Chapter 6: Bright Moon

No matter how many blankets one put on a wooden floor, it was still much harder than a mattress. Even the mattress Everly had slept on the night before in the crappy little hotel her dad had pulled into for the night had been much more comfortable than this.

It wasn’t helping that the moon was so bright. There were no curtains or blinds on the windows yet. Knowing her dad, there wouldn’t be either, not until Everly either bought some or learned how to sew. Guys just didn’t think about that sort of thing, did they? Would he hang any pictures up in any of the rooms? Probably not unless she asked him to.

The moon was bright, that was for sure. She couldn’t really see it while she was lying on the floor of her old bedroom—now her current bedroom, she supposed—but when she sat up and looked out the window, she could see that it was full. For it being fall in the northwest, there sure weren’t a whole lot of clouds in the sky either. It was incredible how many stars she could see here compared to Denver where there was so much light pollution from the city. Most nights she could count the stars on one hand. Looking out this window, there had to be thousands.

Toby stirred next to her, and Everly reached over and patted his head. He was confused and seemed to be missing home. She would need to take him for a walk tomorrow. If her dad would let her. She would have to promise to stay on the driveway and then the road. Otherwise, he’d freak out. If he even thought she was going anywhere near the forest, he would tie her down to that little table by the door, one of the only pieces of furniture in the house. Since that probably wouldn’t do much good, maybe he’d strap her to the toilet—which was now sparkling clean after at least an hour of scrubbing.

Everly laid back down and tried closing her eyes again. It was chilly in the house since there was no heat, and her dad didn’t want there to be a fire in the fireplace until he’d had a chance to inspect it, something he hadn’t gotten around to before dark. Everly rolled closer to Toby, and he laid his head on her chest. Nothing quite warmed a person like a dog.

Even petting Toby wasn’t helping her to fall to sleep, though. Her mind kept going over everything that had changed. Here she was in another state, one she’d lived in before but didn’t remember. She’d gone to school here in kindergarten and had started first grade before everything changed, and her dad took her to Colorado to live with her grandparents. He’d followed a few months later. He’d wanted to stay, but his mother talked him into coming there to be with Everly. She said that his daughter needed him.

Besides, by then, there was really no chance that her mom was going to be found.

It was winter. It was cold. There was snow.

There was nothing to follow, no tracks, no belongings, nothing.

She was just… gone.

Thinking about that wasn’t doing her any good at the moment, so Everly tried to think about something else. She could hear her dad snoring from the other bedroom and was glad that at least one of them was getting some sleep.

She tucked an arm beneath her head and stared up at the ceiling. Would any of the kids from school remember her? She vaguely remembered a little girl with blonde pigtails, but she had no idea what her name was or whether or not they were friends. Her kindergarten teacher’s name had been Mrs. Welch. She only knew that because she had her report card. It was in a box of papers her mom had saved, tucked into a drawer in the desk they’d taken with them when they moved. It would be back with the rest of their furniture in a few days, whenever it got there.

Also in the desk had been a few other items of her mother’s that Everly had looked at a thousand times over the years. A picture that she’d drawn of Everly when she was a baby, a diary that was locked and that her dad said wasn’t something they should read anyway, and a necklace with a silver wolf pendant. Her dad said that she’d gotten that from her great-grandfather when she was a little girl, but Everly didn’t know if that was true. The necklace was in a pouch in the desk, or at least it had been the last time she’d opened any of the drawers, which would’ve been a few years ago now.

She’d gone back to thinking about her mom and wished she hadn’t. Turning onto her side so that she was facing Toby, whose head was now on her pillow, she tried to return her thoughts to school. Back home in Denver, she’d been in the choir. She’d also been in the French club. She’d looked at the classes she could take at Cook High School and discovered the only foreign languages they offered were Spanish and German. She could understand why it might be important to learn Spanish because there were so many Spanish-speaking people in the country now. But why German? She wondered if there were a lot of German people in the area.

Her mother’s maiden name had been German. But then, her mom hadn’t grown up here. She’d just moved here when she was older. Her hometown was only a few hours away. Maybe there were a lot of German people here.

Or maybe they could find a German teacher but not a French teacher.

Either way, she wouldn’t be able to continue to study French at school.

It didn’t seem fair to judge the academic standards of a school she’d never been in, but she had a feeling most of her classes would be easy here, compared to her old school. Most of the classes she’d been taking this semester were not going to be available here. She wondered how that would work with her credits.

Would the other kids be nice? They couldn’t possibly have that many new students here, could they?

What if….

No! She wasn’t going there.

It was stupid.

That guy didn’t look like he was in high school. He was probably just passing through. Some avid motorcyclist stopping in a small town for his favorite snack. When he saw that the grocery store didn’t have his… cheeze doodles, he went on to the next town.

But what if he did go to her new high school? What if she walked in on the first day, and he saw her, his smile widening, and he said, “Hey, you’re that gorgeous girl from the grocery store.”

Even she had to roll her eyes at that. If he went to school here, he was probably already dating the prom queen or head cheerleader or whoever the prettiest girl in school was. It was really stupid of her to even think about.

With her eyelids finally growing heavy, Everly began to doze off. Just as she found herself falling asleep, she heard an unusual sound outside of her window. Perhaps it wasn’t so unusual considering where she was, but even being this close to the forest, it registered in her semiconscious brain as odd.

It was the sound of a wolf howling.