Flower Moon

by Gina Linko

  Much worse.

  It throbbed between us, like a headache starting in your temples, just barely bad enough to be noticed. Like a sore tooth that your tongue can’t help but seek out.

  It had snuck up on me, but it was there nearly all the time, a fine pressure against my eardrums. Even if I didn’t want to admit it.

  I tried to find some way to calm my jangled nerves. But it wasn’t possible.

  I kept picturing the little white shelf above Tempest’s bed at home, emptied of her collection, her most favorite rocks and gems that she’d collected over the years: fool’s gold, a pretty pink slice of agate, a corked glass bottle of St. Simons black sand.

  No more NASA posters on our walls. No more saving the batteries from every lickety-split thing.

  Tempest gone. Erased from my life.

  Two magnets, two poles, repelling.

  No.

  I took some deep breaths.

  I leaned my head back on the seat and I took in the landscape around us. The day was still and heavy, in the way that only balmy summer days can be, with the hot June, Georgia sun high in its perch. The cicadas sang off in the distance, the crickets answering call resting now in the daylight hours. The carnival itself was quiet, with Hames sweeping the midway, collecting any of yesterday’s litter, and Pa Charlie smoking his pipe near the now-dead embers of last night’s fire.

  Tempest sat with her liar gauge flat in the palm of her hand as we swayed to Digger’s motions. Forward, back. Forward, back. She started asking Digger random questions.

  Deep breath in.

  Deep breath out.

  There was no fight that separated Aunt Grania and Mama. It was much worse than that.

  I didn’t want to have to tell Tempest.

  “Do you know the difference between a real and imaginary number?” Tempest asked Digger.

  Digger turned red. “Not at the moment.”

  Tempest opened the back of the liar gauge to fiddle with its innards. She produced some copper wire from her pocket, winding it around a silver gear. “Have you ever been arrested?”

  “No ma’am.”

  Deep breath in.

  From up here, you could even see the ocean off in the distance, its rolling waves, white-capped and powerful, washing up on the black-sanded shores of the St. Simons beach. It was full of strange, striated rocks of all sizes, from boulders to the tiniest grains of sand, made from some kind of rare mineral in shades from gunmetal to silver to midnight black. People came from around the world to see the glittery sands on the beach, to pocket a few of its strange metallic grains.

  Deep breath out.

  Digger rocked the bucket seat something fierce.

  “Hey,” I warned.

  “Did you eat my peanut-butter cookies I left in the mess tent?” Tempest asked.

  “No,” Digger said, a telltale blush settling in the apples of his cheeks.

  “You’re lying, Digger Swanson,” Tempest announced. She showed him the gadget in her hand. The needle from the pressure gauge waggled back and forth, and Tempest gave Digger a very superior look. She opened the back again and started prodding the mechanism, using one end of the copper wire.

  “Anyone could’ve told you I was lying about that. I love those peanut-butter cookies.” Digger laughed, low and hearty. “How’s your other invention going? The one with the tides?”

  “I’m stuck,” Tempest explained. “But that one, it’s going to help Tally and me.”

  “Is it?” Digger asked. “Then why aren’t you working on that right now? Isn’t it more urgent?” He gave me a look, all side-eyed and skeptical.

  “What do you mean by that?” Tempest asked.

  Digger explained, “I can sense it too, sitting right here in between y’all. You’re fairly crackling with something. Static electricity on steroids.” He rocked the bucket seat again. “I’m not a moron, you know. I saw what happened with those matches the other night.”

  “The moon is extra close to the earth. It happens every few years. I think it’s making it worse,” Tempest said.

  “The Flower Moon,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s making everything worse.”

  “Making what worse?” I asked. I knew, of course. I just wanted to hear her say it.

  “This thing between us.”

  What is between us?

  I didn’t say it out loud. I just thought it to Tempest, without even realizing I was going to do it. I shot that question from my mind to hers.

  What do you think? Tempest sent back to me.

  Are we the magnets, Tempest? Pushing against each other?

