Page 7 of The Hunting Moon
CHAPTER4
The last thing Winnie wants to do right now, while green whipped cream sloshes inside her organs alongside Grayson’s eulogy, is go to the Sunday estate for training. But she has also worked so hard to become a Luminary again that she has no plans to mess that up by skipping the required weekend classes. So despite still wearing her funeral clothes, Winnie parks the Volvo on the Sunday estate and lumbers into the red brick building, her backpack feeling heavy despite its near emptiness.
She has missed first period—a fact over which she will shed precisely zero tears. Luminary history with Professor Samuel and a bunch of younger Luminaries (including her cousin Marcus) is her least favorite part of the day.
Her favorite part, meanwhile, is the class she now slinks into: nightmare anatomy with Professor Il-Hwa. She arrives with a few minutes to spare before the tardy bell will ring, and a quick scan of the room finds the twins and Fatima near the windows; Erica Thursday sits at the back.
Winnie accidentally makes eye contact with Erica, earning a cool nod—which is basically theonlyinteraction Erica ever offers. Winnie can’t lie that she had hoped for more since she cornered Erica at the Thursday estate six days ago. She isn’t sure what she’d hoped for exactly, but definitely more.
Then again, cool nods of acknowledgment are a million times better than the liquid-nitrogen glares Erica bestowed on her for the four years previously.
“Hey,” Winnie says as she drops into her usual desk beside Emma and behind Bretta. Fatima sits in front of Emma, so they form a little square.
“Hey,” Emma replies, which prompts Bretta and Fatima to twist Winnie’s way too. “How was the funeral?”
Emma’s left leg is wrapped in a silicon webbing that acts as a breathable and waterproof cast. A set of crutches lean against her desk. She wraps the rubber tops in different scarves every day to match her outfit, and today’s is cobalt blue to complement her blue-and-green baby doll dress.
The color brings out the cool undertones in her umber skin, and she has wrapped a similar scarf around her braids.
“The funeral wasn’t great,” Winnie answers honestly. She digs her fingers under her glasses to rub at her eyes. “Jay is pretty devastated.”
Winnie was the only student to attend the funeral.For Jay,she told herself when she asked Mom to let her go. Now, though, she has to wonder if it wasn’tFor me.Some morbid need to learn more about the werewolf, the Whisperer, the death that so easily could have been her own…
And it’s not like she did much good supporting Jay in the end, did she? She was just the Girl Who Jumped, clinging to the funeral’s edge like a parasite before fleeing back to the parking area when it all got too hard.
“Of course Jay is devastated.” Fatima wags her head, and her turquoise hijab flutters against her gray polka-dot sweater. “He’s now the youngest Lead Hunter in Hemlock Falls. Like,ever.”
“Poor Jay.” Bretta offers a genuinely sympathetic sigh. Her corkscrew curls bounce as she hugs her arms to her chest. She wears a pair of faded jeans and a hot-pink T-shirt, while her sneakers are so white, they have to be brand new. “Should we do something for him? Flowers don’t really seem like his sort of thing.”
“No.” Winnie huffs a sigh. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything wecando. It’s kind of the worst situation possible, but—”
“Heeeeeeey, Girl Who Jumped.” Casey Tuesday plops on top of Winnie’s desk like a spidrin dropping from a tree branch. Winnie has no idea where he came from. All that’s missing is the web. “We’re having a party tonight at the old museum, and you’vegotto be there.”
“Please,” chimes Peter Sunday, who materializes behind Winnie with the same nightmarish speed and silence—as well as a cologne that is laid on just a little too thickly. “All of you gotta come.”
Fatima glares at Peter, then at Casey. Bretta rolls her eyes while Emma, always the nicest of the friend group, says, “I don’t know. Your parties always go so late.”
“But this is for that guy who died,” Casey insists.
And Winnie stiffens in her seat. “You mean Grayson Friday?”
“Yeah, him.” He grins at Winnie as if they’re friends. As if they havealwaysbeen friends and he didn’t spend the past four years tormenting her.
Peter wears the same expression—one that can only be described assmarmy—and Winnie wants to shred the puckered lips right off his freckled face. It was only two weeks ago that he sangHappy birthday, Diana spawnat her in homeroom and then laughed when Dante Lunedì told her not to steal his finger bones. Now Peter looks like he’d gladly give her his finger bones and some toe bones too.
“Did you actually know Grayson?” Winnie asks.
“No.” Casey shrugs one shoulder. “But we always have a party to honor fallen hunters. Plus, this guy is the one who made the old museum intothe old museum.So we’ve gotta have a party for him, you know? It’s just the right thing to do.”
The way he says that with such moral superiority—as if he knows anything about honoring anyone—makes Winnie’s fingers curl into fists.
Although her fingers straighten right back out when Emma says, “Maybe we’ll go.” Then Bretta sighs and says, “We’ll think about it, okay?”
Fatima chimes in a heartbeat later with a voice that is very like her mother’s councilor voice: “Now go away please, boys, because the adults are talking and we don’t want you near us.”
Casey and Peter obey—Casey with a flip of his shaggy hair and a “Cool, we’ll see you tonight,” Peter with a mock salute. They remove themselves as quickly as they’d arrived.
“Oh no, please don’t say youactuallywant to go, Emma.” Fatima shakes her head at Emma.
