Beneath a Meth Moon Read Free

down.
    You should go with them, Laur. You should go home.
    I opened my eyes to T-Boom standing in front of me, the water gone. I didn’t look at him, just stared hard at the House, trying to snatch those voices and that memory of me and Daddy from my head.
    The Pass is gone, T-Boom. No place to go back to. My daddy’s just talking. Just saying words to say them.
    Inside, T-Boom had a whole lot of candles burning, and the house seemed to be breathing with the light. I wondered again who lived here once. Whose old house this was before the boards got nailed to it and the lights got turned off. I’d found a deserted place too—a tiny back room in J. Turner’s old hardware store. Had been staying there awhile. J. Turner died two years before, and his family was fighting over who inherited what. Either everybody wanted it or nobody wanted it, but in the meantime, they left it to collect dust. Water still flowed in the toilet, but no lights worked. No heat came on. Mostly it was dark and cold back there. Quiet as anything. Easy to get to by a small cellar door that had a broken lock on it. I’d gotten some police line tape and strung that across. Nobody tried to come in, and my guess is most people feared finding a body in there. Whatever the reason, I’d never woken up to find anybody standing over me.
    This kid out in Donnersville said it’s not good to have all those flames in the house with the moon cooking,
I said.
    T-Boom shrugged.
Those Donnersville meth heads don’t know. Unless that kid’s gonna come get the electric turned on, he needs to shut up. I know what I’m doing. Keep everything separate.
T-Boom cursed and looked hard at me.
    Sometimes the evil came fast to him—one minute smiling and the next, his face twisting into some kind of rage nobody saw coming. Once, on the basketball court, he knocked a kid from the other team clear across the gym. He was suspended for two games after that.
    But most days, T-Boom was all sweetness, and it was hard not to remember that first time he walked over to me . . . I felt the sadness creeping up quick, put another small taste of moon in my mouth and told T-Boom I had to go, that I’d see him next time.
    You should think about going home, Laurel. I bet your daddy would take you back again. You just gotta leave the moon alone. Me and you, we’re not like those meth heads—we could leave this stuff alone if we wanted to.
    Yeah,
I said.
I know that.
    But I knew all I was thinking about was how the moon was washing over me, disappearing all the sadness.
    T-Boom wiped his nose and sniffed hard.
    I’m just about through with this, Laurel,
he said
.
There’s a place up in Summitville I been hearing about, thinking about. Say they can clean you up real good, all the way so you don’t slip back to wanting it. I know we don’t need some program, but Coach said if I show him I could do it, I’d be back on the team come next season. Get two more years of playing in.
    He leaned against the doorway, swatting at some invisible something near his head. The moon did that, made you feel things that weren’t there.
There’s a place in Summitville,
he said again.
I’m gonna go there.
    Yeah,
I said.
That sounds nice. That sounds real good. Summitville.
    They say it’s easier if people do it together,
T-Boom said.
Me and you could do it together. Then you could go back to cheering, and I could play ball again. Be like it used to be.
    I put my hands in my pockets and fingered the moon. The tiny plastic bags felt warm and good and right. Before I headed back out of town, I’d do a little bit more behind the 7-Eleven. Then walk for a while before trying to hitch back to Donnersville. With the moon inside of me, the walk wouldn’t be cold, the night wouldn’t be dark. I smiled at T-Boom. He was over six feet tall, but he looked small standing there twitching and swatting. He looked like