Under A Full Moon

I looked down at my now seven-year-old hands as the teacher spoke. "We have a new student who comes from Ecruteak City."

I looked up at a small black girl donning pigtails and wearing sunglasses. She was standing in front of the class, looking down at the floor with a nervous look on her face. "Hi, my name's Shonta Jones. I am pleased to meet you."

"There's a seat right next to Ryan. Why don't you sit there and we'll get straight to our lessons?" the teacher asked her while pointing to the empty seat next to me.

Shonta slowly walked to the desk and sat down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. My attention was caught by her wrists, which looked like they were burned in some way. I finally gathered the courage to talk to her.

"Hi, my name's Ryan. I don't want to sound mean, but why are wearing sunglasses? Do you have a black eye or something?" I asked her quietly. Don't ask me why, but she almost looked like the type that would punch your lights out if you said anything stupid. Maybe it was just the sunglasses.

She looked up at me and bit her lip. "No, my mom just wanted me to wear them. She said my eyes looked weird." She went back to looking at her desk.

Tony got up from his desk in front of Shonta's and glared at her. "I'm curious, too. Come on, take off those stupid glasses!" His hand shot forward and snatched the sunglasses from her face.

"Stop, Tony! That's not a nice thing to do! Teacher, make him stop!" I yelled. The other kids were just looking at the blackboard. They weren't real and neither was the teacher.

Shonta got up from her desk and stood in front of Tony with her eyes closed. "He's right, stupid; it's not nice. It's not nice to mess with someone who's not normal." She opened her eyes and glared at him. They were glowing yellow! "It's not smart, either." She gave an unearthly growl while the classroom was engulfed in darkness.

"Shonta, what are you doing? Are you okay?" I asked her. "Tony, say you're sorry before she hurts you!" I looked around. Tony was gone!

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and stopped her growling. "Why am I like this? Make it stop, please!" Her eyes returned to normal. She took a step forward and fell to her hands and knees. "Why can't I stay normal? Why do I have to be so alone? Everyone hates me!"

"What do you mean? I don't hate...whoa!" She was pulling a disappearing act! I started to panic. "Are you doing this, Shonta? Don't go away!"

"You don't need me. No one does. I have no reason to exist." She slowly faded to nothing, leaving me alone in the darkness.

I woke up with a start and looked around. Good, it was just a dream. I remembered when I first met Shonta at school, and fortunately her eyes were not glowing. But what was with the burns on her wrists? They looked like they rubbed against something rough too long. And the glowing eyes and her saying that she wasn't needed didn't make any sense at all. I could ask her in the morning, but that'll be quite the birthday killer.

Cinder was awake and looking at me from the other end of the bed. I must've woken him up when I was turning in my sleep. "Cynda...quil?" He rubbed his head and yawned.

"Sorry if I disturbed you. Did you have nightmares, too?" Man, I wished I could understand him.

Cinder shook his head and looked outside the window beside the bed. I looked out the window and saw everything outside soaking wet. "Oh, the storm kept you awake. I didn't even hear it." I looked at the clock: two in the morning. It only lasted two hours or less.

Cinder dived under the covers as thunder sounded far away. Although the storm looked like it was intense when it came, the sky was now clear and star filled. The only evidence that there was a storm was the wet scenery and the occasional thunder and lightning.

I watched Cinder crawl under my blanket and poke his head next to my pillow. "Oh man, I can't go back to sleep! I wonder if Shonta's up as well? If she is, she's probably on her porch watching the lightning." I took another glance out the window and ended up doing a double take. She was outside, but not on the porch; she was walking toward the forest north of our houses in her pajamas! She was walking like she was drunk.

"What is she doing out there? I thought she was weird, but walking outside in her pajamas and barefoot when it's wet outside? Where's Artemis and Static? At least one of them should have known she was gone!" Then I noticed two shapes running behind her: Artemis and Static. They were shouting at her and probably coaxing her to go back to her bed.

"Cynda cynda quil! Quil quil!" Cinder panicked. He jumped down and ran to the front door of the house.

"Whoa, wait up! I'm wearing less than she is!" I slipped on a shirt, some jeans, and a pair of shoes and ran after Cinder.

I ran outside and looked around for Shonta. "Where could she have gone in such a short amount of time? Cinder, think you can sniff her out?" I asked him.

"Cynda!" He sniffed around on the ground and pointed toward the forest. I caught a sight of Shonta stumbling through the trees. The sound of Artemis and Static shouting came from the same place.

We sprinted toward the sound, not bothering to run back home and grab a flashlight. We ran through trees and eventually into a clearing with a stream at one end. The stream looked deep and rough, probably from the storm. I finally found Shonta sitting near the stream with Artemis and Static sitting next to her. She looked back at me and smiled sadly.

