Moon Dance (43 page)

It wasn’t a dream, according
to my aunts. It was a vision of the threat of the Evil Ones. And
the only way to make sure that these threats never came to pass was
to keep me close.

After high school, I would
have moved out if I’d ever been able to save up enough cash to do
it. But the little money I made always ended up getting eaten up in
various ways. Helping my aunts with grocery money, paying for my
mother’s medication, taking care of the electric bill. I had begun
to think that I’d never get away from them.

And then... the scholarship.

I pulled out two pieces of
bread and put them in the toaster.

Aunt Kate and Aunt Sarah rushed into
the room.

My aunts all resembled me.
We were all dark, round women. When I looked at them, I saw exactly
what was going to happen to my ass in twenty years. I wasn’t
looking forward to it. One of the few things I had going for me was
the fact I was relatively attractive.

Thinking about the size of
my ass, I put the butter back in the refrigerator. Two pieces of
toast with jam was about... three hundred calories? The butter
would pack another hundred on there, and I’d barely taste it. I
could let it go.

I turned from the refrigerator, and I
was swarmed by my aunts. Kate and Libby grabbed my wrists, and they
tugged me out to the kitchen table, where they forced me to sit
down.

“
I’m running behind as it
is,” I said. “Can’t we skip the purification thing?”

“
Teagan Angela Moss,” said
Aunt Kate, “you have no idea how much danger you are in. Every
second of every day, the Evil Ones seek you out.”

“
They want your light,” said
Aunt Libby.

“
That’s precisely the reason
you shouldn’t be going to this college,” said Aunt
Sarah.

My shoulders slumped. I
wasn’t going to get into the argument about going to Thornfield
again. I’d won a full scholarship from that monologue contest. It
paid for everything—my books, my lodging, the whole nine yards. If
my aunts thought I was going to give that up, they were crazy. This
was my ticket out. I was twenty-one years old, and I was finally
going to get to go to college. They weren’t stopping me, especially
not with their crazy talk of the Evil Ones. But if I had to pick
between getting the purification chant or arguing about Thornfield,
I’d pick the chant. It was quicker.

Aunt Libby bent over me and made a
cross on my forehead with scented lavender oil.

Kate and Sarah lit smudges
of sage, and they began to swirl the smoke around my
body.

I shut my eyes. I wished
they’d hurry up already.

“
Teagan Moss, answer yes if
you are a servant of the sky,” Sarah’s voice rang out.

I sighed.

“
Teagan,” prompted
Kate.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I
serve the goddess of the sky and clouds, of the storm and
rain.”

The smoke enveloped us in a
sweet-smelling haze. My aunts’ voices joined together, swirling
around me as well. “Mother Innarra, Serpent of the Sky, we offer
your servant Teagan into your protection. Coil her in your body,
keep her safe from the schemes of the Evil Ones. Purify her
thoughts, take from her temptation, wipe from her mind the
sensation of evil.”

My aunts drew back.

My toast popped up from the
toaster. “Thanks,” I said. “I feel very pure. Very
protected.”

“
This is not a joke,” said
Aunt Kate. “You haven’t experienced the Evil Ones
firsthand—”

“
And thank the goddess for
that,” said Libby.

“
But they are very real, and
they seek to harm you,” said Kate.

I went to get my toast out
of the toaster. “I’ll be careful.”

“
You mustn’t allow them to
steal your light,” said Sarah. “Guard yourself, Teagan.”

I smeared jelly onto my
toast. “I’ll smudge myself with sage daily.”

Aunt Kate covered her mouth
with one hand. “We really don’t think it’s a good idea to leave
this house. This building protects us, you know.”

“
And you know what happened
to your mother when she went to that college,” said
Libby.

I swallowed a bite of toast.
“Mom’s sick. She’s mentally ill. She got worse away from home, but
the Evil Ones did
not
muddle her brain.” I glared at them. “I wish you guys could
join the rest of us in the real world.”

They folded their arms over their
chests.

* * *

My mother stayed in one wing
of the house. She wouldn
’t leave because
she wasn’t convinced anywhere else was safe. We couldn’t even get
her out to visit a therapist or anything. In all honesty, she’d
probably get better care in a facility somewhere, but we couldn’t
afford that. And my aunts were convinced that our house offered a
protective bubble against the Evil Ones, whoever they
were.

It was very unfortunate that
my mother seemed to have taken my aunts’ weird New Age religion and
incorporated it into her delusions.

Right then, I was standing
in the doorway to my mother’s bedroom. She hadn’t seen me yet. She
was crouching on the floor wearing the white nightgown she refused
to take off. We kept her hair short because it was easier to take
care of it, so she resembled a little boy. She was clutching a
crayon, and she was writing something on the floor.

The entire room was covered
in her scratching. She liked to draw pictures of snakes and write,
“Don’t scream, Angela” all over everything. Angela was her name. My
aunts used to try to keep writing implements away from her, and
they used to paint over the walls, making everything
fresh.

But Mom always found pens or
markers or pencils. Eventually, they gave up and let her have the
crayons.

My aunts claim that my
mother was not sick before she left for Thornfield College, the
same college I’d won a scholarship to, when she was eighteen years
old. They claim she was a normal, bright, happy girl. And that she
came home two years later at the Christmas holiday broken and
raving, three months pregnant with me.

She’d never explained how
she got pregnant, so, of course, I had no idea who my father was.
And she’d never recovered.

My aunts insisted that
something happened to her at college that destroyed her. I’d spoken
to a doctor though, and he assured me that it wasn’t the case. He
said that the stress of being away from home must have pushed my
mother too far. She was always schizophrenic, he said, it simply
hadn’t shown itself yet.

