Bedful of Moonlight by Raven Held (audio ebook reader .txt) 📕

into Caleb as the two of us tried to get at the ball, and when Reilly, Jade and I buried the guys in wet sand.
It was not me, the girl who had forgotten how she had cost her boyfriend his life, how she had made her mother leave, the girl who had allowed herself to lose – within just two days – all that she had come to love.
The girl that day was able to shake herself loose of her transgressions like how she shook off the blackish-green string of seaweed from her foot.
It was not me, just someone I wished I could be.


Eight


Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.”
~ Plutarch (Greek writer, AD 46 – AD 119)


Reilly was right on one account that day. It was a no-show from Mr and Mrs Burnstead.
We had been lounging for two hours at the beach – after all that physical activity had worn us out – before slowly coming to realise that.
“We’ve been here for more than three hours. I can only take so much of the sun before I damage my skin,” Reilly said as she flipped over to lie on her stomach. “Much as I hate to say this –”
“Then don’t say it,” Jade snapped.
Tate made a low noise. “Touchy, touchy,” he said to no-one in particular, and then went back to fiddling with the music player.
Jade pushed her shades down to the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that – they said they’ll join us in a bit, right, after they’re done with their work? So they will – join us, that is.” And then she pushed her shades back up.
Tate finally settled on a song that had a lot of screaming and drums and guitar in it.
“Tate,” Reilly said, wincing. “Not Zeppelin again?”
“It’s actually AC/DC,” he said with his lazy grin. It was this grin that made him seem drunk all the time, I realised.
Reilly shook her head. “I hope you guys enjoy your wait, then,” she said to Jade and Caleb, “because I’m going to put the rest of my day to better use. Why wait for rain when there are no clouds, right?”
Despite Tate’s protests of having just settled down, the two of them left.
“Sometimes, I really wish I could kill her,” Jade said. She turned to Caleb. “Are you leaving too?”
Caleb sighed. “I think I will. We’re running low on milk. I’ll just head down to the store and get some.” He looked at me, his eyes extending the offer.
I gathered my belongings.

*

“I’m sure your mom and Mr Burnstead had a lot of work to settle,” I felt compelled to say. Even after I had said it, it sounded vaguely sarcastic.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
His tone stopped me from commenting further on the issue.
Jade had opted to keep waiting, and she gave me the feeling of having somehow betrayed her for leaving with Caleb. My leaving with him had definitely not done anything to lessen her dislike of me, but I had had enough of the sun and sand.
Caleb and I were making our way down to the only supermarket in Wroughton. He shook the sand off his flip-flops, not saying anything more. I decided to follow his cue and keep my mouth shut; I understood the need for silent company.
“You should brace yourself,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“Because the supermarket is where everything about everyone is spilled, especially if you’re new here.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, what happened that night,” he began, shooting me a look, and I knew immediately what he was referring to, “everyone must have heard it by now. We’re a small neighbourhood, Kristen. Nothing is a secret here. People would have sussed out you and your dad’s background – or at least made some of their own conjectures about it.” He glanced at me to gauge my reaction before continuing.
“And?”
“And – well, you’ve got to admit – what you did that night was, well, not something people normally do.” He swung his bag onto his shoulders.
“So I’m abnormal?”
“I’m just saying, be prepared.” His voice returned to its normal tone of casualness. “You don’t even have to talk to them if you don’t want to. Some of them have the biggest mouths ever.”
So it was with something I would go so far as to call trepidation that I entered the supermarket with Caleb, him walking slightly ahead of me as though to fend off anything that might be coming my way.
“Hello, Caleb!” a portly lady with a flushed face said. A grin spread across her face, wide like a sleeping crescent moon. Clinging to her left thigh was a little boy with bright eyes.
“Hi, Magenta,” Caleb said. Then he grinned at the little boy, who had now attached himself to his leg. “Hey, Daniel.”
Before Caleb could make the introductions, Magenta swooped in and extended her arms as though expecting me to fall into them. “I’m Magenta, and that’s my son Daniel. You must be Kristen, the newcomer, right?”
I nodded, giving her the tight smile that I always reserved for meeting new people. “Hi.”
Magenta seemed puzzled for a moment. Clearly she was not used to people who did not hug on their first encounter with her. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, dear. I’ve been hearing such awful stories about you.”
I tensed. Caleb’s gaze flicked quickly to me and back again.
“But now that I’ve met you, you don’t seem half as bad I what I’ve heard!” She laughed, as though it was perfectly fine to tell someone how bad her reputation already was.
Magenta was still prattling on about Wroughton, and how she hoped I would like it here.
“Well, we were here for some milk,” Caleb said, interrupting her. “Guess we’d better go grab them before they turn sour.”
Magenta actually laughed, but she did seem like the sort who would appreciate a corny joke. “But you must take care of her, Caleb,” she said, as though I wasn’t just standing right there listening. “She’s going through a hard time, and the mind can push you to do funny things when the heart is hurt.”
Maybe she thought she was being wise or even just helpful, but she didn’t know shit about anything; so who was she to comment on anything?
I was about to say that, before realising that it was pointless. It would just make everyone upset and me even more tired.
“She doesn’t mean any harm, really,” Caleb said to me once we had slipped into the Dairy section. “People here –”
“I know.”
He looked at me for a while, before grabbing two cartons of milk and a tub of blueberry yoghurt.
“You know what, I need a nap,” he said, as we walked towards the counter.
And I, too, realised how tired I was. Besides, I would need to catch up on sleep if I were to stay up again tonight.

