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

to a stranger who reeked of lavender oil about my sleep patterns was doing the opposite of helping me get better. But he was trying so hard. Plus, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t just lost someone he loved too, for some reason I still didn’t quite understand. Complaining would not do anyone any good, anyway.
Here in Wroughton, it felt as though nightmares were barred from entering. Surely all of that couldn’t exist here, here in all this scary brightness. There were even birds chirping and butterflies flitting about among the well-maintained flowerbeds, for goodness’ sake.
Wroughton just basically made Blake’s death all the more official. Even my only way of reconnecting with him was unwelcome here.
“It’s only temporary,” dad said again. And I knew he felt the same way as I did.


Two


“Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back causes you to bump into people not going your way.”
~ Edna Ferber (American writer and playwright, 1887 – 1968)


How was it that I could feel trapped by sunlight? Because held in the vice-like grip of the sun, that was exactly how I felt. Exposed.
When the door opened – finally – I felt the grip loosen, just a little.
The girl who received us at the door couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She was wispy-looking in a pair of blue shorts and a white tank top, and she had an open face. Unassuming was the first word that came to my mind.
She stood there, staring at us and our bags for a while before collecting herself.
“Hi.” She smiled. “You must be the new tenants. I’m Jade. I live here.”
“Nice to meet you,” dad said, working on autopilot again. He initiated a handshake. “Just call me Daniel. This is my daughter, Kristen.”
We exchanged greetings before Jade invited us in.
The house was probably large enough for two families of four. Maybe it was due to the sparse furniture and lack of personal ornaments in the living room.
And, like everything else, it was too bright. I felt like I was trapped in a waking nightmare where everything was thrown into startling clarity, too bright, too cartoonish, too unreal to be really happening. Nothing quite fit anymore.
“Mom didn’t tell us when she’d be back,” Jade was saying as she trawled through a drawer under the TV. “But here are your keys. I’ll show you to your rooms.”
It became easier after we were shown to our rooms. I was able to sit on the bed, with bed sheets that smelt newly-washed, and let my mind catch up with everything that had changed in the course of one month.
Dad, however, saw the need to make sure I was properly settled in before he could leave my new room.
“Listen, Kristen,” he said in a low voice. Now that we weren’t living alone, the absence of privacy was something we both needed to get used to. “I know this is all a little fast for you, but trust me, you’ll get used to it really soon. You’ll love this place, I promise.”
Lately, everything my father said was a promise to me. I wondered if he realised that.
“We’ll be okay here,” he went on. “We will.”
I laid my hand on his. “Yeah,” I said quietly. Doubt was evident in my voice. I wanted to know if he gave mom our new address, but I didn’t dare ask him. There was never a right time to ask.
“I’m not trying to punish you by making you come here. I know you’ve been through a lot –”
“Dad, not now, please.”
He raised a hand. “Okay. I’m trying to make this work out for the both of us. But I’ll need you to help me, okay? I can’t do this on my own.”
“Yeah.” I squeezed his hand.
“And since it’s your holidays now, you might want to get a job.” He shrugged. “You know, occupy some spare time. Earn some keeps.”
He didn’t have to add occupy your mind too. That part was clear enough.
With an awkward hug, he finally left my room, and I was free to stew in my own thoughts again.
For some reason, through it all, I never cried, even if I wanted to, if only to make things easier. After that day, while Blake’s mother had cried so much and so hard I thought she would shrivel up, I couldn’t see the point of it. Sure, I was shocked at first. I just could not register the fact that he was no longer around. How could someone leave you so quickly, without warning, without explanation, after all? Nothing could prepare you for it.
But later, after days and days had passed where I saw no sign of him, everything flaked off. Nothing else made sense. Not logic. Not words. Not motion. Especially not the way everything smoothed out into its usual monotony, as though nothing had ever been upset.
Later, even Blake’s mother stopped crying. When we saw each other along the streets, I would merely nod at her, while she drifted away, barely taking in my presence even though people used to say I was practically her daughter given the way she regarded me. I suppose there just came a point when you finally realised crying was useless even though you felt better after doing it. Because there wasn’t any better anymore. Even crying lost its effect after a while.
So the only thing I knew to do was to pull out my cellphone from my pocket, and do the same thing I had been doing everyday for the past month.
