SUN AND MOON
(Chapter 1 of my short story LIGHT)
“Why are you drawing the sun and the moon together?”
The question stabbed through my concentration and attempted to crawl into my right hand, which was inking the drawing-in-question. I looked up from the green piece of paper that I had been doodling on into the sarcastic eyes of an unfittingly short red headed girl.
“Um…I was just, sort of…messing around.” I didn’t really know how to answer her. Most people completely ignored me during and after school, but she was definitely making an effort to break through my comfort zone.
“It looks like you were really into it. Do you like to draw or something? If you do, that’s great; I wasn’t being critical of your art or anything, but you have to admit-drawing the sun and the moon together is really weird.” She ignored my blush of confusion and embarrassment at being singled out and pulled a chair next to mine. The girl snatched my paper up from me so swiftly that the pen I held accidentally brushed it, leaving a stray mark. Her pale sea green eyes drifted from one construction line to the next as if staring at it would cause the thing to jump up and come to life.
“Uh-huh…very interesting.” She droned in a decidedly cynical pitch. After examining the piece she jumped up and slammed the drawing down on my desk, causing much to my humiliation, the entire room full of students to peer in our direction. She really didn’t seem to care though. Her whole attitude of not caring, in fact, was summed up in the way she dressed. Or in the way she didn’t dress.
She didn’t wear any jewelry or make-up, which was very rare for most thirteen year old girls, including me, who at the time were successfully and unsuccessfully experimenting with the two elements. Her hair was tied back into a sloppy bun, high on the top of her head. All the rest of us wore our hair mostly down or in pig-tails. The strangest thing of all, however, was the dress she was wearing. It was just a straight black dress with spaghetti straps and a fairly low cut, showing a fair amount of her cleavage. It was a rather short dress, almost too short but redeemed itself for the lack of any embellishment. All of us were wearing bright t-shirts and fashionably comfortable jeans. Her unconventional but straightforward manor, reminded me of a slightly awry secretary or business woman. That was of course, completely ridiculous. We were all just in seventh grade at the time.
“So! What’s your name?” She smiled as she said this, almost shouting it as if I was across the room. I looked down, my brown hair flopping in front of my eyes, while I pushed my glasses onto the bridge of my nose.
“Ha! Hey look everyone! That weird new girl is talkin’ to Julie!” I spun around to look at the rude person who had insulted us. It was a blonde pale looking boy whose name was Zach. He was a bad mannered and spiteful kid who had teased me since I started coming to this school in kindergarten. His face still had that trademark idiot grin when I turned to him; like he had actually accomplished something productive and meaningful. I opened my mouth to yell something in reply but the red head beat me to it.
“Shut your stupid mouth, moron! I was talking to her, not you! Ya want me to come over there and kick you?!” She screamed, her voice resonated around the still crowded classroom and everyone stopped their murmuring. Zach’s face went white and he turned around to finish blabbing to his friends.
“What an idiot!” she whispered, more to herself than to me. She averted her attention back to our conversation with new enthusiasm. “So, as I was saying- Your name, is?”
“Um…Julie. Didn’t you hear him, uh, say it?”
“Yeah, but he’s stupid. I wanted to hear you speak for yourself, ya know? I wanted to hear someone who isn’t an idiot say it.” She smiled and put her arms behind her back, and stood up straighter like she was addressing someone older than herself. Weird. She seemed so much more mature than me or anyone else in this room. I was probably supposed to be the one acting polite.
“Uh…thank you. So what’s your name? You’re new here right? Now that I think about it, I don’t really remember seeing you around from anywhere…” I tried to sound natural. Why does it take so much energy for me to hold a simple conversation? Too much time reading and drawing, not enough time talking to actual humans I guess. I really need to get out more.
“My name’s Chloe! I moved here three days ago…” her voice faltered for just a second, but picked up again with added strength. “Yeah, I’m originally from New York, but my dad was transferred to Florida.”
“Oh! Is your dad in the army?” I asked, probably sounding more excited than I needed to be.
“Heh, yeah. I’m a navy brat!” She grinned with fake vigor, showing off a set of purple braces that contrasted her whole “minimalist” look. An awkward silence took hold of us, we glanced around the room a little trying to find a subject for proper conversation.
“I really did like your drawing…I mean, I wasn’t trying to be harsh or anything. Do you always draw stuff like that? Stuff like, the sun and the moon together? I don’t know why but…it gives me a strange feeling. Almost like…nostalgia. But I can’t remember anything after the feeling goes away…” she voice trailed off. It didn’t sound as forceful or vibrant as it did when she first spoke to me. It sounded…sad.
