Even the Moon Has Scars (3 page)

The center of the painting is still empty. Colorless. I want to fill it in so badly, but nothing feels right. I just don’t know what belongs yet.

“Get up,” Kaydi barks from my doorway, just as I’m tying my apron around my waist.

“I’m sorry?” I ask.

“Don’t get out your paints, don’t get all comfortable. You need to pack a bag.”

“For what exactly?” I ask, tapping my chin with my No. 6 brush. It’s going to paint the bottom of the canvas into what I hope will look like a sparkling lake. It’s dry on dry—a technique I’ve been working on for weeks and haven’t yet mastered.

“Please, I’m begging you Lena, for once.” My sister presses her palms to her temples. “Please don’t make my life difficult.”

“I—I wasn’t trying. I was just going to paint.”

Kaydi shakes her head.

“No way. I’m taking you to Lily’s,” Kaydi says.

“What? I thought you were staying here with me?”

“Change of plans,” Kaydi says.

She’s glancing around my room, probably looking for a bag or suitcase or something of that nature. Except I don’t ever go anywhere so all of those things are piled in the garage, not in my room for easy access.

“Lily’s out of town this weekend,” I say.

I pop my brush case open and set my No. 6 on top of the others. Beneath the dozens of brushes is the brochure for NYU. My dream. My freedom. Everything.

When I originally plotted this current painting, I expected to fill in the blank spot with something symbolic. Maybe a New York City landmark. Something exciting. Instead, it remains blank. How can I paint something inspired by the incredible life full of possibility that’s so close—but still too far for me to fully imagine?

“Of course. Of
course
she is.” Kaydi throws her hands up in the air, then lets herself sink to the wood floor. “Now I’m stuck here watching you. Like always. Forget the fact that where I actually
need
to be is with Brian. I need to be
fixing
things with him. Did you know he might join the military?”

I didn’t, but if I had to wager, I’d say he’s bluffing. You can’t even get that kid to help carry in a pallet of water bottles from Mom’s car. Then there’s the fact that he nearly passed out at the sight of blood when Kaydi tripped and busted the skin on her elbow open.

“I’m not there to talk him out of it. He might just enlist and—”

“So go,” I say.

“He cannot join the military. He just can’t. He’s got a plan and it doesn’t involve the Navy. This is all his dad’s doing. He can talk him into anything. Brian and I have a plan. Had a plan. It’s all wrong now.”

“Go.”

“Truly, thanks a whole hell of a lot for screwing things up as usual, Lena!”

My sister is a jerk But she’s right. I always manage to mess things up just by being me. 

“Just go,” I repeat.

She rolls her eyes and says, “Right, so you can rat me out to mom and dad? No thank you. I don’t need them to take my car away again—”

I want to bite back that at least she’s got a car to take away. Since the day she turned sixteen she got to experience that freedom that I’ve yet to. That maybe I won’t ever experience. I don’t even have my learner’s permit. And I’ve never had to imagine my boyfriend breaking up with me on a whim because I’ve never had anything remotely close to a boyfriend. Truthfully, I’ve never had anything remotely close to
any type
of romantic experience. As much as my sympathy for her in this situation is waning, what I hate more is that  I can’t relate or commiserate with Kaydi in the way that sisters should be able to. And that just plain sucks.

“I won’t. I won’t rat you out. Just go. I don’t need a babysitter, Kay. I’m fine.”

“You are not
fine
.” She rolls her eyes wildly like I’ve just said the most ludicrous thing possible. “Remember that time Mom and Dad went to the movies and left you alone and you were wheezing so you decided you needed a breathing treatment?” I don’t acknowledge her question because I know where she’s going with it. I remember the panicked gasps for air, the tightness in my chest. “ And remember how you screwed it up and doubled your dose? Your heart rate was through the roof when they got home, Lena. They had to take you to the hospital. That’s not fine.”

“Kay, I’m not stupid. I’m almost seventeen. I know how to work my breathing machine.”