She turned in the direction
of the doorway, and she saw me. “Teagan?”

I walked across the room and
sat down on the floor next to her. “Hi, Mom.”

She cocked her head at me.
“They’ve been here today already.”

“
Who has?”

“
The snakes,” she said.
“They come in through the walls.” She pointed to her pictures of
snakes, decorating the area above her bed.

“
But they’re gone now,” I
said.

She nodded. “I guess so. Or
maybe we just can’t see them anymore. Do you see them?”

It was best not to answer
questions like that. It made her mad when I told her I couldn’t see
her hallucinations. But if I pretended, she wouldn’t believe me and
would ask pointed questions about their appearance until she caught
me in a lie. So I simply gave her a hug. “I came up to say goodbye,
Mom. I’m leaving for college as soon as the car they’re sending
shows up.”

“
Leaving.” She handed me her
crayon. “You should be careful, Teagan.”

“
I will, Mom.”

She leaned forward like she
was telling me a secret. “What’s yours is always more powerful if
it is given than if it is stolen.”

Was that supposed to mean
something? I handed her back the crayon. “I’ll miss
you.”

She shrugged. She turned
back to the floor, where she was coloring in the “A” in
Angela.

“
Bye, Mom.” I kissed her on
top of her head and stood up. I started out of the room.

“
Oh, Teagan,” she called
after me.

I stopped.
“Yeah?”

“
They give out free birth
control at the health center on campus,” she said. “Take
advantage.”

I choked. My mother had
never said anything like that to me before. It was a surprisingly
lucid thing for her to say. And really embarrassing. “Actually,
I’ve been on birth control for years, mom.”

She smiled at me brightly.
“Really? Well, then have fun.”

I cringed.

* * *

“
This wing is for
upperclassmen,” said the girl at the door. She had long red curls,
and she was glaring at me.

I’d just climbed up three
flights of stairs in an old, dark building with very few windows.
The walls were stone, and the air smelled just a touch musty. Now I
was standing on the landing and there were three oak doors. The
girl was standing in front of one of them. The door to the wing
where I was trying to go.

I fumbled to look at the
slip of paper I’d been given with my dormitory assignment. “It says
I’m on the third floor of Slayton Hall.”

“
Well, there’s some kind of
mix-up then.”

I peered at the girl. “I
remember you. You were at the monologue contest. I remember seeing
you while we were all waiting outside for our turn to
audition.”

“
Yeah, I was there. I’ve
been there for three years in a row. I thought that this year, I
was going to get the scholarship. Do you have any idea how unlikely
it is for them to award it to someone who isn’t even in the program
yet?”

Oh. She was angry. I’d
beaten her out of the scholarship. “I guess you know who I
am.”

She folded her arms over her
chest.

“
What’s your name?” I
said.

“
Reba Keir,” she said.
“And the last I checked, you were a
freshman
, and you didn’t belong in
the upperclassmen wing.”

I showed her my assignment
paper. “It says I’m living here.”

She huffed.

“
Look, I’m sorry you didn’t
get the scholarship, and that I did,” I said. “I know how you feel.
I’ve been auditioning for things since high school, and when you
don’t get things that you want, it’s disappointing.”

“
Don’t do that,” she said.
“Don’t try to say that we have things in common. We don’t.” She
pointed at me. “You don’t belong here.”

The door opened behind her.
“Who are you yelling at, Reba?” said a girl with blonde hair and a
cute pug nose.

“
Um,” I said, “I think I’m
supposed to be on this wing?”

“
Are you Teagan?” said the
girl.

“
Yeah.” She knew who I was.
Did everyone know who I was?

She grinned. “I’m Nell. Nell
Sutton. I’m your roommate.”

Reba put her hands on her
hips. “She’s a freshman, Nell. She can’t live here.”

“
She’s an older freshman,”
said Nell. She reached out a hand. “Can I take one of your
suitcases?”

Reba moved between us. “So
what? She’s still a freshman.”

“
She’s our
age
. They thought she’d
be more comfortable here.” Nell grabbed my suitcase and yanked it
back so that it hit Reba’s legs.

Reba leaped out of the way.

I squeezed by her. “It was,
um, nice to meet you.”

Nell led me down a hallway.
There were identical doors lining it. Each one was thick and heavy,
made from dark wood. There was only one window, and it cast a
gloomy light over the darkened hallway. “Don’t listen to Reba,” she
threw over her shoulder. “She’s a diva in training.”

There were paintings hanging
on the walls. One was a landscape, with a crumbling castle against
the setting sun. Another was a picture of a bunch of men on
horseback, hunting a wild boar. Dogs were leaping at the animal,
frozen in midair. I wrinkled my nose.

“
You looking at the
paintings?” said Nell. “Yeah, they’re weird, right? But they were
all painted by Thornfield alumni, so we’re stuck with
them.”

I nodded. “Oh, right.
Because a lot of successful artists and performers come from this
school.” It was one of the reasons why I’d been so pleased to get a
full scholarship here. It seemed like Thornfield was the place to
go if you wanted to find success in the art world. While actors
from Thornfield rarely made it to Hollywood, I’d heard that nearly
fifty percent of the actors on Broadway had graduated from
Thornfield. Authors, publishers, and gallery owners often had ties
to Thornfield as well. I was very fortunate.

She grinned. “Yep. It’s
really a great place for networking. Last spring, Thomas Ricter was
a guest director, and, of course, Carter Alexander started teaching
here last year.”

I knew who Thomas Ricter
was, and I’d even heard about his stint as guest director here.
“Carter Alexander?”