Page 33 of The Hunting Moon
Now, here she and Jay stand in a different bedroom with different bodies and different histories, and one leg of the triangle is basically saying,Let me help you. Now I can be here for you.His eyes are still bloodshot, his expression still grim. But now Jay wants to be awewhen four years ago he broke thatweapart.
Winnie’s fingers curl at her sides. She can feel the plates shifting inside her, trembling into an earthquake that will eventually rip her in two. She is afraid that if she doesn’t hold this in, she is going to scream at Jay. Andworse—so much worse—she is going to cry. Furious, magmatic tears of hurt and confusion and rage.
He must sense her emotional shift, because his posture grows wary. His jaw sets slightly to the side, as if he is bracing for a blow to come.
Winnie won’t do it, though. She won’t shout at him, and she won’t cry. Instead, she will give him one chance: “You told me you had your own things going on,” she forces out. “Two weeks ago, you said you didn’t ditch me because of my dad, but instead because you had your own stuff to deal with. So Jay—” Her voice cracks slightly on his name. She swallows, grinds her teeth together, and tries again. “So Jay, if it wasn’t my dad, then why did you ditch me four years ago? What was it you had going on?”
His body turns visibly cold. Like winter frost settling over a corpse in the forest, his skin pales toward death and his muscles freeze toward rigor mortis. Even his chest stops moving, no inhales or exhales to sustain his life.
He is the opposite of Winnie’s violent heated rage, and Winnie almost wonders if she isn’t watching him truly die before her.
Until at last his voice rasps out, so low she almost doesn’t hear it: “I can’t answer that question for you.”
She knew this would be what he’d say, although god, she’d hoped otherwise. She knew he would evade her question because it seems to be all hecando. Her eyes close. Her nostrils flare. She will not cry where he can see her. “Then go, please.” She steps aside from the door, eyes still wound shut. “Go, Jay. Because I did not need your help back then, and I do not need it now.”
She hears him move. Feels the cold of him pass by like a ghost-deer. Her door opens. Her door shuts, and part of Winnie wants to chase after him because sheknowsshe’s being foolish to turn away the only person who knows the truth of everything.
Right now, though, she can’t do it. She needs to be alone.
Jay’s retreating footsteps hammer, stairs groan (third from the bottom is the loudest of all), and only when she hears the front door shut—not a slam, but not gentle either—does Winnie finally let herself erupt.
Just tears at first, then hiccups, then full-on sobs as she collapses onto her bed that now annoyingly smells like Jay. First she cries for that twelve-year-old girl whose best friend rejected her; then she cries for the twelve-year-oldgirl who lost her dad; then she cries for the sixteen-year-old girl who almost died by a monster no one believes in and who now has a dampener under her bed slowly rotting and stinking up the room.
Lastly, though, Winnie cries for Grayson Friday. A guy she never knew and never will know because he is just fish food in an aquarium. Blood splattered on white trees.
Outside, rain falls.
HEMLOCK FALLS TESTING PORTAL
TUESDAY, APRIL 9
TEST RESULTS for PREVIOUS DAY:
Tests Administered: 478
Positive Results: 0
AVAILABLE TESTING LOCATIONS:
Monday hospital,by appointment only
Sunday estate auditorium,under age 18 only
Floating Carnival,coming soon
DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY AND GET TESTED AS SOON AS A SITE IS AVAILABLE NEAR YOU!
CHAPTER18
Winnie awakens Tuesday morning with a sob-hangover. Her head hurts, her sinuses are stuffed full, and her eyes are so puffy she can barely get them open. Outside, cardinals sing and a tufted titmouse on Winnie’s windowsill calls,Peter, Peter, Peter!
Peter, Winnie thinks, should really effing answer so she can go back to sleep.
After kicking off her covers, Winnie yanks her glasses from her nightstand and staggers for the hall—where she runs directly into her Wednesday bear because her fingers aren’t fast enough with the doorknob.
It glowers with deep disdain as she fumbles past.Tsk, tsk, tsk, you really should hand over that dampener to the Tuesdays.
Winnie glowers right back. She has a plan now, thank you. The benefit of her late-night eruption was that, once the tectonic plates calmed and her tears finally stopped flowing, she was left with a large, empty crater. Suddenly, there was all sorts of space for logic to seep in.
