The Summer of Moonlight Secrets (2 page)

3

Allie Jo

The best place to eat The Meriwether's Famous Blueberry Pancakes is in the crook of the bay window in the Emerald Dining Room. That's where Dad, Mom, and I are sitting, but I finish off that blueberry goodness in about two minutes and then I lick the maple syrup clean off the plate.

“Allie Jo,” Dad says, setting his coffee down. “That plate is
spit-polished.
Just put it back in and give it to the next person.” What a joker. He picks up his cup. “Time to get busy,” he says, kissing the top of my head before walking on out of here to his office.

“No tours today,” Mom says, “so I'll be helping Dad in the office.” She gives me a quick squeeze before reaching out for Dad's hand. I watch them walk out of the dining room together. Lovebirds!

I myself am not quite ready to get started, so I lean back in my chair and scan the dining room. That girl from this morning isn't here. If she wants pancakes, she'd better hurry; Chef shuts breakfast down in fifteen minutes.

I pull my legs up and sit crisscross on the chair, staring out the window until the cooks come and break down the buffet. A red cardinal perches on the bird feeder by the oak. I watch as he pushes his head through the feeder, showering the grass with black sunflower seeds and a mix of little yellow seeds. His wife pecks through the grass. When a squirrel jumps from an oak branch onto the bird feeder, both cardinals keep eating. I guess they're used to him.

Well, that's enough sitting on my butt for one morning. Time to get started on my rounds.

Passing the mostly empty tables, I carry my dishes to the cart at the back of the dining room: silverware goes into the plastic cylinder; plates go on one side of the bus tub, glasses on the other. Guests don't bus their own tables, but since I live at The Meriwether, I have to clear my own dishes, even though they don't pay me.

“Hay, Clay,” I say, passing the front desk. I laugh to myself because I know he thinks I said, “Hey, Clay.” It's just one of those private jokes I have with myself.

He nods to me. “Allie Jo.”

I get to the far staircase and dash up the stairs. As I climb past the second floor, I reach the sign that says,
The Meriwether is renovating the upper floors for your future enjoyment. For your personal safety, please enjoy the amenities on the lower floors.
And then, just in case you don't understand what that really means, square black letters at the bottom say,
Guests Prohibited.
I step over the velvet cord and continue.

Everything changes as I turn on the landing. The sculpted floral carpet ends; the stairs going up are covered by all kinds of different rugs, depending on when or if that story got renovated. Which some of them did, but that was a long time ago, not anytime soon, as that sign would have you believe. That's what makes these floors so interesting—you're walking on actual history.

The air gets warmer the higher I go. Even the smell changes—a hint of cut grass, a trace of mildew—but mainly it's the smell of heat and wood. It's a good smell.

I turn onto the third floor to begin my inspection. They don't pay me for this either, but, you know, someone's got to do it. This floor has no rug on account of the hotel being sold in the middle of the 1972 restoration. Just as I'm coming up on the Beauford Chambers Suite, I spot a boy down the hall.

“Hey!” I yell.

He whips his head around, sees me, and grins. Then he throws down a skateboard and pumps like a hundred miles an hour.

I tear after him. “Get back here!” I holler. That's antique heart of pine he's rolling that stupid board over.

4

Chase

Guests Prohibited.
Are you kidding me? I lift my skateboard and climb over the rope. Dad's checking us into this place, and I'm checking it out. It's like a creepy old mansion. The stairs groan under my feet. A deep crack spreads from one side of the staircase to the other, and the rug looks older and dirty.

When I reach the next level, the wood floor rolls out in front of me—the perfect surface. The sign said they're renovating this floor, but I don't see any workers. Still, I better be sure. I carry my skateboard and walk down the hall.

“Hey!”

I whip my head around and see a girl standing all sergeantlike, hands on her hips, legs apart. I grin, throw my board down, and I'm off.

“Get back here!” she bellows.

I laugh. “Come and get me!”

