After Eli by Rebecca Rupp Page A

around me, full of bad energy and looking like old mustard.
    Then the twins came busting in, yelling that we had to come out and see the moon, and so we all went back outside again.
    And it was one fantastic full moon.
    It was so bright that it made shadows on the grass. Everything looked all glazed with moonlight like sugar frosting, the trees and the bushes and the grass and the porch steps and the stone pillars at the end of the drive. And it was huge, like something out of a science-fiction movie. Like the moon the kid rode past on his bicycle in
E.T.
when the alien made everybody fly. It was so fantastic that I almost forgot I had an aura the color of baby poop.
    “I think I’m turning into a werewolf,” Jasper said. “I feel itchy all over. I think I’m growing fur.”
    “I think you’re not,” Isabelle said.
    “And my eyes feel hot,” Jasper said. “My eyes feel really hot. Do my eyes look glowing and yellow? Like the eyes of a fierce wild animal?”
    “No,” I said.
    “I feel an urge to howl,” Jasper said.
    “I feel an urge to howl too,” Journey said.
    “I feel a need for silver bullets,” Isabelle said.
    The twins started running around and howling, “AaaOOOOOO! AaaOOOOOO!” They sounded like wolf cubs who had maybe had their tails slammed in a door.
    Isabelle said, “When I was little, I thought there were Moon Elves. I thought they’d fly down to earth on nights when the moon was full and perch on my windowsill. They had silver wings and silver hair and pearl-colored eyes, and they made little cheeping sounds like baby birds. I used to leave them things I thought they’d like to eat. Moon food. Necco wafers and dragées — you know, those little silver balls they use to decorate wedding cakes.”
    We all looked at the moon.
    I said, “When I was little, my mom showed me how to find the face of a man in the moon, but then Eli showed me how to find a rabbit, and after that all I could see was that rabbit.”
    Walter said that there wasn’t any man or rabbit.
    Walter has a very limited moon. All he sees are the Mare Imbrium, the Mare Tranquillitatis, the Oceanus Procellarum, and the Tycho ray crater.
    Isabelle said, “Later I used to worry about the Moon Elves, that they’d gone away because I’d grown up. Like Wendy did in
Peter Pan.
I always thought that part was so sad, when Peter comes back for her, years later, and she’s too old to go back with him to Neverland.”
    For a moment she looked sad, and then an instant later she was laughing again, and she threw up her arms and shouted, “Moon Elves! It’s me, Isabelle! Come back! Come back! I’m still here!”
    And suddenly I remembered Eli. You know how memory sometimes comes in flashes, like a little video clip in your brain? Just a little piece of something, and you can’t remember what happened before or after, but the middle bit is really clear? I remembered sitting on the back porch steps with Eli and looking at the stars.
    Clear nights where we are, it looks like there’s a million stars, though Walter, who has probably counted them and done a statistical analysis, says only six thousand are visible to the naked eye. But it sure seems like a lot more. There are so many, and they’re so far away, that it’s hard to look up at them without realizing that you’re really pretty incredibly small. Like Walter says, mathematically we’re nothing.
    So Eli and I are sitting there, and there are peepers peeping —
squee-squee-squee
— like tiny little accordions, and fireflies blinking greeny yellow, and the Big Dipper dangling down over the barn, and I’m feeling small. Maybe Eli was too, because all of a sudden he jumped up and started to yell.
    “Hey, universe! It’s me, Eli! I’m here!”
    And he grabbed me and yanked me up.
    “Come on, Danny! Make first contact!” he said.
    So then we’re both yelling up at the sky, “I’m here! I’m here!”
    Like the tiny little people in that Dr. Seuss book,
Horton Hears a