Blue Moon​​
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When I think about you, the first thing I think of is Blue Moon. Not the original, or the covers by Elvis, Sinatra, Cyndi or The Beatles, but the one by The Marcels. Our fifth-year teacher had a fascination with rock and roll dancing and once a week he’d take us away from class to teach us how to swing in the school hall to the slow, deliberate beat of Blue Moon. The hall was really a large shed with plywood walls and uncomfortable wooden pews for the seniors to sit on as we huddled on the rolled out carpets for assembly, where it quickly became unbearably hot with the few hundred people of the school inside. He’d line us up against the walls, boys on one side, girls on the other. The awkward energy between the two lines would have been enough to power a small substation.
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I’m not sure how we ended up paired together, you were at least a head shorter than me, but the girls in our class did tend to fall on the smaller side. You’d blown into town at the start of the year so I knew very little about you. The only interaction we’d had together was when I’d nearly ran you over with my BMX on the way to school. The teacher guided us through how to hold each other; left hands clasped together, my right on the small of your back, yours on my shoulder. We took to the moves like it was something we had been doing all of our lives while the other kids around us stumbled over each other’s feet or were brought to fits of laughter by the singer’s tone of voice. After the dance was over we barely acknowledged each other and made our way back to our usual places in the class, but it was the start of something that would define my year.
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The other thing I remember about that time is that was when you first started digging in the pit. Calling it a pit was generous; it was really just a pile of gravel overlooking the soccer fields at the back of the school, but it seemed like in a pit in that way that everything seems bigger than it is when you’re knee high to a tree stump. One day I spotted you sitting in the pit, poking at the dirt with a stick.
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“Hi,” I said, approaching gingerly.
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“Hi,” you replied, our interactions still awkward and fledgling.
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“What are you doing?” I asked.
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“Digging for stuff, do you want to join in?” You asked as you held a second stick my way.
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Wordlessly I sat down next to you and began chipping away at the loosely packed pile of stone until I spotted something shiny sticking out. Pulling it out revealed it to be a badly weathered and broken piece of what was once a plastic school ruler. Naturally I showed the discovery to my friends once we got back to class and very quickly, my friend group became your friend group too.
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Our yet to be stifled senses of imagination told us the pit was an archaeological site where we could dig up forgotten remnants of the school’s past. In reality it was one of those lunchtime distractions that we would be barred from in a month after someone took things too far. Last month that distraction had been playing bullrush on the field below us until a kid got tackled a little too hard and had to go home early, the month before that it had been trading Pokémon cards at the lunchtime benches until they started getting pinched from backpacks.
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Having been the first explorers of the pit, the two of us became impromptu foremen, ordering our fellow classmates on what to dig for and where. With our increasing numbers, we began making real progress at chipping though the pit, wiping sweat from our brows as we kneeled on the pale, dusty ground in the punishing sunlight. However, aside from a sharp piece of China plate, no other discoveries had been made. The lack of results meant our numbers began to wane, as kids looked for something else to spend their lunchtimes doing that didn’t involve choking on dust.
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One day though, once our party had been reduced to a few stragglers with nothing better to do, you found something shiny glinting out at you. I and the handful of other remaining diggers gathered around as you scratched away around the shiny something. Pulling it out and dusting it off it looked like a jagged pebble, but it was ever so slightly blue and caught the sunlight in the most fascinating way when held up. I thought it could have been glass, but it didn’t cut you when you turned it over and ran your fingers over it to examine its perfectly smooth faces.
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“Gimmie! Gimmie! Let me have a look!” said Angus – the biggest, loudest kid in class – as he pushed the other kids out of the way to try and wrench the stone from your grasp.
“Yaz found it Angus. She gets to hold it,” I told him, getting between you and him.
When other kids started coming to the pit, we had established three rules to hopefully prevent catching the ire of the patrolling duty teachers. One: No fighting. Two: You have to use a stick to dig. Three: Finders keepers.
“She should share though. It’s not fair!” He said in protest, kicking up a cloud of dust as he stomped his foot with every word.
