Page 7 of In the Light of the Moon

When before, he’d been dirty and injured, now, he was clean-cut and standing perfectly upright. His white hairwascurly, with the sides and back cut shorter. He was clutching the strap of a leather satchel slung on his shoulder, and looking down at me with those eyes like granny smith apples.

I took an involuntary step closer but stopped when his eyes tightened, looking me up and down with suspicion. My mouth opened to ask how he was, but he beat me to it, “What are you doing here?”

I jerked back and pulled my headphones off my ears to hang off of my neck. Maybe I’d misheard that. “Pardon?” The hall was completely empty, now, but my mind was focused in on the man that I’d halfway convinced myselfwassome sort of apparition or figment of my imagination. Every day that I’d gone to work, I would go back by the dumpster and try to imagine this mystery man who had been so spooked that it was like he couldn’t even speak.

Even though there was no one around, he took another glance around before furrowing his brow, “Are you following me?” He didn’t sound particularly angry, more astonished. Possibly embarrassed.

My eyes widened, and I sputtered for a moment, “What the hell?” But, it appeared that Ihadheard him correctly the first time. He was… accusing me of following him? Annoyance flared in my cheeks, no doubt making them a bit red. “Maybe I should askyouthe same thing.” I crossed my arms and raised my chin.

His expression hardened, “Look?—”

I cut him off, “Are you a student here?” He looked older than the usual undergraduate age, but then again, so did I. And maybe he was a graduate student or something?

“No,” and then he pushed past me, making sure not to get too close.

But a part of me needed to… prove that what happened behind Vinny’s that night hadn’t been a dream. “Wait!” I practically yelled down the hall at him. Thankfully, he stopped and, rather reluctantly, turned his head over his shoulder. “A-are you okay? And feeling better?”

I watched his body still, tension evident in his upper back, and something in me deflated. My eyes dropped to my fingers that were beginning to fiddle with the knot of my headphones again.

“Yes,” he called just before opening the door to the stairwell and descending before I could catch another glimpse of him.

“What the fuck,” I exhaled under my breath.

Josie lifted one of the rough-cut soaps, holding it to her nose and setting it back down with a shudder. She proceeded to do the same with the rest of those in the section, though I knew she didn’t intend to buy any. She was here more for my benefit.

I placed a bundle of sage in one of the store’s wicker shopping baskets, along with a new pack of tarot cards. My friend would turn her nose up at all of this stuff, but she would most certainly be the first to ask for a reading as soon as I opened the cards. It was one of the few practices my father hadn’t sputtered and gotten anxious over, and I’d grown quite fond of working with the cards in my teenage years. His whole side of the family waswary of anything to do with witchcraft or magic, but it was easy now to flatten the bit of shame that tried to bubble up.

My fingers swept over a delicately crafted bracelet, the beads a mesmerizing swirl of greens and browns. I plucked it off of the display and stuck it in my basket as well.

“So, how are classes going?” Josie spritzed some natural deodorant spray into the air and took a reluctant sniff. She nodded in surprise approval before setting the tester back on the wooden shelf, and I chuckled. Josie was the only friend I had in Antler Pointe, and it was nice to get to spend more time with her since I’d moved back. We met when we were both twelve or so. When while shopping with Granna, a boisterous girl my age bumped into me while running around a clothing store with her friends from school. She quickly complimented me on my cartoon t-shirt and scooped me up to hang out with her little group that day. Never mind that I was a ball of nervous rambles. She just grinned and followed my branching trains of thought easily.

I shrugged, “Pretty good, all things considered. Feels kinda weird being the oldest person in there. Besides the professors, but whatever.” It felt good to be in a learning environment again, around creativity and progress. My first year or two of college had been filled with prerequisite courses where many of my classmates couldn’t care less besides meeting the requirement.

But now, with my last two semesters, I was in the classes that interested me most. And though it felt like a betrayal of some kind, I couldn’t deny that without worrying about my father’s ever-fluctuating health, I felt free to fully immerse myself.

Though I was taking care of Granna, she mostly just needed someone to help her around the house. To keep her company and take on the more strenuous tasks that she could no longer do with ease.

“Meet anyone?” And by the tone of Josie’s voice and waggle of her bleached brows, I knew what she was implying. “A sexy TA perhaps? Ooh—or you could go for one of your classmates!”

My face pinched in disgust, “Jesus, Josie. Some of them are likechildren.”

“What?” She sputtered, “Vicky was younger than you! And everyone around you is at least an adult. Who cares if you fuck someone that’s not ‘age appropriate’,” she used air quotes on the phrase, and I scoffed. Though I was raised outside of Antler Pointe, I’d kept up with Josie enough over the years to know that meeting and discarding romantic and sexual partners came easily to her. Each time she would text or call and the conversation would inevitably turn to our love lives, I couldn’t help often coming up feeling… inadequate. Her enthusiastic and eccentric personality was like a magnet, one that I hadn’t been able to resist even when we were too young for her to be doing it on purpose.

At eighteen, when I was reeling from a particularly bad breakup and our Skype call had mostly involved my blubbering recount of what happened, I asked her how she did it. How she moved on so quickly. With softness and comfort in her eyes, she said that she always entered her relationships and trysts knowing that they wouldn’t last. That it helped nullify any blow. That sounded so depressing and unattainable, something I knew I’d never be able to do.

And later, with Dad being sick, taking care of our house, and all the funeral and hospital expenses, most of my relationships—platonic and otherwise—went down the proverbial shitter.

I reached the counter and smiled at the person at the register. While they rang up my purchases, I threw my head over my shoulder to tease her, “Ididhave an interesting encounter with a stranger.”

Her eyes went wide, “Oh, you better fucking spill it,” she snagged my receipt from the cashier’s outstretched hand, hooked her arm in mine, and started to pull us out of the shop. I just managed to grab the paper bag of my purchases before we exited into the summer air.

We continued down the main square, arm-in-arm, and I fiddled with the plastic wrapping on the tarot cards.

“I feel like we should get some coffee,” she said absently, and we glanced both ways down the street before jaywalking to our destination.

I tugged down my miniskirt as we entered the blessedly cool building, and there was luckily just one person in front of us. We both stared up at the menu over the front counter, and I leaned my head closer to hers, “Some guy—” but then something stopped me from telling her about the state that I found the man in. Though I was now sure that what happened was real, I still had no clue as to how he’d ended up behind Vinny’s. Or what he was doing in the damn English Department if he wasn’t a student.

If I hadn’t been born with the grandmother I had, I would have written the whole thing off as a coincidence. I would have told Josie everything, used the bizarre situation that night as a bit of a tale to impress her with.

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