“Are you…OK?”
“Oh! I’m sorry! Was I being stupid? You can tell me, if I was!” She laughed like it was completely normal for someone our age to talk like that. What kind of thirteen year old is so easy going? So insensitive? Or maybe, I was just the complete opposite of her. Maybe she was the natural one. Maybe I was the complete opposite of everyone at this school.
“No! You weren’t being stupid, I was just asking because…you seemed a little upset…” I looked away from her again, why the heck couldn’t I look her in the eye? Was I that shy and timid?
“I guess I’m still in a little bit of culture shock. This place is really different form New York, ya know?” she leaned her weight over to one leg, tilting her head to one side in a blunt questioning gesture. I sighed with sympathy that I really didn’t know whether or not I was showing the right way. My eyes drifted down to my chipped purple nail polish, I tried to think of something to say to Chloe. What did I have to offer that could possible interest a person like her? I was so plain and unsophisticated. She appeared as though she had everything that I didn’t.
“So I guess you really miss your friends in New York?” My mouth finally opened up with the question I had been rehearsing in my head. She looked away from my eyes; her mind was going out of the room it seemed, far off into New York. The class room was almost empty of students, and the afternoon was wearing on. I wondered if I should call my parents and tell them I was going to be late.
“No…not really. I didn’t have any friends there…I was really quiet and unsociable. I guess I really didn’t have much to say when I was in New York. I guess that just being at that place, the place that would relax my whole body and seem to solve all my problems…was enough, in itself. No, I really didn’t have any friends there. But, I feel that I wasn’t really alone…I think I may have had everything.” Chloe’s head went down, and the room seemed to fade away behind her. The light from the room was soft for just a moment, but it lit her figure like she was outlined in fire.
How could anyone like her ever be alone in the world? She was too pretty; too intelligent…doesn’t anything make sense in this world? I didn’t really want to talk anymore but I knew I had to say something to her. I had to find out more, I needed to realize why she was so sad, why she had so much feeling behind all of her actions and words.
“I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about being alone anymore.” I said the words so awkwardly, the room felt dry and closed in but I supposed at the moment that they were the words she needed to hear from someone. Her head jerked up and I thought I saw her eyes cloud for just a second but her will power pushed the tears away, back into her heart.
“Please don’t ever say that…” she whispered, the words came out a little harsh. “People…always say things like that. But then something happens that they can’t control and they end up going away. They end up leaving me. Or I end up leaving them. So just please don’t tell me things like that, alright?” After she finished she just stared into my eyes. Like she was trying to pierce them, and make it hurt in order to get her point across.
“I’m really sorry…” she said quietly. Her whole body seemed to give up. Her frame shrunk and the very clothes she was wearing looked like they had surrendered to a sorrow that I could never help her with.
“I really am sorry I said those things to you. I’m just in such a strange mood…all this moving around and seeing different people and places. Julie…they go away so fast! One minute you’re there and the next you’re completely vanished from someone’s life! Sometimes I don’t even know if all the people I’ve met still remember me. Still think about me as much as I do them…sometimes, I just don’t feel like I can vanish anymore. Sometimes, I think that if I have to leave one more time I won’t be able to keep my head above water. I think that I’ll just keel over and…” for the first time I heard Chloe’s voice break. It shattered into a thousand pieces that fell all over the empty room.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I felt the question needed to be asked. I didn’t even know her last name but she seemed to be spilling her heart onto the floor beside my feet. For some reason it gave me a weird feeling. I was starting to get very uncomfortable looking up at her. Something didn’t seem to be right.
“I don’t really know…” she laughed. This made me shiver slightly, my hand squeezed the pen I was holding.
“Why don’t you come home with me, Julie?”
. . .
We were walking forever, and I didn’t know why. No, I didn’t even know where the heck she was taking me but it was dark and I couldn’t feel the sun anymore. The stars were making up for the lack of sunlight, however. Their cold rays seemed to imitate heat as they hit our figures with a sharp precision. Chloe’s nails were digging into my wrist as she drug me along the sand of our school’s playground. Why where we at the playground? I thought she said she was going to take me to her house?
“Don’t worry, this is a short-cut, hon.” She turned her head back to give me a reassuring smile. It would have been more effective if her grip had lessened or her pace slowed down to match mine.
