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Dear Unearthly Reader, And so, this is a new part of my journey, which we call life here on Earth. I wasn’t sure I should continue, not after all that’s happened, but he’s a big reason why I’m not stopping. If you ever find this, you should know there are good people on Earth. He’s worth knowing. He’s worth remembering. And when the world has decayed and all I’ve ever known has disappeared in time, you should know the very best of humankind is him. Read this. (I hope you understand my language.) He might be long gone with me, but I hope he’s immortalized in this text. Please, keep him alive.
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🥺😭
Instead of glancing up at the twinkling stars, I gaze down at the sketch he just drew for me. Black pen bleeds into the ripped paper: him and me kissing among whirling planets and stars, all fancifully drawn in one continuous line. Like we’re forever connected to the galaxy of our dreams. I clutch the sketch protectively. It’s the embodiment of us. Of what we could be. Of what I hope we will be.
I hate that it still feels so out of reach. Like this happily ever after version of us lives in another timeline. But I know what Donnelly would say. I can practically feel the warmth of him beside me, murmuring the loving words against the pit of my ear. “Believe with me.” I whisper in the night, “I want to.”
Though, here on this planet, I am considered an American princess. Fame and media are usually the bigger considerations when dating anyone. How much privacy will they lose? How much media attention will I gain dating so-and-so? Will the public hate them or love them? We haven’t even breached that stage of deliberation. We’re trapped in the beginning.
I cannot wait for public Donnelly and Luna 😭
“Luna?!” Kinney’s voice grows louder. I imagine she’s walking deeper into my room. “Are you on the roof? You’re not trying to get beamed up again, are you?” There’s a sharpness to her voice like she thinks the idea is completely absurd.
Some of my very first trips to my roof were in pursuit of being taken away by extraterrestrial life. By you, unearthly reader. Not only to see a new planet. New galaxy. But I felt like the only way to escape my problems was to leave this planet. The idea of being kidnapped and swept away somewhere better had this dark allure.
I guess it doesn’t seem as cool now. Donnelly probably wouldn’t be beamed up with me, and I don’t really want to live...
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“The aliens aren’t coming for you,” she deadpans. “But if you fall off the roof, you will turn into a ghost.” She sounds so much like our dad.
Her black-painted lips draw into a thin line, and her vexed expression is riddled with blistering concern. Kinney wears worry like a dress made of razor blades. Unapproachable, untouchable. It’s as hard for me to near her as it’d be for any enemy.
I make a move towards the window to demonstrate just how fine I am. While I step through the threshold, my sneaker catches on the windowsill, and I awkwardly splat on my fuzzy rug in a belly flop. Oof. Beached flounder has become me. She blinks. “Super graceful.”
I remember Donnelly’s words as he called up to me. “That’s what I imagine in the end. You and me and our galaxy. And maybe I don’t want you to forget it.” “I never will,” I told him. I never will.
“Okay,” I breathe, my eyes raw. My heart has already floated out of my body. I think I truly did give it to Donnelly before he left.
How could I not know what’s troubling me? I do know. I know it’s everything. I know it’s easier to just shut down. To switch an off button. Staring far away at the floorboards, I lift my hoodie’s hood over my head, and I imagine I’m disintegrating after a Thanos snap. I’m fluttering pieces of dust, drifting into the air. No one feels pain after they dust. They’re just gone. Invisible. Not present for the bad days, the awful months, and then they reemerge years later as time has passed without them. Without me.
What would Kinney do if her heart was broken? Destroy. Everything.
“Oh…kay, okay…this is good,” Kinney says, more to herself. Louder, she tells me, “Let it out, Luna. Go for the pillows!”
The bookcase weighs a million times more than I can brace, and as the entire wooden structure teeters forward, I want it to bury me. I want to live underneath the rubble of my childhood. Maybe it’ll be where you find me. In this single solitary moment, I’m not scared of being crushed. That should scare me, I think.
“Kin—” I start, but her name is torn out of my throat as someone barrels towards me. Mom. Her wide panicked eyes are on this impending demise, and quickly, she clutches the frame of the bookcase—the bookcase that’s at least three arm-spans wide. The bookcase that nearly swallows my entire wall. The bookcase that’s seconds from crushing me. She tries to heave the thing upright. “Go, Luna! Leave!” Mom yells at me. I’ve never heard her yell like that—with so much urgency and distress.
