Read Online What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau - Free Book Online

was
outside
me matched what was
inside.
I could feel my heart racing—
boom-BOOM, boom-BOOM—
and my blood pulsing under my skin—
shh-shhh, shh-shhh—
and my breath moving in and out like wind through a tunnel—
oo-hoo, oo-hoo.
They were the sounds of the waterfall, the sounds of a seashell pressed to your ear. Rushing blood mixed with pounding rain until the two things became one and the same.

    Rain drummed on the kitchen roof. Over lunch, Abuelita had told me that in the rainy season buckets of rain fell every afternoon. I sat by the kitchen fire in jeans and my fuzzy green sweater with holes in it. I liked the holes. They were souvenirs from a hike Dad and I took through a thorny field in Maryland early last fall when the sky was unbelievably blue. No wonder Dad was so crazy about nature, after growing up in a place like this, tucked into mountains and forests.
    That hike through thorns in the fall was the last hike Dad and I took together. When I’d told Samantha about the hike at school on Monday, she said, “Clara, you are, like, the most wholesome girl in our entire school.” After that, whenever Dad asked me, I made up some excuse about homework or hanging out with friends. He would look down at the ground and say softly, “Okay, then. I’ll go alone.
Yo solo y mi alma.
” Just me and my soul.
    Once Samantha hinted that my dad was stuck with his landscaping job because he hadn’t gone to college like her father. It felt like a kick in the stomach. I didn’t know what to say. Mom always bragged that Dad came over as a penniless fruit picker and was smart enough to work his way up to owning a business. Of course, I didn’t tell Samantha that. I didn’t want anyone to know that my dad was ever an illegal fruit picker. But if Samantha were here now I’d tell her that maybe he just wanted to be outside, around plants, because that was how he grew up.
    I wondered what Dad and Mom and Hector were doing now. Dad, especially. I wondered if he was thinking about me, thinking about his parents, about Yucuyoo. I had a flash of inspiration and decided to fill my sketchbook with drawings for him. On the first page was the little pink house with shutters and flowers in the windows. I labeled that
What I Imagined.
On the second page was a picture of the shacks and outhouse and wild gardens nestled in a valley that I’d drawn my first evening here.
What Is Real.
I looked at the two pictures side by side. If you wanted something familiar and predictable to hang over your sofa, you’d pick the first picture. But if you wanted a picture that held surprises and secrets, a scene to look at closely and explore, you would pick the second.
    I flipped to the page with the map I’d drawn of the path up the mountain.
Path to a Waterfall?
I wrote as the caption. I still didn’t know where to put the waterfall, but I felt sure it existed.
    “Abuelita,” I said. I blew on my chamomile tea. “Do you have a map of Yucuyoo?”
    She smiled, then laughed. “A map?” She shook her head and her earrings clinked like tiny wind chimes. “Oh,
mi amor,
there has never been a need to make a map of Yucuyoo!”
    “Why not?”
    “We know this land well. As well as our children’s faces.”
    I took a careful sip of tea. “I just thought maybe for tourists…”
    “Clara,
mi vida
! No tourist has come here before. You are the first.”
    I stirred a little more honey into my tea. I’d liked the idea of keeping my explorations secret—it made them more exciting—but it looked like I’d have to say it outright. “I heard a waterfall today.”
    “Ahhh,” she said, nodding. “The spirit waterfall.”
    At that moment, Abuelo came into the kitchen in a dripping rain poncho, carrying an armful of firewood. “The spirit waterfall,” he echoed. “The waterfall that is heard but not seen.” He began piling the wood neatly in the corner.
    “People of our village are accustomed to the sound,” Abuelita said. “For us, it is part of