  My mind went silent. The quiet sounds of the carnival cleanup below, the whir of the nearby highway, Pa Charlie’s booming laughter—all of it went quiet, like someone had hit the mute button. And all I could hear was Tempest’s sharp intake of breath when I asked that question.

  Yeah, I think so.

  I exhaled a deep breath and tried to steady myself. I didn’t want to accept this.

  Digger was talking still, oblivious. “Y’all fixing to howl at the full moon with Pork Chop?” Digger chuckled. I elbowed him hard in the ribs. How could he be joking at a time like this?

  Tempest kept talking, “I looked up the Flower Moon, after Digger told me what y’all had found, and that’s what they call it when the moon is as close as possible to Earth.”

  We all turned our faces upward and checked for the moon in the sky. It wasn’t there, of course, as it was high noon. But it felt like the moon could see us, anyway. It was affecting us, surely. It was just … hiding, just out of our reach, playing us like puppets.

  “So what happens on your birthday?” Digger asked, now serious, suddenly understanding what was at stake.

  “Well, I’m …” I trailed off. Had Tempest put this part together yet? The obvious next step. Our inevitable conclusion?

  Something told me she hadn’t. She seemed too calm. If she knew, she’d be freaking out, just like I was inside.

  She hadn’t yet applied our mess to Aunt Grania and Mama, to their separation. Was I going to have to tell her? My stomach turned at the thought, and I wondered if I might barf again, over the side of the Ferris wheel.

  This all seemed impossible. Too impossible to be true.

  Tempest had pulled out a bunch of things from her pocket now: a spool of copper wire, three miniscule watch batteries, a tiny set of scissors. “My invention is just stalled right now. I’m not certain of my next step. I have to think on it, the repolarizing,” Tempest mumbled, practically talking to herself.

  But I needed to know. “So, how will your invention help us?”

  Tempest didn’t answer me. Maybe she hadn’t even heard me. I sighed loudly, but still she didn’t look up.

  Digger stole a length of copper wire from Tempest’s stash.

  After a long time, she responded. “I don’t know yet. So don’t ask me any more questions.” She blinked hard once, and then again.

  I turned and watched Digger’s hands as they began fashioning that length of copper wire into something—twisting it and turning it, bending it to his will.

  The wind picked up a little and rocked our Ferris wheel bucket. I laid my head back on the headrest and I closed my eyes. Right in my chest, I felt the pressure of Tempest being so near me.

  I took out my inhaler and breathed in twice from it.

  Digger was right. It was getting worse. Urgent.

  What in the world were we going to do?

  Digger had coiled his wire into little springy pieces, and soon it started to take on a shape.

  “What is that going to be?” I asked. “A butterfly?”

  “A dragonfly,” he answered. He motioned to Tempest for another piece, which she produced from the seemingly endless supply in her pockets. Digger bent a longer piece of wire into the second wing, and then I could see what he was trying for. It was really something. He handed it over to me. “For you.”

  “Thanks.” It was light in my hand, bent i
n such a way that it looked like it was about to take off at any moment.

  Digger leaned his head toward me. “Sorry I made werewolf jokes about whatever’s going on with you two. I know—”

  “It’s all right. We just don’t know why or what we can do to—”

  “What if you don’t get this invention done by the time your birthday rolls around?” Digger asked.

  My stomach did a backflip, and I looked at Tempest. She said, “Tally and I will have to spend our birthday apart, make sure we’re not too close. ’Cause this seems to be gaining steam, doesn’t it? We’re fairly explosive now, so by then, who knows? Then once the moon passes … everything will go back to normal, at least for a while. Until the next moon. Because everything with the moon is a cycle.”

  This was why Tempest thought we were going to be okay. She didn’t realize that after the Flower Moon, it didn’t cycle back.

  I wished she was right. I did.

  But … if she was, then Mama and her sister wouldn’t have to live half a world apart.

  Tempest must’ve seen it on my face.

  The resignation. The impossible sadness of it all.

  Tempest stopped speaking, and I watched the color fade from her cheeks. She was finally putting it together, connecting the dots between us and the moon, between Mama and Aunt Grania and their forced separation.

  The Flower Moon was not part of a cycle. No. It was the spark, the igniter, blowing this thing between us wide open. Nothing was going to cycle back afterward.

