01 Six Moon Summer - Seasons of the Moon

by SM Reine

  Tyler and Teri followed her down the tunnel. It was marked by yellow lights near the roof every few yards, leaving large swaths of the road in darkness. Their footsteps echoed against the concrete walls. The further they got from The South Den, the louder every little movement became.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Tyler muttered to Rylie when Teri released him for a moment to stare anxiously around the tunnel.

  Rylie responded by staring at him. What was she supposed to say? He didn’t look at her longer than a half second at a time, and she wondered if he had finally noticed her eyes.

  "I don't want to scare you guys, but I think we're being followed," Teri whispered. Rylie glanced over her shoulder. Three formless men in bulky jackets were down near the curve in the tunnel. Their hoods were pulled over their heads. They could have been anyone.

  When Rylie sped up, their followers sped up too. There was no mistaking their intentions. The men were trying to catch up like the werewolf had on the night she was attacked. Rylie, Teri, and Tyler were being hunted.

  “They must have come from The South Den,” Rylie said. She surprised herself with how detached she sounded.

  “They probably want to buy our tickets to the Black Death gig,” Tyler said.

  Everyone knew that wasn’t true, but nobody had to say it. The word muggers hung unspoken in the air around them. Teri clung harder to Tyler’s arm.

  They ducked down a side tunnel. It wouldn’t take them to the train station, but Rylie thought it might get them to the surface faster. The men rounded the turn not long after they did, speeding their pace.

  The thrill of the hunt ran through Rylie, and she had to close her eyes to keep from falling over. She was suddenly so hungry.

  "There's a police station three blocks down," Tyler whispered. "If we hurry..." Hurry? Ridiculous. Rylie wasn't going to run. She wasn't prey.

  "You're following us!" she called, turning to face them. "Why? What do you want?"

  "Stop it," hissed Tyler. Teri clung to his arm. "What are you doing? Are you trying to get us killed?"

  Rylie saw a flash of silver and smelled the tang of gunpowder. One of them was armed. His words smelled like ammonia to her sensitive nose. “Give us your wallets and jewelry. Everything.”

  The wolf grew still within her.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Teri whimpered, starting to empty her pockets. Rylie didn’t move.

  “Did you hear me? Money! Jewelry! Now!” he snapped. His friends flanked him. She didn’t smell any other weapons, so she knew they were only meant to be intimidating. The three had one firearm between them.

  “Rylie,” Tyler said urgently while he set his cell phone on the ground.

  The man with the gun moved forward to pick up what Teri and Tyler had dropped. The gun wavered.

  “You too, blondie,” rasped the man on the right. He was trembling. The wolf smelled sickness on them, the kind of weakness and disease that came from drug abuse.

  Rylie flared her nostrils and sniffed. The gun had been fired recently, but she didn’t smell fresh gunpowder. It wasn’t loaded. They were being mugged by a gun without bullets. Her lips pulled back to bare her teeth in what must have looked like an uncomfortable smile.

  He shoved the gun against her forehead. “You want to die, kid?”

  Teri wailed.

  Rylie’s hand lashed out and her fingers raked down his gun arm. He shouted, dropping the gun.

  Everyone was too shocked by her reaction to move. Rylie rammed her shoulder into his gut, shoving the mugger against the wall, and his head cracked against the concrete.

  She jerked him back and flung him to the ground. The wolf pounced, pinning him beneath her knees. “Hungry,” Rylie murmured, and his eyes went wide.

  Her fingers tightened on his throat. Meat. Fresh and hot. She could already imagine it spilling across the asphalt and steaming in the cool night air. She could imagine the tang of blood, the satisfying tear between her teeth.

  Like the fawn.

  She wavered above him, lip sliding down over her teeth.

  “You’re crazy, bitch!” one of the other men shrieked. Their feet pounded as they fled.

  The wolf registered the odor of feces—the man she pounced had soiled himself—but Rylie wasn’t listening to it anymore. What had she done? She attacked a man with a gun. She could have been shot.

  He shoved her, and Rylie didn’t fight back. She sat down hard on the asphalt. The mugger scrambled to his feet and fled in the same direction as his friends.

  “Are you guys okay?” Rylie asked, but Teri was pulling on Tyler’s arm.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Teri urged.

  Rylie turned to Tyler, hoping to find some kind of sympathy or gratefulness, but he looked just as pale and terrified as his new girlfriend. “What’s wrong? I saved you two from those guys. Why are you—?”

  "Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?" Tyler asked.

  "She's a freak! Tyler, please—hurry!" There it was again: freak. The word made Rylie's hair stand on end.

  They ran too, leaving her alone in the tunnel. She drew her knees to her chest and hugged them, burying her face against her legs.