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Before the argument could escalate the bell rang, though the sound of it was soft this far away from the school buildings. You continued to hold the stone close, gazing down at it intermittently as we trekked back across the grass, and naturally when we got back you showed your discovery to the teacher. As his eyes adjusted to what you were holding between your finger and thumb, his expression changed ever so subtly from surprise to shock.
“Wow… That is quite the find there Yaz. Do you mind if I take it for just a second?”
A fellow child looking to wrench something from your grasp was very different to an adult in a position of authority politely asking to borrow it, so you handed it over without a second thought.
“Thank you,” he said with a smile before telling the rest of the class he’d be back quickly and disappearing out the door. From my usual seat by the window I could see he was heading towards the principal’s office.
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Eventually he returned, the stone no longer in his hands. You didn’t have a chance to ask where it was as he wrangled us into a line and took us off to the school hall, it was time for another dance lesson.
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“Alright everyone, find your partners and enough space to move around,” he said as he made for the CD player in the backroom.
Todays was a little different though, instead of teaching us a new dance he held an informal competition to see which of us were the best. We found each other and our hands found their places as if on instinct before the music started playing. Of course, the song the teacher picked was Blue Moon. We repeated the moves with grace while the teacher moved between pairs. The kids with no sense of rhythm were tapped on the shoulder and told to sit down, swiftly followed by the ones for whom holding hands was too uncomfortable to bear. The class was whittled down one pair at a time, but each time he passed us, he gave us a slight nod of approval before moving on. Eventually as the song was coming to its end it came down to us and one other pair. I dared not look at the other pair, lest I lose my place on the beat, so kept my eyes locked to yours as we swung and swayed. As the song played its final notes the teacher came to stand beside us. I guessed he was about to tell us to take our seats.
“I think we have our winners,” he said instead, gesturing to us.
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The class and our final opponents applauded us as we looked at each other with pleasant surprise, it seemed we made a good pair.
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As we were leaving the hall, you tugged on the teacher’s sleeve to ask where the stone was.
“I gave it to the principal to look at,” he said, “he was as interested in it as I was and wanted to give it a proper inspection.”
“When will I get it back?” you asked.
“Soon Yaz I promise, we just think you may have found something special and want to know for sure.”
There was not much else we could do. We were just kids after all; it’s not like we could have barged into the principal’s office and taken it. Instead, you were asked to come to the office after a few days. You asked if I could come along, guessing what it was about and telling the teacher I had as much to do with finding the stone as you did, but the teacher said the principal only wanted to speak to you. I watched from the window as you made your way towards the office, your head down and hands balled into fists. My stomach began to tie itself in increasingly complex sailor knots even though I was pretty sure neither of us had done anything wrong. It wasn’t like we stole anything; it seemed like the stone had never belonged to anyone to begin with. At lunch I found you at the pit, which was now more popular than ever thanks to your discovery. As kids crowded around from all angles and picked at the dirt like it was a great big scab, you told me what happened with the principal.
“He’s got some guy in to run tests on the stone, they think it’s a diamond.”
“A what?” asked Angus, eavesdropping on us from nearby.
“It’s like a really special rock or something, like that shiny Venasaur you had, he thinks it’s worth a lot of money,” you said in reply.
“Woah! We’re rich!” Cried out a delighted Angus, the rest of the group chattering excitedly.
“Did you get it back?” I asked you.
You shook your head; your face creased in a frown as it had been ever since the stone had been taken from you.
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***
The next day, two men from the newspaper came to school, a tall, hairy man with glasses and a short, bald man with none. We were in class when the teacher asked you to go meet the two for a ‘photo op'. The day after the story was on the front page of the paper:
‘Lunchtime antics lead to primary school uncovering diamond worth millions,’ said the headline.
Under the title was a picture of you with two men, one was the principal but the other I didn’t recognise. He was a man with dark hair, a similarly dark suit, wide, round eyes and a big, toothy grin. Both he and the principal were beaming with pride holding the diamond aloft with a hand each – as if they were the ones who found it – with their other hands on your shoulders. While those two smiled your face bore the same frown you’d had for the last few days, it seemed the day you’d get your stone back was getting further and further away.
