Night of the Purple Moon (3 page)

“We’re not allergic to it. You said that yourself.”

“Jordan, I didn’t say that.”

He headed for the door. “Where are the binoculars? Well? You’re always telling me how messy I am. At least I know where things are. You had them last!”

Abby inched closer to her brother, ready to grab him. “Jordan, stay inside.”

He scowled. “What makes you the boss?” He glanced at Kevin, hoping for an ally, but Kevin lowered his eyes.

Abby suggested a compromise. “If Mom’s not on the noon ferry, then we’ll go up to the roof.”

Jordan looked at her, at the door, back to her.

“Please,” Abby said.

He grunted and moved to the window. Abby breathed a sigh of relief, but she was certain he would soon challenge her again. Until her mother arrived, Abby knew that they all needed to stay together and work as a team. She’d do whatever was necessary to make sure that happened.

It was easy to forget about Emily. She sat like a mannequin on the bed, saying nothing, staring straight ahead. It was not so easy to forget about Toucan. Her sister was bored. Confined to a small room, understanding little of what was going on, what toddler wouldn’t be antsy? Abby got out Jenga to play with her. As Abby was removing a block from the tower, Toucan said something that caught her off guard. “Wake up Daddy.”

Abby dissolved in tears. The tower toppled.

She felt the tension rising as noon approached. They should hear the ferry horn any minute. Over and over again, Abby pictured the ferry motoring into Castine Island harbor and the captain pulling the cord that sounded the horn.

By noon the ferry horn had not sounded. “It’s running late,” Abby said, knowing the ferry never ran late. By 12:15, still nothing. “I bet Mom will take the five o’clock ferry.” Her fake cheeriness did little to raise the somber mood of the boys.

The afternoon dragged on. Abby put Toucan down for a nap. Soon after that the radio station went off the air.

Jordan and Kevin went downstairs to try the TV and computer. The boys reported every TV channel had a test pattern. Kevin was able to make a connection from the computer to the server—located somewhere on the mainland—but he couldn’t access the internet.

“We have a satellite connection with a wireless network,” Kevin said. “If I get my laptop from my house, I can work from here.”

“Let’s wait,” Abby said. “Our mother will be here soon.”

“She might have sent us e-mail!” Jordan said.

“Jordan, she’ll be here at five-thirty.”

“What if she isn’t? What if…” Her brother lowered his head.

Just then tires squealed outside. Jordan reached the window first. By the time Abby looked out, the car had sped by the house.

“It was green,” Jordan stammered. “I couldn’t see the driver. It was going really fast.”

Abby felt her spirit lifting. If someone else was alive, it meant than her mom was probably okay, too.

“The mailman drives a green car,” Kevin said.

“His is dark green,” Kevin said. “This was light green.”

“Who else drives a green car?” Abby said.

They all paused, thinking. They hardly knew anyone on the island. Dad, who’d grown up here, always said, “It takes a long time to get to know a local, but once you do, you have a friend for life.” Since moving here Jordan had so far made one friend, Eddie Egan. Abby had zero friends, and she was sure that Kevin and Emily didn’t have any friends, either.

“Whoever it was, I bet they’re going to meet the ferry,” Abby said.

The five-thirty ferry never arrived.

Jordan gazed out the window at the evening sky. It was an ugly mash-up of reds and different shades of purple. Earth, he imagined, was still hurtling through the comet’s tail.

Where were the gulls? Normally birds filled the sky at sunset. He wondered if they were allergic to space dust, too.

Several street lights turned on. He didn’t react. He knew they came on automatically at dusk.

The street remained deserted. The green car had not passed by the house again. He and Abby and Kevin had taken shifts at the window, keeping a lookout. The driver, speeding to the point of losing control, must have been in a great hurry. Was he or she going somewhere, or running from something?

Jordan pictured his father on the porch. His mind jumped around like that, thinking about the green car one second, his dad the next, then some other random thought. But the image of his dad kept reoccurring. When he’d heard Abby scream in the breezeway he knew that something was terribly wrong.

Jordan felt tears streaming down his cheeks. He was glad that he was alone in the room. He hated for people to see him cry. Kevin was in Abby’s room changing out of his pajamas, and Abby had taken Toucan and Emily to the bathroom to shower and use the toilet.

