Moonflower Read online

  By Angela J. Townsend

  THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the authors' imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  NO part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Moonflower

  Copyright ©2014 Angela J. Townsend

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by: Marya Heiman

  Typography by: Courtney Nuckels

  For more information about our content disclosure, please utilize the QR code above with your smart phone or visit us at:

  www.cleanteenpublishing.com

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Books

  To my family who taught me go after my dreams

  To my sons, Grant and Levi who taught me that love is endless

  To Milton Datsopoulos and Diane Larsen who taught me the value of friendship

  And to

  Dale McGarvey

  Who taught me to never give up.

  Seattle, Washington

  The shadows came for me at night, in my sleep, evoking demons as they crept over me, pressing down, tangling around my arms, my legs, my neck. I struggled to open my eyes. To move. To breathe. Panic swelled. Twisting and thrashing, I battled to break free. The shadows turned to vapor, and it was my mother who held me now, clutching me to her bloody body as we huddled together. Her ragged, uneven breath feathered across the back of my neck.

  She whispered one last Russian lullaby.

  My father appeared in the doorway, his heavy boots dripping snow on the oak floor. His eyes were cold, vacant, a rifle tight in his hands. He advanced, yelling Siberian curses that fell from his lips like hissing snakes. He snarled and aimed the weapon at my mother’s chest. Her eyes stretched wide in horror, her lips twisted in a final scream as she pushed me to safety.

  A bullet exploded through her torso, shattering my existence in a mixture of steel, blood and bone, colliding at the speed of light. My father lowered the gun, grabbed my mother’s wrist and checked for a pulse. A satisfied smile crept across his lips as he dropped her lifeless arm.

  A whimper escaped my throat. He spotted me cowering in the corner, his eyes blazing with scalding fury. He raised the weapon, aimed it at my forehead, and the shadows came for me again…

  I jerked awake, gasping for breath and clammy with sweat. The images of my dying mother still clinging to my mind. I shielded my eyes from the brilliant beams of sunlight seeping into my room, letting it trickle between my fingers to warm my face. From a cracked windowpane in the corner, a scatter of diamond-shaped patterns laced the floor in an intricate dance. I stared at the kaleidoscope of colors, willing my heartbeat to return to normal, tracing each shape, forcing the recurring nightmare from my mind. I closed my eyes and counted backward from twenty and by the time I had reached ten, the tightness in my chest had relaxed and I was able to breathe again.

  I threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, my toes warm in the dancing sunlight. Daytime brought me peace, chased away the dreams of a past better left forgotten. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. I'd suffered the same horrible dream every single night. Maybe someday it would leave, but I had a feeling things wouldn’t change until I knew everything that had happened: my mother’s murder, how I survived getting shipped off all the way from Russia to an orphanage in Seattle. I was only two years old when my mother died—but even at that tender age the horrible memory had taken root in my subconscious, sprouted limbs, and grown into a monster over the years. I didn’t know what was real anymore.

  The worn cotton robe I’d slept in slid from my trembling shoulders, exposing my nightgown, long and pale like my Siberian blonde hair—a color I inherited from some ancient ancestor whose bones rested under a layer of Russian ice.

  From the kitchen came clinking glass and the gargle of a blender. Bambi, my foster mom, was no doubt mixing up a bomb squad. Or at least that’s what she called it. It took the edge off her constant hangovers and kept her head from exploding.

  On an end table near the bed, my alarm clock blared. And before I could switch it off, Bambi bellowed, “Natasha! Turn that blasted thing down! How many times have I told you….”

  I hit the snooze button and waited until she retreated down the hallway, her footsteps heavy across the worn shag carpet as she entered her bedroom at the end of the double-wide. I knew she’d probably gone back to bed with a pair of blinders over her eyes to keep the shards of light out.

  Bambi came into my life the summer I turned twelve, when I was a flightless bird trapped in a sewer called Bellingham—a group home for throwaway kids. On a Friday afternoon, Bambi’s big white Lincoln roared into the driveway, a rooster tail of dust behind it. She stepped out wearing tortoiseshell sunglasses, a pink mini-skirt with matching heels, and low cut halter-top. Her long hair shone in the afternoon sun, a rich mane of licorice black cinched in a ponytail at the top of her head like a genie.

  She spotted me staring at her through the glass, removed her sunglasses, and winked. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I’d only seen women like that in magazines, leaning against cars. She looked sharp and dangerous, like the curve of a blade. She came inside, her spiked heels clicking across the tiled floor. She bent down to eye me, the top of her breasts spilling over the “V” of her tank-top. I stared up at her. What did she want?

  She reached out and smoothed a stray piece of hair dangling in front of my eyes. “Well, hello there, Missy.” She pressed her hand into mine. “You must be Natasha.”

  I recoiled, not used to being touched. I only knew the palms of rough hands pressed against my back, urging me to and from a bedroom with cement walls like a prison, rubber sheets that crinkled beneath me and a roommate who screamed in her sleep.

