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Published by Steph Campbell
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Cover Design: The Cover Lure
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2014 Steph Campbell
All rights reserved.
For E,
They say that hard times will always reveal your true friends.
I’m so thankful to call you one.
“Make hummus not war! Make hummus not war!”
I push my way through the crowd, trying my best to keep my eyes on the ground and not roll them in the faces of the people I pass at their chosen slogan.
Is that really the best they’ve got?
I scan the crowd, looking for the familiar dark hair, at the same time I’m straining my ears trying to make her voice out in the chants. It’s pointless, this pile of people is just too thick. I need to find her and get the hell out of here, but it feels damn near impossible in the endless sea of crimson t-shirts.
“Dude, you need a sign!” a girl calls to me, and offers up one of her cardboard, STOP THE BOMBS signs.
“No thanks,” I say. I shouldn’t even be here, and not just because I don’t know which side I’m on. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I, a seventeen-year-old kid with no horse in this race, has all the answers—or any answers. But what I do know is that this protest is getting out of hand, and I need to get her out of here before the cops get involved.
She’s standing on the brick steps wearing the only blue shirt in the crowd.
Of course. I should have looked for something other than red right off the bat. She always has to stand out.
“Listen up!” a cop calls into a megaphone right next to me. I flinch away from his booming voice, cover my ears, and keep moving. “Time to vacate! Students need to get back to their dorms! All others are trespassing!”
“Hey, kid, time to go,” a cop in uniform says to me.
“No problem,” I say but keep walking toward Jemma.
“Hey!” he calls after me. There’re plenty of other people here for him to hassle though, so he doesn’t press on. But that moment of hesitation causes me to lose sight of her. She must have slipped through the tight group of people.
I wish I didn’t care. I wish I would learn to walk away from people.
I cup my hands around my mouth and yell, “Jemma!” But she doesn’t look in my direction.
This isn’t the first time she’s gone to one of these things and it turned out to be more than she bargained for. Or, at least that’s what she wants me to think. She’s pro at sending me texts or leaving me voicemails claiming she’s in over her head. That she’s terrified. That she needs my help.
She’s the kind of girl who starts fights with guys twice my size just because she gets off on watching me defend her. She’s the girl who claimed she thought someone put something in her drink and I had to come and get her, when in reality, she just didn’t want to spring for a cab and had missed the last train of the night.
She’s my girlfriend—she was my girlfriend. Of course I would have picked her up if she’d just asked—but Jemma could never do that—something as simple as ask. She always had to make it dramatic. She always had to make a fool out of me.
Like the text she sent me thirty minutes ago, before I raced across town to pick her up because she was scared things were getting out of hand. But from the looks of things, she’s just as into this rowdy protest as the rest of the participants.
I wonder if she even knows what she’s protesting.
Jemma will sign up for any cause, she’ll be anything—except honest. With me, with her family, hell, with herself. She’s a chameleon who has no idea who she is, or what she stands for. But dammit she dragged me into her life and I’m here now, foolish as it is, because I’m loyal to a fucking fault—despite how hard she stomped on my heart with her vegan shoe, I can’t watch her go down. So I push on, through opposing sides of an issue that I can’t make sense of, just trying to get to my ex-girlfriend before she gets arrested.
“Jemma!” I call again.
I’m almost to her when I see an arm go up and wrap around her tiny waist.
That’s when I haul ass to her.
That’s when I punch without looking.
***
“Gabriel.” Her voice is sharp and wakes me up like a bad nightmare.
I pull myself up to sitting, touch my cheek, and wince at the pain.
“Did…did someone hit me?” I ask, working my jaw back and forth. It doesn’t feel good. “Did a cop hit me?” I blink a few times, trying to put together the memory of what happened before I took a solid right hook to the jaw.
My mom scoffs.
“The official report says that another protester hit you, though I suppose it could’ve been a police officer. I don’t want to hear another word about that though,” she says. Her arms are folded tightly over her chest and she taps one shiny, black heel with each clipped word.
“I just—”
“I told you to stay away from her,” Mom says, then holds one hand up. “All of this could have been avoided if you just would have listened to me and stayed away from her.”
I don’t answer, because I have no defense. This is the one time my mom has ever been right as far as I’m concerned.
“Never mind, we don’t need to discuss that now. What we need to do is get you out of here. I’ve already signed all of the paperwork,” she says.
Don’t have to ask me twice to leave the white cinderblock walls and the comfort of the matching cement bench.
“Thanks, Ma,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Oh, don’t you thank me, Gabriel. The man you punched—the man you assaulted at that protest—he was a police officer.”
I close my eyes and visualize the arm reaching for Jemma’s waist.
I shake my head and say, “He wasn’t in uniform.”
