniffed near the chicken coop, our old cat’s favorite place to lie in the sun. I wondered if Bones missed that cranky cat, how she used to bite at his ears if he was in a spot she considered hers.

  Bones spent a little time circling the big oak, giving his collar a couple of extra scratches, as well as his left ear. Then he did his business behind Dad’s toolshed, his nose in the air like he couldn’t believe he had to work for his privacy.

  I shivered in the weird morning coolness. My ears perked when I heard Mama’s voice from the kitchen, and something about the tone froze me in place.

  I couldn’t make out her words. But I did catch Daddy’s reply: “Tomorrow?”

  “He’s making a circus jump soon from Dunwoody.” I heard Mama’s voice now as she moved closer to the back door.

  Dad sighed. “Okay, Genevieve. If you think that’s best.”

  “If we’re really going to allow this, then we need to get it over with. Before I rethink it.”

  “We don’t have to,” Daddy answered. His voice had that wrung-out sound to it. “But we can hope that nothing will come of it. Do the girls ever ask you about Grania, anyway?”

  “No,” Mama answered.

  Aunt Grania? What did Mama’s world-traveling, never-around sister have to do with anything? I tiptoed to the back steps, straining my ears.

  I caught only a snatch of what Daddy said next. “—more than they’re letting on?”

  Mama answered, “I think Tempest might.”

  What?

  Mama continued then, her voice so small I really had to concentrate to hear it, and I only caught snippets. She must’ve moved farther away from the door, toward the pantry. “It—terrible—never my choice.”

  My ears were pricked and I was standing stock-still right outside the door now. But that was all I got. Bits and pieces of something. What was terrible? What wasn’t her choice? And what in the jelly sandwich did Tempest maybe know that I didn’t?

  “By the way,” Daddy said, passing close to the back door, his voice easy to hear now. “Are the girls supposed to know yet about Molly-Mae and your dad?”

  Mama mumbled a response, and I strained my ears, but after that the only sounds were the breakfast ones: the hiss of the coffeemaker, the pad of Daddy’s old slippers on the wood floor, the clink of a sugar spoon.

  I made a big fuss coming back in the house with Bones, trying to show that I was having a totally normal morning and hadn’t been listening to their totally abnormal conversation. I knew better than to put Mama and Daddy in the hot seat and straight-out ask them what kind of secrets they were keeping from us. All it would earn me was a lecture on eavesdropping.

  So instead, I said, “Piggly Wiggly has Bones’s flea medicine on BOGO. Saw it in the paper.”

  Mama and Daddy had a quick conversation just with their eyes, probably wondering how much I’d heard.

  “No way me and Tempest can take Bones with us to Peachtree?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be. I bent down and scratched at his scraggly ears.

  “Tempest and I,” Mama corrected. “And, no, I don’t think so, Tally.”

  “Well, he’s got a flea or two,” I told her.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Mama said. Then she put her coffee on the counter. “By the way, honey, Dr. Fran called last night.”

  “Yeah?” I edged toward the stairs, wanting to go mull over what I had overheard.

  “She asked if I’d tell you that you were right about Winnie.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “What did you know about Winnie?” Mama asked. “That’s the new greyhound she’s sheltering
, right?”

  “Yeah. I just thought … I could tell she was favoring her left back paw. Asked Dr. Fran to take a look at it.”

  “That’s my girl,” Mama said.

  And I took off up the stairs, Bones at my heels.

  When I got back to our room, Tempest was still asleep. She looked so cold, knees drawn up to her chest, that I instinctively went to pull the covers back over her.

  I concentrated again.

  Wake up.

  Do as I say.

  Nothing. Not even a hitch in her breath or a wrinkle of her nose. I grabbed the blankets at the bottom of her bed and began to pull them up over her, but something stopped me.

  There it was again.

  That weird thrum of pressure—like yesterday in the science lab, but not as strong. Just a whisper of it, making my back teeth feel like I’d chewed tinfoil.

  The air around me vibrated like a bell just rung. I leaned closer to Tempest, and it got a little worse.