"Shonta, what are you doing out here? You could get..." I took a good look at her face and gasped. She looked terrible. I could get over her bad hair day easily, but her eyes looked glazed and she was breathing heavily. Chances are she had a fever, too.

"I wanted to look at the full moon. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to get out and take a walk," she said drowsily. She was talking as though she was still sleeping. It was as though her energy was completely zapped.

"Yeah, but at two in the morning in your pajamas and no shoes? And in the middle of the forest? Look at you! You look like the last place you should be is somewhere like here!" I felt her forehead. She was burning up. "Let me take you to my house at least."

"I had a dream. My dad was in it," she said dreamily. "He wasn't very nice." She laughed weakly and showed me her arms. Her wrists had the same burns that I saw on her in the dream. "Rope burns. Daddy was angry."

"He did that? But I've never seen them before; don't tell me you did that to yourself." I noticed the same kind of burns on her ankles.

"No, he did it. Cackle said so," she said. She was starting to sound delirious.

"Who's Cackle? Did he know your dad?" I pulled her to her feet.

She slowly nodded. "He was Dad's Haunter. He refreshed my memory about my past. I think he did something else." She fell back to the ground. Artemis and Static futilely tried to pull her back up while Cinder pushed.

"If it was a Haunter, it was probably Nightmare. It should've stopped when you woke up. But it's just a nightmare; it doesn't mean that it was real."

"It was and don't you try to make me think anything else!" Her look of drowsiness temporarily disappeared as she stood up and glared at me with tears in her eyes. "My dad hated me and tried to drown me! I saw myself tied up and dropped into the river! I don't even know what happened to me after that! My past is cloudier now as was then! Why did it have to be like this?"

"Whoa, no need to be shouting at me about this! Your mom knows about these things!"

"What's the use? I'm useless; Dad says so and he's right. Why else would he try to kill me? He wanted me dead even before I was born. Why else would he think that if I...I..." She stopped there and went back to sitting on the ground, crying full force.

"Because he's an extreme jerk and needs to be taught a lesson." I looked down at the Pokemon and saw their tears.

Artemis climbed in Shonta's lap and wiped her tears with her paw, coaxing her while doing so. Static jumped on her shoulder and licked her cheek lightly.

"I don't think I'm normal, Ryan," she said quietly.

I was suddenly hit with flashbacks from the dream, how she made her eyes glow and the classroom disappear into darkness. "Of course you're not normal. Who is?"

"I mean a bad kind of not normal. I mean, how am I able to talk to Pokemon? Maybe there's something wrong with me."

"If you can talk to Pokemon, that's not something wrong. I'd give anything to do that. It's not like your eyes were glowing or anything." That didn't help me with the dream, it just made me remember it more.

Shonta stopped crying and stroked Artemis's fur. She was still breathing heavily. That wasn't a good sign. "But when Dad dropped me, how did I survive? There was nothing to hold on to and I was sure there were sharp rocks down there, plus there was a fast current."

"Are you trying to tell me that you don't think you're human?" I asked her skeptically.

"I don't know. Do you think I'm human?" she said with a small smile.

"Don't know and, quite frankly, I don't care. You're you and that's all that matters."

"But I feel so alone. No one knows the way I feel about this. I wish I could find someone as weird as me." She set down Static and rubbed his head.

"Don't worry, Ryan's just as weird as you," said a voice.

"Yeah right! He can't stand storms and he can't understand a word you say," Shonta said.

I suddenly had the urge to scream. "Uh...Static said that?" I asked Shonta.

"You knew what he said?" Shonta asked me slowly.

"If he said that I was as weird as you, then yes."

Shonta laughed out loud like she just saw heard something out of Who's Line Is It Anyway. "I can't believe it! I wonder how that happened?"

"I have no idea. Now we're both weirdos!"

"Oh boy, you've really lost it," Static told me.

"Thanks, Static!" I said back.

"No prob, psycho!" he said.

Shonta coughed and slumped forward. She was getting worse. "I think I'll go home now," she said.

"You can stay at my house for the night. We'll then go to the clinic and have the doctor check you out in the morning." I helped her to her feet.

"I don't think you should be going anywhere," a gruff voice said from the shadows.

"Who's there? Cinder, get ready to attack!" I told him.

A group of Pokemon emerged from the trees. Small, grey dogs with yellow eyes cut us off from the way home.

"Oh no, they're Poochyena! I hate those things!" Static said shakily.

"We're going to be dog chow!" Cinder said.

"We're going to have to go through these guys just to get home," Artemis said.

Static looked up at me and shook his head. "Boy, you sure picked the wrong time to get weird," he said to me.