  Her shoulders began shaking, and before Rylie could stop herself, tears poured down her cheeks. Her entire body shuddered. All the stress and pressure of the summer flooded out of her at once. “Oh God,” she whispered into her arms.

  Rylie was truly alone.

  The grief struck her a moment later. She had been trying to block it out ever since Louise told her what happened to her dad, but it finally crashed into her.

  He was dead. Rylie’s dad was really dead.

  She wept. Her cries echoed down the tunnel and bounced back to her magnified a thousand times over, like the howl of wind through trees on the peak of the mountain.

  Rylie sat in the tunnel until her tears turned into dry sobs and then into silent trembling.

  There was nothing left in her an hour later.

  Rylie took the train home, leaving Teri and Tyler’s valuables in the tunnel. Jessica was still awake when she entered the condo.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked when Rylie passed her.

  “Yes,” Rylie lied.

  She locked the door to her bedroom and didn’t come out for a long time.

  The funeral service wasn’t for three more days.

  Earlier in the summer, Rylie would have leaped at the chance to come back to the city. She had missed the art galleries, the theaters, and the parks. Now she didn’t even want to leave her room.

  Rylie hated to admit it, but she missed Gray Mountain. The big city park wasn’t the same. The trees were too far apart. The bushes were too manicured. The brook really was a brook instead of a broad river. It babbled over smooth, colorful rocks instead of roaring over cliffs and crashing into boulders.

  The wolf in her didn’t think much of the park, either. Rylie couldn’t keep herself from growling at a pigeon when it landed near her. A mother with a stroller hurried past, shooting her looks out of the corner of her eye.

  Freak. She could almost hear Teri spitting the word at her.

  Her room was like a cage, but it was better than the city.

  Rylie avoided Jessica until the morning of the service. They had to ride to the cemetery together. They met at the car, and Jessica gave her a brief appraisal before getting in. “You look good,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Rylie said, staring pointedly out the window.

  “Has something changed? Are you wearing contacts now?”

  “No.”

  Her mom dropped the subject, and they went to the cemetery in silence.

  The day was too sunny and windy to be properly mournful. Rylie stood by the grave while the pastor read his eulogy. He said that Rylie’s dad had been a wonderful influence in the community, and a loving family man, and something about ashes and dust and God. Rylie wondered what kind of terrible God would curse her and kill her dad in the same summer.

  There we
ren’t many people at the service: Rylie and Jessica, Uncle Jack and his family, and a handful of employees. Rylie’s dad always had a big heart, but few friends.

  She dropped a flower on his coffin as they lowered it into the ground. “Miss you,” she whispered. The wind rose a little higher and tore the scarf from her neck, sending it dancing through the air across the graveyard. Rylie didn’t bother chasing it.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” said his executive assistant, Tracy, at the church after the service.

  “Thanks,” Rylie said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” mumbled another employee as he passed.

  She wanted to crawl under the carpet and disappear. How many people were sorry for her loss? And how many of them really cared?

  Everyone left the church. Rylie and her mom sat in one of the back pews. She toyed with a cracker off one of the platters the church bought for the reception. Rylie snapped off a corner and let the crumbs hit the church’s floor.

  “He left you everything,” Jessica murmured. She dabbed at her eyes with the same tissue she had used for the last half hour. “At the final divorce hearing, he told me that he revised his will. Everything’s yours. His house. His belongings. His investments. Even his business, if you want it. It’s all going to be held until you turn eighteen.”

  Jessica’s fist tightened on the tissue. The fact that Rylie’s dad had won the family business in the divorce—and then gone on to will it to his daughter, rather than the ex-wife who used to run it—must have stung.

  “Who’s going to manage it until then?” she asked.

  “Richard. He was in charge while your father and I went through the divorce anyway. Tracy can help him with whatever he doesn’t know,” Jessica said.

  “Great.”

  Even though Rylie’s mother had all but told her she was now very rich, she didn’t feel excited. How could she, when the price was so high?

  “You don’t have to return to camp. I know you never wanted to go. I’m sorry we made you... made you leave. It was wrong.” Jessica tried to sound upbeat. “You can stay with me in my condo. There’s a great high school in the neighborhood.”

  “No.” Rylie gazed at the cross at the front of the church. “I want to go back as soon as possible. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mom left her in the church. There was nothing more to say. Rylie didn’t want to live in Jessica’s condo, and she didn’t want to meet any of her boyfriends.

  She sat alone for a long time. Rylie hadn’t cried at the funeral, but her eyes began to sting. Two wet circles plopped on the Bible in front of her. Once she started to cry, it was hard to stop.

  Sniffling and wiping her eyes on the back of her wrist, Rylie knelt at the prayer stool by the altar. She had brought her old rosary from communion, and wrapped it around her hands before clasping them together. She stared at the pulpit and gathered her thoughts.

  Rylie wondered what she could say and what pleas she could make. If there was one question she needed to have answered, what would it be?

