Moonlight
Prim is taking forever to get ready, so I wait for her in the backyard. I loop my legs through the tire swing attached to the ancient oak tree and secure myself into the rubber doughnut hole, glancing suspiciously at the ropes knotted around the branch above. They look brittle and tired from having been in a tug-of-war for so many years, the fibers splitting like the ends in my dark hair.
How long has it been since we replaced those ropes? I hope I don't fall on my ass.
My sister complains that I worry about the smallest things. She's right, but I'm not going to change. Someone in this family has to do the worrying.
Tentatively, I rock back and forth, the soles of my shoes skimming the dusty lawn. I trace the worn threads of the tire, watching my nail polish—indigo with a touch of purple, the shade called "Nightlock"—shimmer beneath the moon. The scent of lilacs wafts over from our neighbor's house.
It's the first warm spring night we've had in town. I love it. I've been dying for it. I can't stand space heaters anymore. They don't really heat that well to begin with, and if we forget to turn one of them off to use the microwave or blow dryer, the fuse blows.
The upside is that we're not as dirt poor as we used to be. Last summer, Mom finally saved enough from her job at the hospital to give our house a fresh coat of dark green paint and replace broken fixtures. Our home is cozy, clean, and compact.
I wish Sunset could see the place now. He would have liked it. He would have helped with the painting...I roll my eyes. I keep rocking on the swing, rocking myself right out of that thought.
The neighbors' pooch, Bonkers, is yipping like crazy. He's kind of spastic, which probably has something to do with his owners exercising him with a laser pointer rather than taking him for an actual walk. I pet-sat him once for cash, when I was twelve, but he fucking chewed up Prim's stuffed cat, mistaking it for a handout.
Dad gave Prim that plush toy. Some things are irreplaceable.
A bird lands by my feet. My heels grind into the dirt, freezing me on the swing. I frown, mystified, as the creature perches on the toe of my boot and gazes up at me like, I swear to God, it's waiting for me to do something.
But that isn't the strangest part. It's the extra long beak, out of proportion to its body, and the gold-tipped wings that startle me. They're really, really gold. Metallic gold. I've never seen a bird like this before, not even during the summers when I spend every morning hunting.
The golden critter flaps its wings, the feathers reminding me of flames. The minute the back door to our house swings open, it takes off. It vanishes so fast, soaring off in the direction of the moon, that I wonder if I should mention it to my therapist next time.
Prim bounces out the door like the segment of a pop-up book and meets me at the swing. She bumps it with her hip. "Pinkie swear that you won't grunt the whole time we're out."
I grunt hyperbolically for good measure. It pisses her off whenever I do exactly what she asked me not to, but it's also justified tonight. We're on our way to some student art exhibition at her middle school. I'd already suffered through a head-case session this afternoon and don't want to endure a double-dose of torture today.
Art always makes me think of Sunset.
Unfortunately, Prim made me promise to go with her. The exhibit is starting pretty soon, but instead of pestering me to head out, she plops onto the opposite side of the tire. When we were little, we used to spin in this contraption, trying to see who would get dizzy and puke first. Most of the time, it was her.
We press our toes into the ground and begin to sway. The crickets do their thing, droning like an out-of-tune string section. The atmosphere is nice and peaceful until she spoils everything with her next question. "So what did Dr. So-and-So say?"
I don't want to talk about it. I don't need a therapist. I'm a high school junior, I'm on the archery team, and occasionally I sing in the shower. There's nothing wrong with me. A long time ago, I folded myself up like a shirt, stepped over imagination's threshold and into reality, becoming a girl who took less midnight walks and more aspirin.
Sure, since Sunset died I'd been bombarded by dreams about faeries calling to me, inviting me into the type of world he and I used to pretend really existed. But I haven't had one of those dreams in a year. Yet Mom still makes me go to a shrink because, well, it remedied her sleepwalking issues, so she believes it will cure me of the crap she thinks I haven't finished dealing with. My school counselor had betrayed me and agreed with this.
My sister will nag until I answer her. "Apparently, I'm doing an honor roll job of repressing my grief. It's moved on from dreams and now manifests itself through my relationships with boys."
She gasps. "How dare he! I can't stand people like Dr. So-and-So. They're such...such doctors."
I hate when she sides with the establishment. "Prim—"
"I mean, your Gale-playing-hopscotch dream is an obvious sign that you've moved on to other zones of teen angst. Speaking of Gale, why did you drop him again?"
"He wasn't practical."
"You said it was because he trophied in pickleball."
"Yeah. So what? It's a mutt sport."
Technically, the game is some hybrid combo of badminton, tennis, and table tennis. I don't get it. Why can't Gale choose one or the other? It's like he's indecisive. Indecisive guys are unreliable guys.