Kaydi slumps down onto the foot of my bed, looking sad and defeated as she says, “You sort of have a way of ruining things, you know that Lena Claire?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’ve got much else to do with my time, right?” The words come out dry and brittle. Cracking into little bits once they leave my throat.

I wish, I
really
wish so hard that I hadn’t been so special in everyone’s eyes. That I could have been normal like my sister. I wish that I wasn’t the reason she couldn’t have sleepovers during flu season- because that meant more germs in the house. I wish that two Christmases in a row I didn’t get pneumonia and need to be hospitalized, so Kaydi ended up having to stay with our grandparents in Rhode Island. She’s wrong if she thinks I don’t know that I suck the life out of things. She’s wrong if she thinks I don’t carry the guilt around my neck like an ten-ton albatross.

But I didn’t ask for any of it.

“Please don’t do the whole,
‘treat me like I’m normal’
thing right now, Lena. We can’t treat you like you’re normal. You’re not.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” I say.

Back when I believed in Santa Claus, my parents took me to see the one at Dad’s office, because it was just a small Christmas party and there weren’t many children. When it was my turn to tell Saint Nick what I wanted, I told him a new paint set and french fries with salt. Normal kids get to go to a fast food place and order french fries and start eating them right away. But not me. My parents were trying to keep a firm grip on my sodium intake, which meant I always had to wait for a special batch to be cooked without salt. I rarely got fast food at all, but one time, a week after Christmas we drove thru, and the worker said the fries were salt free. In a hurry, my mom tossed the bag into the backseat for me without checking that day. I devoured every last one of them before she could realize the mistake. They were golden, salty and delicious even if they were the temperature of molten lava. I took it as a delayed Christmas miracle.

My sister is whining about not being able to go suck face with her boyfriend.

I just wanted normal french fries.

And all I want
right now
is for her to go.

“I’m telling you to go. Just go. I don’t want you here. I don’t want to sit here for the next three days listening to you cry over him. Just go. Do whatever you need to do.”

She raises a brow like she’s waiting for confirmation, so I give in and say, “I won’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“You don’t get it,” she says through the choked tears that have made another appearance. “You’re so lucky that you don’t understand what it’s like to have your heart broken like this.”

She winces as the last few words tumble out of her mouth. She paws at her throat like she’s trying to stop them, but they fall anyway.

I can’t help but pull back.

Not because I’m insulted by the broken heart comment. It’s not like my mom hasn’t said
“you’re going to give me a heart attack”
dozens of times and then apologized profusely afterward. It’s just a slip. I don’t need them tiptoeing around me. It’s not that at all. It’s bigger than her stupid words.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, looking at me through the dark brown bangs that are matted to her face with tears. Our features are so similar, but Kaydi’s are sharper, more serious. When she cries, it’s hard to see that she’s sad, and not just mean.

I wave her off like it’s no big deal, but what my sister doesn’t realize is that I’d much rather have a broken heart like her than a miraculous one. What’s the point of having a heart stitched with such precision and care—where every beat is a precious gift—only to be stuck living this dull, stagnant life?

“Just go,” I repeat.

She finally gives a quick nod.

“I’ll be back soon. I promise,” she says.

The first twitch of a smile I’ve seen from her since she got here pulls at the corner of her mouth as she adjusts her purse strap on her shoulder and then bolts for the door.

Finally.

When the I hear her car back out of the driveway and her breaks squeak at the end our road, I still don’t wholly believe it. She left. She really left.

I watch her car turn the corner and still wait another five minutes after that, face against the cool glass of my bedroom window before I start to believe it’s true.

I’m alone.

I rush down the stairs, tug on my wool-lined boots and grab a cardigan of Dad’s off of the hook by the door. I hold the handle for a minute and listen. Absolutely nothing. Stillness. Silence. No one asking me what’s wrong. No one asking what I’ve eaten. Just quiet. I open the door and pull in a couple of deep breaths. I’m alone. I’m really alone.