  For a second, just a flash, I couldn’t see Tempest clearly. The air between us shimmered. My vision bent in waves, like heat coming off the Georgia asphalt in July. I blinked and it went away. But there was still that little hum, a pressure in my ears.

  I dropped the blanket onto my sister and took a step back.

  It lessened.

  I took another step back, and it darn near disappeared. What in the green beans was going on?

  I looked around our room. Did Tempest have some kind of weird equipment set up? Had she accidentally left something on?

  Could it be one of Tempest’s gadgets gone awry? I bent and sifted through her box of junk at the foot of the bed, lifting a few of her doodads this way and that, eyeing each of her gadgets—but, no, nothing seemed to be producing that strange hum.

  I only felt it when I went near my sister.

  Then I had a strange thought: maybe it was one of her gadgets gone right.

  Was Tempest doing this on purpose? Had she created some invention designed to push me away? Some kind of revenge over our fight about Mary Anning, or some other imagined slight?

  The idea made my knees wobbly. “Whoa,” I whispered into the quiet space of our room.

  Tempest didn’t stir.

  I looked at my sister, at her calm face, her hair spread out on the pillow.

  Could she really be pushing me away somehow, on purpose? Counteracting our natural pull?

  Did she have anything in her hands? Some kind of remote control that might trigger the force? Like some invisible dog collar for a wayward twin sister, buzzing me if I got too close?

  No. There was nothing. Not that I could see. I hunched over her, peering at her face, and suddenly, now, there was no weird feeling left.

  Just Tempest and me. As always.

  I could almost tell myself I’d imagined this whole weirdo thing.

  I reached out to shake her gently on the shoulder, but before I even touched her, she said, “I’m up. Quit staring at me.”

  “I … um—”

  “What is it?” She opened her eyes and sat up.

  I don’t know why, but I didn’t say what I’d been thinking. I told myself it was all a fluke. Instead, I just said, “We’re meeting Pa Charlie tomorrow.”

  “What? Already?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s soon.” She stretched.

  I took a deep breath, then went and dragged our big suitcase out of the closet. “Once we get finished packing, we’ll go say goodbye to Marisol. Maybe Dr. Fran too.”

  “Okay,” Tempest said, getting up from bed. She pulled her tattered shoebox from under her bed and placed it on our desk. It made a bunch of clinking and clanking noises as she began adding some of the other equipment from our bookshelf.

  “By the way, Tempest, did you know there’s something going on between Pa Charlie and Molly-Mae?”

  “Sure. They’re sweet on each other, Tally.”

  “What? What else do you know that I don’t?”

  “Lots of things, I bet. But what do you mean specifically?”

  “About why Mama and Daddy aren’t coming with us to the carnival? About why they’re acting weird.” I narrowed my eyes into slits.

  “I think I dreamt about Aunt Grania last night. She wore lots of jangly bracelets.”

  “We’ve never even met her,” I said. “What does Grania Greenly have to do with anything?”

  Tempest shrugged. “I don’t know.” And I figured she was telling the truth. She always pulled on her eyelashes in this weird way when she was trying to get away with a fib.

  “What are you working on now?” I asked her.

  “Not exactly sure yet,” she answered. “Has something to do with the tides.” She picked up a small gear and held it to the light, then dropped it back into her box and picked up what looked like a watch face.

  I was about to tell Tempest more of what I’d heard our parents discussing, but then she picked up some kind of a circular metal thing with sawtooth edges. She turned it around in her hand, looking at it so very closely I thought she was going to go cross-eyed, and … I don’t know. What exactly had I heard?

  Just enough to worry my stomach into a knot.

  Anyway, I got back to packing.

  4

  “Pa Charlie!” we both called out the car window. As soon as the car rumbled to a stop on the Dunwoody carnival grounds, Tempest and I jumped out. He waved from across the lot, near the ancient carousel. My heart pinged against my ribs. I loved our Pa Charlie. He always seemed to look upon me with kinder eyes than the rest of the world.

