Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 132933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
I’m fast.
Faster than him. Faster than Frog. While I’m running after Luna, I use my mic, “Donnelly to Frog, we’re switching. Stay with Xander.”
Sorry, little Elf. I have to be with your sister.
Frog is a foot behind me. “I can handle—”
“Stay with Xander,” I repeat in comms again, not looking back. Urgency lances my voice.
“Okay, I’m on it.”
Luna thrusts open the emergency door, and an ear-splitting siren blares throughout the café. Students’ ooohs overtake the laughs, but it’s not a more pleasant sound.
I slip through the glass door, just before it closes, and the warm September air rushes at me. With one glance back, I realize Eliot isn’t chasing after Luna.
He’s busy talking heatedly to Jeffra.
Can’t focus on that—not when I just want to catch up to Luna. I’m at her side, glad she’s running in a direction away from the mobs of phone-wielding students who’d been posted near the entrance.
Her Vans scuff against the cement pathway. Cheeks splotchy and breath uneven.
My heart is in a pretzel. Not the good, freshly baked Wawa kind. “You wanna take a seat?” I ask quietly while I keep her hurried pace.
She doesn’t answer. Just rounds the back of the brick building. Off the main path of campus, we veer into a shaded dead-end where a black crow is perched on a blue dumpster.
Luna stares dazedly at the crow.
“Get outta here, Bird.” I shoo it, and the skittish crow springs into the air with a long squawk.
I angle my head, trying to see her eyes. She’s probably replaying what happened. What can I get her? I dip my hand in my back pocket and unearth a pack of Lucky Strikes and a nearly empty canister of blue Tic Tacs, frosty mint-flavored.
Besides my wallet, phone, radio, and gun, that’s all that’s on me right now.
“Tic Tac?” I offer.
She finally shifts her eyes, though they’re morose and more resigned. Like this bullying shit is just an ugly, ferocious, endless monster in her life, and I hate that. “Thanks,” she whispers, taking the Tic Tacs.
I pound the pack of cigs against my palm. “You wanna smoke?” I ask, seeing her eyeing them too.
She nods.
So we find ourselves sitting on the curb, the dumpster blocking us from any possible sightings. And we’re smoking my last two cigarettes.
“That was Jeffra,” Luna says so softly.
“Yeah, I know,” I breathe. Smoke billows out of my nostrils before I place the cigarette between my lips again. “We were briefed on everyone who lives in your parents’ neighborhood. I’ve seen her driving down the street once or twice.”
Jeffra’s family lives on the adjacent street to the Hales.
Luna nods, taking a short drag of the cigarette and then she unzips her backpack. Rummaging in its contents until she fishes out a baggie of highlighters and markers.
I blow smoke up to the sky while she rolls the hem of her denim shorts higher up her thigh, revealing more of the galaxy on her leg. Fine-line black ink that I tattooed. Seeing more of her thigh reminds me of splitting them open.
Of when I buried my face between her legs.
I’m going on the longest dry spell. And lately, just the thought of Luna makes me hard.
I force down those kinds of urges, though. Getting turned on isn’t what I’m trying to do.
After Luna uncaps the purple, lime-green, yellow, and blue markers, she begins silently coloring. Her other hand rests on the curb beside my thigh, her cigarette burning between two fingers.
She passes me a darker green Sharpie. Without saying anything, I draw on top of her hand next to me.
“When I was thirteen,” Luna speaks just as quietly as before, but we’re close enough that I can hear just fine. “Jeffra told the teacher I brought a vibrator to school. The teacher made me dump out my purse on the desk in front of everyone.” She slowly colors a star bright purple near her kneecap, lost in the memory. “Among my things was this hot pink vibrator that I’d never seen before. Instead of calling my parents and giving me detention, the teacher made me sit outside in the hall during class. For two weeks.”
My stomach tenses.
“Every time someone went to the bathroom,” Luna says in a near-whisper, “they would pass me and make fun of me.”
“I hate that you went through that.” I wish I coulda been there to call out the middle school shitheads. Luna has a soft heart, but I don’t think I’d be as kind if someone repeatedly came at me. I stop drawing for a second and realize something else and add, “I hate that you feel like you’re going through that again, too.”
She expels a tiny breath. “I’m used to Jeffra being horrible. She treats me like her own personal dart board. But for some reason, she always knows where to hurt me most.”