Dear Nobody,
It's barely the 15th yet, it's just midnight now and I'm down in the Ronlux basement with my friends (except for Grey) but it's kind of quiet so I decided to keep myself busy by writing something down. I think everybody's pretty shaken up about Grey being arrested and knowing that he'll probably be stuck in jail for a while now. I'm the least hopeful but Tasha's sure that Grey will be able to talk the judge down because he's most likely a sociopath. My words, not hers.
Jules, Cece, and Faith were driving across down town to pick up some drugs from Jules' friend and they were blasting the radio so loudly that they couldn't hear their phones ringing when Tasha had been frantically calling them when Grey was about to get into the fight. It's a good thing that they got there when they did, I guess, because I probably would have gotten myself hurt pretty badly if I jumped between those two guys again. It probably wouldn't have helped anything anyway.
Now, I don't know what to do. Cece's drawing, Faith is still trying to comfort Tasha about what had happened, and Jules is already getting high on the other side of the basement. The mood is just so depressing right now that I don't feel like starting a conversation or joining Faith and Tasha's conversation. I'm just going to sit here and-
"What are you writing?" Faith asks me and as an instinct, I immediately shut my notebook so that nobody can read what I've written.
"Nothing important," I tell her.
"What's up with being so secretive lately?" She wonders with raised eyebrows and now, I see that everybody is looking at me, waiting for my response.
"How am I being secretive?" I play dumb but I'm pretty sure that they're referring to Danni. I'm not going to make assumptions until they admit to it though because if I'm wrong, I'd just be calling myself out.
"First there's that girl that was at the fight," She reminds me, disappointingly proving my assumption correct. "And now you're starting a secret diary or something?"
"Oh, right, that girl. She's my lover and I'm now writing love letters to her, if you must know," I say in a deadpan voice. "It's a forbidden type of thing because her parents are homophobic. I don't even work at the library anymore, whenever I say that I'm at work, I'm sneaking around with her to have hot lesbian sex. Romantic, right?"
"Shut the fuck up," Faith refutes with a small laugh, obviously not believing my sarcastic response. One thing we all have in common is our ability to detect sarcasm and to fire it right back at somebody, which is good because without that bonding ability, there would be some serious misconceptions and hurt feelings in our circle of friends just about all of the time. "Seriously, what's up?"
"It's really nothing," I say, scrambling for something real to say that's believable and yet, not the truth. I don't like lying to my friends but I don't feel bad about it. We all have our secrets, it's what makes us human. "She's just some chick from my building and I needed a fast ride to the lot, so she drove me."
"She's from your building?" Cece wonders, looking up from her sketch pad with her head cocked to the side. "She looked like she was ripped right out of a department store catalog."
I just shrug at her because I don't know how to address that with a believable lie. "She likes to look nice, I guess."
"Luna, you don't think that we'll really believe that she's from around here, do you?" Jules fires, standing up from the other side of the basement to join the conversation because this is apparently very important to all of my friends. "Did you see her car?"
"What's wrong with her car?" I ask.
"Absolutely nothing," He says before putting his smoking joint back to his lips. "That's my whole point. If she can afford a car that nice then she surely can afford to get her cute little ass out of the city."
"Unless the toxins in her perfume are suffocating her brain," Faith adds with a snicker. "And she doesn't know what's going on anymore. Or her hair die is soaking up her critical thinking skills. Maybe she likes this city."
"She's actually really nice," I add, trying to defend Danni even though I know that it's futile. This is what I knew would happen if they found out about Danni and this is what I was trying to avoid but it's out of my hands now. I wish she would have just listened to me when I told her to drive away after she dropped me off at the lot because then we would have avoided this whole conversation.
"I'm sure that she is," Cece laughs with a roll of her eyes. "I'd be nice too if I was from the fucking Hamptons."
"She's not from the Hamptons."
"She might as well be," Jules says with a small shrug. "I mean, she was hot, but she was that kind of hot that's really unappealing, you know? Because the personality doesn't match the hot face."
