Looking at the Moon

Praise for Kit Pearson

“Kit Pearson is a great talent in Canadian children's literature.”

—
The Guardian
(Charlottetown)

“One of Canada's best junior fiction writers.”

—
The StarPhoenix
(Saskatoon)

“Pearson is a strong writer whose work puts to shame most of the books that kids spend so much time reading these days.”

—
Ottawa Citizen

“Kit Pearson gives young readers a strong testament of the interlocking nature and power of reading, writing and living.”

—
The Vancouver Sun

“Another magical tale from the master.”

—
Toronto Star

“Dazzle. It's not the right word for what Kit Pearson manages to do … but it's close. Closer would be a word that catches the irregular glint of light reflected on water, street lights suspended in fog, an opalescent fracturing of time and genre to create something with its own unique glow.”

—
Edmonton Journal

“Through the vivid observation of two summers, Pearson weaves a summer out of time and weaves as well a spell over her readers.”

—
The Globe and Mail

“The very best in fiction for young adults. Kit Pearson does herself proud.”

—
The Windsor Star

“Kit Pearson's careful and exact research brings the period vividly before us.”

—
The London Free Press

“The woman is a brilliant writer.”

—
Kingston This Week

“Pearson superbly and gently captures the welter of emotions that beset a young teen who is experiencing the onset of adolescence and having to cope with its physical and emotional demands.”

—
CM

“This is a writer at the top of her craft.”

—
Quill & Quire

“Pearson's real strength … lies in her ability to convey the texture of a specific time and place…. So vividly and lovingly evoked that it is almost possible to smell the pine trees.”

—
Publishers Weekly

PUFFIN CANADA

LOOKING AT THE MOON

KIT PEARSON
was born in Edmonton and grew up there and in Vancouver. Her previous seven novels (six of which have been published by Penguin) have been published in Canada, in English and French, and in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, China, and Korea. She has received fourteen awards for her writing, including the Vicky Metcalf Award for her body of work. She presently lives in Victoria.

Visit her website:
www.kitpearson.com
.

Also by Kit Pearson

The Daring Game

A Handful of Time

The Sky Is Falling

The Lights Go On Again

Awake and Dreaming

This Land: An Anthology of Canadian Stories for Young Readers

(as editor)

Whispers of War:

The War of 1812 Diary of Susanna Merritt

A Perfect Gentle Knight

L
ooking at the
M
oon

GUESTS OF WAR BOOK TWO

KIT PEARSON

PUFFIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1991

Published in Puffin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1993

Published in this edition, 2007

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

Copyright © Kathleen Pearson, 1991

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher's note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305635-5

ISBN-10: 0-14-305635-2

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available upon request.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see
www.penguin.ca/corporatesales
or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474

For Betty Anne and Ron

Sorting Out the Drummonds

I whispered, “I am too young,”

And then, “I am old enough”;

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.

W.B. YEATS

1

Return to Gairloch

I
look so ugly!

Norah peered over her brother's head at the photograph, while Aunt Mary held open the Toronto newspaper and read aloud from the “Personal Notes” for August 2, 1943:

Mrs. Wm. Ogilvie, her daughter Miss Mary Ogilvie, and their young war guests, Norah and Gavin Stoakes, have just returned from a trip to Vancouver. They will be spending the month of August at “Gairloch,” their summer home in Muskoka.

In the picture above the caption Aunt Florence sat stiffly on the chesterfield, looking as majestic as usual. Gavin was perched on its right arm and Aunt Mary smiled timidly on the far left. Between the two women scowled Norah, her face all nose, and her arms and legs as skinny as toothpicks.

“What does ‘Wim' mean?” asked Gavin.

Aunt Florence laughed. “William, pet. It's an abbreviation.” She took the paper from her daughter to examine it more closely. “Must you always frown, Norah? At least your new dress looks presentable. We'll buy two copies so we can send one to your parents. Won't that be nice?”

Norah shrugged. She ran out of Ford's Bay Store, where they had picked up the newspaper while they waited for the launch. Standing on the dock, she hooded her eyes with both hands and gazed hungrily out at the lake.

At last they'd arrived! The hot, hundred-mile drive from Toronto had seemed endless. Norah had smouldered with frustration while they wasted a whole hour in Orillia, having lunch with friends of the family. During the meal she'd made so many hints about the time that Aunt Florence had marched her out to the car and made her wait there without dessert.

After Orillia Gavin had slept, but Norah had squirmed in the back seat, while Aunt Florence nattered to her daughter about their friends' connections. “Let's see now … Alma Bartlett married Harry Stone … wasn't he the brother of William Stone?” For all of July, during their trip to British Columbia, Norah had been subjected to the same boring gossip.
Who cares?
she wanted to scream.

But now she watched the dancing waves and sniffed in the balsamy smell that was always her first sensation of being back in Muskoka. A breeze lifted her sticky hair. She knelt on the dock and dipped her hands in the clear water. She splashed it into her face, then took a drink. All summer she had been waiting to feel and taste the lake again.

And in a very short while she would be at Gairloch itself! She hadn't been there since last October; now that there was gas rationing, and you couldn't buy new tires, they no longer came up in May. Norah still hadn't forgiven Aunt Florence for cheating her out of a whole month on the island. And a month spent almost entirely in Aunt Florence's company had been too much to bear.

Norah was used to her guardian after living with her for almost three years. After a rough beginning they had reached a sort of truce. But lately Aunt Florence's fussiness had driven her wild. Kind Aunt Mary understood that Norah was growing up, but Aunt Florence still treated her like a child.

“I'm thirteen!” she had protested, when Aunt Florence had brought home the “presentable” dress before their journey—impossibly babyish, with puffed sleeves and a sash. “I'm a teen-ager now—why can't I pick my
own
clothes?”

“A teen-ager!” Aunt Florence had sniffed. “I don't hold with these newfangled notions. There's no such thing as a teen-ager. In our family you are a child until you leave home and then you're an adult. I don't want to hear that word again.”

And all Norah could respond was “Yes, Aunt Florence,” as sulkily as she dared. Whenever she tried to explain
her
side of things, Aunt Florence just said “Sauce!” and closed the conversation. Norah remembered having loud, satisfying arguments with her mother. But her mother was in England and Norah hadn't seen her since
she and Gavin had been sent to Canada to be safe from the war. With Aunt Florence she was supposed to behave like a polite guest and keep her mouth shut.

At last the launch curved around the headland, and Norah saw her “cousins” Janet and Flo in it, waving. She shouted and waved back and jumped away her car stiffness. Now she had five whole weeks of freedom ahead of her, when she could have as little as possible to do with bossy adults. She glanced down at the comfortable shorts she was only allowed to wear up north. Maybe she didn't
really
want to be a teen-ager, not yet …