August Moon by Jess Lourey Page B

grass.
    I smelled it before I saw it, that metallic, gory smell of violent death, playing through the fresh country air. A cluster of police surrounded the weeping woman to my left, and straight ahead two more officers crouched around a female shape on the ground. It was her hand I noticed first, unwrinkled, freckle-free, taut, spread out on the ground like she was jumping off a barn beam into a pile of hay and hadn’t yet landed. She was no farther away from me than a clerk at a drive-through, but I felt like years and miles obscured her. Around me, people buzzed and moved, and I felt invisible.
    I followed the arm up, noting the dark green cloth covering it. Her hair was long, dark and messy, splayed over her head like a fright wig where it wasn’t matted with blood. My eyes skimmed over the dip in her back, about the size of a baby’s fist, couldn’t process that detail, and traveled over to where her other arm should be. I couldn’t see it. It must have been twisted under her body. She was wearing a skirt, short, pleated, and trimmed in white. Her legs were bare, firm and strong, and on her feet were white socks and sneakers. One shoe was untied, and the leg it was on was twisted gruesomely around so her toes were almost pointing up at the bright, unforgiving sky. I glanced back at the depression in her torso, relatively clean and round at the entrance point, though it looked like it had been made with an elephant gun. The dead girl was a cheerleader, and she had been shot in the back.
    “What are you doing here?”
    I couldn’t pull my eyes away. They were stuck on that murky hole and the missing flesh that should have protected her heart. I fancied I could see the bright grass underneath her through the wound, but then realized it was mucky bones, shattered, sharpened, and reflecting sunlight.
    “I said, what are you doing here?”
    A hand grabbed me, roughly, and I caught a glimpse of Gary Wohnt before I wobbled to the other side of the road and threw up. Between retches, I scoured the ditch for more dead bodies, or body parts, but the grossest thing on this side of the street was coming out of my mouth. When my stomach settled, so did my ears. I heard the woman who found the cheerleader describe how she was staying at a local resort and had been jogging. The tourist was near hysterical and had nothing to offer.
    I spit and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I felt empty, but far from cleansed. My nose and throat burned, and I needed a shower. I knew that dead girl.

I lurched into my house like brain-eating zombies really had attacked me. Tiger Pop and Luna followed. When I tumbled onto my couch, Luna snuffled my hand and Tiger Pop laid across my lap. My head was empty except for the picture of the ragged wound in Lucy’s back—Lucy, who loved books more than anything and always looked for the best in people. I wondered if her parents knew yet, if they were just puttering around their house, waiting for her to get home from summer cheerleading practice, if Gary Wohnt was about to knock on their door and ruin their lives. Lucy’s parents were dairy farmers, the old-fashioned kind who believed in hard work and good manners. They were also the ones who had given Lucy the lovely gold charm bracelet with red dangling hearts on it that I had seen on her cold gray wrist as she lay sprawled in the ditch.
    Dark thoughts chased each other in my head like wild animals, their claws ripping and slashing until I had a bleeding muscle of a headache. I don’t know if I passed out or fell asleep, but when I next looked at the clock, I had lost an hour. It was nine a.m., and I was soaked in sweat. I concentrated on the blinking numbers on my VCR, orienting myself to the room, the house, the town, the planet. None of it felt right. All I knew for sure was that I was in Battle Lake, and sweet young Lucy—the girl who was going to St. Cloud State after her senior year to major in elementary education, who liked to party