Everything was so strange and sad and that included Emily Patel being here in his house. He had thought she was really cute the first time he had set eyes on her, three months ago in Ms. Gifford’s class. Emily sat two rows over, and to glimpse at her long brown hair, he’d pretend to look at the wall clock. Once she had caught him staring at her and she stared back with her huge dark eyes.

Now those huge brown eyes had stared into space for the past eight hours.

The colors of the sky blurred from more tears as Jordan’s thoughts turned to his mother. Was she still at home in Cambridge? Or had she made it as far as the ferry terminal in Portland?

He recalled their last phone conversation two days ago. She had called to let them know what ferry she was planning to take. When the phone passed to him, she told him the surprising news. She was going to look for a job in Portland. “Happy?” she asked. He let out a whoop. Leaving her job in Boston and working in Portland meant two very big things: the family would once again be together, and they would continue to live on Castine Island. Jordan could think of no better place to live.

Growing up, he and Abby had stayed with Gram and Grandpa on the island for several weeks every summer. He loved to sail and fish and wanted to join the Coast Guard or Navy when he grew up. After both grandparents died, the island house remained vacant. Then last September Dad, who worked at the Cambridge Public Library, half-jokingly applied for a job at the Castine Island Library. Tired of the city, he’d always talked about moving here someday. To Dad’s surprise, they offered him the job of running the small library.

“Let’s move on a trial basis,” Dad had proposed. “Your mom will keep her job in Boston and visit on the weekends. If we like it, she’ll look for a new job in Portland. If we don’t like it, we’ll move back to Cambridge next summer.”

Abby had hated the idea from the start. “All my friends are in Cambridge,” she’d argued. “We can’t go in the middle of the school year …” She had even suggested that Dad should move to the island, and they would all visit him on weekends.

Jordan bit his lip. What if Abby had had her way and the family stayed in Cambridge? Would they all be safe now?

Just then a light blinked on at the Couture’s house across the street. It was in a room on the second floor. Jordan’s jaw dropped. Then he wondered if the light was on a timer. In Cambridge some homeowners set lights to turn on automatically whenever they were away on vacation. It discouraged burglars. But there was no crime on Castine Island, no reason to have timer lights.

Gulping, he raced to the bathroom and pounded on the door. “The Coutures are alive,” he shouted. “They’re alive!”

Abby told Kevin to get long-sleeved shirts. “You’ll find some in my dad’s closet,” she said. Abby was cutting up a sheet to make masks for them to breathe through when she and Kevin crossed the street to the Couture’s house. She didn’t think the masks or shirts would do much good, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

The moment Kevin disappeared Jordan shot her a look. “I was the one who saw the light! I should go with you.”

“One of us has to stay with Toucan,” she told him.

“Kevin can.”

Why did Jordan pick the worst times to be stubborn?

“Jordan, she’s our sister. We’re responsible for her.”

He pointed to Emily on the couch. “She’s Kevin’s sister. What’s the difference?” He folded his arms, a signal he wasn’t going to give in.

“Jordan, if something happens to both of us, who will take care of Toucan?”

“I’ll go with Kevin,” he said. “You stay with Touk.”

“Have you ever been inside the Couture’s house?”

Abby knew the answer was no. She didn’t think he had ever spoken to the elderly couple. But Abby had spoken to them and had been inside their house. Mrs. Couture invited her over for cookies two years ago. It was weird experience. Mr. Couture had pointed a shaky finger at her whenever he spoke, and Mrs. Couture sprayed Lysol on her “to keep the germs down.”

Jordan grumbled. “Fine,
be
the boss. Next time, it’s my turn to go outside.”

They discussed signals. If Abby waved the flashlight side to side, everything was good. Up and down meant trouble. She told Jordan to pull down the bedroom shade if he needed help.

He huffed. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

Abby and Kevin buttoned up the long-sleeved shirts and tied their masks in place. They added pullover wool caps and work gloves.

“Trick, treat!” Toucan squealed.

How Abby wished this were Halloween and she were going out for candy rather than searching for someone alive.

