The Silver Moon Elm (7 page)

“Uh. ’Kay. Um, Jenny, there’s a party at Amanda’s this Friday.”

“Yes, there is.” Jennifer’s head began to ache, and his voice sounded far away.

“I was thinking maybe you and me could—”

“Go together? Yeah, that would be great.”

WHAT?

Don’t worry, the other half of her brain desperately tried to assure the first half. I’ve got a plan. I must have a plan. Don’t worry, the other half of her brain desperately tried to assure the first half. I’ve got a plan. I must have a plan.

“Wow!” Bob’s simian face brightened. “Really?”

And your plan is?

Um. It’s a secret?

Idiot.

“See you Friday night,” she said quickly, and turned to shuffle past Susan, who was gaping.

She was halfway to geometry class before her friend’s voice caught up with her.

“What was that?”

“That was a date,” Jennifer replied simply.

“A date? With Bob Jarkmand? For a macking party?”

“Geez, Susan, what do you want me to do? Go to this thing without anyone?”

“No, but what about going with an actual member of the human race?”

“Hey, Bob asked me. Amanda and the others find him acceptable. I’m taking what I can get.”

“What a terrific way to pursue true love. Will you let him down your pants if Amanda and the others say it’s okay?”

“That’s cute, Susan. Could you be a little more insulting?”

“Sure, how about this: Since when did the Almighty Dragon Princess start blowing off her friends to go to parties with those bitches?”

Jennifer stopped short and faced Susan. “Is that what this is about? Them?”

Her friend stared at her as if she had polka dots on her nose. “Duh! Yes!”

“I’m sorry I said yes to Amanda, okay? And I’m sorry I said yes to Bob. But I don’t have lots of choices, Susan. Bob’s a beaststalker, or a beaststalker-in-training, anyway. And haven’t you ever noticed? His family hangs out with Amanda’s family, and I’ll bet Amanda’s one, too. Heck, the whole freaking A-List could be beaststalkers. Someone’s got to reach out to them. Eddie’s not stepping up. That leaves me.”

“So because Eddie punked out, you’ll ditch me and become an A-List whore?”

Jennifer let a hiss escape through her her teeth. “Will you stop overreacting? It’s one stupid night. I’m not blowing you off—”

“We were going to go to the mall together Friday night. Remember?”

The words hit Jennifer across the face like a dasher’s spiked tail. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I guess not. Like I said: Blowing Me Off!” Susan raced off to geometry class.

Jennifer stood there—still in shock—for a good few seconds before she caught movement in her peripheral vision.

“So how’d it go, Jenny?”

It was Amanda. She was focused on using a tiny lint roller to remove invisible specks from her perfect wool skirt and cashmere sweater. The other three girls were in tight formation behind her.

“It went fine. I gotta go to geometry.”

“Bob’s coming to the party with you?”

Aggravated, Jennifer pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. “Of course he is. What, you think he’s saying no to this?”

That got Amanda to look up and grin. Abigail let out a whoop of laughter, and the others tittered nervously.

“He’ll have his hands full,” Amanda said, scanning the length of Jennifer’s body as if recognizing her for the first time. “Make sure you don’t tell anyone else about this party. I don’t want to wreck the place or my parents will kill me. Sally’s cool with not going?”

It was barely a question. Jennifer cast her gaze down the hall. Her friend had already disappeared among the crowds of roving teenagers. “Susan will be fine.” But she wasn’t sure of that at all.

“Where do you get your ’do done?” Anne took a cautious step forward and reached out to touch Jennifer’s platinum hair. “That color is insane. I want it!”

Feeling brave and still a bit angry, Jennifer reached up and held Anne’s freckled nose between thumb and forefinger. She shook the girl’s head back and forth with gentle mischief. “Oh no, cutie! You don’t want to go through what I had to go through to get this hair. Believe me.”

Anne gasped and took a step backward, breaking contact. The other three girls stared at the two of them, stunned by Jennifer’s audacious move. I dared touch one of them! The giddy thought raced through her mind with a mixture of surprise at her own transgression, relief that Amanda would probably disinvite her from the stupid mack party, and horror at what rumor they might generate to torture her for the next two and a half years.