Prim holds up her index finger. "I will preface this: No, he wasn't the ideal boyfriend. Not because he smelled like peanuts, even though he did, but I'm not as freakishly picky as you. And yes, sometimes he could be a self-righteous prick—"
Who the fuck is teaching her this language...oh.
"—so I'm not defending him when I say it wasn't about pickleball."
My sister and I love each other. That doesn't stop us from laughing one minute and screaming at each other the next. My clenching gut is a red flag, warning me this will get ugly, that my tolerance level is plummeting.
My voice can't get any flatter without it being pushed through a fax machine. "Are we going or what?"
"Katniss, it wasn't about pickleball. Admit it. And Cato—that break-up wasn't about his insensitivity issues, because you're not much better in that department. And that boy you went to homecoming with. What about him? What was wrong with him?"
"Hey," I snap. I'd mistakenly given that bum my virginity. I don't know why. I didn't even care about him, and I didn't enjoy the sex. I cried in the bathroom afterward.
Prim knows better than to bring him up. What she thinks has always been clear, but she's never ever spoken bluntly about it before. She lets Mom do that. The brutal honesty is worse, and unfamiliar, when hearing it out loud from my little sister.
I think about the rope keeping the swing aloft, gradually tearing with each movement we make.
"Why won't you admit it?" Prim counts off her fingers. "You've stopped having those dreams, but you're still afraid to go to sleep. You hate fantasy and fairytale movies. When you found out you had to read A Midsummer Night's Dream for English, you went on strike and tore out the book pages in front of the class."
"Five pages. Five measly pages. God, get your facts right."
"Because it's all about facts with you, isn't it?" she gripes. "There's no room for the Katniss you used to be. The one who didn't mind a little fiction."
"Oh, give it a rest. You knew that Katniss when you were six. How much of her could you remember?"
"And you hate playing board games. You sneer at art. You make up excuses not to date cute guys."
"They're not excuses."
My head's starting to pound. Prim is on a roll.
"It's been seven years," she says. "Sunset wouldn't want you to be like this."
The tire is too stiff to sit on for this long.
"He would want you to recover."
Bonkers is still barking.
"You're doing his friendship a disservice. You need to get over it—"
I shout, "When are you going to learn to be a little sister, bow down to my will, and shut up!"
"Maybe when you stop comparing every normal boy to a dead one! It took you less time to get over Dad's disappearance!"
It's like brakes screeching against pavement. I stop swinging, abruptly jerking the tire to a halt. In my head, the crickets have ceased their racket, the dog goes mute, and mist shrouds the air. My mind goes blank, but my heart does many other painful things.
Prim's hands cover her mouth. Her eyes glisten with remorse.
I get off the swing, snatch my orange backpack off the ground, and walk away, cutting to the front of the house, then down the street toward her school. It's close enough that we don't need to drive, which is good because our family has only one car, and that car is with Mom at the hospital.
Behind me, I hear the slap-slap-slap of Prim's sandals on the sidewalk. Good. She's keeping her distance. I'm not flaking on my promise to go to the art exhibit, but I don't want to talk to her right now.
The town is mostly the same, though Sunset's foster family abandoned the bakery and moved away a couple of years ago. My best friend had been so sheltered from this place. People paid no attention to him. He was as significant as a puff of smoke. The only times he ever left the bakery were to be with me, and we always kept to ourselves.
After his death, everyone became aware of him. He was news. He was tragedy. He was a cautionary tale.
That's when things got weird. His foster family, and everyone else in town, began referring to him as Sunset. I couldn't get answers about his real name from the family, nor anyone else who might have possibly known what it was. Because they all kept insisting that "Sunset" was, in fact, his name. I tried to refute this, but it never stuck.
To this day, I still don't get why I'm the only one who believes, who knows, he had a different name. It's like his death warped the town's reality. Even Prim thinks the same as the locals. No matter how many times I've told her "Sunset" was just a nickname, she always argues that my memory is false.
It's not. I may be going to therapy, I may be accused of having grief issues, but I'm right. And everyone else is wrong.
No one understands what it was like to see him vanish into the bushes, to not know what happened to him, and for it to be all my fault. Even though it sounds pitiful, he still owns my heart. I miss him so much, but it also hurts to remember him. Except for my annual visits to his grave, I try not to.
Still. None of this means I need a shrink. I can take care of myself.
My hair fans against my neck. I've left it loose tonight, wanting to feel the spring breeze brush through it. The funny thing is, it's still a beautiful evening. My emotions can rage all they want, and it will still be a beautiful evening. Nature is independent that way. No matter what I do, no matter where I go, the sky is still there, with it's moons and sunsets. I can't escape.
kpkpkpkpkp
The student exhibition is being hosted in the auditorium, which is commonly a big empty hall. Tonight, partitions create the layout of a maze, separating the art displays into small sections based on grade level. There's also an area where teachers and anonymous artists have contributed their work to a permanent collection for the school. I'm surrounded by acrylic and pencils and chalk and metal and glass and ceramic and wires and video installations. Art ranging from traditional to the WTF? The range is surprising, especially for a middle school.
