Watch for Me by Moonlight

“Anyhow,” Merry went on, “he was really a good actor, and he would still be cute now if he were alive. I mean, he wouldn’t be cute now. He’d be old, like ninety. But if he were to be in movies now, people would still consider him amazing. He even made smoking look good. I think he died in a motorcycle wreck. Like, long ago. Before my parents were born.”

  “We could Google it,” Neely suggested.

  “No, that would just show you what Ben looks like to me,” Merry told her. “Sort of.” She let herself remember the sight of Ben’s slight ripple of muscle under his plain, sparkling clean white T-shirt. Though he wasn’t a big guy, or a pretty boy, he had this gentle loneliness in his smile that went straight to Merry’s soul—or where she thought her soul must be, somewhere in the region of her stomach. And his eyes weren’t sly or ready to laugh with the next joke directed at girls—their hair, their cell phones, their gossip. They seemed to hold Merry gently, a gaze only for her, a promise that Ben would always protect her. “He ... he has really long hair. But it’s soft and pretty. Not greasy or knotted up.”

  “Guys,” Neely said, “so do not know how to manage long hair.”

  “Very true,” said Meredith through a mouthful of cookies. “He does. He’s different in other ways too.”

  “So he lives with his grandparents?” Neely said.

  “Either that or ... maybe his parents live in one of the new houses on that street.”

  “Are you really dating?” Neely asked.

  “Uh, no,” Meredith answered.

  “So no harm, no foul if you ask your dad about him; he knows everybody.”

  “I guess. I just don’t want my parents glomming all over this like they did when Mallory had a crush on Eden’s brother. Cooper? Remember? I mean, my mother got in his face at our birthday party! I just want to figure out if I really do like him first.”

  “Makes sense. Why face the hassle?”

  Meredith said, “See, Neels, I got the impression he couldn’t really afford to go to college yet. Maybe he’s working for a year.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be hard to find him. Aren’t there only, like, five houses out there? We could take a walk.”

  The very thought was horrifying to Meredith. She didn’t want the round of gossip to start: He said this and she was like whatever and I was like no way.... Ben was better than that. Startled, she realized that she might talk about him to, of all people, her sister. Or maybe someone older, like Sasha. But not to her friends. They were too silly. Hurriedly, she said, “Oh no. It wouldn’t be that easy. That’s the thing. Not anymore. There were only a few houses when we were in the fire. But there are way more houses out there now on Pumpkin Hollow than there were then, at the time of the fire. Last year, Mr. Aldridge started selling lots from the land where he used to have the part of his farm where he grew sod. And at least three houses went up like ... like lettuce. There are some retired people in this pretty two-house thing and a couple of families with little kids and bigger kids too. There could be families with older kids at home. People I don’t even know. Don’t worry about it, Neels. When the time comes, he’ll be there.”

  “That’s bizarre,” Neely said.

  Merry couldn’t explain. She just shrugged.

  But through the night, from wherever he was now, she could literally feel Ben thinking of her. It wasn’t as though Ben had actually held her against him, but she seemed to remember the heat and tenderness of his touch in her mind and in her body. It wasn’t like the touch of the guys in school, who tried to glom all over your body even if they didn’t know you—the kind that made you want to shower with bleach. She felt odd, almost as though Ben had blessed her. She could say that, so she said, “He was ... so kind to me. Like a prince.”

  “I think you’re like ... on drugs,” Neely said. “Hey! Want to go out and drive around? I only have my permit but we still can. I’m a very good driver.”

  “If we get caught, I’ll be grounded for a month, and you’ll be the same as you are right now,” Meredith said, and both the girls flopped back on Neely’s massive bed, laughing. Neely never got grounded. Her parents viewed whatever she did that was wrong as Neely’s way of expressing her frustration with young adulthood. It was such a joke that Neely said it took all the fun out of rebellion.

  But Neely was, by then, already sleepy and Meredith was as well. Neely curled up on her side of the bed, slipping her gel mask over her eyes and putting in her ear buds. Meredith knew what Neely listened to—an endless loop of crashing surf. She said it soothed her, but Merry would have gone around the bend.