She was late.

Maggie was just late.

Inside the mailbox there’s a stack of ads that are going to go straight into the recycling and  two standard sized envelopes. One is a bill of some kind. But the other is for me.

I run my finger over the raised return address of the one addressed to me. Endicott College—Mom and Dad’s first choice for me and just eighteen miles away.

A gust of wind blows through our narrow street. Our house sits down away from the others on the street and the cool breeze stays trapped in our alcove. My legs burn from the goose bumps that prick up on my exposed skin. The lightest flurry of snow floats silently down from the trees, then swirls around me. I take inventory of my choice of clothing: Pajama shorts, a t-shirt and a thin cardigan. Not exactly winter attire. I start back toward the house, the crunch of the shell and snow under my boots, and the mail clutched close to my chest.

I know before I get to the door.

I know before I try to turn the knob.

Still, I  pause with my hand on it and take in a deep breath, hoping I’m wrong.

I’m not.

The door knob won’t turn.

Ten minutes home alone and I’ve locked myself out.

“Gabriel? Is that you?” my grandmother asks from the other room. I stop in my tracks in the kitchen, near the pea green cabinets, and back up into the living room.

“Hey, Babci,” I say, leaning over the back of the floral print sofa that has been in the house since I was a kid, and plant a kiss on her cheek.

She startles and shoves her hands under the throw pillow next to her, but the familiar crinkle of plastic wrap gives her away.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

As much as I love my grandmother, I wonder the same damn thing every day.

“You called me in here.” I say.

Babci’s memory is getting worse, even since I first got here a handful of weeks ago, I can tell there’s a change. As much as I want to tell Mom, I doubt she’ll make time to deal with it. It’s probable that if she does, Babci will just end up in a nursing home since Dad isn’t around to take care of anything. Even his own mother.

So instead, I do what I can to help out. I make her meals for her so that she’s not using the stove or anything that she could harm herself on—or burn the house down with. And if I’m gone too long during the day, which isn’t often because there is nowhere in this tiny ass town to go, I make sure Ms. Seale, the nice but mildly inappropriate lady from next door, drops in to check on Babci.

Babci is still healthy for the most part, she eats too many sweets—like the one she’s just crammed in the cushion of the couch—but mostly, she’s just a little more confused since grandpa passed away earlier this year.

Maybe that’s what happens when the person who’s been at your side for sixty years, suddenly...isn’t. Maybe it’s less about what she can and can’t remember and more about what she wants to. Who really wants to hang out in a world where the person you built your entire life around has left?

Then again, what the hell do I know?

I’m just a punk kid whose mom saw him as more of a hindrance to her glowing reputation rather than a person who might screw up now and then but is still worthy of her love, so she stashed me at my dad’s parents’ house until I somehow manage to get my shit together.

Not that she cares if I do or not, just as long as I stay out of her way.

“Babs, what are you hiding?” I grin.

“Young man,” Babci looks at me from over her thin framed glasses. She grins and the skin around her crystal clear blue eyes wrinkles up. “I don’t think I like what you’re insinuating. I’m just sitting here watching these people on the television.” She waves at the television, but I’m not buying it.

“Uh-huh,” I say, nodding. “So, what’s going on over there?” I motion to the TV—the volume on the news is set so low I’m not even sure the sound is on at all.

“Well, see, they’re over there in…” Her voice drifts off as her gaze floats to the fraying pillow where she’s hiding the sweet treat that she really shouldn’t even have. “Ah, hell, I don’t know. Who are these people anyway?”

I chuckle and grab the remote to turn up the volume, just as she pulls an icing-covered honey bun out from behind the pillow and wastes no time chomping down.

“Libyans, Babci. Those are Libyans.”

“Oh,” she says, in between bites. “Like Rosie O’Donnell?”

“No,” I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure that’s lesbians.”

Babci shrugs. “Same thing.”