I'm flying over the whoop-de-doos, getting a little air, faster, faster! Yeah! I stamp my back foot down for a perfect ollie, only my landing's sketchy and I feel one of the wheels catch in a groove. Suddenly I'm cartwheeling—arms flailing, legs snapping—and I have just enough time to think,
This is gonna hurt!
before I slam onto the floor.

Aw, man.

I'm squeezing my eyes shut, trying to decide which hurts more—my head or my ego—when I hear that girl come running up.

“Are you okay?” she yells.

I lift my head, try to look at her, and suddenly feel like I'm gonna hurl. I rest my head. Closing my eyes, I say, “Yeah, I just need to lie down for a minute.”

Her footsteps shuffle up close to me.

She gasps.

My eyes snap open. “What?”

Gaping, she points at my arm. “It's crooked,” she says.

Oh, no. I try to sit up, but when I brace myself, fire races down my right arm. Oh, man. “I'm gonna be sick.”

Her face goes white. Mine feels green. “I better get my dad,” she says, and before I can say anything she takes off, leaving me alone on the floor.

Waves of seasickness overtake me. My arm throbs like a blinking red light. I moan. Then, because no one's around, I moan louder.

It's on a freshwater spring
, Dad had said.
You'll love it—lots of history
. Um, yeah, that's what I want on summer vacation—history. An old, beat-up hotel with bad floors. I know he's a travel writer and everything, but how come we never go where
I
want to go, like that place that had shrunken heads outside and the sign read,
Heading this way?

What's taking so long? It hurts too much to just wait. If I had a mother, she'd already be here with an ice pack. I roll on my left side and part of my right arm rotates against itself. “Oh, man!” Tears spring into my eyes.

“Don't move about,” a voice says. “Lie down; your arm's broken; I feel much pain.”

I look into the eyes of the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Her eyes are like black jewels; her long, dark hair brushes across my face as she helps me lie flat. I'd think she was an angel except I'm pretty sure angels have blond hair and I don't think they say
aboot
instead of
about
. Wonder where she's from.

“I just want to close my eyes,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Stay awake. You might have a concussion.”

Yeah, or a hatchet through my head. “Where's my board?”

She looks around and stands up, and the floor creaks as she walks away from me.

“Oh, good,” I say when she brings it back. “Not broken.” Summer would bite without my skateboard. I'd be stuck sitting around the pool while Dad pecked out stories on his portable typewriter.

She lays my board by me and quickly stands. “I must go.”

“Aw, man.” I might start crying if I'm alone.

“They're coming,” she says. “I'm not supposed to be here. Don't tell anyone.”

Guests Prohibited.

I wince. She runs along the wall and disappears. I don't hear her, but now I hear voices coming up from the opposite direction. Uh-oh. One of them is my dad's.

5

How the girl's heart had thundered when she revealed herself to the boy. His whimpering reminded her of pups struggling up the rocks, separated from their mothers. She could not but help him.

There was much risk in being seen, but what did this boy know of her? It was nothing to check on him. Her cousins had often helped others of his kind in troubled waters, taking pity on their flailing and thrashing; she could do no less.

Showing herself to the one called Allie Jo had been no accident. She had observed Allie Jo from afar for many days. The young girl had brown hair, not as dark as her own, and green eyes, the color of seawater. Often, Allie Jo poured black shells and yellow seeds into small wooden houses on poles; birds fluttered to the little shelters, eating greedily.

Once, after Allie Jo left, she'd scooped up some of the black shells for herself. They were crunchy, like winkles, her favorite snack.

6

Allie Jo

“Jinx, look, they're taking him away.” I lean closer to the window frame of the fifth-floor nanny quarters, in the part I call the garden room. I'm hidden by the jacaranda tree; its ferny leaves are the perfect camouflage.

A bunch of tornadoes in the sixties knocked out all the windows up here. No one uses this floor, and no one has replaced any of the glass, which I think is actually an improvement to the place, since now the kudzu vines have crawled in and wrapped themselves along the walls and the ceiling. Sitting here is like sitting in an arbor. When the kudzu blooms, butterflies follow the vines right into the room and flit from flower to flower.

