Bedful of Moonlight, Raven Held [story books for 5 year olds .TXT] 📗

or fantasy. Sometimes, the books we sell just here don’t appeal to them. Personally, I reckon it’s just the yellowed pages.”
There was something raw about him then, as he said that while looking down at his baby cousin. I didn’t understand what it was, but that sharp hurt split me in a half again, the familiar blade of hurt carving out its usual space at the same spot.
“My grandparents opened this bookstore,” Caleb went on. “Grandpa named it after my grandma – her name was Belle. My mom’s Annabel, Aunt Belle’s Isabelle. It sounds kind of corny, but…” He shrugged, smiling when he looked up at me.
“Was?”
“Well, she passed away. I think I mentioned that before.”
“Oh. Right.”
“My mom wanted to sell this place after grandma died, but grandpa decided to hand it over to Aunt Belle.” Caleb grimaced slightly. “It’s not that she’s doing a bad job, but Aunt Belle just loves to take on more than she can handle sometimes, you know? She’s juggling two other temp jobs as well, and with the boys … I don’t know how she manages it.”
“She does seem pretty strung out,” I offered.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Caleb said, shrugging. “You know, you were probably just hoping to get a book or something, and you end up getting locked up in a room by a four-year-old.”
How was I supposed to reply to that? It’s fine, my pleasure?
He went on before I could think of what to say. “So what were you looking for?”
My face burned, but his countenance was so wide open that there was no reason not to fall into it. So I said, “I don’t know what book, exactly, but just something that … Blake … would like.”
A sick feeling parked itself on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I could smell the rain on the tarred road all of a sudden.
“You said he likes Hemingway, right?”
“Liked,” I whispered, as though all the air had been knocked out of me.
“Sorry?” He leaned slightly forward.
“Liked,” I repeated, louder. “Not anymore.”
I dashed to the window before anything else could happen. The smell was too much for me to bear. Caleb was right behind me, helping me hoist open the window despite his bewilderment.
The sensation of hot bile blazing a path up my throat was not something I could see myself ever getting used to, despite the frequency at which it occurred these days. Just as the chill began to set in, something always had to come along to thaw your insides. It made you wonder if the alternate expansions and contractions would split you open eventually, a hairline crack growing into an irreparable rift.
I was aware of Caleb holding my hair away from my face as every inch of my body was set on fire. Blood rushed to my face, and the sounds I was making tore up my throat.
He offered me a mint after I was done.
It was that one gesture, that tiny seed of promise, sitting in the heart of his palm that quelled the remaining bile in my gut.
“Peppermints have volatile oil compounds that sooth the muscles along your digestive tracks,” he said. “So it’s best to have some when you’re feeling sick.”
“No kidding,” I said, feeling a whole lot better already.
It was strange that instead of plying me with questions about Blake, Caleb chose to indulge in that random little piece of information that seemed so inconsequential.
But right then, like before, I was grateful, grateful for him standing there next to me, gently smoothing my hair back, much like how he had done with Sawyer, standing in the right space – neither too close for comfort nor too far out of reach.


Five


“Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.”
~ Jane Austen (British writer, 1775 – 1817)