"You don't know her personality," I mumble, feeling kind of irritated even though I know that if I didn't actually know Danni, I would be laughing along with them instead of defending her. Making fun of people with money is one way that we cope with the fact that we have absolutely none. Kind of like how stupid people make fun of smart people, it's a coping mechanism. It's cruel and it's unfair but it's just how it goes.
"Luna, you're kidding right?" He asks me with an easy laugh as he hands his joint to Cece and she takes a drag of the weed and passes it to Faith.
"Look, just because she wouldn't fuck you if you asked politely doesn't mean that she's a bad person. Like I said, she's actually pretty nice," I fire at him. "Let's just talk about something else, alright? I'm not in the mood to deal with you guys being assholes."
"What's got your panties in a bunch?" Faith asks me, seeming surprised that I'm getting annoyed at them for making fun of Danni. That's understandable because like I said, this is normal behavior for us and it should be strange to them that I'm not just going along with it.
"My panties are fine, I just think that you guys are being kind of ridiculous," I say with a small shrug. "And really judgmental for no reason. She just gave me a ride, which was really nice of her because without her driving me, I probably wouldn't have gotten to the lot for another fifteen minutes."
"Somebody's being really sensitive right now," Jules observes as I stand up from the ground and push my notebook into my bag before slipping my coat on. I know that I'm being really pissy right now and I'm just not in the mood to socialize or party or anything so I should just leave now before I start a real argument.
"Whatever," I mumble moodily as I start walking toward the basement stairs. "I'm just going to go home. I'll see you guys on Monday."
They don't say anything else to me before I'm going up the stairs back toward my apartment next door. I'm sure that my friends will brush off my mood as my reaction to Grey getting arrested earlier, and that's probably true, so I know that they won't even bring it up when we get to school on Monday. We all have our bad days and we all have tough skin so we just move on.
On my way out of the building, I notice the abandoned strip mall across the street from the apartment building has some blank white space beside one of the old glass store doors. I can hardly see it due to the only light source being the flickering street lights, but I can still see it clear enough. It used to be riddled in graffiti but I guess one of those charity groups that goes around the city cleaning up the graffiti came around and cleaned off the tiles so that they're white again. Because graffiti is the worst thing that has ever happened to the city so these groups must protect us inhabitants from their disgusting presence. Personally, I think the graffiti adds a little something to this bullshit. It's like a tattoo for the city, it tells our story. It's art.
Feeling angry at the world for what happened to Grey and also for my friends being assholes about Danni, I grab my bottle of spray paint out of my bag (an essential must-have in my bag at all times) and make my way across the street to give this city just another tattoo.
I shake up the can and look around to make sure that nobody sees me as I write my own story on this city. After I'm done, I step back and read the black letters that read 'Hold your own hand.' My personal message to the rest of the city. They can thank me later.
I take a picture of it with my polaroid and then go back to the apartment where my mother is in the kitchen, pulling a bottle of alcohol off of the top shelf. I notice an open suitcase stuffed full with clothes and booze on the couch and I know instantly that my mom is going away again. That's the biggest and most obvious sign of her soon-to-be departure.
"Hey, Mom," I greet her as I walk tentatively toward the kitchen. Whenever my mom is about to leave, she's either in a really good mood or a really bad one and I'm not sure I'm in the mood to deal with the latter right now. "What's going on?"
"Oh, hi, Luna. Nothing. I'm just going away for a few days," She tells me, searching the cupboards for anymore alcohol that she can stuff into her already-full suitcase that's starting to rip at all of the seams due to her multiple 'vacations' where she's constantly trying to shove as much booze possible into that poor stressed suitcase. "David left to go back home, so he broke up with me."
"Oh," I mutter, not really sure how she wants me to react to that. I'm obviously not upset about the fact that she's not seeing David the Perv anymore and I'm not going to act like I am. "Where are you going?"