  I stared up at her, into those intense green eyes. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Bambi.” She batted her sooty lashes. “Run along and get your things. You’re coming with me.”

  I took off to my room and threw everything I owned into a big plastic garbage bag. I hated that cheap sack. A parting shot from Bellingham. A reminder that foster kids were worthless. Not even important enough for a real bag. When I’d watched other kids get placed, I always thought that throwing all your stuff in those plastic trash sacks would feel like one of two things. Either throwing away your old life, the bad memories, the fear and hate of Bellingham; or the feeling of a refugee, so blinded by freedom that it didn’t matter. I was wrong. It felt like admitting you didn’t matter, like saying you weren’t worthy of the freedom you’d always dreamed of. I told myself not to worry about it, to focus on the fact that I was getting out, but the thought lingered as I hurried out the door to Bambi’s car. She was perched behind the wheel when I got there, wiping lipstick off her teeth in the rear-view mirror. I tried the door and it was locked. She leaned over, flung it open, and waved me inside with her long red press-on nails.

 
“Hurry it up, Missy. Don’t have all day—got me a tiki party to go to tonight.”

  I slid into the cushy white interior and snapped on my seatbelt. On the way home, Bambi chatted endlessly about how she used to be a drug addict and stripper at a gentleman’s club before she found Jesus. “You know what, Missy? Jesus loves everybody, even prostitutes.” She slipped a cigarette into her mouth and lit the tip. “Says so right in the bible. Did you know Lazarus’ sister was a lady of the night, before she got saved?” Bambi exhaled a cloud of smoke. “If it wasn’t for Jesus, I’d sure as hell be dead by now.”

  I stared at her, trying to think of something to say. In the close confines of the car, I saw the glue of her false eyelashes dotting her lids, a thick layer of foundation and face powder over fine lines near her nose and mouth. There was a roughness to her beauty, more from hard mileage than time. She reminded me of a pretty doll, broken and patched together again.

  We stopped at a red light. Bambi slid her gaze in my direction. “Have you been saved, Missy?” Before I could answer she squealed and cranked up the radio, singing along at the top of her lungs to Paradise City, by Gun’s N’ Rose’s. The light turned green and she hit the gas, music blaring out the windows as we sped onto the freeway.

  A little old lady in a big Buick cut in front of us, gray hair and curlers barely visible over the wheel. Bambi slammed on the brakes, punishing the old woman with a loud blare of her horn, honking and swearing over the music. My gut twisted. For someone who was religious, she sure could cuss. A sigh crept past my lips. I hoped Bambi wasn’t some kind of phony, that this time it might be different and I wouldn’t have to be brought back to that place where I barely existed. Nameless. Faceless. Nobody’s child.

  We exited to a narrow street that evened out along shabby houses with chaotic yards and sagging, cluttered porches. A steel factory. Cars without wheels. Houses boarded up. Bambi drove under a metal sign suspended by iron chains, Sunny Ridge Trailer Court. I didn’t see anything sunny about it with its rusty trailers, faded lawn ornaments, and abandoned cars. It looked more like a junk yard than a place to live.

  None of it mattered. I didn’t care where we lived or where we were going. Bambi would be the perfect placement for me. I didn’t want to live with a nuclear family, where pretend mothers and fathers ended up not wanting you because you wouldn’t bond with them. For me, it was impossible. I didn’t know how to love—and it turned out that Bambi didn’t either. I was a means to an end, a paycheck waiting in the mailbox on the third of every month. Spare change. Beer money.

  As it happened, weeks of uncertainty became years of bingo on Saturday nights, wild weekend parties, and a string of bad boyfriends Bambi picked up along the way. Through it all, I somehow managed to turn seventeen.

  I glanced at my alarm clock again and the glaring blank screen. I had no idea what time it was since I had jerked the cord out of the wall. Great. Better hurry if I wanted to meet the bus on time. I struggled to open the top drawer of my dresser, pushing back piles of messy clothes stuck in the sides, and selected a pair of cutoffs to wear over my leggings, a tank-top and long black sweater. Underneath a pile of dirty clothes, I unearthed my combat boots and slipped them on. I loved the weight of them. They made me feel grounded, like I could climb a mountain if I had to. I tied my hair in a messy knot, gathered my school books that had been littered across my desk, and tucked them into an army bag. My fingers traced the lines in the smooth canvas. I loved the worn pack, covered in peace signs and denim patches. It carried everything that was important to me, my art supplies, my drawings, pictures I’d cut out of magazines.

  Being an artist was my whole life. It was all I cared about. All I wanted to be. Art saved me, spoke to me, kept me company at night when I would lay in my bed at the group home listening to the endless, unanswered cries of children mixed with the ceaseless drone of the television in the common area. My palette of assorted acrylics in a spray of vivid colors gave me fresh flowers and the bittersweet scent of autumn leaves when in reality my world was surrounded by smells of detergent, floor wax, and urine. Art was a way out, a universe of my own creation.

  The bus rumbled to a stop in front of our lighthouse-shaped mailbox, a glaring false idol of hope in a rundown trailer park. Bambi was as crazy about lighthouses as she was about Jesus. Our house was packed with them.