After the story came out new people started coming to school, led by the man in the dark suit. At first they came in trucks like what my dad drove but as more and more men arrived the trucks and machinery they drove got larger and larger. We came out to lunch one day to not only find the pit taped off, but most of the soccer fields too, the various contraptions and faceless men in safety equipment trampling the grass into muck. Over by the pit I spotted the man in the black suit directing the group, a high visibility jacket and hard hat placed over his usual outfit. Most of our digging group simply migrated back to the playground – which was now so crowded you had to wait minutes to go down the slide – but me and you leant on the tape and watched as the men brought out stranger and stranger equipment and the hole in the middle of the fields grew larger and larger. The weather became colder and damper. Clouds rolled in, obscuring the mountain in the distance from view. It would not reveal itself again for many months.
“This situation will only be temporary. I have advised these men to do their work in a way that will disturb us the least. They’re work will only last until the end of the school year and I think that by then we’ll have something very exciting to announce to you all,” said the principal at assembly, he too now having abandoned his smart casual clothes for a suit, although his was bright white. The audience, both children and school staff, seemed somewhat bewildered by what he’d said.
Despite the principal’s promises, there were many times class was interrupted by din of the machines incessant grinding and scraping and smashing as the field was turned from a large hole to a gaping chasm. Some teachers took classes on field trips on a near daily basis to get away from the constant, maddening noise. Most kids now spent their lunchtimes inside to stay safe from barrage of machines turning the grounds of the school into a foul-smelling slurry of mud, fuel and waste. The newspaper published concerns from local environmental groups that the toxic sludge from the dig could wash down the hill the school was perched on to the river at the bottom, but they too were drowned out by army of machines which appeared more monstrous by the day.
On the night of the end of year school disco, there was barely enough room on the road for my parents to drive me to school. Inside the hall the disco was different. Usually the space was mostly barren, save for a small stage against the back wall and a snack table off to the side as a selection of top 40 hits from five years ago blared from the tinny CD player. Tonight, streamers fluttered from the rafters and a light-up dancefloor was placed over the top of the usual plywood. In the place of the usual CD player, a DJ was spinning a mix of the current pop bangers. The principal welcomed me in, his strangely perfect, strangely wide smile was as luminescent as his suit. I tried to remember if his teeth had always been that white or if I’d just never seen them up close. The snack table was where it had always been but instead of Bluebird chips they had Copper Kettles, instead of no-name chocolate there were Whittakers and organic colas replaced the store-brand bottles of fizzy which had always vaguely tasted of soap. The environment projected such an aura of luxury that even the air inside smelt fresher than before, free of the halls usual lingering hint of mothballs and the stench of diesel outside.
However, despite the opulent surroundings, there still seemed to be a forcefield in the middle of the dancefloor separating the boys from the girls. Much like that first dance lesson, I kept my back to the wall and stared out at the other side of the hall with the rest of the boys until eventually you came over, dressed in a sparkling blue ball gown.
“Monique and Kyle are going to dance together; do you want to go to?”
Before I could answer you grabbed my hand and pulled me to a corner of the hall away from the bright lights and the prying eyes. Waiting for us was the second-place couple from the dance contest. In the time since then they had officially become a couple, or as much of a couple as you could be at our age. The two were already dancing by the time we arrived, our hands finding their usual spots on each other’s bodies.
“Wait,” I said. “What about the music?”
At that moment the DJ was playing some unholy mash up of The Pussycat Dolls and The Backstreet Boys. None of us were brave enough to ask the for a request, and even if we were, I doubted he’d have one of the songs we danced to on rotation.
“Just think of Blue Moon and look at me,” you said.