“None of that matters, Gabriel. This isn’t a game any longer. This isn’t about her or her family anymore. This is about you. You’re the one sitting in jail right now.”
Mom leans in as she talks and points one, long, manicured finger in my face like she used to do when I was a kid and I’d interrupted her work.
“Okay,” I say in a flat voice, and let my shoulders drop. “What do you want me to do then? I’m sure you’ve got a plan, right Ma?”
Of course she’s already got a plan. Always a fixer. Mom looks over her shoulder to make sure that no one is in earshot, because appearances matter above all else. Who, other than my mother, would have taken the time to put on the black suit and a full face of makeup just to pick their kid up from jail? She flips her black hair back over her shoulder and purses her red lips.
“I will not tolerate this behavior any longer, Gabriel. I’m up for re-election. Have you forgotten that?”
How could I? Mom and her career have been the center of our entire world for as long as I can remember.
I touch my tongue to my lip and taste dried blood.
When I was six, I had a really bad case of pneumonia. When I wouldn’t get well, the doctors thought I had meningitis, so I had to have a spinal t
ap. The nurse came in to assist and she held me still while the doctor performed the test. She pressed my face into her chest while I cried, as my mother stood in the corner of the room. I remember thinking that the way the nurse held me was probably what real comfort felt like, what real mothers did when their children were sad or scared or hurt. They were warm to their children, and stroked their head and held them close.
Real mothers didn’t fix their kids.
But mine does.
“Where am I going this time?” I deadpan.
“To stay with your grandmother. It was the only option at the last minute.”
There are worse places to go than down to my Babci’s house in Gloucester. It’s still close to home, it’s comfortable, and I bet Babs could use a little company now that my grandfather is gone and my dickhole dad up and left a few months ago.
“Your car is staying here, though. Hell, I may even sell it.”
“Fine,” I say. I don’t care. I honestly don’t. “Whatever you want, Ma.”
“How about I tell you what I don’t want—what I absolutely won’t stand for, is you back in this city until we clear this up.”
“Whatever,” I say, grabbing my coat from the cement slab I’d been napping on.
“And stay away from that girl. I mean it this time, Gabriel. Enough is enough. You’re only making a fool out of yourself at this point.”
Now that I can do.
I was born a miracle. I don’t mean that in the generic way that all babies are a miraculous gift of life. I mean, my parents were told that they couldn’t have any more children after my older sister Kaydi was born, and yet, four years later they got the good news that I was on the way. A miracle.
And not just any miracle, the type of miracle that years later, still causes your parents to pause outside of your bedroom door, shaking their heads, staring at you with such fervor that you expect the skies to part and angels to drop down playing little harps— even when all you’re doing is sitting in bed reading a book. The kind of miracle that makes them obnoxiously say, ‘We’re so lucky,’ over and over while you’re just trying to spread some Nutella on your wheat toast in the morning—because miraculously, I’m able to make my own breakfast.
You think I’m joking.
I wish I were.
My parents are lucky, but honestly, that’s a lot of pressure for anyone to live up to every day.
I’m the kind of miracle that when you go to the doctor and they do an ECHO, they say things like, ‘I’ve seen a lot of things in my years of practice, but I’ve never seen anyone as sick as she was doing so well now.’
A miracle that was born with a rare heart condition. But I survived. Miraculous.
I still pause to look at the long scar on my chest every day before I get into the shower. It’s less angry looking than it used to be, but it’s still noticeable. I still have to cover it in medicated cream to try to soften its appearance and wear certain shirts to cover it. It’s grown with me rather than fading away. It’s always there. Just like my parents.
Everyone always told me that it was a mark of bravery.
The truth is, I was just a newborn when I had my surgery, I don’t remember any of it.
I don’t remember being brave. I don’t remember the long nights in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit that my parents still talk about like it all happened last week. I don’t remember the cabinets full of heart and lung medications that I used to have to take every day. This scar is the only thing that proves to me that those things really did happen.
Well, this scar, and the way my parents treat me.
If it weren’t for those things, I might have had a shot at being a normal teenager.
There’s a box of cards my mom keeps on her vanity from when I was a baby. Back then, everyone wrote messages of hope to my parents that I would survive. They told them that I was destined for great things.
That my life had a grand purpose. That God had plan for me.
I just haven’t seen any of that yet. So far, my life has been in this house.
As best as I can remember, my parents have told me every single day of my entire sixteen years that I am the miracle.
“Don’t tell her she can’t have one more hour of TV,” my mom would say to Dad, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. “She’s a miracle.” They’d said it so often, with such vehemence, that you’d think I would eventually believe I was really something special.
But I’m not. I’m just me. I’m just Lena Claire Pettitt.
I just want to be the normal version of me. Because for every bit of daily spoiling they’ve done in response to my miraculous status, they took something away daily, too.
