Jade Moon (Celestial War Book 1)

Jade Moon

by Julia Richards

This is a work of fiction.

All rights reserved.

Jade Moon

Copyright © 2014 Julia Richards

San Pedro, Belize

Mom shook me awake with panic in her voice, “Harper, wake up. We have to run!”

I stumbled out of my hammock.

“Mom?”

“They’re coming for us. We have to go. Now.”

I groaned. Mom had always been paranoid so I didn’t take her too seriously. “Where are we going? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Virginia.” Mom frantically tossed stuff into her backpack, her coppery skin glowing in the candle light.

I was about to make a smart-ass comment about the boogeyman when Mr. Ek, the village school teacher, appeared in the doorway of our small hut.

The look of genuine fear on his face jolted me awake. His eyes were wide, bright white against his mocha skin. While mom was always going on about scary people after us, I’d known Mr. Ek since I was six years old and had never once seen him afraid of anything, not even the deadly snakes or jaguars that lived in the jungles around us.

“Harper Dae, listen to you mom. We need to get to the river quickly!”

My heart leapt into my throat. I grabbed my machete and followed Mr. Ek and mom out into the moonlit jungle. I had no watch, but the moon’s position told me it was way too damn late.

“What’s going on?” I whispered.

Mom held up a hand to silence me and, in a low crouch, she took off toward the river. Mr. Ek gave me a curt nod, indicating that I should follow her. Blood roared in my ears as I crouched and followed mom into the night. Mr. Ek fell in behind me, glancing back like the devil was on our heels.

The three of us moved low and silent across the main square. The rest of the village slept in their huts as we made our way past the small wooden church and the Mutal twins’ fix-it shop. Over the night song of cicadas and brwaping frogs, an owl screamed. I jumped at the piercing sound. Then another, and another, and another. To the Maya, owls are the messengers of death. Despite the hot air, goosebumps rose on my arms as their shrieking became a haunting chorus.

On the far side of the village, we took the path to the river. It was rarely used so we had to clear the underbrush with our machetes. Slicing through tangled vines with practiced strokes, we moved as quickly as possible though the dense jungle foliage. Though it is less than a mile to the river, I was sweating by the time we reached the old village docks.

A single dugout canoe bobbed on the slow moving water of the Rio Bravo river. Mom climbed in and gestured for me to join her.

I stopped and looked back at Mr. Ek for reassurance. We had lived in this remote village deep in the jungles of Belize for ten years. Were we really leaving the only home I’d known?

Reading my fear, Mr. Ek squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry, Harper. This is the beginning of something amazing.” He smiled, his long Maya features pulled into a genuine expression of love. “This is for you.”

He pressed a soft leather pouch into my hand.

“To keep important things safe.” He wrapped me in his arms and gave me a gentle kiss. “Now go. We’ll see each other again soon.”

I climbed into the canoe and mom pushed off.

Under the brilliant stars, we paddled down the river.

Howler monkeys roared. Rubbery palms the size of houses slapped a deep rhythm against each other in the faint breeze, whump whump. Twisting vines moaned like discordant violins as they rubbed against the unbending branches of mahogany trees.  Shifting leaves whispered a soft shush shush shush.

As we fled into the night, the jungle sang me a farewell serenade.    

To America

With an unknown hunter on our trail, Mom and I fled to Virginia on a friend’s rickety plane. We ran from something. Or to something. Or maybe mom really was just losing it. Not sure which scared me more, the idea of boogiemen after us or my mom going crazy.

The suburb we ended up in was a far cry from the jungles of Belize. Though I was American by birth, I had no real memory of our life there.

As I walked from our crappy new apartment to my brand new high school, my stomach churned.

Rather than orchids and rotting vegetation, the air smelled of honeysuckle and cut grass. Instead of clicking cicadas and roaring howler monkeys, I could only hear the muted purr of expensive cars, TVs murmuring from inside massive houses. Even the light looked different. Everything in Belize seemed heavy, rubbery, muted deep greens and browns. In Virginia it was all light, airy, greens that seemed fresh and downright dewey. Long, pale trees wavered in the clean breeze.

It should have felt lovely. Instead it made me downright sick. Nothing felt like home.

My new school, Langston High, was a maze of brown and grey brick walls. It sat down in a small valley off the main road like it was sinking into the earth. Great, the high school equivalent of hell.

Stepping inside, I stood proudly at the top of the stairs thinking to myself, you’ve got this, Harper. New place, new school, new people, no problem. You are a kick-ass-ninja-of-blending-in. No one can even tell you’re totally freaking out right now.

My frizzy curls were smoothed with gel. I swished my home-made skirt and clutched my teetering stack of new textbooks like a shield. For just a second, I wished I had my familiar machete strapped to my hip. Deep breath in then take that first, confident step down the stairs into my new life.