*

I was wrong to think that nightmares only appeared at night, when nothing could be thrown into stark clarity like that provided by daytime.
It was only when I heard his voice that I realised how long I had actually gone without missing him, thinking of him, the way I should have.
In a way, I welcomed the nightmares, because it made me feel less accountable for having spent time at the beach, having spent last night with Caleb. At least I was dreaming about him, right? I wondered if I would feel the sting of my betrayal as keenly every subsequent time.
We were back at the road. I knew that because of the wetness creeping through my jeans and the weight I held in my hands.
This time, he was crying. Already gone – I was always a step too late by the time I got to him – and eyes already shut, but tears kept sliding down the side of his face.
I kept mopping them away, wiping the moisture against my jeans, telling myself there was a chance he was still alive if he was crying. But the tears kept coming and he never woke.
And then someone was shaking my shoulder.
“Kristen,” Jade was saying. I muttered something back. “Kristen, it’s time for dinner. You’ve been out at least five hours.”
When I opened my eyes, it was dusk outside. The sun had almost completely gone down, and a deep blue was settling itself upon the world.
“Are you okay?” Jade asked. “You were crying in your sleep.”
I reached up and swiped the moisture away from my face. “I’m fine.”
She looked at me for a moment before deciding I wasn’t worth fretting over. “I just came to tell you Tate and Reilly bought dinner.”
“Where’re your parents?”
She paused for a beat. “Mom and Gabriel are out – somewhere.” Taking a step back, she said, “I’ll go check if Caleb’s awake.”
I went downstairs after a quick wash of my face. The demons that I had initially thought only came out at night were still dancing in my head. It showed. My eyes were embarrassingly puffy.
Tate and Reilly were the only ones at home. I tried calling dad to check if he had had his dinner, but he rejected my call, so I left him a message and headed into the kitchen.
“That’s got to sting,” Tate was saying as unwrapped his tortillas. “I mean, watching someone you love die – painful, right?”
“Maybe that’s why she’s so sullen all the time,” Reilly said, setting a plate in front of him.
“Sullen? Try messed up. The girl’s a wreck. You said so yourself. You’re lucky she didn’t burn down this house with you in it.”
She ignored his comment. “But really, maybe those people were just making stuff up as usual. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“But some of those rumours about Connell the other time turned out to be correct,” Tate said. “How would you know?”
“Exactly. We don’t –”
“And that stuff about her mom … maybe she and her dad are running from her. Maybe they don’t want her to find them, so they came here. She could be some psycho ex-wife, like they said.”
Reilly turned on the tap to wash her hands. “I didn’t know you had it in you to be like one of those gossip-mongers, Tate. Look, if she wants us to know, she will tell us. In the meantime, we should keep our mouths sh – Oh, hi Kristen.”
I jumped when our eyes met, but Caleb and Jade were coming down the stairs behind me. I knew Reilly knew that I had overheard them, but Caleb had warned me people were going to talk. I just didn’t expect Reilly and Tate to be part of them.
“We had a new makeup artist today,” Reilly said. “And she was wicked.”
“Ri’s a runway model,” Caleb explained for my benefit. “She doesn’t have to do it, but she’s trying to hold up her pride.”
“She told the wildest stories and did contouring so well,” Reilly went on. “Kept feeding me her life story, though. It was kind of weird, but she was nice.”
I began tuning her out and found myself observing Caleb. It was only then that I realised that it was not just Blake who appeared in my dream. Caleb had been standing on the other side of the road, watching us. For some reason, he was holding my cup of raspberry yoghurt.


Nine


‘How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or