  Merry got up and glanced out the window again. As Thornton Wilder had written a hundred years ago (they’d read Our Town in ninth grade), the moonlight was terrible. She wanted to see Ben and ... and what? Just to see him would be enough. Not seeing him made her feel like a belt was pulled tight around her ribs. Finally, because the snow thickened until it made smudges of the lights in the houses down the hill, and finally even the smudges disappeared, Merry lay down.

  She dreamed of Ben.

  They lay together in the sun, in a blooming big orchard where apple blossoms swayed over their heads. Merry wore a sundress and Ben his white T-shirt, and the sun beat down on them while the birds chorused madly. Ben held her close, so close she was almost trapped beneath his strong body. But there was no sense of pressure. Ben would never hurt her. Merry closed her eyes against the sun, with their lips about to touch, his love for her all around her like a bath of warmth in which she could never drown. He said to her, “Meredith. It’s not so far. It’s not so long. We’re just that close. We can be together. Don’t you see? Don’t say no, Meredith. ”

  She missed the first crystal ping of her cell phone that told her she had a text message. Dreaming as hard as she was, slowly waking, she imagined that the second ping was Ben, throwing a snowball at the window, asking her to step out onto the balcony off Neely’s room and speak to him in sweet syllables.

  The third ping actually opened Merry’s eyes.

  “No need to come now,” her father had written. “Owen is back in the hospital but he’s already better. Having tests. Don’t worry. Love u, Pop.”

  Don’t worry?

  The warm bath of imagined love quickly went cold. Merry lay down again, but sleep was banished. When the window light was gray, before Neely awoke, Merry scribbled a note on Neely’s stationery pad and ran downstairs in her sweats, asking Stuart to drive her to the hospital.

  PREDATOR

  Meredith burst through the door of the emergency room entrance, and the first person to catch up with her was Kim Jellico’s mother, Bonnie. Bonnie was Merry’s own mother’s closest friend.

  “I hate it when people say, ‘I know what you’re going through,’ but I know what you’re going through,” Bonnie said, hugging Merry tight. Not only had Bonnie and her husband Dave lost David, their eighteen-year-old son two years ago (in what everyone, except the twins of course, assumed was an accidental fall), just six months ago, they had also suffered through a surgery to correct a minor heart defect that Christian Loc Jellico, the baby boy they’d adopted from Vietnam, was born with. Christian was fine now, a healthy toddler instead of the big-eyed skinny little ghost he’d been. But the night of his surgery was the only time Meredith ever remembered both their parents asking the kids to pray.

  “Bonnie, do you know how Owen is?”

  “He’s asleep finally,” Bonnie said. “He had a tough time of it. Not as bad as last time. But he was on the edge of dehydration, and we couldn’t stop him from vomiting. They gave him a little something to sedate him. It was the whole story all over again. First he chucked up his dinner, and then Luna gave him a bottle of formula. That’s when he really started to heave. Luna just wrapped him in his snowsuit and a big towel and drove him right here. Good girl. She’s in the waiting room now. The plan is to test Owen for allergies to milk-based products.”

  “Thanks Bonnie. Is my sister here?”

  “Home with Adam. She says Adam’s wo
rse off than your parents. He’s terrified.”

  “Okay. I’ll go back to my mom now. Where is Owie?”

  Bonnie led the way to the swinging doors—the twins treated the emergency room as though it were their mother’s office—and pointed to a curtained section in the middle of the trauma rooms. “Let me check what’s going on. I’ll come right back and get you.”

  Before Meredith could turn around, however, someone tapped her shoulder. Luna had come out of the family waiting room.

  “Luna! Have you been here all night?” Merry asked.

  “I thought it was my responsibility,” Luna said. “Would you have gone home?”

  “Well, it’s a hospital and my mother’s with him, so yeah. Aren’t your parents furious? It’s almost six in the morning!”

  “I’m sure my mother doesn’t even know or care where I am, and my dad’s still at work,” Luna explained. “Merry, I felt something like this coming the moment I stepped up on your porch. The first step.” Luna looked like the long-lost older sister in the Addams Family, her pale face made whiter by her kinky choice of foundation, her lipstick like a blackberry slash.