“Actually…” she stopped walking so suddenly my heart skipped ahead of me. Her hair was completely undone now. It fell all around her eyes and shoulders in a frightening way that made her look like a witch. Chloe’s arms dropped down to her sides and she turned her head left and right as though she was deciding on something rather quickly.
“Actually I think I’ll take you somewhere else…” her voice was so different. How can someone’s voice change so friggin’ drastically in the course of two hours? But I didn’t really have time to think about that any longer, because she began to run and her feet didn’t seem to touch the sand as she pulled me along without looking to see if I was even there or if she had just ripped off my arm. The sky was spinning and my breath wasn’t reaching my head anymore. What was she trying to do to me? I had to keep up with her. I probably should have just died there but I didn’t. I had to stay with her.
We kept at it for about seven minutes. The playground was long gone; we had crossed a highway and nearly met our makers at the mercy of a BMW. Chloe still had on her black high heels, which thundered once on highway pavement then cutting through the air as she ran. Our bodies were covered in sweat and I could almost see my lungs exploding. Finally we came to a patch of woods that stood brooding at the edge of the now empty road. She finally slowed and I could hear her breathing, which I have to say made her appear more human to me than anything else.
“Well….” She gasped. “Do you feel anything yet?”
“What?” I, of course, was out of breath too. “Are you out of your mind? Where are we?” At this she laughed. The sound pierced everything. The trees around us looked down on her and me with a scorn I couldn’t really explain.
“Well,” she was staring up at the stars. “Do you feel the pulse? Do you feel our hearts tearing us to shreds? Haven’t you seen the colors explode yet? Have you…seen the sun and the moon together yet?” She was breathing more frantically. I wanted to get away. Why did I even open my mouth when she first spoke to me? The minute she glanced towards me I should have ran, ran like we just were far away from her and everything else.
Underneath me the grass was wet and icy. I could sense the chill through my clothing, but I didn’t really know if my body was entirely cold or not. The woods seemed so old and dead. Even though I knew the road leading to the highway, to our school, was just 120 ft. away from us I couldn’t help but feel we were miles from any other soul. I realized she was still clutching my hand with her left and then in her right I saw she was holding my drawing. Driving her fingers into it just like she was my flesh. Was she insane? Why was she doing this to me? Panic was taking over fast.
“No, I don’t really know what you’re talking about. If you don’t mind I would like to be on my way. My parents are going to be worrying about me.” I tried to pull from her grasp but she acted as though I hadn’t even moved. Her body was a stone statue still looking up at the unchanging sky.
“It’s the pulse, Julie…” the woods were so quiet as she spoke. Not an insect or breeze was stirring the air. Nothing but her whispering voice.
“I can’t explain it to anyone, but I feel it. Everywhere I go I sense a deity…” she inhaled the energy around her when she breathed. Perhaps she was taking it from the woods, from the stars, or from me. It made her powerful and kept her standing upright against the suffocating pulse that she spoke of.
“Especially in places like this. They try to talk to me but they can’t get through and it ends up like static on my ears. Static that’s driving me mad.” She looked at me. Tears where flowing down her face, illuminated by the sharp glare of the stars.
“The moon is dead tonight, Julie. I didn’t want it to die but it did and it’s trying to take me with it. It wants me to vanish again. It breaks me and tortures me.” Her eyes were becoming black with hate. She was hurting my hand and squeezing the life out of my drawing.
“Chloe…please you’re hurting me and you’re talking nonsense!” I screamed trying to break her out of this insane poetry she was slamming into me.
“AM I?!” she screamed the question. “AM I HURTING YOU, JULIE?! IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING?!” I let out a shriek I knew wouldn’t be heard.
“Oh, don’t you dare CRY! You’re the one who had the bright idea to actually tease me, to torture me with drawing something that actually reflects myself in a way so personal that only you could predict! YOU!! It’s YOU, isn’t it!? You’re the one that’s hurting me so much!!” Why? Why was she yelling at me? I hadn’t even done anything to her! I don’t even-
“I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!”
“THEN WHY ARE YOU HURTING ME!?”
“PLEASE JUST LET ME GO!”
“NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!! INCLUDING A SELFISH BITCH LIKE YOU!!”
I don’t really know or comprehend what happened after that. She threw me down, she yelled, and I yelled, we hit each other, and tore out our hair…
Everything was so fast and full of rage, and I didn’t even know why…