Leaning forward, I hear the paramedics' voices, but I can't make out what they're saying. When they were on the third floor, though, I heard everything they said. They asked that boy a whole bunch of questions, like “What year is it?” and “Who is the president?” That's how I know his name is Chase—it was the first question they asked him.

Chase looks small on the white gurney. Some kind of spongy thing is fitted around his head. “Where's his dad?” I say. I'd be scared to go in an ambulance alone.

Jinx is not curious about any of it, which is strange for a cat. She lies in a patch of sunlight hitting the strip of carpet I brought up here, holds up a black paw, and licks it. She's as comfy in this room as I am.

The walls of the floors below, the ones meant for tourists to see, are dressed in burgundy wainscoting with cream-colored chair rails a third of the way up. On top of the chair rail, the walls are covered in a striped wallpaper, cream and burgundy.

The wood is all original; that means it's the same wood they pulled up here on steam trains and horse-drawn wagons in 1887. Heart of pine and cedar—you'd learn that on the tour if you took it. The wallpaper has been replaced, but it's accurate for the time period. That little tidbit is straight from the tour too. People run their clean fingertips along the wallpaper, and after so many years, the oil from all their fingers ruins the wallpaper. It's kind of gross if you think about it.

There is no wallpaper up here in the nanny quarters. There's no chair rail either. No carpet. No glass. It sounds like this would be the worst place in the world, but it's actually the best. Downstairs is all dark and elegant; up here is all sunny and happy. There's a pink room, a yellow room, and a lavender room, and the hallway is painted green. Two window seats face each other on opposite ends of the quarters, and, boy, you can really get a nice breeze up here—you know, since there's no glass.

Wham! Wham!
Paramedics shut the ambulance doors and slowly drive away. A little silver car follows close behind. I watch until I can't see them anymore.

“Well,” I say, “they're gone.” I breathe in, let out a big sigh. I've never seen an arm bent like that. “Maybe I shouldn't have chased him.” I didn't want him to break his arm; I just wanted him to stop trespassing. I sure didn't expect to see him rolled out into an emergency vehicle. “Wonder why they don't put the sirens on?” I say out loud.

Jinx stares at me with her big, green eyes. The first time she dropped in from the window, I watched her sniff the kudzu. I didn't move a muscle; I didn't want to scare her away. When she kept coming back, I needed to call her something besides
Here, kitty, kitty.
I thought about names like Smoke or Shadow, but everyone with black cats uses those names. Not that I actually own Jinx. She started showing up here last summer, so I started feeding her.

I lean over and stroke her back. Her fur's warm from the sun. Closing her eyes and stretching, she purrs, and it's like a little motor rumbling inside of her. It rumbles into me and makes me feel good.

I haven't seen her for a couple of days. She comes and goes, but I always leave her something from breakfast and fill her water whether she's here or not.

She lifts her head and licks my hand with her scratchy tongue. Suddenly, she leaps up and swipes at a yellow butterfly moving lightly along the kudzu. A couple of monarchs flutter overhead.

Peaceful as it is, I keep seeing Chase flipping off that skateboard, the way it flew out from under his feet. Now that I replay it, I'm sure I heard a crunch when he snapped his bone. A little shudder runs through me. Maybe that crunch was his skateboard smacking the wall.

The skateboard—did he get it back? I can't remember that part. The least I can do is go get it for him. Before I stand, I pet Jinx one more time. She leans into my hand as I scratch between her ears; then she's swatting at that butterfly again. I hate leaving her alone up here, but I know she can take care of herself.

The darkness of the fourth floor is almost depressing after the brightness and the liveliness on the fifth. I walk down the hall. The creaks are especially loud on the fourth and the third floors because neither of them has carpet or vines. The third floor doesn't really look any different from the fourth. It's dark and shadowy on account of some of the windows being boarded up.

