Juliet's Moon Read Online Free Page B

the match, sucked in the smoke, and blew that out, too, then waved it away. Oh, how I wished I could do that! It made you look so grown-up!
    She looked amused. "Wanna try?" She took the cheroot out of her mouth and offered it to me.
    I didn't want to be a Miss Prissy Boots, but neither did I want to provoke Seth into killing me. "No thanks," I said. "Seth would have kittens if he found out."
    "How will he find out?"
    "He finds out everything sooner or later."
    "I wish I knew that to be true," she said wistfully.
    She was sad. Something was bothering her. I waited until she spoke again.
    Finally she did. "Your brother," she said carefully, "is smitten with me. At least he thinks he is. What are we going to do about that?"
    "I don't know," I said.
    "You're taken with me, too, aren't you?"
    I blushed down to my toes. "I admire you tremendously," I said decorously.
    "It's more than admiration, honey. It's love. Puppy love."
    I opened my mouth to object, but she shook her head no. "Before you go thinking that I'm peculiar, let me tell you why you're in love with me. And what it is that we have to tell your brother."
    She paused only a moment, then sighed. "Juliet, I'm not a woman. I'm a man."
    Her face wavered in front of me. The words echoed inside my head. "What?"
    "You heard me, honey. I'm a man. And you are completely normal. That's why you're in love with me."
    I scrambled to my feet. "You're not. You can't be. I've seen you in women's clothes!"
    "Clothes don't make the person, Juliet. You see, when I fight alongside the men, I really
am
the Lieutenant Flowers I pretend to be. They all love me for it. They all think I'm a brave, incorrigible woman. The kind of woman they'd marry if they had the courage. And your brother has taken to flirting with me like a schoolboy. He's hooked like a fish on the line, honey. At first I thought it was all great fun, and I planned to tell him one day in the future, and then I come here and I meet Martha."
    She hesitated. She inhaled the cigarette. "That sweet, patient, beautiful woman who waits for him to make up his confused mind. And I say to myself: 'Lieutenant Flowers,' I say, 'you can't let this go on. You've got to tell him.' Only I don't because I don't have the courage. And then I meet you."
    I said nothing while I tried to piece it all in my head. She was lying, as sure as my name was Juliet. "I don't believe a word of it," I said.
    "Why would I make such a thing up?"
    "Why not? Look what you've made up already. You've done so much lying you don't know what the truth is anymore."
    "Honey, if you were my little sister, I'd slap you for talking like that to me. But instead I'm going to prove I'm not lying another way." And she stood up then and grabbed me by the shoulders and drew me to her. "This," she said, "will open your eyes to a lot of things." And she leaned down and kissed me.
    I'd never been kissed like that before. It was at first horrible and intrusive, and then sweet and gentle, and I knew no woman could kiss like that.
    Sue Mundy was a man!
    He released me and I was wobbly on my feet.
    "Who
are
you!" I demanded. "You have no
right!"
    "Darling, sweet girl, I just touched you with a kiss and made you grow up, didn't I?"
    "You're a man! You're Lieutenant Flowers!"
    "Yes, but that wasn't Lieutenant Flowers kissing you. That was Marcellus Jerome Clark."
    "Who is that?"
    "My own real name. Juliet Bradshaw, we all have our own private moon. And every moon has a dark side. Only we never dare confront it or let others know about it. Most times we don't even know it is there. Not our moon. Our moon has no dark side."
    "What is all this talk about moons? I'm going to tell Seth you kissed me. And then you'll be sorry."
    "Ah, Seth. He's what this is all about. Think of what a kettle of fish we're all in here. You and your brother both in love with the same person. Only you're in love with Lieutenant Flowers, and he's in love with Sue Mundy. And then there's poor dear Martha, having to