Which is when my foot slipped right out from underneath me. My arms flailed and a hundred pounds of textbook flew in the air. For a brief second I thought I might regain my balance, but nope.

With the grace of a thousand flailing baby giraffes, I fell down the stairs on my first day of high school.

If it hadn’t been quite so spectacular, it might have gone unnoticed. But, as mom says, I don’t do anything half-assed. I couldn’t have just faltered a bit, maybe even stumbled down a step or two. No way. Instead my feet came all the way up and over as my face smashed down onto the speckled linoleum. Tumbling like a marionette, I thumped and bounced all the way to the bottom. Blood trickled from my nose onto my lips. Hair burst into a wild halo of curls. Skirt hiked up enough to show off my very uncool grey-white underwear.

My face flushed a fiery shade of pink. Were I to name the crayon, ‘mortification’ would’ve worked.  

Gathering the single shred of dignity I had left, I picked up my books glancing around to see how bad it was. A few people giggled openly. Some winced and averted their eyes.

I retreated to the nearest bathroom and huddled in a stall. Fighting tears, I closed my eyes and thought of home while little droplets of blood spattered my rayon, second-hand shirt. For god’s sake, I had moved here from one of the most dangerous places in the world. I knew how to wield a machete. Could kill a poisonous snake without batting an eye. Hell, I’d faced jaguars in the wild that had scared me less than the teeming mass of humanity out in the hallway.

The bell rang making the last drop of spit in my mouth dry up like the sahara. I wanted to curl up in the bathroom and hide for the rest of the day. But I knew mom would kill me. So I straightened my clothes, smoothed a little water on my hair, and wiped the blood off my nose. Gingerly, I hefted my books and whispered, “Face your fears, Harper. You got this.”

Forcing on a confident smile, I strode out into the almost empty hall.

***

I was late to class, heart pounding as I slid into an empty seat at the back of the room. But the teacher was nice about it. I’d seen plenty of movies about American high school and was afraid she was going to yell at me, or worse, introduce me as the new girl.

Maybe I looked shell shocked because blond Mrs. Foster just let me sit down without any fuss. Being home schooled, I breezed through that first day of History and Literature. They were just starting on American transcendentalism, Emerson. Stuff I’d read when I was fourteen. To be honest, it was shocking that they were so far behind.

The teacher yammered for a while then asked, “What did Mr. Emerson mean when he said, ‘Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today?’”

With a little wave of inner-confidence, I raised my hand.

“Ah, Harper is it? Go ahead.” She smiled, a speck of pink lipstick sticking to her teeth.

“He was trying to say that you should stand up for what you believe, but also be willing to change your mind. Be forceful but not rigid in your thinking.”

Mrs. Foster tilted her pretty blond head to the side, “Very, very good Harper.”

I had a moment of pride, thought maybe this would work out after all, until I realized that the two girls sitting across from me were smirking like I’d just done something horribly embarrassing. They positively radiated disdain.

Hooo boy, I was way out of my league. I had no idea what to say or how to say it. I might as well have sprouted wings and gibbered in some made up language.

I lowered my head and sat quietly through the rest of class.

***

At lunch, I managed to find an empty section and sat alone at the bleach-scented formica table. My chair wobbled but the food was edible.

Then one of the girls from Mrs. Foster’s class plopped down across from me. Hope filled my heart, maybe she was taking pity on me. Wanted to include me in something. Anything.

She looked directly into my eyes and kicked me. Under the table. Pretty damn hard. Not a word, just stared at me.

“Uh, you just kicked me,” I said.

Face full of mock sympathy, she said “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Then kicked me again, even harder. A group of three girls at the next table giggled. All of them wearing the same ‘uniform,’ pencil skirts and silky blouses.

“You’re kicking me on purpose?” I asked, genuinely flabbergasted. Sure I’d seen the movies, new kid hazed by the clique of cool kids, but I’d assumed they were, you know, exaggerating.

She smirked.

I rolled my eyes. “What are you, five?”

Her smirk fell and a look of pure malice flitted across her face. She was tall, perfectly coiffed hair, natural makeup and a little diamond necklace that probably cost as much as everything mom and I owned.

“Well, you’re just a little Mexican wetback. Probably barely made it over the border to sew me some clothes.”

I just blinked at her. Did she seriously just call me a wetback? Even worse, did she seriously not know the difference between Mexico and Belize? To be fair, most people can’t tell that I’m half-Greek, half-Pacific Islander, but I doubt she actually cared where I’m from.

In shock, I looked over at the teacher sitting against the wall. The cafeteria monitor was a teacher with cropped grey hair and a sharp nose. Short and stout just like the proverbial teapot, she looked right at us just as the girl kicked me yet again. The teacher, who I later found out was Mrs. Louie, clearly saw it happen, but she looked away as if she saw nothing.

Which was when I had a terrible revelation. Those movies I’d seen weren’t exaggerating. They were sugarcoating the hell that is American high school. Things were much worse than I imagined. 