Students and their families mill around. I make sure not to look too closely at the art. I move from one display to the next like an underworked docent. How long do I have to be here?
I sulk until I reach a painting that catches my attention. It's a six-foot tall landscape on canvas depicting an enchanted forest, riddled with onyx black trees that have curled stumps, like hooks, but no roots. Beneath an amethyst sky, emerald moss creeps across branches. Buds of white light slither through the woods.
There's something distrustful yet seductive about the piece. It's a magical place but not an innocent one. It seems familiar.
The plaque says, "Artist: Anonymous."
The flipper beat of my sister's sandals gets louder, then stops right next to me. We came here because one of Prim's classmates submitted a few abstract watercolors, and Prim wanted to show support, because that's who she is. Caring. Considerate. She's not on student government for nothing.
I admire her. I'm still not talking to her.
"Talk to me, Katniss," she begs. "Please."
I ignore her blotchy, guilt-ridden features and pretend to be fascinated by the painting, which isn't hard to do. Where have I seen these woods before?
A stringed instrument threads through my memory. I glance around, expecting someone to be playing a tune for the guests, but I don't see a musician.
And then...then an exotic aroma, maybe a unique breed of flower, wafts right under my nose.
"I'm sorry, okay?" Prim says. "I'm so, so sorry."
I don't feel lucid. I'm tackled by instant sensory overload.
Prim tips her head to the side, distracted for a second, which makes me wonder if she hears and smells these absurdities, too. But then she blinks and focuses harder on me, raising her voice. "Katniss, seriously, I didn't mean what I said. I just wanted to get you to talk."
Doesn't she know that people are beginning to stare at us?
I respond trimly, "You've talked enough."
"You can't hold it against me for caring!"
Whipping around, I get in her face and hiss, "Listen, just leave me alone. I can't take your shit apologies right now. I'm tired of you."
I stomp off and get lost in the maze, giving myself a chance to reboot. Yet the sensations follow me. To distract myself, I turn on my phone—my one luxury—and scroll through text messages. Three from Gale.
An hour ago: Thanks for breaking up with me in a text, deer hunter.
Thirty minutes ago: You seem to have forgotten that I play soccer, too.
Five minutes ago: Bitch.
Huh. I guess these were meant to be insulting, but I don't have the right to hold it against him. I did send him a text. I knew he'd pound his chest and throw a masculine fit if I told him in person, and then I would have to explain myself without rehearsing first, and I'm not good at expressing things in a deep, heartfelt, sensitive way. Not even with Prim.
I've only been able to do that with one person. One boy.
Sighing, I retrace my steps to find my sister. We've never been that mean to each other, but I'm the older sibling, so it's on me to patch things up and forgive her.
When I get back to the forest painting, she's not there. I comb the entire auditorium several times before my annoyance gives way to apprehension. I check the bathroom, then the lobby. I speed walk through the hallways, peeking through classroom doors. I go back to the auditorium and check my phone, but it's useless because Prim doesn't have one of her own. She could have borrowed someone's cell to find out where I was, but there are no messages from her. And she's not the type to hide from me out of spite.
It's happening already. The sweaty palms. The nerves flickering like bulbs in my stomach. There's no security on campus, and come on, this is a small town. So I try to act calm and big-sisterish as I ask moms and dads and kids if they've seen Prim. Everyone shakes their heads. One of Prim's teachers assures me they'll keep an eye out for her and instructs me to report back if I still can't find her soon. A few strangers who don't know her—visiting relatives I'd guess—ask me to describe her.
And then they ask what she's wearing. I swallow a boulder-sized lump in my throat. I don't know what she's wearing. I have no clue.
"Sandals," I say to them hollowly.
It hasn't been that long, maybe half an hour. But my father vanished on me. My best friend vanished on me. My mother almost vanished on me during her sleepwalking heydays. I sense—no, I'm certain—something is wrong.
Not only that, but the music and floral smell are both gone. As I realize this, the strange bird with the gold-tipped wings makes a grand entrance. It swoops and taxis in, plopping on top of a bell tower sculpture created by a teacher. The very fact that I'm not surprised by the bird's return alarms me. It ruffles its feathers, blinks at me twice, and then sails into the air, piloting its way through the mass, tipping left and right and dodging people who don't notice the creature at all.
I rush after it.
Maybe it's because it's the last place I saw Prim, but the bird leads me back to the enchanted forest painting. I watch it circle over the art piece. It flaps like mad, raps the frame with its beak, then darts away, flitting through the auditorium doors. I have no idea what just happened.