  “Why me?” she finally whispered to the cross.

  Nobody responded.

  Twelve

  The Fourth Moon

  Jessica didn’t linger when she dropped off Rylie.

  “I’ll see you in August,” she said without looking at her. It was the only time they spoke on the entire ride over. Rylie took her bag out of the back seat and gave a small wave before hiking back to Camp Silver Brook.

  She felt strange walking the path between the highway and the camp. It seemed like a lifetime since she had taken the trail with her dad wheezing at her side. Rylie was embarrassed to think that she had found him so humiliating in front of the other campers. Why had she cared what they thought anyway? She should have hugged him before he left. She should have...

  Taking several slow, deep breaths to clear her thoughts, Rylie kept hiking. The further she got into the forest, the more relaxed she felt, and the more distant the city and her father’s funeral became. Amber and her gang couldn’t see her crying. Even if she had scared them off, there was nothing like a good breakdown to make her a fresh target again.

  She found Group B’s campsite empty. The schedule on the door of Louise’s cabin showed that they were at a first aid class for the morning, and having a picnic later. Perfect. She could unpack before having to deal with anyone.

  Byron the Destructor took his usual place on her bedside table where he could watch her sleep. Her shorts and pants went in the bottom drawer of the tiny dresser, and her shirts and sweaters went in the top. The journal stayed safely in her back pocket.

  Rylie sat on the edge of her cot, surveying the loft and the beds below. She still didn’t care for her roommates, but being back on the mountain where the air was fresh and the sun was bright was more calming than she expected. The city and felt messy and brain-shatteringly cacophonous. Here, everything was right.

  Louise found Rylie writing in her journal on the cabin steps after the first aid class ended. She took a seat beside her.

  “When did you get back?” Louise asked.

  Rylie didn’t look up. “Not long ago.”

  The counselor waited in silence while the nib of Rylie’s pen scratched against the page. Louise turned her whistle over and over in her hands as though trying to decide what to say.

  “If you want to talk, Rylie, I’m here. You’re having a hell of a summer. I can’t do anything about it. I probably can’t even understand what you’re going through. But I can listen.”

  “Thanks Louise,” she said, and for once, she meant it. Rylie couldn’t describe the werewolf problem without sounding crazy, but knowing she had someone on her side other than Seth, was who was elusive at best, comforted her.

  She napped fitfully in her cabin that afternoon. Rylie dreamed of chasing a fawn in the forest, watching its spotted back bounce between the trees. It wasn’t fast enough to escape her. She sank her teeth into its throat, and by the time it hit the ground, the fawn had become her father. His empty eyes stared at the sky.

  Rylie screamed and screamed, but nothing could bring him back—she had killed him, he was gone, and she could still taste his blood on her tongue.

  Her pillow was damp with tears by the time she awoke. The other girls chatted below her, painting their toenails as they waited for dinner. She smothered the sounds of her sobs underneath a blanket and stuffed a fist in her mouth so they wouldn’t hear.

  When they left, Rylie took a clean page out of her journal and prepared to write a note to Seth. Her fingers were shaking. I’m back, Seth, she began, but his name was barely legible. A tear rolled off her chin and blotted the ink.

  Rylie flung her pen against the wall.

  “Damn it!” she yelled, balling her fists in her hair.

  Something moved in the trees beyond her window. She slid closer so she could see, scrubbing her cheeks dry with her hands.

  Seth.

  He lurked in the shadows, too distant to make out his expression. Rylie didn’t need to see it to know he was looking back at her.

  She pulled her boots on and dropped out the window. He greeted her by walking into the trees, and she followed silently. They stopped once the cabins were out of sight, and Seth gave her his slanted smile. “Hey,” he said.

  Rylie tried to smile back. It didn’t work. Her chin trembled, and she dropped her head so he couldn’t see the tears welling in her eyes.

  His arms wrapped around her, and she rested her cheek against his chest. Seth’s smell was comforting. She had missed him back in the city. Any thoughts of demanding answers from him fled her mind as she leaned into his embrace, and his hand smoothed small circles over her spine.

  “I was so embarrassed the last time I saw him,” Rylie whispered. She didn’t need to tell him she was talking about her dad. “I wanted him to go away. I was so angry. I didn’t... I should have... I mean, I thought I hated him.”

  “He
knew you loved him,” Seth murmured against the top of her head.

  “But I should have told him. Why did he have to die?” She rasped the words so softly that she wasn’t sure Seth would be able to hear her.

  “Rylie...” He let out a long sigh. “Dying is as natural as being born, and all of us have to face it someday. Some sooner than others. It’s difficult to understand the meaning of it all. The question isn’t, ‘Why do we die?’ The correct question is, ‘Why do we live?’” Seth’s hand stilled on her back. “My father died when I was very young.”