As I stared into the dark brown pools of your eyes, the music and surrounding ambience of the disco faded away, replaced by the droning voice of Cornelius Harp. I felt the beat in my head and led us on our slow, lazy circles. We could have been dancing there for hours, and I wouldn’t have known as we stared into each other’s souls. I marvelled at how your blue dress twinkled like the blue diamond you’d dug out. The world outside that square meter of plywood ceased to exist. In reality we could have only been there for a couple of minutes before I stopped to wipe the sweat of my hands, you must have registered that as the time to stop as your hands returned to your sides.
“Thanks for the dance,” you said, as we had been instructed to in class.
“You’re welcome,” was all I could say before you quickly walked away and out of the building.
I stood there for a moment, considering what just happened and though I didn’t realise it at the time, it was one of a handful of perfect moments any given person gets in their lives.
***
Unfortunately, those perfect moments are as fragile as they are illusive. Arriving back at school the next week, I could tell something was off. The massive machines still occupied the fields, but the men were nowhere to be seen and the air around the grounds crackled with anxiety which wasn’t out of the ordinary but instead of coming from the children, it was coming from the adults. Once we were all in class, the teacher revealed the source of the angst. Someone had snuck into the principal’s office and stolen the diamond.
“We don’t know who it was, the Police are yet to be notified, but if the person who did it is in this room, the principle has told me that if you come clean and give it back, there will be no further action taken,” he said.
Most of the class murmured to themselves and looked at each other to see if anyone looked particularly guilty, but from my seat I noticed Angus staring bullets into the back of your head. It didn’t take long after we got let out for lunch for him to catch up with us. I’d taken you to the old playground to talk about what happened at the disco when he found us, his eyes full of rage and finger pointed accusingly at you.
“It was you! You stole it!” He shouted at you, getting too close for comfort.
“What are you talking about?” you asked.
“The Diamond! I saw you sneaking towards the principal’s office during the disco. If you don’t tell him right now, I will.”
“Stop it Angus,” I said, trying to stop the situation from escalating. “Yaz was dancing with me at the disco, it couldn’t have been her.”
“Don’t cover for her! You’ve been making love eyes at her for weeks but when I tell the principal your girlfriend is a thief that’ll be the last time you see her.”
Angus said this with a degree of malice that had me fearing what would happen next. Unfortunately, you didn’t feel that same fear.
“Angus, just because you didn’t find the diamond doesn’t mean you can bully me into saying I did something I–”
Angus moved so fast I couldn’t do anything about stopping him. The slap reverberated across the school grounds to the point nearby students craned their necks to see what had happened. The shock of it had knocked you to the ground. You didn’t cry, not at first but I could see tears forming in your eyes. It seemed Angus was surprised by his own actions, as his eyes were wide and mouth agape, his arm still outstretched. Any attempt from me to calm everyone down went out the window as all I could see through the red mist was my hurt friend and the person who hurt her. I was on Angus before he could do anything about it and my hands rained down with all the pre-pubescent fury I could muster. The commotion and Angus’ wailing caught the attention of several roaming teachers, and they eventually hauled me off the weeping Angus before dragging us all to the principal’s office.
***
“Sir, all I did was ask Yaz if she’d seen the diamond cause I knew it meant a lot to her, and he attacked me,” Angus said, pointing a finger at me and getting his accusation out between heaving sobs. I sat there silently shaking with my eyes on the floor, in slight disbelief at my own violent actions, thankfully you stood up for me.
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“That’s not true sir! Angus said I’d stolen it. All he did was–”
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“I don’t want to hear it from either of you right now!” The principal bellowed, which caused my head to jump up and look at him. His face was red with rage, hair jutting out at wild angles all over his head, eyes cloaked in shadows and tie hanging loose in his white suit. The motivational posters hung around his office advising the benefits of keeping calm and hanging in there seemed like a cruel joke now as I looked at the man he’d become
“Now Angus, tell me exactly what you saw on the night of the disco,” the principle said, trying and failing to keep his voice level.
“I saw Yaz leave the hall and walk towards the principal’s office–”
“I was going that way because my parents were parked outside and it’s the only way out of the school.”
“Yaz, be quiet, I’m talking to Angus. Angus did you see her go into my office.”
“Well… no, it was too dark, but I know she’s the one who took it.”