Then all four of them started giggling uncontrollably, and Jennifer knew all was truly lost. They have accepted me. I have become one of them. Kill me now.

“Oh, Jenny, you are a riot!” Amanda reached out with her lint roller and rubbed it over Jennifer’s own sweater, as if leaving her own scent all over the new girl. “There. Much better. Hey, you wanna go to the mall tonight?”

Another twinge of regret rankled Jennifer at the mention of the mall. She would have to make it up to Susan when they got back from Crescent Valley. Heck, maybe she could convince her parents to keep the visit brief enough to come back early in the morning, or even tonight…

“I’ve got plans,” she finally said without paying much attention to Amanda’s look of astonishment. Apparently, not too many girls at Winoka High turned down the A+ of the A-List. “Thanks, though.”

“Huh. Yeah, well, see you around.”

The A-List turned as one, flared wool skirts all flipping in unison, and walked away.

A boy’s whistle behind her made her turn. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Wow.” Skip couldn’t take his eyes off the retreating foursome. “You know those girls? How come you never introduced—”

“Forget it.”

“Yeah, I don’t suppose any of them want a guy with a brain above the belt, anyway. Speaking of which, are you honestly going to a party with Bob Jarkmand this Friday? I mean, that’s a joke, right?”

Her jaw dropped. “You heard already?”

His expression froze somewhere between amusement and amazement. His thumb jerked. “I ran into Susan back there. She filled me in. I thought she was just screwing with my head.” Adjusting the backpack on his shoulder, he looked at Jennifer with more confusion—and perhaps less respect. “Bob Jarkmand, eh?”

“Skip, I really don’t have time for—”

“Where’s your necklace?” He was suddenly alarmed that the wooden necklace he had given her last spring, with the carved image of the Moon of the Falling Leaves, was not hanging around her neck as it usually was.

She looked down at the sterling silver chain and prism pendant she had decided upon that morning, and then shrugged. “I just figured I would wear something different today. What, doesn’t this look good?”

“It looks great. You look great. But I kinda hoped you’d keep—”

“What? Wearing your necklace? It’s not like we’re going out anymore,” she interrupted hotly. “I mean, I should probably give it back to—”

“No!”

She took a step back, startled. “Geez, Skip. Fine. I’ll keep it. But do you mind if I accessorize myself in the morning?”

“You should wear it,” he replied with thin lips. Then he shook his head. “More often, I mean.”

As patronizing as this was, she couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Skip, this morning was the first time I took it off since June! What, you want me to stuff it down my bra?”

Her joke relaxed him a little, but his grin was still nervous. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Sorry for freaking out. See you around. Say, you still going back to Crescent Valley tonight?”

“Oh, um.” She hesitated. Of course he had known she’d planned to return with her mother—but he looked quite vulnerable right now, and she didn’t want to start another fight. So she steeled herself and lied. “Naw. It’s not that important. I’m still angry at them for booting you and Susan. I told my mom I’d take her another time.”

The news did seem to brighten his mood. “I appreciate that. Thanks. But geez, you don’t have to—Anyway, if you go, you should wear the necklace.” He soothed her with a soft touch under her chin. “All I mean is, it looks beautiful on you when the crescent moon’s out.”

With a long bat of her lashes, she pushed his hand away. “Sweet talker.”

As it turned out, she forgot to put Skip’s necklace back on that afternoon before she and her mother left in the minivan for Crescent Valley. To be fair, she had a lot on her mind.

First, her backpack was full of geometry homework—an unreasonable amount, even for the enthusiastic Mr. Slider. During class, he had handed out binders full of proofs and problems, chirping over student protests that a busy geometry student was a happy geometry student.

Second, word of her upcoming Friday night date with Bob Jarkmand had washed through the school like floodwaters, penetrating every nook and cranny of the classrooms and hallways until she was drowning in schoolmates’ furtive looks and giggles.

Eddie, however, hadn’t been giggling as they walked home together.

“Are you kidding me?”

“It’s no big deal, Eddie.” She wondered why she cared what he thought. “You hung out with him yourself earlier this year. Remember the Halloween Dance?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t…go together,” he sputtered. “It wasn’t like he and I would ever plan to make out at a party!”

“Gosh, I don’t know, Eddie. You two would make an adorable couple.”