  “If you felt it coming, Luna, why didn’t you just call my dad and tell him it was going to happen?” Meredith asked, more sad than irritated.

  “People don’t believe you. He would have just thought I was crazy.” Merry both could identify and could not imagine what it was like to be Luna. People did think she was crazy, if in a harmless way, and, since the hunch Mallory had about the witches dancing in the woods, Merry was among those who thought so.

  Still, she asked, “What if it was a matter of life or death?”

  “I would know if it was that,” Luna said. “I knew Owen would be fine. I can, you know, talk with the dead.”

  “Hmmm,” Merry said. “What do they have to say?” Merry already knew very well what they had to say. Her ancestors and the few other ghosts to whom she had talked were generally—although not always—sweet, yearning people who were worried about their lost puppies or their rose gardens or, most often, the people left behind who grieved so horribly that it kept them, well, around.

  “They tell me who’s next,” said Luna.

  “So who’s next?” Merry asked, wishing Bonnie would come back and free her from Luna’s hungry eyes.

  “I’m not really at liberty to talk about that, Merry. But it’s not always who you’d expect.”

  “Okay,” Merry said.

  “And if I did say anything, I’d be treated even more terribly out there than I already am,” Luna said. “People are utterly intolerant.”

  That was the understatement of the millennium, but Meredith felt a fleeting wisp of real sympathy for old garden-variety wannabe psychic Luna. She wasn’t doing anything but waiting in the hall, so she decided to indulge Luna, whose customary intensity seemed really torqued up to an almost eerie degree. So Merry asked, “So you really, really had some kind of ... premonition that my brother would get sick? That’s amazing.”

  “I absolutely did,” said Luna, tapping the blond wood doorframe with one black dagger of a fingernail. “The moment I went into the kitchen, I had a flash of being here, right here, with him. It scares me to death to think what it would have been like if I hadn’t been there.”

  “Me too,” Meredith said. “But do you have these feelings often?”

  “Yes. Well, I do know when a bad event is about to happen,” said Luna.

  “Thunderstorms? Losing your lunch card? Or just people stuff?”

  “Anything.”

  “Can you do it at will?” Merry asked.

  “I don’t want you spreading this around school,” Luna said, lowering her voice. “Not everyone is Miss All-American Apple Pie like you and Mallory. But yes, I can ask my voices anything and they will tell me. For example, right now they’re telling me that Owen isn’t really allergic to milk.”

  “Well, I’ll let you know,” Meredith said, turning to look for Bonnie, who was approaching and beckoning to her. Merry gave Luna’s arm a squeeze. Luna’s cologne lingered, a blend of something like vanilla and mustard. Meredith had to admit that it was pretty sweet of her to stay there all night. Then again, Luna’s life with her nuts mom, Bettina, and her mostly absent dad, was probably a little short on genuine drama. As she went through the double doors, she glanced back at Luna, who was still standing in the hall, then nearly collided with her father.

  “Merry heart,” Tim said, giving Merry a hard hug. “Owen’s asleep. I’m sorry. But I’m glad he is.” Tim opened the door and propelled Meredith back outside the door of the emergency room. Luna watched Tim and Meredith with that craving look—a look that suddenly set off an alarm in Meredith’s stomach, which began to knead back on itself as though she hadn’t eaten in a long time (in fact, she hadn’t). Maybe it was only hunger, but she had learned to trust physical sensations that had psychological strings attached. “We’ve been up all night, but Owen’s so much better. The test for milk allergies was negative, so I’m going to run home now and get his formula, in case there’s some contaminant of some kind. We have the super large-sized can, so we’ve been using it for a while.”

  “I used the last of it up,” Luna said, striding across the room.

  “There was a lot of powder left,” Tim answered. “It was a monster can.”

  “Well, when I got there, I have to confess that the bottles smelled sort of peculiar, so I threw them out and made new ones. But he’d already gotten sick once by then,” Luna said. She gave Meredith a significant look. It hadn’t been “smell” at all, but one of Luna’s alleged “feelings.” Meredith found a chair in the hall and sat down.

  “But the rest of it?” Tim asked.