  We could look at Mama and Aunt Grania to see that. Or our grandmother and her twin.

  Suddenly, Tempest gasped. “No.”

  “Tempest, I—”

  “You already know? When’d you figure it out?”

  “Only last night.”

  “What’d you figure out?” Digger asked.

  I lifted my eyes to Digger’s. “Don’t make me say it.”

  “Our Mama. And Aunt Grania,” Tempest croaked.

  Digger’s face went serious. “They don’t choose to stay apart?”

  “No,” I answered. “They don’t.”

  “They have to stay apart? They’re … what? Combustible?” The panic in Digger’s eyes was freaking me out. “Tally?” Digger asked, and he grabbed my hand. “Tally, you’re shaking.”

  “We only have six more days,” Tempest whispered. She was calmer about this than I thought she’d be. “Six days until the moon comes up on our birthday.”

  I felt despair, utter despair and anger, but Tempest nodded to herself and then kept winding a piece of copper wire around a wooden spool. I wanted her to react. So I could know she fully understood.

  I kept picturing my room without Tempest’s stuff in it.

  And worse, I thought of Tempest out in this big, mean world without me. Walking strange halls at a strange school, her blinking gone out of control, wearing her hair in those golly-gee pigtails. Who would protect her? Who would be there to defend her from the Bradley Ballards of this world?

  Suddenly, I couldn’t get a big enough breath. My ribs ached. My throat pinched. I took a deep pull of my inhaler, then another one. Digger whistled through the gap in his teeth for Fat Sam to let us down.

  I couldn’t say I’d be sorry to get away from my sister right then. Fat Sam threw the lever, and the wheel began to move, slow but sure, our car traveling back toward the ground.

  “Listen, Tempest, there’s got to be something we can do. I’m going to talk to Pa and Grania, find out what Mama and Grania tried at least, and then … I don’t know … I’ll find a way to protect you from this, and—”

  “Tally, you’re exhausting me.” Tempest eyed the stuff in her palms. “I’m trying to make something here. Don’t you have any faith in me?”

  I eyed her bits and bobs, her spool of copper wire. “It’s just … this thing is bigger than some kind of jerry-rigged doohickey, and—”

  “Oh, right,” she said, shoving all her stuff into her pockets. The Ferris wheel came to a stop and Fat Sam steadied our bucket, lifted the lap bar. “I could never fix anything big, could never do anything important. That job is only for Tally Jo Trimble, not geeky old Tempest and her box of bolts,” she said, her words clipped and sharp. “Tally, why can’t you even believe in me just a little bit?”

  And with that, Tempest took off in a huff.

  I hurried right out of the bucket seat too, needing to get away from Tempest, needing to get a better breath into my lungs.

  “What’s the hurry?” Fat Sam called after me, but I ignored him as I strode away. I heard Tempest calling back to Digger to ask if we had found any scrap metal in the catch-all.

  “Probably,” he answered her.

  But I kept on moving toward the pod. On my own. All alone.

  I figured I’d better get used to it.

  13

  Once the carnival started up that evening and I had calmed myself down enough to be fit for human company, I found Digger in the animal tent. “Where’s Aunt Grania?” I asked him. “Nobody’s seen her, and I want to ask her what they tried, if anything, and—”

  “Tally, wait,” Digger said. Then I saw what was in his arms, and I forgot all about Aunt Grania and Mama. Digger gently placed a listless Pork Chop into the crook of my arm. “He’s not feeling well.”

  “I see that.”

  “He was curled up in a far corner of the animal tent, away from the other pups. I reckon his stomach’s aching. Left a pile of vomit over in the corner. I’m going to put up the closed sign.”

  I stroked the crown of Pork Chop’s head. “It’s okay, little guy.” I found a spot on the hay bale in the corner, and I sat with him in my lap, careful not to jostle him. When Digger reappeared, I said, “He feels warm. Did he seem warm to you?”

  “I’m not good at this stuff, Tally. I didn’t notice.”