Maybe I should correct her, but the woman is in her nineties with a memory that’s fading more by the day. I’m not sure she’d remember what I said by the time I make it to the door anyway.

“Alright,” I laugh. “I’m going out to the garage.”

She sets the empty wrapper next to the framed photo on the side table. It’s a picture of my father—the asshole who took off just days after my grandfather died. Sure, it was less than a year after my mom divorced him and he was kind of forced to move in with his mom, but that’s no excuse if you ask me.

I wonder if he keeps in touch with his mom at all, if he knows how Babci’s memory is fading. I wonder if he knows that when he finally decides to make his way back here, she may not remember him, or maybe she won’t even be around at all. I hate to even think of that, but Babci doesn’t need to be alone, and he was too big of a coward to stick around and deal.

My father was a bailiff at the courthouse, that’s how my mom—who was an associate attorney at the time—met him, years ago when they were young and before she cared about things like status or wealth or what other people could do for her. Or maybe I’m naive and she always did care more about those things—but maybe she actually loved him back then too.

Hell, I don’t know. I do know that he should have known it wasn’t going to be a forever thing when, after she found out she was pregnant with me, she married him but refused to take his last name— and even more so when I was born and she gave me his Polish last name as a middle name. I became Gabriel Bryk Martinez. And my mom eventually became a District Attorney.

With her rise to fame came even longer hours than before and, eventually, the demise of their marriage. Dad’s no longer a bailiff. He took off on a fishing boat two days after my grandfather died, and no one has heard from him since.

I guess Mom was right all of those times she said he didn’t know how to be a real grown-up.

And once again, I was left feeling like a fool for believing too much in people who don’t deserve it.

“Have a good day. I’ll see you later, Gabriel.”

“See ya, Babs.”

“And keep the cursing to a minimum today, wouldya? I think all of Cape Ann must have heard you yesterday. You’ve got a mouth like your father.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

I take the wrapper from her snack and toss it into the garbage on my way to the garage. It’s where I’ve been spending most of my time since Mom shipped me off here. It’s cramped as hell in the garage, but it’s quiet and working on the car keeps me busy. Because other than googling parts, doing the online correspondence courses Mom set me up with when she pulled me out of my high-end private school, and trying to keep Babci entertained, I don’t have much going on outside of this garage—unless you count avoiding my ex, Jemma’s, calls. I spend a lot of time doing that, too.

My grandfather was a career bellman, a driveway mechanic, and, apparently, a champion hoarder. This garage houses every single tool you could ever want or need, probably multiples of each—but good luck finding anything.

That’s what caused most of my cursing in frustration yesterday—needing a tool, knowing it was around somewhere, and not being able to put my hands on it. Stacks of wrenches, ratchets, and sockets cover every surface, Chilton manuals and other random handbooks are sticking out of partially closed cabinet drawers, and absolutely nothing in the entire space is labeled.

Once the weather is nicer, if I’m still around, I’m going to open up the garage and clean it all out. If Babci will let me. It’s been snowing, but the main reason I haven’t cleaned it up is that I don’t know if it’ll upset her to see it different than the way Gramps left it.

I press my body flat against the old, Crocus Yellow Corvair—the car my grandfather spent most of his retired life trying to meticulously restore. I know the exact color because my father and I had to go to five different places to find the perfect shade of 1965 Chevy paint that Gramps wanted a few years ago.

I literally have to shimmy sideways around the car to the other side of the garage where the creeper is. I lay back on the board and am halfway under the car when my iPhone rings in my pocket.

I roll out from under the car and answer, “Hello?”

“Is this Gabriel?” A husky adult voice asks on the other end.

“Who’s asking?” I can’t hide the paranoia that claws at my voice. I’ve tried my damndest to stay out of trouble since I’ve been here, and I hope to God it’s not managing to find me on its own.

“Settle down kid. This is Paul over at Paul’s Beantown Classics. Listen, I’ve had a note here for a few weeks that you were looking for an aluminum valve cover for a Corvair?”