“He’s a bully.”

“He’s my date.”

“You can do better!”

“Yes, well, right now better boys aren’t exactly popping out of school lockers.”

“They’re out there.”

There, she had lost her temper and snarled at him. “If they are, they’ve lost their nerve.”

That had shut him up.

Third, Elizabeth Georges-Scales was in a huge rush to leave—the tall, lithe doctor had barely let Jennifer slide the backpack off in the mudroom before claiming she was going out to warm up the minivan and they were leaving in five minutes, or one of them would be left to fly to the farm.

Oh yeah? Jennifer had grumbled to herself up in her bedroom, in a flurry of packing and tidying. What would you do with yourself once you got there, old woman?

But she was down in the minivan in time, waving with limp enthusiasm to Eddie as he watched them go from the front door.

“It hardly seems right to leave him alone tonight,” Elizabeth observed with concerned emerald eyes as she slowly backed out onto the street. “Are you sure he doesn’t want to come with us?”

“Definitely sure.”

“Maybe I should drop him off to see his mother…”

“Mom. You left him with two hundred dollars for the night. If he wants, he can get a taxi to the hospital, order a catered meal from the nearest gourmet restaurant for both himself and Mrs. Blacktooth, and then take a limo back here.”

“I just feel strange leaving him alone at our place overnight, after what he’s been through.”

“He’s fifteen. He’s a big boy. You’d rather stay home and baby-sit him?”

Elizabeth smirked, tucked a blonde strand behind her right ear, and put the minivan into drive. “Okay, honey. You’ve made your point. I guess it’s all for the best. This way, we can spend some quality time with your father.”

“In Crescent Valley.”

Her mother’s green eyes glowed, but the rest of her face stayed composed. “In Crescent Valley.”

“Where you’ve never been before.”

“Where I’ve never been before.” Long fingers tapped anxiously on the steering wheel. They were off Pine Street and heading for the town limits.

“And where you’ve been dying to go ever since you met Dad.”

“Yes!” To Jennifer’s delight, she had finally cracked her mother’s composure. Elizabeth bounced up and down in her seat. “Where I’ve been dying to go ever since I met your father! Jennifer, you can tell me now. What’s it like? Where is it? Is it in the forest? It’s in the forest, isn’t it? On the other side of the lake. I tried to check it out back there once in the car, but there aren’t any roads after a while and the trees got really thick and there were some enormous wolves running around and that’s where it is, isn’t it? I can tell from your face!”

Jennifer couldn’t help laughing—her mother was positively ebullient. “Mom, relax! You’ve gone years without knowing. Can’t you wait another couple of hours?”

“Jennifer Caroline Scales, you tell your mother this instant where Crescent Valley is or I’ll gut you with my sword.”

“Did you bring it?”

“Hell no. I’m not showing up in front of your father’s Giant Angry Lizard Club with a weapon.”

“We’re closer biologically to birds than lizards, Mom. Remember?”

From the older woman’s expression, it was obvious her mother was thinking back to Jennifer’s first night as a dragon. “Yeah, I remember. That was quite a night. You called us clueless.”

“Well, you were.”

“But we were right about a lot of things, weren’t we? You have to admit: Parents know more than teenagers want to admit.”

Jennifer traced a wavy line down the frosty passenger window with her fingernail. “Mom, just wait until you see all the stuff you don’t know!”

CHAPTER 5
Monday Night

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Back on the farm, Joseph greeted both Scales family members with more enthusiasm than he had shown Skip and the others. Mother and daughter looked over the grounds briefly and gave Joseph some help on a few maintenance issues around the stables. Then Jennifer thoughtfully packed a waterproof overnight bag for her mother, secured it to her hindclaw, and invited her mother for a ride.

“Is this really necessary?” Elizabeth asked, climbing on. “And why do you have one of your grandfather’s old duffel bags strapped to your—Hey!”

Jennifer was off like a rocket over the lake, and was not too far from the shore when—

“Hang on tight!”

—she plunged into the moonlit surface.

They came out the other side moments later. As they gently treaded water, they witnessed the venerables’ belt of fire course around the crescent moon and listened to the strumming of the surrounding insect life. Elizabeth had calmed down enough by now to slap her daughter gently across her spiked head.