It had almost become a sort of ritual. It was stupid, but I thought that if I stopped doing it, the possibility of her never coming back would become reality. Like I said, it was stupid, naïve and childish. But every time I felt the urge to hang up, I’d grip the phone tighter, letting it ring and ring until I heard mom telling me to hey, leave a message after this beep and I might get back to you if I feel like it. It was the closest I would ever get to hearing her voice again.
Mom never failed to disappoint every time. I tossed my cellphone onto the dressing table.
I had planned on occupying what was left of my day with some Emily Bronte, instead of exploring my new neighbourhood, like dad suggested, but I was barely halfway through a page before a knock came on my door.
Jade smiled. “Hey. Caleb’s buying dinner for us. Anything you’d like? I’d recommend the turkey ham sandwich or the chicken stew. They’re amazing.”
“Okay, guess I’ll have the sandwich then, thanks,” I said, not even sure I cared who Caleb was, as long as I could return to Wuthering Heights. The fact that I now only read books by authors Blake had never been too keen on was uncomfortably obvious.
“Seriously, who actually professes their love this way?” he used to say, wrinkling his nose when he saw me reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Jane Eyre for the hundredth time. “Imagine if I told you I were your spaniel. Hermia’s really smart, if she thought that would win over Demetrius.”
And I’d punch him for mocking Shakespeare.
But it was true. If either of us started quoting Shakespeare, we’d fall over ourselves laughing. Blake and I had been friends for six years before we got together. It just wasn’t the sort of thing you said to someone with whom you used to share a tent during family camping trips.
“I’m home!” someone called, and I jumped slightly. “With dinner!”
Caleb turned out to be Jade’s older brother who had received no notice that the sleeping arrangements had changed.
When I emerged from my room, he was ringing a bell – or, at least, what sounded slightly like a bell. It was a curt sound, and the chime did not ripple out like it was supposed to. It was more of a hard, metallic thwack that sounded like the bell was choking.
Jade walked with me downstairs and yelled, “Not that stupid bell again? I keep telling them,” she told me, “that old clanker needs to be replaced.”
“Unfortunately,” Caleb yelled back as we entered the dining room. His voice shrank to its normal volume as he went on, “This old clanker” – he shook the bell and it gave another cough – “happens to be the signature of the bookstore, so replacement is out of the question.”
I noticed the bell first. It was a large heavy-looking black thing the size of a cereal box that might have once looked grand, but now looked miserably cloaked in dust and algae. The tongue was wedged in an awkward angle.
“Yeah,” Caleb said, eyeing the bell with me, as though he knew what I was thinking.
My head snapped up, and I dropped my gaze to the bell again. Something in his eyes was too disconcertingly familiar. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt something squeeze my heart so hard that I almost had to lay my hand on my chest.
“I know it looks like crap,” he went on. This time, I kept my eyes fixed on the sad-looking bell. “But my grandparents were really proud of it – they’ve had it for so long, since the start of the business – so it’s not like my aunt can just throw it away just because it looks old and doesn’t work all that well.”
All I did was look at the bell and he thought I had taken a stand on Jade’s side. Also, he seemed to think I would understand whatever it was he was saying. Or that I would actually care.
I supposed I should have said something, but I had barely thought of how best to answer him before he cut me off.
Suddenly realising that a stranger was standing next to him in his house, he asked, “Who are you, by the way? The new tenant or Jade’s friend? You look too sensible to be her friend.”
“Kristen, meet my annoying brother, Caleb.” She turned to Caleb. “She and her dad just arrived about an hour or so ago. Her dad went out to explore the estate.”
Wroughton. She pronounced it like rotten, just that the o was dragged out.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Caleb said with a goofy wave. “Goodness knows we need someone else here apart from her.” He jabbed his thumb near Jade’s face, and she slapped it away.
I had no choice but to look at him. But I did so fleetingly, knowing that I probably looked rude. There was no way not to look at him when he was talking to me. There was just something in his face that reminded me of what I had just left – I had hoped – for good. I wasn’t ready to revisit it all.
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“I got you your sandwich,” Caleb said and placed it on the plate before me. The filling was overflowing when I unwrapped it. “And your stew,” he added, placing Jade’s dinner before her. “You’re so addicted to this it’s probably unhealthy, but I don’t really care.”
“Oh, like you’re not addicted to their Philly cheese-steak sandwich.”
Caleb rolled his eyes at his sister, and then turned to me. “So how do you like Wroughton so far, Kristen?”
I pretended to pick the olives out of my sandwich. “Good,” I muttered.
“You haven’t even been around yet,” Jade said, wincing as she spat out a boiled tomato.
“You have the worst table manners on earth, you know that, Jade?” Caleb said. He turned to me again. This felt like punishment. Did they not know when people wanted to be