Meet Me in the Moon Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

And Lila. Lila with the tits, and she’s not even ten. Imagine that. And don’t forget the Witch’s Daughter. The one who’s so hard to see. Julie Yaga.
    They sat quietly on that stuffy summer afternoon, looking at Julie’s head. The cottage was strangely still. Julie stared down at her hands folded in her lap.
    “Baba’s gone,” she said.
    “Gone?”
    “Bigger fish to fry, she said.” Julie looked up at them, and they could see she’d been crying. “She said I’d be fine. Keep sewing, she said.”
    “But what is that on your head?” Lila demanded.
    “I dropped another stitch this morning,” Julie said.
    “But what is that?” Lila asked again. She reached out but didn’t touch.
    The boys were curious, too, but they wouldn’t ask.
    Julie ran the back of her hand under her nose and sat up a little straighter. “I don’t know. It was just there this morning.”
    Sammy moved in closer to look at the little tree rising up through Julie’s black hair. There were little green leaves, just at the top, and tiny white flowers.
    “Well, take it off!” Lila said. “It looks stupid. Like a green toilet brush or something.”
    “I can’t.” Julie looked sad. “It’s growing there.”
    “Oh, gross!” Lila said. “That’s disgusting.”
    “Hey! I think it’s neat.” Sam sat down beside Julie and put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. “It’ll drive ‘em crazy in town.”
    They all got to giggling then. Even Lila joined the group hug.
    “They needn’t know,” Julie said. “No one should know that Baba’s gone. They’d take me away if they found out. You’ll all forget I said she was gone.”
    “Sure we will,” said Sam.
    In the years that followed, the tree grew taller and wider. Julie’s neck expanded to the circumference of her head. She had to hold on to things for balance when she walked. Sometimes she needed help. Mike was too busy with his horn, Craig with his pigs, Lila with her tits. Finally only Sam remembered her at all.
    “You’ll leave me, too, Sammy.”
    Sam sat tossing rocks into the creek. “No, I won’t.” He’d been thinking of Lila and the way his head swam when she’d touched him the night before at the Grange dance. He looked away from Julie’s squashed features. Her flattening eyes. Her wide mouth always seeming to grin horribly under the weight of her tree. As the tree grew, her body spread. Her legs grew shorter and thicker. She’d developed a smell that reminded Sam of raw chicken.
    “Everyone leaves me,” she said. “First her, then them, now you.”
    “You know I love you, Julie,” he said, but he said it automatically. He couldn’t have said what it meant, unless it described the nagging obligation he felt.
    “Maybe you did once,” she said. “But it looks like it wasn’t enough to stand up to this kind of pain.”
    “I’m not going to sit here and listen to that kind of stupid talk.” He got up and dusted off the seat of his pants. He had brought her food, but he didn’t want to stay and watch her tear it to pieces. “I’d better get back.”
    “Just like I said. You don’t want to be around me.”
    Sam looked up at Julie’s tree, and he felt a cold rage twist his guts. “Haven’t I spent enough time talking to the trees?”
    Julie jerked back and nearly toppled herself. He felt a strange satisfaction at her stricken look.
    “The least you could do,” he said, “is sprout some fruit.”
    Julie put her hands over her face and her shoulders shook and her leaves rustled.
    “How about bananas?” Sam’s rage peaked and he put his hand on Julie’s shoulder and pushed.
    She sat back hard on the ground, then toppled to the side. She looked up at him. “I thought you were my friend, Sammy.” She put her hands over her face and cried.
    He was glad he’d hurt her, this creature, this thing that had swallowed his friend and scattered the gang. Together they had had something; separately they were all so ordinary, each of