A long time ago, one of the owners talked about knocking down the hotel, saying they could build a new, modern hotel or a strip mall in its place, but Hope raised such a fuss about The Meriwether being the heart and soul of the area's history that the owners instead sold it to an investment company, who sold it to another investment company, who sold it to the one who owns it now. I don't know what they're investing in when they still haven't bought new glass for the windows.

As I stroll down the hall, I scan its length for Chase's skateboard, but I don't see it. The floor groans and snaps under my feet; I don't think anything of it until I hear a scrape, and it's not coming from me.

Wood floors are not your friend when you're trying to be sneaky. The best thing to do is to walk on the edge, hugging the wall, like I do now. I listen for that scrape; it's coming from 312! I creep to the doorway and lay my fingers on the doorjamb like a spider stretching its legs toward its prey.

I whip myself around. “Gotcha!”

No one.

Still, I heard something, and it could be coming from the closet or the gutted bathroom. Might be a squirrel. But I think it's a kid. I pick up a ratty old sneaker and hurl it into the closet. Nothing. I need to check the bathroom, but I don't see any more ammo.

“Allie Jo?” Mom's voice rises from the staircase. “Allie Jo?”

“I'm right here,” I holler.

I lean against the wall, feel the ripples of peeling wallpaper ruffle against the back of my shirt. “You might as well come out,” I say, crossing my arms. “My mom's coming up.”

Nothing. Then a girl steps out of the closet and I whoop, practically jumping out of my skin. It's the girl from the springs! I am frozen to the spot. Her movements are so quiet and smooth, it's like she's floating. Her hair is silky, slipping over her shoulder. I forget to tell her that she is prohibited from being up here.

Erk! Aaar!
Mom's footsteps. She's getting closer. “Allie Jo?”

The girl takes a step toward me, her mouth hinting at a smile.

My heart beats a little faster. She puts her finger up to her lips.
Shh,
she says, without making a sound at all. The footsteps are almost upon us. She puts her finger to her lips again and slips into the shadows of the closet.

“There you are!” Mom stops in the doorway, takes a step in. “I've been looking all over for you. There's a girl downstairs I want you to meet. She's really nice and she'll be staying for the summer.” She smiles. “I think she could use a friend.”

What Mom really means is she thinks
I
could use a friend. I do have one, Melanie, but she's on vacation up north for the whole summer. A couple of girls who I did invite over, their moms wouldn't let them come because I live in this hotel.
Hotel rat
is what I hear behind my back, which, when you think of it, isn't even correct because I haven't ever seen a rat here, but I know an insult when I hear one.

Mom says people say mean things because they're jealous. I think people say mean things because they're mean.

What does it matter if you get your clothes from a secondhand store instead of from the mall? They probably came from the mall to begin with. And all the popular people have perms, but my hair is straight. That's okay, though—I don't want to look like a poodle.

I hate passing their lunch table during the school year. They giggle when I walk by, and once, when I was wearing my favorite checked shirt, one of them called out,
Hey, Allie Jo, did your mom make that shirt out of a tablecloth
? When I got home, I folded that shirt up very nicely and put it in the bottom of my dresser drawer.

They act like if your family doesn't have as much money as their family does, you're a nothing.

Who cares anyway—I'm busy enough without a bunch of girls getting in my way. I've got Clay and Chef, and there's Jinx to take care of, and my inspections—I really don't know if I have time for anyone else. Still, Mom's always pushing me to make friends even though I've explained to her I'm just fine with the way things are.

Like right now, for example. A secret girl is hiding in the closet, but Mom wants me to go downstairs to meet a regular girl. Mom steps into the room even farther, and my heart flares.

I block her path. “Okay!” I say. “Let's go!” Mom looks surprised at my enthusiasm. I'm surprised too. I don't know why—maybe it was the way she trusted me—but I'm keeping that girl's secret, whatever it is.

Mom loops her arm through mine. “Her name is Sophie and she's twelve.” Close enough; I'm eleven. Mom rattles on and I feel torn as she pulls me out of the room. I take in the closet, but I see only darkness.

“Come on,” Mom says, yanking me into the hall. “You can finish your inspection later. I think you'll like this girl.”