  Pork Chop looked skinny as a Popsicle stick. I could even see a hint of his ribs. I gingerly picked him up and tried to palpate his abdomen, like I’d seen Dr. Fran do a thousand times to the dogs.

  Pork Chop did not like that. He turned and nipped at my hand, then slithered out of my grip and wouldn’t let me back near him. Digger and I got him cornered behind the water bowl, and Pork Chop actually bared his teeth at me.

  I gave Digger some orders, and when he returned, I sat on the ground near Pork Chop and was able to coax him out with a Tupperware bowl full of oatmeal mixed with diced-up ham.

  This had him crawling over me like I was his new best friend. He licked the Tupperware clean, and I felt all kinds of proud of myself because I’d had Digger hide some tummy-soothing jasmine rice in there—a trick I’d learned from Dr. Fran. “You must’ve eaten something that didn’t agree with you,” I told Pork Chop, scratching at his ears for him.

  What a relief it was when Pork Chop scuttled into my lap, sniffed at my T-shirt and chin, and curled himself into a ball to sleep.

  “Thank goodness,” Digger said, going off to do our chores.

  Molly-Mae appeared soon after, carrying a plastic-wrapped plate full of her famous fried chicken.

  “Just wanted to check up on the poor pup,” she said, “and bring you something to eat.”

  “Thanks. I think he’s on the mend,” I said.

  Molly-Mae hesitated. “You look like you could use some company,” she said, placing the paper plate on her lap as she sat down on a hay bale across from me.

  “Just worrying over Pork Chop.”

  Molly-Mae tilted her head and smiled. “Aside from the dark hair, you look so much like your mother, Tally. It’s really striking.”

  “Do I?”

  “You’ll be a great beauty one day.”

  “Who cares about that?” I grumbled, eyeing the plate of fried chicken. Pork Chop gave a little whimper from his position in my lap, and I tried to sit still so as to not jostle him. I would eat later.

  Molly-Mae patted at her hairdo in her nervous way. “Tally, I reckon I was just trying to give you a chance to talk to me … You seem so
out of sorts lately.”

  Ugh. I’d hurt Molly-Mae’s feelings. Why was everyone so sensitive? I didn’t have time for that.

  Unless …

  “Actually, I was wanting to talk to you,” I told Molly-Mae. Her eyes brightened, and I went on. “You were on our list of interrogations that we wanted to get done.” I smiled to myself. The list I made with Digger. It seemed so long ago already—and now so unimportant. We knew too much now, and yet not nearly enough.

  “Your pa said you were asking about your mother and Grania.”

  “Yep, I was.”

  “They have a thorny history. One I’m not exactly supposed to be talking about with you.”

  “I’m kind of tired of that excuse,” I said, sighing.

  She didn’t say a thing, which was very uncharacteristic for Molly-Mae. I took advantage.

  “Listen, Molly-Mae, let me level with you. We know that Mama and Aunt Grania didn’t choose to be separated.” Her eyebrows shot up at that, but she didn’t say a word, so I continued. “What I need to know is what they tried. In order to stay together. I mean, I—” I choked up here for just a second, thinking about my sister.

  “Tally, this is hard for your pa to talk about, I reckon.” Molly-Mae leaned over and patted my leg in a very grandmotherly gesture. “When Grania decided to leave, it was—”

  “Whoa, wait. She did decide to leave?”

  “Well, yes, Grania left. Your mama wanted more time to try out a bunch of things, but …”

  I sat up straighter, just barely stopping myself from startling Pork Chop. “So I was right! Aunt Grania did bail on Mama. Completely!” Just like I’d thought. Sure, this whole thing was inevitable. But Aunt Grania had left Mama before they could even try to fix it.

  Never my choice.

  Molly-Mae was still talking. “I don’t know if I would say she bailed, Tally. Oh, Tally, I so want to be able to comfort you. I do. But I don’t know what to say about this here conundrum between your mama and Grania. Not sure it’s my place to—”

  “Molly-Mae, do you have any of Mama’s old silhouette garlands?”

  “I don’t think so, Tally.”

  I wanted to find more notes, more information. But I knew there was really only one way to get it. I had to talk to Aunt Grania.