Marked by moonlight, p.1
Marked by Moonlight, page 1
Marked By Moonlight
Elizabeth Heyn
Copyright © 2021 Elizabeth Heyn
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Art Painter
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
This one's for me.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Acknowledgement
About The Author
Chapter One
It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but looking back, I feel as if it should have been.
It was actually a bright Friday night after a football game at the high school. I’d just been dumped by my sort-of boyfriend and decided to go to a party with my twin sister Leah and younger brother Mike instead of staying at home and moping about it.
When I think about it now, I remember the moon vividly. It was full and seemed even brighter than usual, as there were no clouds in sight. It was a balmy, late September night, but no one at the party seemed to mind, as it was already picking up. We’d just won a game against our rival high school, after all. I should have known something crazy was going to happen with the full moon in the sky; they do say that full moons lead to wild behavior. It’s called the Transylvania effect, and I believe it was in full effect that night.
The party was at a clearing in the middle of the kind of deep, dark woods, you find out in the middle of nowhere. We lived in a relatively small town, so the only places that we could really meet up with friends and get loud was a clearing in the forest. There was truly nothing else for teens to do other than participate in rambunctious activities and general debauchery; the more adventurous of the high schoolers would travel to the university a bit north of town on Saturday nights, but my friends and I were not that brave. Instead, we stuck closer to home in our own comfort zones.
“Leah, how long are we staying tonight?” I asked my twin sister, looking around at the large crowd that was still filling out while the two of us made our way closer to the keg at the center of the clearing. Mike had, in his own stereotypical older brother way, ditched us, and I was feeling especially uneasy because there was a pretty large crowd from Kaiser High, our rival school. Not knowing who everyone was immediately made me uneasy. I’d struggled with social anxiety for a long time. My problem wasn’t really that I didn’t like people. It was that I constantly worried they wouldn’t like me.
“As long as it takes to get Sawyer to ask me out, Chloe,” she said, laughing, though I knew she wasn’t really joking. “You know you didn’t have to tag along tonight. I know you’re probably not really in that much of a partying mood after today.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, shooting her a glare. “I just want to get my mind off things, okay?”
She was referring to the fact that the guy who I’d been calling my boyfriend, Daniel, told me that he didn’t want to see me anymore earlier that day. If I recalled correctly, he’d told me that he just didn’t want to “do this anymore,” which hurt. He added that he didn’t want to be in what he considered a “long-distance” relationship with me, which was even more ridiculous since he only lived 20 minutes away from me even if we didn’t go to the same high school. The distance had never stopped us from spending time together before, anyway.
Dan and I originally started to see each other after he’d attended a dinner party at my house since our moms were coworkers. The two of us were the only kids there at the time, so we’d been exiled from the house and sent to the backyard, where we spent a couple of hours drinking the miniature bottles of wine he’d taken from his parent’s gift basket and talking. While our parents played Pictionary and spent time laughing about just about everything, Dan and I bonded over our love of books and told each other about our lives and our friends. I realized at the time that we might not have been soul mates, and I would not call it love at first sight, but it was so much fun spending time with him that night and for the next few months that I had definitely fallen for him and wanted to get to know everything about him.
The initial breakup had come as a shock for sure, but something that hurt even worse was that five minutes after our talk and me going to find Leah to tell her what happened, I saw Dan under the bleachers making out with the head cheerleader, who also happens to be one of my least favorite people, Morgan May. They were hardly even trying to hide it, either; they were just all over each other in full view of anyone who might be looking their way.
That being said, by the time I got to that life-changing party, I knew that Dan wasn’t in my future and he mostly just wanted to “play the field” while he was in high school. I was determined to move on with my life and try to forget about the pain I was feeling at the time, so I leaned on my sister for help.
“Chloe, Dan’s a jerk. You’re not fine. I know you really liked him! It’s a twin thing!” Leah was the most optimistic person I had ever met in my entire life, which was saying something because our mother was just a tad less of an optimist, happy-go-lucky type person. Mike and I, on the other hand, took after my father and tended to be more on the glass half-empty side of the scale. Sometimes things just didn’t work out, and as much as it sucked, I liked to be the kind of person to recognize that a lot of the time, people suck, situations suck, and it is what it is. No matter what, we get through the hard times. If only I could tell that to my anxiety and just let go once in a while.
“I did like him,” I told her. “I liked him a lot. A lot, a lot. But he made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be with me. My plan right now is to have a drink and try to forget about him.” Contrary to the way it may seem, I was not a big partier, and I generally tried to avoid drinking. It made me act more like Leah, which was a hell of a lot less like myself.
