Luna and the Lie

by Mariana Zapata

I didn’t put the pieces together until way too late. Until I got shoved forward from behind so hard I went flying. Until my hands stretched out to break my fall, them and my forearms scraping the concrete when I landed what had to be ten feet away. It wasn’t until then that I figured out what the hell was happening. I wasn’t sure why, I wasn’t sure I would ever know why, but the first thing out of my mouth was a shouted, “RIP!” at the top of my lungs. I yelled it again the second I could get another mouthful of letters into my body. But it was the second that name was out of my mouth that I heard the grunted, “Fuckin’ bitch” that triggered some part of my brain a second before a hand dug into my hair, my short freaking hair that barely passed my chin when it was wavy, and jerked my head back, giving me a split-second view of a face I recognized. A face I made a plan for spitting into a second before my cousin backhanded me like the piece of crap he was. Stars flashed across my eyes just for a moment, just for a second, as that stupid ring he always wore bit into my cheek. “What the fuck are you doing, Rudy?” a voice I didn’t recognize shouted, panicking. “You said we were going to talk to her!”

HELP WTF IS HAPPENING