The mean girl looked right into my eyes, full of inexplicable hatred and kept going. “You’re just a Mexican bastard with a crazy mother.”

I was formulating a witty response but her comment about my mom left me speechless. I swallowed the ball of vomit in my throat. Did she know that I was worried that my own mother was going crazy, or was that just a generic your-mom jab?

And that was how my first day of American high school went.

***

“How was your first day of school, honey?” mom shouted from the back room of our crappy apartment. Really the only other room of our crappy apartment.

“It was fine.”

She came out wiping her hands, thick brown curls pulled up in an easy ponytail. Even when she was wearing sweats, Marian Dae stopped traffic. Something about mom’s energy was like a magnet, men and women just wanted to be around her. I’d long ago given up attempting to reproduce the effect. After my first day of school, I wondered if perhaps I inherited the opposite, some kind of repulsion force field.

She held her arms out for a hug and flashed a huge smile until she saw my face. “Oh no. It wasn’t fine, was it?”

“Brilliant deduction.” I stomped to the little ‘kitchen’ that was actually a corner of the main room. We’d moved to the most affluent suburb of Washington DC and somehow managed to find the only apartment within ten miles. We’d rented a place in the small downtown area of Waterford, really just a few blocks of upscale boutiques and salons. Our apartment was above the Treasure Trove, a little chotchkie shop full of doe-eyed porcelain children that creeped me the hell out. A sea of McMansions spread out in every direction surrounding the quaint little town.

“Sweetie, it’s normal for people to have a bad first day of school. You’ll know the ropes in no time.”

“Mom, today I fell down the stairs, some horrible girl kicked me,” I pointed to the bruises on my knees, “and then, she called me a wetback.”

“What?” Her hands flew to her mouth. “That is just terrible.”

“No joke. We need to move back. I don’t belong here.”

Sadly, I could tell mom was thrilled to be home. She’d missed her life here. Dishwashers and cars. Grocery stores packed with every food you could dream of. Mom wasn’t shallow, but the jungle had been hard on her.

San Pedro was right on the Belize/Guatemala border, seriously in the middle of nowhere. To even get there you had to fight your way down an old loggers road, twenty miles of gargantuan potholes and mud or a three mile hike through dense jungle. In the rainy season the road wasn’t even passable, so for three or four months out of the year, we didn’t see anyone outside the families that lived in San Pedro. We grew our own food, except for eggs and milk, which we got from the Mennonites like Abe.    

People think of America as the melting pot, but Belize could give it a run for its money. In our little valley of Belize there were German speaking Mennonites with blue eyes and overalls, Maya refugees from the Yucatan, a huge Chinese population from back in the day when the British imported them as slaves, a few British holdovers since it used to be a British colony, Garifuna people from the Caribbean, and my mom and I, east-coast Americans.

Pretty cool. I had only vague memories of our life before Belize. I could picture my childhood house, avocado green carpets and a big back yard.

Mom looked so worried, my anger faded. “Can you please just explain to me why we’re here. I know it’s not for me to get ready for college.” I plopped down on the ratty sofa that came with the apartment. A foul-smelling puff of dust made me wince.

She sat down next to me. “Harper, there are some things it’s just not safe to tell you.”

“So you say. Mom, I’m turning seventeen soon. Don’t you think I can handle it?”

She took a deep breath and actually seemed to be contemplating my point. “Look, there are very powerful, very bad people in this world.”

“Did you just tell me there are bad guys? No kidding.” I began to peel off the boots that had betrayed me. My feet were soaked and smelled of wet dog. Tears welled at the wave of hopelessness that crashed over me but I fought them down.

“Alright, alright. It’s hard for me to remember that you’re growing up.” She squeezed my hand. “We went to Belize to stay safe. Surely you figured out that we were hiding there. But we weren’t safe there any more. We needed to stay hidden from…” she struggled to find the words, “some real evil in the world. Genuine evil, Harper. Not cartoon bad guys. Murders. People who would kill you without a second thought. But we’re safe here.”

Mom was literally the worst liar in the world and it was written plain as day across her face that she was lying. She didn’t believe we were safe here at all. Maybe not anywhere.

It scared me, partly because she was saying something terrifying, partly because I wondered if she really was totally bonkers. She didn’t look crazy. No manic glint of delusion in her eye. Was that how genuinely crazy people seemed? If they believed what they were saying, did they look perfectly rational and calm?

“So, we fled the evil monsters and hid in Belize for ten years, now you yank me back here for a year and a half of torturous high school to hide some more? Couldn’t we have hidden in Belize just a little longer?”

“That’s not how it works. I really am sorry we had to come, but I did mean it when I said you’d know the ropes in no time. You’ll see.” She patted my knee and went back to unpacking. She turned back, “I know your dad is proud of you, Harper.” She always said things like that, as if dad were still alive.