Read Online Bad Moon On The Rise by Katy Munger - Free Book Online Page B

what
Coach says. I love you so much, always remember that, no matter
what. – Mom.” It was dated last May; I could not quite read the
exact day, but the postcard itself looked to be decades old, the
ink faded and the photo watercolor-like. The identifying caption
was short: The Blue Ridge Mountains boast some of the most
beautiful peaks in the world. No wonder so many people love calling
North Carolina home.
    The caption confirmed the age of the
postcard. “I like calling North Carolina home” had not been used as
a slogan by the state tourism board since the 1970’s. That was well
before Trey’s time and my best guess was that Tonya had found it in
some dust-covered rack in a store somewhere and felt the need to
send her son some small token of her role as his mother.
    I don’t know why, but the message on
the postcard made me sad. I love you so much, always remember that,
no matter what. It was almost as if she was telling him good-bye,
as if she knew something bad was going to happen.
    I stowed it in my back pocket and kept
going through the stack. Next up was a small wallet-sized school
photo of a girl with black hair. I didn’t recognize her, but she
looked to be Trey’s age. I also found several letters addressed to
his mother and examined them closely. One was a letter
congratulating her for completing a drug rehab program. The date on
it was over three years old. The kid was clinging to past glory.
Another was a letter from the North Carolina Parole Commission
confirming that Tonya had completed the terms of her sentence. That
letter was a year old, and evidence of no glory at all. But then
the last letter in the pile stated that Tonya Blackburn had been
accepted for re-admission to Piedmont Technical College, with full
credit given for the six courses she had taken there
previously.
    Now that was interesting. She had been
planning to return to college and complete her studies, studies
that had perhaps been interrupted by a stint in jail, if the parole
letter was any indication. I went back over the timeline Corndog
Sally had given me. Trey had been living with Sally during the time
his mother might have been in prison, I figured, then he’d had
about nine months of nearly normal life living with his mother and
attending Perry High before they’d pretty much gone into hiding.
What had happened to cause Tonya to go on the run and take Trey
with her?
    I went back through the other
envelopes, searching for a clue. I found one item I had not noticed
before: a color photograph tucked inside a letter to Trey from his
grandfather. The photo made no sense. It showed a beautiful young
black girl dressed in a miniskirt and flowered blouse standing
beside a white man who was sitting on a huge motorcycle, his denim
jacket cut off at the top of the sleeves to reveal a very fine set
of biceps. He was a handsome man, with long legs that stretched out
in worn jeans to keep the motorcycle precisely balanced. He wore
cowboy boots with big heels that dug into the dirt road. He wore no
helmet and his black hair flowed freely to his shoulders. An
equally dark handlebar mustache topped a wide grin. Mirrored
sunglasses covered his eyes. He was smiling at the girl beside him
with an almost joyous confidence in her proximity.
    That grin looked familiar.
    I peered at the photo closer, trying
to place where I had seen it before. There was something about the
photo, though, that prevented my brain from making the leap to
recognition. Something was out of context—the man was out of
context.
    I knew him, but not like that. Not as
a biker.
    I tried to imagine what he would look
like without the sunglasses. He’d have dark eyes, I knew, very dark
against that smooth white skin. Sort of like....
    I couldn’t breathe.
    Just like that, I could not breathe
and my whole life changed. All that I thought I knew suddenly
became as foreign and unfathomable as a country I’d never been in
before.
    I knew the man on the motorcycle. I
knew him