  It was late evening and the crescent moon shone high in the sky, but the crew wasn’t tearing the carnival down yet. The place was in full swing: game bells ringing, lights flashing, rides whirring. Customers laughed and hooted and hollered, forgetting that they were blowing their hard-earned money on fool’s games. Clusters of little kids ran around with Kool-Aid mustaches, trailing their licorice ropes behind them. A knot of teenagers huddled around the most popular ride, the Spaceship 3000. It spun so fast that Fat Sam, who wasn’t fat at all even though we called him that, had to keep his supply of barf dust right under the ride’s milk-crate ticket stand.

  A waft of spun sugar blew past us, some kids were complaining at the dart-throwing booth, and Arnold Shutes, who we called Arnie the Carnie, gave us a wink as we walked onto the midway. Tempest and I waved to Hames, who stood behind the ping-pong-ball goldfish booth, a cigar dangling from his lips. “Hey, y’all!” he called as he counted out quarters from the change apron around his waist. A newbie running the potato-sack slide looked up from his post, and a couple of carnies waved from near the Ferris wheel, one of them leaning on the old iron lever. I waved back, but I couldn’t remember their names from last year.

  And then I saw Molly-Mae over by the Candy Wagon, her hair a white beehive that mirrored the shape and wispiness of cotton candy. “Girls! How you been?” she yelled.

  “Hey, Miss Molly!” I called, but now Pa Charlie was grabbing Tempest and me into a bear hug.

  “My girls!” he said in his honey-smooth voice, and he pulled away to give us a good sizing up. “My golden girls,” he said. “You’re taller.” He gave us his best scrutinizing look, his bushy, gray eyebrows meeting in the middle. “And you’re string beans. We need to feed y’all. Molly-Mae, could you make us up a junk buffet for Tempest and Tally here?” Pa called.

  “Hi, Dad,” Mama said as she caught up and gave him a kiss on his bearded jowl.

  “Charlie!” Dad said, shaking Pa’s hand.

  “We missed you,” I told Pa Charlie, wrapping my arms around him for another squeeze. Lawdy, he had an enormous middle, and I loved smelling that Pa Charlie smell: pipe tobacco, the outdoors, and good old sweat.

  “Your sister here’s been writing me letters all spring. What’s the matter with your writing hand?” he asked me, holding my right hand up in the air and pressing it up to his gigantic palm.

  “Nothing,” I said, but I shot Tempest a look before
changing the subject. “How’s Antique?”

  Pa Charlie motioned toward the peach and green canvases of the petting zoo tent, and I pulled on Tempest. “Let’s go see him.”

  We left Mama and Daddy hugging and catching up on gossip with Pa and hustled toward our pony.

  “Really, Tally,” Tempest said. “You don’t have to be so abrupt all the time.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, shoving the canvas aside, loving how familiar the rough fabric felt in my fingers.

  “Pa wanted to talk to us.”

  “He did?”

  “Tally, maybe you should give people half as much attention as you give your animals. How about that?”

  “Tempest, replace animals with gears and batteries, and I could say the same to you.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey nothing,” I wanted to say. But I let it go, because I had that familiar thrill inside my belly, growing and shooting out through the rest of my body. Every summer at the carnival was an adventure waiting to happen. And now, here we were. With my animals. The alpacas from Morrow’s Farm that came on the road for the summer. The strange little wolf pups Daddy had told us about that Pa had nursed back to health after he found them motherless and starving in the farmland behind his creek a few weeks ago. The two grumpy turkeys named Salt and Pepper.

  And, in the far stall, there he was: Antique. The pride of Peachtree. At least to me.

  A few summers back, Pa and Daddy had gone to an auction, hoping to add to the petting zoo, and they came back with a beautiful, midnight-black gelding.

  He took to me right away. Tempest had been too busy with her telescope that summer, and sure, I fed him sugar cubes from the get-go, but that doesn’t totally explain exactly how much we liked each other from day one. Pa Charlie likes to say that animals don’t get bothered as much as people do by prickliness. He said that over and over to Mama and Daddy that summer, having a good laugh, and I knew they were talking about me. But I didn’t care, because here was this beautiful animal, and Pa Charlie acted like he was mine.