The Next Full Moon (6 page)

“You have. . . ” Morgan reached out her fingers and
touched Ava's arm.

“Yes. They just started coming in at the lake, and now . . . Well, this.”

“Wow. They're . . . ”

“Feathers,” Ava whispered.

“Beautiful.”

Ava just stared at Morgan, who was softly touching the feathers on her arm with a dazzled look on her face. “What?”

“They're beautiful,” Morgan said. “It's like you're wearing this completely glamorous, fantastic old feather jacket. It's so amazing. Like in one of those old movies your dad is always making us watch. With all those ladies who lie in bed and faint and stuff.”

“But it's
not
a jacket.”

“Let me see the back. It totally looks like you're wearing a jacket. Look how they go down your back and stop at your neck, and end perfectly at your elbows. It's totally weird.”

“Yeah, thanks, I KNOW it's weird.”

“But weird and
beautiful
, Ava. They're all glittery and perfect. Like, if you sold this in a store it would cost a million dollars.”

Ava stamped her sneakered foot in frustration. “I can't take it off though! What am I supposed to do??”

Morgan shrugged, and then her face changed. “Wait a second . . . ” She furrowed her brows.

“What?”

“Look.” Morgan was touching Ava's arm near the elbow, lifting one of the feathers. “It looks like . . . Like they're starting to peel or something.”

“What??!” Ava snatched her arm away in panic. How much worse could it get? The tears returned then, hot and streaming down her face. What was wrong with her? “I'm such a freak!” she cried.

“No, look,” Morgan said. “See? When you lift up the feather, it looks like it's starting to peel. And underneath, your skin is perfect. Can you feel that? Like you're . . . shedding or something.”

“Oh my god. What is happening to me?”

Morgan was about to respond—though of course she didn't know any better than Ava did what was wrong—when the bell rang outside, signaling the end of first period. Any minute the bathroom would be full of girls.

Quickly, Ava grabbed her T-shirt and slipped it back on. As she was reaching for her hoodie, she noticed the little clump of feathers scattered on the toilet seat and the floor. “Morgan!” She pointed at the feathers, and her friend bent down to pick them up, accidentally knocking into Ava's arm as she did.

Zipping up her hoodie, Ava burst out of the stall just as Jennifer Halverson entered the bathroom with a few of the zombie girls just behind. After flushing the feathers away, Morgan followed Ava out of the stall.

Jennifer laughed. “Having some alone time, girls?” she asked. The zombies all laughed with her.

“Hey, have you seen Jeff around?” Morgan asked, her voice obnoxiously sweet. “He keeps asking about Ava. I think he has a crush or something. Guess we'll go see what he wants!”

And with that, Morgan brushed past the group of them and out the door.

Jennifer stood looking after her, with her mouth open and her hands on her hips. “Did you hear what she just said to me?”

Ava slinked out the bathroom door and into the crowded hallway, avoiding Jennifer's evil glare, adjusting her clothes so that no feathers would show, peeling or not.

T
he rest of the day passed by in a haze of embarrassment and humiliation—which wouldn't have been so different from most other days for Ava, except that this time there was actually a reason for it. School seemed to last forever, even worse than usual. In gym class, she had to muster every ounce of emotion to convince the teacher she was too sick to participate, and then she had to spend the whole class sitting in the grass next to Alison Freeman, watching the other girls play soccer as sweat rolled down her back, in and out of the feathers, and Alison went on and on about some Broadway musical she'd just seen as well as her great love for field hockey.

It was, truly, the worst hour of Ava's life.

Morgan was no help at all, rushing to find her between classes and staring at her with big googly eyes, offering Ava her arm as if she were an old lady.

“I may have feathers all over me,” Ava was forced to say under her breath at one point, “but I can still
walk
, Morgan.”

Morgan had just opened her eyes even wider and whispered back, “I bet you can fly, too. Do you want me to help you find out?”

“No!”

By the time Ava got home, she thought she might pass out from heatstroke, not to mention humiliation and mortification generally. The house was empty, except for Monique spread out lazily on the couch in front of the television, licking her paws and staring at Ava suspiciously.

“What?” Ava asked, putting her hands on her hips.

Monique narrowed her eyes and placed her paw on one of the fake fur pillows Ava had insisted her father buy. “Ava Gardner would totally have pillows like this,” she'd argued at the time.

“Whatever,” Ava sighed, heading to her room and tossing her backpack onto the floor. Behind her, Monique let out a loud yowl.

Ava pulled off the horrible hoodie and collapsed on her bed. She clicked on the ceiling fan and let the air move over her. The feathers were so thick now. Why couldn't she have
grown feathers in the wintertime? They might have come in handy then. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was somewhere far away. The air and coolness felt wonderful, amazing against her skin, ruffling through the feathers.

She turned over onto her stomach and stretched out. It felt so good, the cool air. She relaxed into the bed, let her mind drift . . .

She woke up disoriented, wrapped in covers. The room was dark. Monique was spread out beside her and moonlight spilled into the room through the window. So bright and silver and glittering, bathing her.