“Okay. Let’s get a drink then,” Leah replied, linking her arm through mine, and leading me to the keg where some football players were charging for red cups full of nearly warm, most likely flat beer. Something didn’t feel right, though. While walking in that direction, I heard a noise that sounded like it might be a wolf howling off in the distance, causing the hairs on my arm to stand up and goosebumps to raise on my arms.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, grabbing Leah’s arm and pulling her to a sudden stop.
“What? The wolf howling?” she asked, laughing again and pulling her eyebrows together. “It’s a full moon. I’m sure it’s just the basketball team messing around down by the river. Why? Are you… scared?”
Her dramatic pause was completely unnecessary and annoying, but Leah was nothing if not dramatic. I didn’t reply to her and tried to put the howl out of my mind even though it didn’t sound like it came from a person. It sounded too animalistic. Since no one else seemed alarmed, I told myself that it was no big deal. I had always been easily spooked, after all. It went well with my general pessimism.
“Hey, Elliot,” Leah said to the cuter of the two boys standing next to the keg.
At the time, Elliot was the dreamboat quarterback of the high school football team, and I knew that he was one of the most sought-after guys in our school by the girls in my grade, at least. He was tall with long, wavy blonde hair and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen; they were the same color as the sky on a clear summer day, and in the firelight, they looked almost iridescent, and I could see specks of gold throughout them illuminated by the light of the full moon.
“How much for a cup?” Leah asked him about the beer.
The guy standing next to Elliot answered with a sloppy looking wink that looked more like a blink than anything else. “For you beautiful ladies? Nada. Drink as much as you want, please!”
“Excuse him, Chloe and Leah, he’s drunk,” Elliot said, which sprouted objections from the other guy. Elliot ignored him. “But of course I wouldn’t charge either of you for this crappy beer.”
After pouring a drink for each of us, Elliot handed them over. I was not a fan of beer at all but it was all there was, and I didn’t want to be picky. Taking my first sip, I winced at the taste, having a hard time swallowing the warm, bitter liquid.
While Leah chatted with Elliot and his drunk friend, I took the time to look around the party, unable to get rid of that uneasy feeling that something was off and that someone or something was watching us. I could have sworn that I saw the light of the fire reflected in what looked like animal eyes in the tree line. They were much too large and low to the ground to be human, but I kept telling myself that it was nothing and I needed to shake the feeling away. It wasn’t like there was an actual wolf or somethi ng that was going to come near a rowdy group of teenagers and a huge bonfire, so even if I wasn’t seeing or hearing the things I thought, we should be perfectly safe.
With another shiver, this time from both fear and the chill in the air, along with another sip of my beer, I smiled and thanked Elliot before Leah and I walked away to find our friends. We took a quick lap around the perimeter, which gave Leah the opportunity to say hi to just about everyone there. Eventually, we came to a picnic table where our friends Taylor and Ana were sitting alongside a couple of guys I vaguely recognized as in our class at school.
Neither Taylor nor Ana had changed out of their purple and gold cheerleading uniforms before coming to the party, and I wondered how they weren’t freezing in the chilly weather. Sure, it was kind of a warm night, but it was still fall in the Midwest, so the skirt and tank top combo didn’t seem that practical to me. Unfortunately for me, they were talking about my breakup when we walked up, which was the two boys sitting next to me. They both looked confused about what was going on, and I wanted them to feel included without talking about my breakup any more than was necessary.
“I know, we’re on the school paper together,” the guy closest to me said, smiling and not looking at all offended. “We just brainstormed about a new story together a few days ago, remember? The one about the wild dogs or wolves hanging out near East U’s campus.”
I nodded, thinking back to how annoying it had probably been to work with me that day. I’d been trying to get ahold of Dan since he wasn’t answering my texts, and I definitely had not been 100 percent (or probably even 50 percent) focused on reporting on anything other than my relationship status and what Dan was up to at the time. I did remember at that point, though, that the guy talking was Tyler Wells, one of the staff reporters at the school paper, which I had decided to join just a few days prior.
Tyler was tall, about a head taller than I was, with dark hair and eyes. He was wearing a black leather jacket and high-top Converse, which seemed a little out of place in the middle of the woods to me, but I wasn’t one to judge. I was wearing leggings, a yellow button-up blouse, and ballet flats I borrowed from Leah after she told me my Keds wouldn’t work. “I’m Tyler, and this is Sean.”
“Nice to meet you guys! I’m Leah.” Leah said from across the table, holding her hand out to shake Sean’s hand. She had probably been feeling a little bit left out, but I noticed that she’d also completely stopped looking around to find Sawyer. Instead, she turned all of her focus toward Sean, who, from first glance, seemed to be flattered by the attention. It was obvious that he spent some time in the gym, and he smelled nice, as I could tell from where I was sitting.
“I know you just joined the paper this semester, but we haven’t really had a chance to get to know each other yet,” Tyler said. He was smiling, and I noticed that he wasn’t drinking.