I reach into my backpack and grip my phone in case it buzzes. A shoulder bumps hard into me, and I'm so on edge that I turn, about to lash out an expletive when my gaze lands on the canvas.
Apprehension skyrockets to distress. My watery limbs propel me forward. I stumble closer to the image of the woods. It's not possible, but there they are: brush strokes of my sister's sandals lying on the forest floor, one of them overturned as though she'd kicked them off. Or had been dragged away.
"Prim," I whisper.
How? Why? What the hell?
"It's atrocious how much you miss when you don't take a second look at things, isn't it?"
Leaning against the wall to my right is a twenty-something guy with the body of a swimmer and a face that would render me speechless if I wasn't in the middle of a Code Red panic. His copper hair, clover green irises, and pincushion dimples make him stand out like a butterfly among an anthill of bland small-towners.
"Excuse me," I say. "Have you seen a girl, thirteen years-old, looks like Alice in Wonderland?"
"Yes. And so have you."
I give him a withering look. "This isn't a joke, bucko."
He smirks and crosses his arms. "I think you know where Primrose is."
My hands ball into fists. What is that supposed to mean? Who is this guy? How does he know Prim's name?
It takes me all of two strides to knock chests with him, but I have to crane my neck to meet his amused expression. The anger in me is so inflamed it's going to leave blisters up and down my skin.
I speak between clenched teeth. "If you've touched her—"
"My, my, you have the temperament of a hornet," he quips.
"Listen asshole, I'll call the police—"
"Listen human, you're gorgeous, and I'm bored, but if you can't comprehend a simple hint, then your sense of imagination leaves much to be desired. I pegged you for someone who could cross over, but with that foul attitude, maybe you're not the unique breed I thought you to be."
"Speak English."
He leans so close that our noses touch. "The painting, oh precious thing."
I shake my head. "No."
"No? Why ever not?"
"It's not real," I say, yet Prim's sandals are still there when I wheel around to take another look.
The guy saunters up behind me, his breath prowling across my ear. "Hmm. Not real, eh? Because these sorts of things only happen in dreams?"
Dreams. That's where I've seen this landscape before. Only this time, everything is mutating into a nightmare.
"Ah, I see you're grasping the truth," the stranger says. "Reality has many dimensions, but not everyone can travel them. You're one of the exceptional souls. Despite your repugnant sense of reason and shallow perceptions, you seem to have retained a drop of wonder. Your sister must have something to do with that."
"Why are you doing this?" I ask, not taking my eyes off those sandals.
When he laughs, the walls of the auditorium gleam, but I'm the only one in the place who notices.
"I'm not her captor," he says. "But don't expect me to reveal their identity, either. They must do that on their own. That's how things work in my world. I'm merely a spectator who has decided to add a variable to the fun. Trust me, if you cross over, you won't be expected."
Prim is gone. She's been taken. How, or where, or by whom, I don't know. But this stranger does.
I face him and bury my pride. "Please. Tell me how to find her."
"And what do I get in return?" When I just stare at him, frustrated, he clarifies, "A favor for a favor."
Now, this I understand. "I'll do anything."
"Ah. So attached to one another," he says, appraising the neckline of my scoop-neck tee. "I'll think on my favor and save it for a later date. When I ask, you'll give me what I want. No resistance."
I don't have time to debate this. I nod.
Satisfied, his dimples dig into his cheeks. He swings his arm toward the painting. "Welcome to our world. And remember: Look more than once before you foolishly bypass things."
I gape. "What? Through the painting?"
"There are many doorways into the world of faeries. This is simply one of them."
"You're a faerie?"
His features twist with displeasure. "You make it sound like low-brow fantasy, which is degrading and insulting. Let me offer you a valuable piece of advice: Be careful how you speak about us. Use courtesy or you won't get far. Yes, I'm a faerie, and our youth are called fae. Remember that."
My hands tunnel inside my pockets. My gaze traverses the auditorium as normal families go about their normal evening looking at normal art. If I try to walk right into a painting, they'll think I'm nuts.
"Never mind them," the stranger says. "People only see as much as they want to see."
"What do I do when I get there? Where do I go? How do I survive?"
He clucks his tongue. "Too many questions. Not enough answers."
"Wait," I say, remembering something about the lore of faeries, how time passes differently between dimensions. "What happens while I'm away? Oh God, will time jump ahead here?"
If Prim and I are gone for even a day, how long will that be for our mother? Weeks? Months?
"Ugh," the stranger groans. "That myth is a human fabrication. Time is the same under every sky. Now, run along and be merry. I have other business to tamper with."
"But—"
I never get to finish my question because the hunky faerie fucker loses his patience and pushes me into the painting. And into another world.
I'm at: andshewaits (d0t) tumblr (d0t) com.