The windows were open, and cool air was blowing down on her from the fan whirring above her on the ceiling. She pulled in the covers more tightly around her.

For a few minutes, she barely knew where she was.

She looked around for a clock. 10:05, it said. It took her a moment to realize: 10:05 p.m. At night. She must have slept all through the evening. Slowly, the day came back to her, a sick feeling in her gut as she remembered school, the way everyone had stared at her, how uncomfortable she'd been.

And Jeff Jackson, defending her. Her heart fluttered. It hadn't been
that
bad a day, when it came down to it.

She got up, throwing off the covers, and pulled on her hoodie again. She tiptoed out of her room. She was hungry, she realized. Starving, in fact.

Her father's bedroom door was open and his bed still made. No wonder the house was so quiet; even if her father were home and asleep, she'd at least hear a snore or two. There was a note on top of the television: “Out fishing, back late. Dinner's in the fridge.”

She froze. Realized, all of a sudden, that she'd fallen asleep with the bedroom door open . . . He had to have seen her, checked in on her at least. She felt a sudden resentment that he hadn't awakened her for dinner. And now she was starving and had to fend for herself! But more importantly, she thought, catching herself: Wouldn't he have seen? When had she pulled the covers around herself? Her heart pounded. Plus she hadn't been wearing a shirt! So she was weird, gross, and perverted, all at once. She felt guilty, as if she'd done something horribly wrong and been found out.

The thought crept up on her: but she hadn't done anything, had she? Maybe if he saw, and knew, he could help her.

Immediately she dismissed the idea. Her father had already dealt with the death of his wife, and plus now his own mother not only had one foot in the grave but was also talking to his dead father as if it was perfectly natural. She, Ava, was all he had.

How
could she tell him she was covered in feathers?!

She sighed and wandered to the kitchen. As she crossed the living room, she caught sight of the full moon over the
mountains in the distance, through the big sliding glass door.

Of course. Her father always went fly fishing on nights of the full moon. He had for as long as she could remember, though Grandma Kay had told her once that he'd become much more regular and even fanatical about it after his wife died, as a way to cope.
That is what the moon is for
, she'd said.
It lets him see her again.

Grandma Kay always talked that way, though.

Ava stared at the moon now. Perfectly round in the sky, a bright, glowing coin. Its light turned the whole house to silver. Outside, the trees swayed, and a wind rattled the leaves. It was spooky, but beautiful, strange, like something out of a dream. Everything seemed so otherworldly at night. Especially with the full moon outside and her father out fishing.

Her dad always said that fishing by moonlight was the best, that the trout were different somehow, surfacing for the bright light and getting confused and dazzled when it was not the sun that greeted them. He'd stay out all night and fish until dawn, but he was always happy the next day, glowing even. “They swim right to you,” he said. “You could scoop them up with your hands.” The forest, too, turned magical under the moon, he said, revealing all its secrets.

“Whatever floats your boat,” was her typical response. More trout to throw right back in the water. She always thought how terrible it would be to be a fish in these parts,
getting caught over and over again whenever you just wanted to swim to the surface and get some dinner.

Speaking of which . . . Her growling stomach broke the mood, and she padded over to the kitchen to see what goodies her father had left behind.

Inside, right in the middle of the top shelf, was a Tupperware bowl with a note that said “DINNER, HEAT THREE MINUTES, FROM DAD” taped to the top. She peeked, saw it was his famous spaghetti bolognese, one of her favorites.

Things were starting to look up.

She poured herself a glass of lemonade and stuck the food in the microwave, then wandered back over to the sliding door as the rich scent of meat and sauce began to fill the house.

A figure moved and she cried out loud, almost dropping her drink, before she realized it was her own reflection she was looking at. She stopped, staring at herself. She looked . . . pretty. Even in her stupid hoodie. Tall and lean, her long black hair curling down and her skin pale, ivory, which was nice in this light. Beautiful, even. She set down her drink and stepped forward, curious.

She was entirely alone. Her father wouldn't be home for hours yet.

She unzipped the hoodie and pulled it off. Watched as the feathers spread from underneath her short sleeves down
to her elbow, catching the moonlight and seeming to glitter.

She stepped forward again, focusing in on her reflection in the glass. Shadows fell over her body, but the feathers glimmered and shone in the light, bright as the moon. Her hair fell black down over them. The feathers did really look like a jacket of some kind, like Morgan had said. She twisted around and looked over her shoulder, lifting up her hair to see the feathers covering her back, spreading up to her neck and down to her hips, but perfectly. As if someone had painted in an outline for them to fill.

She turned back around, moving her hair to cover her breasts.

It wouldn't be so bad, she thought, if she could always just walk about at night in the shadows, seeing her reflection in dark glass, by the light of the moon. She could hang out with vampires and wear lots of black.

Turning again, she put her palm on her forearm and moved it up, slowly, over her skin and to the feathers.

To her surprise, she could slip her hand in between the feathers and her skin. Right there, near her elbows, the feathers were no longer attached. She almost cried out, it was so unexpected, though Morgan had said something about it earlier in the day. Hadn't she?
Peeling
, she had said.
It looks like it's starting to peel
. . .