“Yeah, I’m not a huge talker or sharer, really,” I said quietly, taking another sip. “I like the idea of reporting, but I guess I’m not much for networking yet. Talking to strangers makes me anxious.”
That earned a laugh from him. “I get it,” he told me. “It took me a long time to warm up to everyone on the staff, and I took even longer to actually feel okay about interviewing people for stories.”
“Yeah, it feels weird to tell people I’m writing about them for the paper,” I said, noticing that Leah was still deep in conversation with Sean and that Taylor and Ana had started eyeing the football players around the fire.
“You just have to go in with confidence,” Tyler told me. “Like, right now I’m trying to work on a feature about the women who have gone missing around here in the past year, and I’ve reached out to all of their families to do an interview. We’re going to try to get at least one feature story out every other week. I know it’s just a school paper, but the local paper said they might pick up the stories too.”
“What missing women?” I asked, puzzled. I hadn’t heard anything on the news, not that I’d been paying that close of attention, but it was startling to me that there were multiple missing women in the area.
“Over the past year, eight have gone missing within a 150-mile radius of here,” he said. “The police don’t believe they’re connected, but I honestly think there could be something there… Either way, I still think it’s important to get their stories out there as much as possible, you know?”
“Yeah, of course,” I told him, thinking about just how amazing it really was that he wanted to help those families. “That’s amazing, actually! Let me know if I can do anything to help, preferably something that doesn’t involve calling people or meeting strangers.”
“I’ll get you used to talking to strangers,” he vowed. “Trust me. If you walk and talk like you’re supposed to be there, no one will even think that maybe you don’t belong or question your authority.”
“I have a hard time believing that works.” In my experience, people didn’t just accept things because they looked right. Tyler pulled his phone out of his pocket and frowned at the screen.
“I’ll prove it to you sometime,” he told me. “Unfortunately, I have something I need to take care of right now that can’t wait.”
“Right now? At 11 o’clock on a Friday night?” I asked incredulously, wondering if I’d said something to him that offended him or made him want to leave for some reason.
“I know, my life is weird sometimes,” he said, frowning again. “Hey, Sean, you ready to go?” Sean looked over with a shocked expression on his face, and then nodded after seeing Tyler’s expression. “Chloe, I’ll see you Mon the one thing I wanted to try to avoid thinking about.
“So apparently the guy just walks away from her, goes to the other side of the bleachers and kisses Morgan while she was supposed to be getting water for the squad. What kind of bullshit is that? Who does that? Especially when you have the chance to be with someone like Chloe,” Taylor said. I felt a deep blush coming on, so I hid it by taking a long drink, and Leah cleared her throat to let them know we were right there. I couldn’t help but think that my friends were being sweet. I didn’t think Dan was downgrading, at least not in the looks department. Morgan was not only prettier than I was, but she was also more experienced in just about every way. She had also been one of my least favorite people even before she stole my boyfriend; the two of us had quite the history, to say the least.
“Hey, Taylor!” Leah said, “Wasn’t the game amazing tonight?” I was grateful for the change in subject. Leah took the open spot next to Taylor and Ana, so I was stuck sitting on the other side of the table next to the guys and feeling awful because, while I recognized one of them from the school newspaper, I could not remember his name.
“It was incredible! I am stoked that we won.” Taylor said, and I could tell she was a little uncomfortable. “It’s the absolute worst to cheer when we lose. Always feels like a bummer.” At that, Ana started giggling uncontrollably, looking back and forth from Taylor to me.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, still giggling. “I feel like we just have to acknowledge how awkward this is.”
Ana was always the overtly honest one in this group of girls. No matter what, I could count on her to be straight up with me. It saved us all a lot of time and saved us from having to have even more awkward conversations.
“Thank you, Ana! We really don’t need to talk about Dan. I’m over it,” I said, realizing that my cup was already almost empty, and that I was feeling a little tipsy.
“Hey guys, I’m Chloe,” I said to day at the meeting for the paper?”
I nodded, smiling up at him as he stood to go and he and Sean walked away. Leah watched with a slightly dreamy expression on her face before turning back to Taylor and Ana to talk about their weekend plans. I sat around while they talked for a little while, finishing my drink and chatting with Ana about how much of an absolute jerk Dan was and how, yes, of course I was upset, but I knew I would be fine eventually.
Ana and I talked about how we were both nervous waiting to hear back from the colleges we’d applied to. She was still hoping for a long-shot cheerleading scholarship so she could pursue a science degree on a full-ride somewhere with hopes of being a doctor. I was much more undecided about what I wanted to do, but my plan was to get far away from home and experience more of the world. I had applied to the university about 20 minutes north of town just in case, but that was my back up of all the other back up schools I’d also applied to.