"I don't know. I just need to get away for a little bit. To clear my head, you know," She explains in a rushed, raspy voice. She turns toward me to go back into the living room with her last load of alcohol. Her thin lips are cracked and dry as she offers me a close-lipped smile and then stumbles her way back to the suitcase on the couch. "Three days max."
And by days, she means weeks.
But I don't say anything, I just bid her a quiet goodbye and then go upstairs to be by myself for the rest of the night because I'm really just not in a good mood.
I was feeling a little bit better about the Grey situation for a little while when I was with Danni on campus because the ice cream really was pretty awesome and because it was on her meal plan, I didn't have to pay for it which was nice. We didn't talk about Grey when we were hanging out, we didn't talk about what happened in the parking lot at all really and that was really nice because it helped me get my mind off of it but going over to the Ronlux with my friends kind of brought me back to reality and my mood decreased yet again.
It didn't make things any better when they started mocking Danni.
Just as I'm unlocking my door, Nathan's door opens and he appears in the hallway.
"Mom's leaving again?" He wonders curiously and since he's talking to me, I turn around to look at him. His eyes look too much like mine and I think that it's creepy so I look at the scar on his forehead instead of making eye contact with him.
"Yup."
"Are you by any chance going with her?" He asks me, leaning against the door frame of his room. I can see into his room over his shoulder but all I see is clothes and blankets and a messy bed, which isn't anything new because his room is always an atrocious mess. So messy that I felt inclined to use the words 'atrocious' and 'inclined'. It's that bad.
"No. I'm not," I sigh, wondering why on earth I would go with her, when have I ever went with her on her self-discovery trips? I don't say that out loud though because I don't want this conversation to last very long, I just want to get into my room so that I can get to sleep.
"Okay, well you're very moody," He observes and without needing to dignify that with a response, I turn to go back into my room but he starts speaking again before I can get the knob turned. "I had a deal with a kid earlier who told me that one of your friends got into some trouble today."
"Yeah," I mumble, turning back around to face him again. "So what?"
Nathan laughs a little bit, forcing a small smile onto his pouty face which is a rarity. I rarely ever see my brother smile, let alone laugh. It's a foreign concept to me completely, like he just broke out speaking fluent Japanese or something. "It's just kind of funny, don't you think?"
"No, not really," I shake my head and then reach behind me and turn the knob to my door so that I can go inside and walk away from this conversation.
"Come on, Luna, lighten up. Shit happens," He tells me with a small shrug as he starts heading for the stairs and I feel a small wave of relief wash over me. "You're never going to survive if you let little crap like that get to you."
"I appreciate the brotherly advice, but I'm fine," I fire at his retreating back sarcastically, stepping all the way into my room and shutting the door behind me to end our conversation. Most of the time, I'm pretty intimidated by Nathan but right now, I'm too moody and too tired to really care.
In my room, I put my stuff down and pull out my notebook so that I can finish my letter from earlier and put it in an envelope to put it in the box of growing letters under my bed. The Polaroid picture of my new graffiti turned out pretty well so I decide that I'll use that picture for this letter and I write a little tag on the bottom before flipping my notebook to the right page where the unfinished letter is scribbled on a piece of paper.
Sitting on the edge of my creaking bed, I grab my pencil and instead of finishing the unfinished sentence at the end, I just scribble that part out and start a new paragraph.
Today was shit. Tomorrow will be shit and so will the next day and the next. I won't be able to sit still until I know what's going on with Grey because I'm so worried about him. And that in itself kind of makes me feel like shit because I know that he wouldn't be so worried about me if the roles were reversed. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn't have even showed up to the fight and if he did, he surely wouldn't have tried to stop me from fighting. I care too much and I know that. Not only about Grey but about a lot of things. I do a good job at hiding that though, so I just have to keep that up but it's getting harder.
With my mom gone again, Nathan's going to start throwing his parties again, which will be annoying too so that just adds to all of the shittiness that is starting to swirl around me. My eyeliner-decorated window says it all: Hopeless. Completely and utterly hopeless.
Picture included: My contribution to this hopeless city
Sincerely,
Luna Rose