Before stepping outside, she looked at her sister and brother as if it might be for the last time. She swallowed hard and tried to drive this sad, frightening thought from her mind. She told herself that she was not allergic to the space dust. None of them were. “We’ll be back soon,” she told them. “Mr. and Mrs. Couture will know what to do.”

A briny odor hung in the damp air, and light from the purple moon outlined tree trunks and their leafless branches, springtime still a month away. The first stars were out, twinkling purple, but the comet had yet to appear. A block away, toward the harbor, a single streetlight was shining, casting a ghostly lavender cone of light.

Their footsteps crunched on the driveway made of crushed clamshells. Despite the chilly temperature, perspiration dripped down Abby’s neck and chest, and soon her mask was soaking wet from her breath.

The adrenalin coursing throughout her body sharpened her senses. She tasted salt in the air and was acutely aware of a buoy bell tolling miles away.

They stopped in the middle of the road. A streetlight was glowing up the hill. From that direction, she pictured the lobster truck careening out of control and blasting through the picket fence.

“Abby!” Kevin shouted.

She jumped and whirled toward Kevin.

He grabbed her wrist and aimed the flashlight at a clump of bushes in front of the Couture’s yard. “Look!” he cried.

Eyes reflected red, and then the animal scurried away.

Abby’s heart was ready to explode. “Kevin, it’s only a dog.”

“It was a wolf!”

“Please, don’t shout!”

Kevin’s hat and mask covered much of his face, but she could tell he was terrified.

“There are no wolves here,” she added, taking him by the hand and leading him toward something far scarier: the truck and what was likely inside the cab.

“The engine’s running,” Kevin said. “I’m going to turn it off.”

Abby didn’t question why he wanted to do that. She accepted that he must have a good reason.

She gazed up at the second-story lit bedroom. Then, turning toward her house, she saw Jordan in the window. “Kevin, hurry up.”

She inched forward and trained the flashlight on the truck. The beam revealed a man with a bushy black beard slumped over the wheel. It was Mr. Marsh, for sure. Whenever he dropped Colby off at school, he always reminded Abby of a bear.

Kevin discovered the passenger door locked and he moved around to the other side. When he opened the driver’s side door a crack, the weight of the body suddenly flung it all the way open and Mr. Marsh tumbled out.

Kevin screamed and jumped back.

Abby froze, too shocked to react in any way.

“Whoa,” Kevin finally said and approached the truck once more. He stepped around Mr. Marsh, leaned into the cab, and turned off the engine.

In the eerie silence, Abby waved the flashlight side to side, pretending everything was all right.

The cough startled Jordan. Emily had been so quiet all this time that he had forgotten about her. She was leaning forward on the bed. She coughed a second and third time and then started gagging.

He was about to pull the shade down when he decided to take care of the problem himself. A wild ache of panic crept through his veins as he stood before Emily. Her gagging was so loud that it woke up Toucan. Was something stuck in her throat? Should he perform the Heimlich maneuver?

He raced back to the window, ready to pull down the shade, but at that moment Emily caught her breath.

He sat beside her. She continued breathing normally, but she trembled all over. He lifted his arm to put around her shoulder, but somehow he just couldn’t. Toucan crawled over and curled up in his lap.

Emily buried her hands in her face and wept. Tears trickled out between her fingers. Toucan patted her on the head. “Em’, no cry.”

“Father’s glasses,” she whispered.

Jordan moved closer. “What?”

“Father’s glasses,” she said in a quivering voice. “They were on the table beside the bed. Mother’s hand was hanging over the side. They looked so small, like they were children. Kevin was just staring at them…”

Jordan realized what she was describing. “Go on,” he said.

He hardly took a breath as she told him everything that had happened from the time she had awoken when Kevin screamed up until the time that Kevin pounded on the Leigh’s door.

“I found Kevin in my parents’ bedroom. What’s wrong, I asked him. He just kept staring at Mother and Father. Father had a peaceful expression. I noticed Mother’s bracelet.” Emily paused to wipe her eyes. “I remembered that we were supposed to go to Portland. We need to wake them up, I told him, or we’ll miss the ferry. That’s when he said they were dead. The next thing I knew I was standing in front of your house and Kevin was banging on your door.”