I’ve lived in a bubble. Preserved for no reason.
I was born with half of a working heart, and as a consequence, I will only live half of a life.
Healed physically, but barred from any true experience.
I should feel grateful, but instead, I feel robbed. Why bother saving someone only to force them to live halfway?
As far as prisons go, I guess my home isn’t so bad. My mom is a great cook, my house is nice and comfortable, and there are beautiful, scenic views in the seaport town we live in just outside of Boston. I’m allowed to walk around and explore our city. I can take my easel up to the cove and paint for hours in the sunshine if I want. Our town also happens to be the oldest art colony in the US, so that makes it perfect for me—but it’s still small.
It’s still claustrophobic.
It still makes me ache for bigger cities and a bigger life.
And while I can go to my art classes, the mall, or the movies with my best friend, Lily, I can’t ever go alone. Even though my last surgery was sixteen years ago, and the cardiologist said as long as the valves they created on my heart grow with me and nothing becomes blocked by scar tissue I’m in the clear, my parents can’t see past the what-ifs.
They live their lives so terrified that something will go wrong and they won’t be there to recognize it.
Like the time we went to Tennessee for a family vacation. I had a headache so they let me stay in the cabin while Mom, Dad, and Kaydi went for a hike. I was fourteen and they were only gone for a couple of hours, it wasn’t a big deal. Except that it was. Because by the time they got back, my fever was up to one-hundred-and-three and my head hurt so badly, I couldn’t pick it up from the pillow. It turned out to be strep, but to a kid with an already compromised immune system—one who isn’t even allowed to have her ears pierced (doctor’s orders!) because the infection could go to my heart, strep is a big deal. You’d think by my age I’d know my body better than I do after all of the procedures and scares, but maybe I don’t.
Maybe Mom and Dad are right.
They smother me, because they’re scared of losing me.
I can’t fully understand how it must feel to walk in their shoes, but I try. I really, really do. I work hard to keep my frustration inside and not to complain too much when it feels like I’m watching the outside world through a viewfinder. Like everything I want is so close, but still so far out of my reach.
“Lena, two minutes,” my mom peeks her head into my bedroom and says.
“‘K,” I say. I give a quick nod but keep my eyes trained on the mailbox at the end of our driveway.
“Two,” Mom repeats before closing the door.
I look down at the time on my iPhone: 2:53.
The mail always comes by three. Every single day.
Dad’s coming home early today and I have to catch it before he does on his way in. I’ve been playing this game of who can make it to the mailbox first for the last three months. I never lose because I’m always home. Waiting anxiously for Maggie, our mail carrier, to drop the mail into the box.
“Waiting on something good?” Maggie has asked dozens of times.
Yep. For life. Real life to start.
I hear the hiss of brakes and press my face to the glass to peer down the street as far as I can. But instead of the m
ail truck, it’s the familiar red Honda Insight that belongs to my older sister, Kaydi.
I watch her through the window as she parks in the shell-covered drive, gets out, slams her door dramatically, and then stomps toward our front door. Her brown hair swirls around her face, but I can still make out the way her brows are pulled down and her lips puckered into a scowl.
Normally, I’d roll my eyes and wish her away in my mind, but now, I selfishly see her as a welcome distraction. Whatever is upsetting her today will buy me a few minutes to get to the mailbox first.
I pad across the creaky hallway and to the top of the stairs where I can now hear Kaydi’s choking sobs. She could be crying over something major, or she could just as easily be upset over losing an earring. I think having so much of the attention on me all the time made her more than a little dramatic and attention starved.
“What is it, sweetheart?” I hear my mom coo.
“Brian—he hates—broke up—” Her words are all a jumbled, tear-filled mess, but I get the gist before silently making my way out the front door, taking extra care to close it behind me as quietly as possible.
I rush to the end of the driveway and pause for a long second before I pull open the mailbox and shove my hand inside while keeping my eyes on the front door. My palm is icy in the cold metal box, but apart from the dampness, there’s nothing there.
It’s empty.
I can’t remember the last time we didn’t receive even a single ad.
Something. Is Maggie late today?
I peer down the street hoping I’ll see the truck but there isn’t anyone on our tiny, one lane road.
Back inside the house my sister is snotting into her tea. Like, legitimately snotting.
Her cheeks are bright red and her bangs are damp from tears.
“What’s going on?” I ask, slumping into one of the dining room chairs. The chairs are too formal for the rest of the house and we never have enough people over to fill all eight of them. More people around mean more germs. And more germs mean that I might get sick. Mom can’t handle it when I do. Her world grinds to a halt. She follows me around the house enough on a normal day, but when I’m sick, even with just a seasonal thing, she takes my temperature around the clock and gives me hourly pulse ox tests.
Even the Moon Has Scars Page 1