Turning away from them, I go towards my bed and trip over the comics I’d thrown. My knees hit the floor. Farrow bends down, his arms around me while I crumple. A gnarled sound I’ve never heard myself make suddenly ruptures out of my lungs, and I choke on a scream. The scream morphs into me crying into my hoodie. I hate this feeling that claws at me. I hate it so much.
“It has to be her fics, right?” Xander asks softly. “It’s going to be okay, Luna.” My dad looks distraught seeing me in this much pain, but I’m avoiding his daggered eyes more than anyone. I just can’t… It’s going to be okay, Luna. I shake my head slowly. “I know…” Xander stammers for the words. “I know it feels like it never will be.”
Xander Hale isn’t a supernova in my sky. He’s not Eliot or Tom or even Moffy. He’s my little brother who was stuck inside a decrepit, often dusty and darkened castle, and if anyone knows the roadmap out of that awful place, it’d be him.
“I know you don’t want to be here…” Xander tells me. “But you have to ignore that voice. Not forever. Just ignore it this minute, this shitty second.” This minute. This second.
“Small hurdles, you know?” Xander says quietly. “You can do that. I know you can, sis. You’re way stronger than me.”
Hot tears fall in a blink because I don’t think I ever have been. I think sometimes I’m the weakest of the entire Hale family. Or maybe, I’m just the hardest on myse...
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Xander groans. “You’re always going to take Dad’s side.” Kinney glares. “No, I’m taking Luna’s side. Our sister. I know a broken heart when I see one because mine has been pulverized.
“He didn’t do anything except want to be with me,” I tell them more clearly. “And you didn’t want to be with him?” Kinney asks with confusion. She glances to Dad. “We still might need to hunt him down.”
“What?” our mom’s eyes widen at our dad like the witch hunt was erected in her absence. And I guess it kinda was, but not by him. “There are no hunts of people. This isn’t The Hunger Games.” “Thank you, Lily,” Farrow says. “But it could be,” Kinney notes.
omg I’m literally watching the hunger games right now
“Shelve the pitchforks, Kinney,” he says gently and more quietly than softly, but then again, my dad’s voice is almost never soft. “Not pitchforks. A sharpened knife.” He squeezes her shoulder. “Shelve the knives, battleaxes, all weapons. We’re not pointing them at Paul Donnelly.” It takes me aback. The certainty of his voice. Is he really not against Donnelly anymore? Kinney frowns. She’s searching for an adversary of my broken heart. In the battle of good and evil, Kinney needs the villain of all villains to attack. “But Dad—” “If you want to point a blade at someone, it’s going to be me—not
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I told you that he has no bad bone in his body. I told you that he’d give you the last shirt he owns. Right off his back. Shit, I told you he’s been kind towards the women he’s been with, and he would let Luna rule his world if she wanted to. I told you he’d be there for her. I told you they’d be good together. So what the hell does us meeting as teenagers have to do with shit?”
“I wish I knew what he meant to you from you or even him. Not from Luna. Not from Moffy. Instead, you just kept telling me who he is.” Farrow keeps shaking his head. “You left out an important part.” Farrow breathes angrier, shaking his head harder. “I didn’t.” “You forgot to tell me he’s like your brother.”
“That’s the thing, Farrow. I had no goddamn idea the depth of how close you were to him. I didn’t know what he meant to you.”
“I would’ve liked to know,” my dad says just as quietly. “It would’ve meant something to me.” “We didn’t grow up together,” Farrow reminds him. “Neither did me and my brother. I met Ryke the day I turned twenty-one.”
He loves Ryke to his deepest, rawest core, and I wonder if he’s reevaluated everything Farrow has ever said about Donnelly. I wonder if that’s ultimately a big reason why his heart has shifted. I imagine he’s thinking if Farrow has seen good in Donnelly for years, if Farrow loves Donnelly to his deepest, rawest core, then maybe Donnelly isn’t a bad influence or a bad guy. Maybe he’s a man worthy enough to be with his daughter. To be with me.
“I would’ve liked to know,” my dad says strongly. “It would’ve mattered. And I don’t know why it is, but the bonds we make matter to other people. I know that Ryke and Rose’s friendship matters to me. Connor and Daisy matter to me. Willow and Daisy matter. Garrison and Lily matter. Just like you and Donnelly are going to matter to me. Hell, you both may even annoy me.” He grimaces but stares deeper into Farrow. “But these relationships mean something to the people who love you. And I love you like a son, and I’m…I’m sorry I didn’t take your word beforehand. I’m sorry I’m an ass. I’ve been an
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“His family is dangerous, Luna. There are no buts. I’m handling this with Donnelly. It’s the team-up no one saw coming, especially me.” He touches his chest. “It’s Cyclops and Peepers.”
