The Next Full Moon Read Online Free PDF

the den, where her grandmother sat in her old chair, rocking back and forth. A small, elegant woman, she was beautifully dressed in a filmy top and skirt.
    â€œWhat are you doing, Grandma?” Ava asked, concerned.
    â€œJust sitting here, thinking about your grandfather.”
    â€œOh.” Ava sat down on the couch. “Don’t be sad, Grandma.”
    â€œI’m not sad at all honey. How are you, doll? Shouldn’t you be at school?”
    â€œI stayed home sick today.”
    â€œIs that right? And yet you managed to make your way here. I’m so impressed!”
    Ava laughed. “Well.” Her grandma always seemed to know when she was lying. She seemed to know lots of things.
    â€œIs everything all right with you, Ava? Your grandfather seems to think that you’re having a hard time right now.”
    Ava hesitated. “But, umm. Grandpa is dead, Grandma.”
    â€œI can still talk to him, though, dear.”
    â€œReally? How?”
    â€œHe lives in here.” Grandma Kay pointed to her chest,where her heart was.
    Ava felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh. Well. I just . . . I don’t know what to do. Something is . . . happening to me. Like, with my body.”
    Her grandmother smiled, fixing her pale blue eyes on Ava. “You’re becoming a young woman, dear. Your body does all kinds of things at this age. Don’t be afraid of what’s happening. It’s natural. More natural than you think.”
    Ava looked at her grandmother. Did she know? She had the oddest expression on her face, as if she were looking at a ghost. It was the same kind of expression she’d had when she read Ava’s palm or laid out her tarot cards, when Ava was a kid. Grandma Kay had always been funny like that, and Ava and Morgan had loved to spend afternoons over here when they were little, listening to Grandma Kay talk about love lines and hangmen and magicians. But that was before Grandpa died and Grandma Kay started losing her vision and Ava’s father told Grandma Kay to stop with the kooky stuff altogether. “You’re corrupting their pure young minds,” he’d said.
    Ava shook her head.
    Of course Grandma Kay didn’t know.
    She sighed. “It’s not natural, though, what’s happening. It’s . . . weird. And gross.” Ava almost took off the hoodie to show her grandmother the feathers, or at least let her feel them, but then she stopped herself. What could hergrandmother, a blind old woman, do to help? Grandma Kay might have been kooky (and wonderful!), but she couldn’t make miracles happen. Ava just wanted to see her, be here. Lie for a while on the couch and talk to her grandma while eating ginger snaps out of the box.
    Forget, and feel like everything would be fine.
    â€œHoney, you’re becoming who you’re going to be. That I know. And you’re going to be wonderful. All you have to do is sit back and let it happen.”
    â€œSure,” Ava said. “Just let it happen.”
    What other choice did she have?

CHAPTER THREE
    W hen Ava tried to stay home from school a second day, her father would have none of it. Especially when she’d acted suspiciously normal the night before as they sat together watching a movie he’d Netflix’ed for her. An old Ava Gardner movie that actually wasn’t too bad for being black and white.
    â€œYou should really get to know your doppelganger,” he’d said.
    â€œDoppelganger?”
    â€œYour twin.”
    She was certainly regretting watching that movie nowand letting her father see her acting so healthy and un-sick. But it was hard to spend hours on end pretending to be sick in bed when it was so beautiful outside, when she’d just spent a long lovely afternoon with her grandmother, and when her father insisted on making his famous Italian meatballs that he rolled by hand, plus a big salad with artichoke hearts and olives, two of her favorite