When Belle finally came back, the first thing she did was charge up to the storeroom, moaning at Oliver along the way. She sounded so woeful that I marvelled at how Oliver could stay so shamelessly guilt-free at what he had done.
“She’s just too soft with him,” Caleb said again, shaking his head but smiling.
“Caleb, Kristen, I am so sorry,” Belle breathed, looking so apologetic that I felt I should say sorry to her. “I’m so very sorry, really I am. You’re right, Caleb, this boy” – she tugged on Oliver’s hand and he grinned impishly – “needs to be put on a leash. How about this, Kristen? For what this little tyke has put you through, I’ll let you pick a book out of my collection. Consider it an apology gift.”
“That’s really not necessary,” I said. “It’s fine, Belle, really –”
She kept insisting, however, and caught me on my way out with Caleb for having not taken any book. So in the end, I had no choice but to let her shove The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens into my hands. It was what I’d always wanted to read.
“You know, Dickens was removed from school when he was twelve and sent to work in a boot-blacking factory,” Caleb said as we headed out into the sultry dusk. The air was still alive with the heady scent of flowers around. “He felt so cast out that his later works reflected his views on how the social system should be changed.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “He’s one of your favourites too?”
“I just think it’s amazing how he could have worked in those conditions and produced such great works. He’s a genius – like Beethoven.”
“I hate Beethoven,” I blurted automatically.
He looked at me like I was nuts. “I’ve never heard of anyone who hates him. The man’s a completely genius! Did you even hear –”
“Over-rated,” I snapped.
“If genius is over-rated, we might as well all stop living now. Just let our species die out and not strive to reach the next level of evolution,” Caleb declared, waving his arms a little.
“You’re annoying,” I said, but I could feel a smile fighting its way to my lips.
He grinned. “I guess it runs in the family, then, only Jade’s a whole lot worse. And you should hear my mom when she starts blubbering about something that nobody cares to know. It makes you wonder why you had to be cursed with ears.”
I laughed. The sound was foreign, too uninhibited. I actually looked around to see if someone else had laughed in my place.
“It’s nice to see you not behaving like such a grumpy old bag for a second,” Caleb said. “Jade was starting to wonder if you needed therapy – wait, actually, you do go to therapy.”
“Which is a complete waste of my time, every time,” I couldn’t help but say. We were turning into the row of neat-looking houses, each pretty but generally similar to one another.
“So you said.” His smile was lopsided with bemusement. “You know, I think Reilly might have a better therapist to recommend.”
The thought was horrifying. More people trying to break through my glass bubble? I’d take a whole week of Oliver any day. “Please, no. No more therapists. I’ve got one too many to handle.”
He laughed. I found myself smiling, and immediately beat the growing smile back where it belonged.
He stared at me for a while – not long enough to make me uncomfortable, but long enough for me to realise he was looking at me longer than was required.
“Home?” I asked, just as his gaze broke away.
“I’m actually going to visit my grandma, so – do you want to come along? You’d have a ride home, at the very least.”
All that was waiting for me at home was more shadowed time alone and awkward moments dripping by.
“What, on your bicycle?”
“Oh, I’m sure my bike can take one more passenger,” he said, thumping his two-wheel proudly.
“It’s not the bike I’m worried about.”
“It’s the physical contact, then? Do I make you nervous?”
I stared at him, only absently noticing we were walking, him wheeling his bicycle at his side. In Wroughton, everything was prettily done up, smooth grey pavements, squat rows of identical houses with red roofs and brightly-coloured plants everywhere, wild yet neat. We were walking along one of those never-ending pavements that snaked through the entire estate, the burning late afternoon sun right in our faces.
“You wish.”
He smirked. “Because I noticed you have a thing with that. Physical contact, that is,” Caleb went on, straddling his bicycle.
I hopped on defiantly behind him. “Just ride, okay?”

*

The cemetery was everything I had not expected.
For one thing, I had not expected to see one (especially in a secluded estate like Wroughton), since I thought we couldn’t afford the space a cemetery demanded, being a land-scarce island and all.
But what surprised me the most was how unthreatening it looked. The cemetery was not littered with moss-covered sad-eyed stone angels and tombstones. It actually looked restful, bathed in light.
The only time I encountered the dead was during the deepest hour of the night, where memories of the dead clung on just as tightly as I did to them. I hated that need, that dose of reassurance that told me Blake would always be a part of me. I didn’t want any dealings with the dead, but then again, it was the only way I could keep Blake alive. So naturally, the cemetery held a dreaded charm for me, one that I could hardly resist, but couldn’t stay away from either.
But this cemetery actually seemed inviting, the sort of place you would go to take refuge in, if only for a while.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Caleb said quietly beside me. “I wouldn’t mind being dead if it means I get to live here.”
“Me neither,” I said, nodding hard. “For all eternity.”
He made a face. “Well, maybe not for all eternity. Won’t you get bored of it?”
I did not offer him a reply.
We stood on the narrow lane that wound itself around the entire cemetery, flanked by expanses of green. Before me, the smooth orange-gold canvas of the sky peeked through the straggly fingers of a tree dotted with white flowers.
“One of the reasons why hardly anyone ever comes to Wroughton,” Caleb said, still in a low voice.
I understood his need to respect the restful silence, respect the dead. So I said, “What is?” in a voice just as quiet.
“This cemetery. If you follow this trail to the end, you’ll be out of Wroughton.” He smiled. “So in a way, we’re protected by this cemetery from the ugly business of the outside world.”
Protected by the dead. It was an idea that, strangely, I took comfort in.
“Even though I’ve been here countless times, I never fail to get lost,” Caleb said with a sheepish smile. “Right now, though, we’re looking for a frangipani tree. My grandma’s right next to it.”
“Frangipani tree. Right,” I said. “How does that look like?”
“It has bright yellow flowers,” he said simply. “You won’t miss it.” He smiled again, and I was aware of how alone we were, together but separate in the resting home for the dead. I had the urge to bottle up that smile.
Blake would love this place. It was these short-lived pleasures that he had lived for. My mother always said he was the type who would endure a week of misfortunes just to experience that second of glorious luck in the end.
I looked at Caleb now. He was wandering around, his back to me, cutting