I glance down at my phone. Too afraid to unlock the screen and see social media, I just stare at the time and a pic of me and Donnelly in our shared bathroom. A mirror selfie: his inked arm is resting on my head while I show off my green tongue piercing. He’s flashing his silver nipple ring.
I like how happy we look. Radiant isn’t a word I’d use in my fics to describe characters that are like me, but I start believing we look radiant together. Apart, do we seem gloomy? Miserable?
Very quietly, I ask, “Do you remember the slumber party at Jeffra’s house? When I was little?” Her round face blotches with red marks. I think in anger—though, my mom is rarely furious. Her brows bunch together. “The one where the girls played a prank on you?” “Yeah, that one.” They wrote Weirdo on my forehead while I’d been sleeping, and my dad came and picked me up with Uncle Ryke.
I forgot about this 😭😭😭
“Dad told me that it’s okay if I never had friends. He said that I’m the queen of my own galaxy, and after so many years, I’ve realized there are people in the universe who make you feel at home. Donnelly has made me feel like my galaxy is the happiest, most exhilarating place to be, even if I’m the only one there.” I drop my head and gaze back at our photo. “He treats me like I’m his moon. His stars. Like I’m the person who makes him glad it’s today and there’ll be a tomorrow, and I don’t know if I’ve ever been that for anyone who’s not my family.” I’m important to someone. I’m not a failure.
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I hear my mom’s hitched breath before I turn to look. Tears have flooded her reddened gaze. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you, Luna.” She smiles tearfully over at me but quickly focuses on driving. “You know, it makes sense then.” She wipes at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “What does?” “Why he’s trying to protect his moon, his stars.” My heart fills, but it’s a little cracked, leaking. “I want to protect him too.”
“You should call your aunt. Rose was ranting on the phone for over an hour about the types of people trying to ridicule your writing. She called them pigs. Or swine. Maybe both.”
Xander’s dad wants more info about my family, and I figure this is the only way to really get it. What he’ll do with it—I’m not a hundred percent sure. To make my family a non-threat, it’d take loads of money, bribery, maybe even murder. And there’s still a part of me that thinks Papa Hale has a hitman on retainer.
There’s a lot still going for me. A career, best friends, a pillow to lay my head on, enough money to buy my next meal. Still living in the great state of PA. All these things would’ve calmed my nerves and made me excited for tomorrow. But none of that stuff really matters without her.
Today’s Focus: show Luna I still love her, even if I can’t date her.
I can’t tear away from this cat. Toodles is the lazy one, but he bends low like he’s stalking a rat. “I’m not easy prey,” I warn him. He slowly extends a white paw, creeping towards me. “I’m not.” I’m not. He’s gonna pounce. I let out a gnarled groan. “You know, pussies and I have a longstanding history, and they usually love me.” My voice rises. He hisses. “What? You don’t like being called a pussy? It’s what you are, man. A pussy cat. Look in the mirror.”
I have no clue what her mom thinks of me. Being on Lo’s shitlist, I can handle, but if I’m on Lily’s, I dunno…I think I’d still go fling myself off this planet and sob.
Don’t know if I have the ones she’s scavenging for, but we do need to talk. I’m dying to give her what she needs. She’s the only girl who wants, truly wants, what I can give, and how unjust is it that I have to wait to give her all of me? Fuck me, right? Always, fuck me.
“You didn’t eat?” I skim her again, my chest caving. I wouldn’t have left her—if I knew she was this broken up—I wouldn’t have left as fast as I did.
“I won’t let anything hurt her.” I just say it. I believe it. I’d rather be bait and roadkill than let a single soul harm Luna Hale. And I plan to prove it.
“Just don’t give up on each other,” Lily suddenly says, and I realize she’s gazing at the last sight of Luna too. “Even if it’s hard to wait it out. It’ll be worth it in the end.” Before I can reply, she gives me a warm smile. “Night, Donnelly.”
I’m drawn down to her metallic gold bra. Shouldn’t be looking at her tits when she’s been crying. I sorta feel like dogshit for doing it, but I’m attracted to this girl, and how do I turn that off right now? Images of me kissing Luna, of running my hands along the bareness of her body, of slipping inside her warm, tight pussy suddenly race through my head. Sex and Luna. Emotions and Luna. Life and Luna. It’s all fucking me up.