I try to sit up but end up smacking my forehead against the metal light clamped on the table behind me.

“Hell yes,” I say. Five-and-a-half-weeks. That’s how long I’ve been trying to hunt down this particular part. I know because I’ve been here for six weeks.

Six weeks holed up in my grandmother’s house outside the city.

Six weeks watching Babci sneak cakes into the house and me having to explain to her over and over that even though they’re from a local place—a tiny store at the bottom of the hill that her house is perched on—they still raise her blood sugar.

Six weeks of avoiding Jemma’s calls.

Six weeks of my mother texting me to remind me that she pulled all the strings she could to keep me out of juvenile detention this time, and I’d better be staying out of trouble.

Six weeks of wheeling myself under this damn car and trying to forget that it wasn’t that long ago that Gramps and Dad were working out here together.

Six weeks of trying to silence the stupid, childish voice in my head that tells me if I fix it up the way they dreamed, maybe one of them will come back…

“So are you coming to get it? I don’t hold parts that haven’t been prepaid. And I don’t have the space to keep them just sitting around. I can set it aside till closing tonight for you—”

“I’ll be right there,” I say. This guy is probably full of shit. I seriously doubt he’d be able to turn over this part that quickly if I don’t make it, but I can’t take my chances. I need this part.

I leap to my feet, smacking my face on the lamp again. When I steady myself I hear it.

It’s the tiniest of knocks. So small that I pause, pressed up against the car and listen for it again.

“Hello?” I hear a voice on the outside of the garage. At least I think I do.

“Hang on!” I yell back. I make my way to the side door in slow motion, trying not to knock anything over that will set off a domino effect in the cluttered garage.

I pull open the door and expect to see a delivery person or the kid up the street who keeps dropping by to see if we want to buy any overpriced, mediocre lobster rolls for her class fundraiser.

Instead, I’ve got a girl standing in front of me, hugging herself tightly, with her teeth chattering. She’s a stranger, but before I even bother to ask her name or what she’s doing here, I reach out and grasp her forearm, tugging her into the cramped but warm garage.

“It’s freezing out there!” I say as I slam the door closed behind her. I sound like an old curmudgeonly man, hollering at kids for stepping on his freshly mowed lawn. I have to bite back asking her what the hell she’s doing out in nothing more than shorts and a light sweater when it’s barely above freezing.

She pulls her brows down and bites her lip, looking embarrassed.

“Are you okay?” I ask. There barely room for one person in this space, much less two. And we definitely do not fit comfortably. That means this girl—this stranger—is nearly pressed up against my chest.

“I’m so sorry to bother you. I just—I live a couple of houses down and I locked myself out. I tried the other neighbors but I guess those houses are only occupied in the summer, they all look empty. And then I tried the front door but there was no answer. I heard your voice in here—”

“My grandmother, she’s probably napping—” She smells powdery and soft and slightly fruity.

“God,” she smacks her tiny palm to her forehead. “I hope I didn’t wake her. I’m so sorry. So sorry. I’m such a moron.” She keeps mumbling, but it’s so low I can’t make it out, and I think she’s maybe not even talking to me anyway.

“So, you need to use the phone?” I offer.

“No,” she says and shakes her head. “I don’t exactly have anyone to call…”

I pull my brows together and cock my head to the side, confused. Something isn’t adding up. Not in a sinister way, in a this-girl-is-mysterious-and-I-want-to-figure-her-out-way. Or maybe I’m just starved for human interaction, and I’m making more out of this than there really is.

Either way, I take a chance and ask, “But you live right down the street? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I do. I’m not—I’m not crazy or anything if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Right, well, you’re looking at me like—”

Like you’re adorable, because that’s what you are.
But even if I’m thinking it, I don’t say it, because I’m not a total creep. Or, at least I’m trying not to be since I’ve been handed my second and final chance out here in Gloucester. And this girl doesn’t seem like the kind who is in any way impressed with guys like me.