“Alright that’s enough Angus, you can head back to lunch now,” the principal said.
“But–”
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“Back to lunch! Please.”
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Angus shot filthy looks at the both of us before getting off his chair and leaving the office in a huff, slamming the door behind him. Luckily for us but unluckily for him, this whole ordeal took place in a time before surveillance cameras were placed everywhere you could possibly mount them, before our culture became so focused on surveillance that we’d all become spies on our peers. The principal let out a deep sigh before addressing the two of us.
“Now, I’m only going to ask you two once, did you take the diamond?”
We both answered no.
“And if we had teachers do a check of everyone’s bags, they wouldn’t find anything?”
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We said no again.
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“Then we have nothing else to discuss, but you’d better hope the diamond re-appears soon, or we’re all going to be in big trouble.”
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***
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The three of us all got off with a warning, but the diamond was never found. Over the next few weeks, memories of the diamond faded and rumours took their place that the principal had made some under-the-desk deal with the man in the dark suit to sell the school to his company so they could look for more diamonds. For much of the year the men and their machines continued to tear the soccer fields apart, but nothing like your discovery was ever found and on the last week of the year they packed up and left. Only once the men and their infernal machines had left did the sky clear and the mountain show itself once more. That same week the principal announced his retirement, looking like half of the man he was mere months ago. At the end of year assembly while he reminisced on his achievements of the school, he was met not with looks of appreciation but unbridled disgust from the teachers dotted around the hall. The man in the black suit did a very bad job of cleaning up his mess, they left the field as partially a bog and partially a toxic pit no kid could dream of ever playing in for the foreseeable future. We stayed close through the rest of the year, but that closeness came with a tension that I couldn’t put my finger on the cause of.
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On the last day of school, you pulled me to the side and whispered you had something to show me. You led me to the end of the toxic bog, behind the groundkeeper’s shed and made sure no one was looking before removing one of your shoes. I wasn’t sure what you were trying to do until you reached into the shoe and pulled out the diamond, it still twinkling as hypnotically as ever. I didn’t ask for details on how you’d got it and just looked at you gobsmacked, your eyes dark and heavy with guilt.
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“I understand,” I said eventually. “I know you wanted it back.”
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You slowly shook your head but seemed to struggle to find the words.
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“I didn’t like what it was doing to everyone,” was all you could say eventually.
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Without saying anything more you walked up to me, grabbed my hand and placed it in my palm before closing my fingers tight. I was about to ask why before you answered for me.
“I’m moving away, out of town. I want you to have this in case I don’t see you again, you’ll know what to do with it.”
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I could have asked what you meant by that but instead I just silently nodded. We stood there for a few moments, staring into each other’s souls for the last time, our hands clasped together as we breathed in and out together. Eventually though, we both became conscious of the potential for someone watching us, so I delicately slipped the diamond into my pocket and we walked back to class.
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Those were the last words we ever spoke to each other. On the bike ride home along the river I did what I thought you would have wanted by throwing the diamond into the water, burying it under thousands of tonnes of silt and muck at the bottom of the brown murk. No one batted an eye, to the adults around it was just a kid throwing a rock into the water and watching it go splash.
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I still think of you sometimes though, of that time, of that place, and of how different life is now. It all seemed so important, yet we never thought of the risks of getting caught. Looking back, it was one of the few times that my life felt like an adventure, before I got weighed down like we all do in the minutiae of adult life. When I think of you now I play Blue Moon. I wonder if the school ever recovered and if kids still dig in whatever’s left of the pit. Most of all, I wonder if you still think of me too.
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​​By Finn Williams
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Finn Williams is a writer, English teacher and former journalist from Whanganui, Aotearoa New Zealand. Finn has loved the art and magic of storytelling since he was young boy and when he is not writing his own stories, he is imparting that love for stories onto his students in the classroom. Currently he is particularly interested in telling stories about the beauty and difficulty that comes with being human in an increasingly anti-human world. He is also in the last editing stages of writing his first novel, which he hopes to have published soon.
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IG: @finnwriteswords