  The bus door hissed open and I begrudgingly climbed aboard. Fighting my way down the crowded aisle, I found a seat near the front, my bag at my feet. Behind me a group of cheerleaders gossiped about boys, makeup, and sex, their shrill laughter drilling into the back of my head. I slipped on my earbuds, drowning them out with the deep, dark tones of Rachmaninoff, my favorite Russian composer. Girls my own age were a different species, their everyday problems so trivial. I didn’t really know anyone, and didn’t want to. I liked being alone and I suspected my independence suited me better than it should. Worse yet, I hated crowds. I had this raw, primitive urge to live in some secluded cave and do nothing but paint.

  So far I’d made it through almost three years of high school, yet my junior year seemed endless. It wasn’t that I hated school, it was the structure I loathed—just another institution. Another form of control. Another obstacle in the way of me being able to do my artwork.

  School dragged on forever. When the final bell finally rang, I leapt from my seat, my army bag slung over my shoulder, and I fought my way through a sea of teens clogging the hallway. I opened the double doors to the exit with both hands and escaped into the parking lot, dodging through the train of cars and buses. Finally I could breathe again. I hurried across the street, every cell inside my body tingled. I couldn’t wait to get to the theater where I made costumes for the stage, drawing and painting—creating intricate designs on simple fabrics. There I could lose myself in my artwork and in the magic of the old, massive, ivory-columned structure.

  Sunshine spilled across the pavement as I worked my way downtown on foot. It took fifteen minutes to get to Pike Place Market. Springtime in Seattle was acting totally schizophrenic as usual. One minute it was super sunny, transforming winter-burnt stems and wilting plants into an emerald green carpet, then a second later rain and melting ice gargled down the raspy throats of muddy drains.

  The heels of my boots thudded across the pavement as I entered the heart of Seattle. No one could be depressed in the market. The place buzzed with tourists, a chaotic hum of sights, and sounds. The delicious scent of exotic spices mixed with the poignant aroma of raw fish and seafood. There was something healing and magical about the place. Seattle’s artistic creations of every kind were on display. Portraits offered, hand-painted tea cups for sale, jewelry, and driftwood.

  It was an artist’s dream, alive and beating with waves of energy. A place where I could completely disappear, blend into the crowd and become part of the backdrop while all of humanity bustled around me. I loved those moments, wanted to capture them on canvas, keep them forever. In places like that you can be alone because you’re surrounded by people, part of the flow of life and yet only an observer.

  It took about five more minutes to reach the Zippo Theater. I drifted past bouquets of pink and red tulips, roses and sunflowers sold by local vendors, past street performers strumming guitars, playing saxophones and trombones.

  I ducked inside the art-deco theater and through the silver-plated lobby filled with brightly colored posters advertising upcoming plays. I entered a stage door and climbed a flight of stairs to my art table, tucked in a secluded nook. Hidden away, I penciled portraits on onionskin paper, painted miniatures on tiny scraps of canvas—each minute brushstroke, each carousel of colors, a record of my existence, my mark on the world. I mattered. I was here.

  While I worked backstage with my ink pens and my palettes of acrylics, I found paradise. Invisible to others, yet near enough to hear their conversations. Their voices were calming to me, muttered words, whispers, secrets told in confidence. It was like being a painting on a wall that no one noticed. No de
mands. Nothing expected.

  A mother and daughter in gypsy costumes hurried past for a dress rehearsal. They laughed while the mom straightened the girl’s collar. The mother whispered something about being proud and kissed the girl’s cheek. They hugged each other for luck and dashed off. A sudden rush of raw emotions cut at me, slicing layer by layer until reaching bone. I stood alone in the shadows, feeling a hint of the love and nervous energy they left behind—balancing on a blade of pain and frustration.

  What would it be like to have parents? I could barely remember mine.

  My stomach dropped to the floor. A dark figure flashed into my mind. My Russian father, a sinister silhouette of all I did not know, an empty shape filled with rage, murder, and bloodshed. Why did he murder my mother? What had she done to make him so angry? Was he still alive? Did I have siblings?

  There were so many questions I needed answered—but there were no answers to be found. I had looked everywhere, searched every record possible. And searching for information on biological parents roughly five- thousand miles away in a foreign country isn’t exactly easy.

  It was like I had dropped from the sky. As solitary as a clam. The only things I knew were that I’d been born in Russia, my father had murdered my mother, and I was sent to live in a children’s home in Seattle. But why? Weren’t there plenty of orphanages in Russia? There had to be a reason. None of my caseworkers were any help. The last one just shrugged and suggested that maybe all the orphanages were full at the time. No one seemed to know much about me, other than the basics—age, race, birth date, place of birth.

  A thousand unanswered questions fought for my attention. If only I knew it would make things easier, bearable. Some say it’s better not to know. That ignorance is bliss. But not for me. For me, not knowing was way worse. I was in this weird state of constant grief over the loss of a relationship with people I didn’t even know.