  “The rest of it spilled into the sink when I was making the new bottles,” Luna said. “I didn’t feel right about those either, so I washed them out too.”

  “So ... there’s nothing the doctors can analyze that might have made Owen sick?”

  “Not at your house,” Luna said. “I’m sorry. I know that stuff’s expensive.”

  Tim pressed his lips together and turned back to the curtained-off space. As he did, several nurses, including Campbell, wheeled Owen out in a huge crib, like a lion’s cage, heading up toward the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, which at Ridgeline Memorial, amounted to two rooms.

  “Luna said she threw out all the formula and made more and threw that out,” Tim told the group. “Then she spilled the rest of the can.”

  “That’s ... crazy!” Campbell whispered explosively. “Luna! Why would you do that?”

  “She said the formula smelled funny after she gave Owen his bottle,” Tim said.

  “So maybe we could know now what was wrong!” Campbell said. She was yelling, but in a whisper, so as not to disturb the baby. “But spilled the rest of the can of powder?”

  “Do you think that’s not true?” Tim whispered. But Luna heard him.

  “You think I’m lying?” Luna asked. “I sat here all night with you guys and I’m lying? Thanks a lot.”

  Meredith got up from the chair and kissed her mom. “No,” she said. “She’s not lying.”

  “How do you know Meredith?” Campbell asked. “You just got here. Luna, I’m not trying to say anything that will offend you or accuse you, but this is the kind of situation where we have to consider that Owen might have been exposed to contaminated food.”

  “I understand that,” Luna said formally. “But I’d look at the person who made the bottles instead of the one who tried to throw them out so they wouldn’t hurt him! Namely me! Or at the manufacturer, disgruntled employees are always putting rat hairs and urine and ...”

  “Oh that’s enough, thanks,” Tim said.

  Owen stirred slightly, and one of the other nurses said they’d go get him settled upstairs and wait for Campbell. The lights outside the curtained area were glaring, and Owen clearly was becoming restless. Meredith reached between the bars to touch one of his tiny, starfish hands and leaned down to kiss
it. She turned back to her mother, and to Luna, who had her arms crossed tightly across her chest in its skull-embroidered sweater.

  “I talked to Luna for a long time, Mom. You taught us to be able to tell when people are lying. I don’t think she is. About this anyhow.”

  But the conversation in the waiting room wasn’t the reason Meredith was so sure.

  In a sudden vision, just moments before—the reason that Meredith sat down hard in the metal chair outside the ER assessment area—she’d seen the spilt formula in the sink and Luna’s ever-so-unmistakable hands with their black nail polish cleaning up the mess. What confused her was that she also saw someone making bottles—someone with plain, unpainted shaped oval nails, like Campbell’s. But the fingers didn’t look like her mother’s short, practical fingers. They were long and slim. Young hands. Not Grandma’s. Sasha had made bottles for Owen earlier in the day, before the winter formal. But that was in the early morning. All those bottles would have been used up before they even left for the dance or poured down the sink later on ... and Carla was younger than Campbell. She had plain hands, too.

  But she hadn’t worked that day.

  Meredith needed to talk to Mallory.

  What was really going on?

  How badly did Luna need to prove that she was really a psychic? Was there something crazy about Luna, beyond the obvious?

  Campbell turned to Bonnie and Dr. Staats, the doctor who’d delivered the twins, Adam, and Owen and who happened to be on call in the ER that night, since she—and every other doctor in Ridgeline—had stopped delivering babies. Campbell kept saying she was going to be the one brave enough to start doing it again, and Tim told her that she’d better start saving now for the million a year in insurance premiums it would cost her, since doctors who delivered babies got sued more than anyone else did.

  Dr. Staats said that this meant they’d have to try to analyze Owen’s stomach contents, but they’d already disposed of the junk he’d spewed in the ambulance. The only hope was to try to insert a tube....

  “I’m not putting him through that,” Campbell said with a voice like a judge’s gavel coming down. “It’s fine to test him for other allergies and hope something will turn up. There are plenty of other things in formula besides milk and maybe there’s something else. Maybe in his baby food. She didn’t throw that down the sink too?”