Luna Grey District 4

Appearance:
I am 5’4” and average sized for a girl my age. My skin is slightly tanned but for the most part fair. My teeth are straight and white. My hair reaches a little ways past my shoulders in tamed curls. It’s shiny and chestnut brown, in the summer it gets sun kissed highlights from being outside so much. My eyebrows are high arches over my eyes; they make me look like I’m always intrigued by something, though they might just look like that because I’m focusing on something with my good eye. I also have dark circles under my eyes, they’ve always been there and no matter how much I try to sleep they never go away.

If I wasn’t blind out of my left eye both of my eyes would be a dark gray with flecks of silver. But because I am the left one is lighter, more silver then gray. I also have a scar on my right hand from an accident when I was eleven. It goes diagonally across the front of my hand, now slightly raised and an unnatural white. It hurts when I have a bad feeling about something, like my gut reaction to something or someone. So if you see me rubbing it absently it usually means that there’s something wrong, or I feel like there’s something wrong. My hands are always cold, no matter how hard you try to warm them up they never change. Sometimes my feet get cold too, but it’s not constant like my hands. When I was a kid Jason would always hold my hand, thinking that he could make them warm. It never worked, but when I was with him I hardly noticed they were cold.

I have only one thing to remind me of my past aside from my nightmares. It’s a coin sized pendant I wear around my neck on a leather cord. It has an engraving of a bare tree on it. I don’t know what it means or where I got it. I just know that it’s from my past, and even though what I do remember is bad I can’t bring myself to take off the pendant. Because it’s still a part of me, something I can’t ignore or bury.


Personality:
I don’t make friends easily, and I’d have to say that Jason is the only friend I have. Not that this is a bad thing, at least not to me. I didn’t even know I wanted a friend until I had Jason. There are times though when Ma tells me she’s worried I don’t spend enough time with people my age and Jason tries to introduce me to his friends. I just go along with it, tell Ma I’m fine and tell Jason that I just didn’t get along with the people he introduces me to. They both understand, they know how hard it is for me to express myself.

I guess you could say I’m shy but I think of myself as cautious. I tend to watch more then I interact, the opposite of Jason. He learns by reaching out, doing things, and I learn by standing to the side, gathering data before I jump in, if I jump in at all. I like to be alone, the only person I can confide in is Jason, and he’s the only one who understands me. Even though I love my adoptive parents, Mary and Wade, and I know they love me I tend to stay distant from them. I know that they’re not going to push me away or make me leave, but it’s just instinct for me not to get too close. I don’t know why, it probably has something to do with my past but I can’t change it. The only exception I’ve ever made to this was Jason.

I know I’m dependent on him, I always have been from the moment we became friends. But I don’t know how else to live, and I’m not sure I want to live any other way. For so long Jason has been the one constant for me, through everything. He’s the sunshine that causes the darkness to fade away. We’re opposites, night and day, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re like two parts of a whole; neither side can function without the other. Or at least I can’t, I know Jason could live without me. He’d be just fine.

I don’t really like going to school, it’s not that I’m not smart, I am. But I don’t get to be with Jason, and I have to spend the day with people who don’t understand who just walk around me and pretend I’m not there, not sure how to act. I’d rather be on the beach, walking and talking with Jason, or just sitting there while my thoughts go away with the receding tide. Being next to the ocean has always made me feel better, calmer.

Now that Jason’s gone I can’t sleep. I’ve been an insomniac for the past four months, ever since Jason disappeared. At night I sneak out my window and walk around the district, through the deserted streets and along the beach. All I think about is Jason, about the last time I saw him. I worry about him and wonder where he could be right now, if he’ll ever come back.

My life is simple, it revolves around family, around Jason, because without him I’m nothing but darkness, a moon unable to orbit, just a broke piece of glass. I’m afraid of being truly alone, of waking up and not having Jason there to make everything better. Maybe I sound pitiful to you, but I don’t care. This is who I am, and I’m happiest when Jason is holding my hand as we walk down the beach talking about everything and anything.

If it hadn’t been for Jason I would still be sitting on the beach alone, watching as everything passed me by. Because of Jason I can live for the first time and be happy, alive.


History:
I don’t remember much about my childhood before I met the Haddox family. It’s like my mind is shielding me from it, like it’s too much for me to handle. There are a few things though that come out in flashes, or nightmares, dark room without a window, screaming and yelling that still haunt me at night. I’ve never been much of a sleeper but when I do I usually have nightmares about my past, a past I don’t even know or understand.

What I do remember of my childhood is when I was with the Haddox’s, though the first year is a little fuzzy and told back to me by Mary and Jason. I was seven when I arrived on their doorstep, my clothes were dirty and bloody, my left eye swollen while my arms had minor cuts and bruises. Ma said that she had been doing the dishes when she saw me. I was standing in the street outside her window looking somewhat lost and dazed.

When she first called out to me I didn’t react, just stood there in the street looking around me. But when she called out again I turned around and she says that she will never forget how I looked then, malnourished, bed-ragged, injured, and sleep deprived. The worst injury was my left eye, it was what stood out the most to her because that eye was so much lighter then the other, punctuated by a red puffiness around it. It wasn’t long after that that she realized I couldn’t see out of it, could tell when it didn’t follow objects in tandem with the other. It’s my eye that gave me my name, Luna, because when they looked at my bad eye it reminded them of the silver moon hanging in a dark sky, luminescent, the only brightness in the sky. My last name was created by the color of my other eye, grey, like the moon on a night when the mist of the ocean hid it, only able to make out the brightness in glimpses.

It may be strange to you, the fact that they didn’t give me their last name, that I didn’t have a name in the first place. But when I came to live with the Haddox family I wasn’t speaking and therefore they didn’t know what to call me. In time I guess, like everything else about my life before the Haddox’s, it was locked away, buried too deep to be found again. They didn’t give me their last name because even though they loved me as their own, they wanted me to be my own person, to go wherever my path led me and not to where their name did. They wanted me to be free.

When I first started living with the Haddox family I wouldn’t speak, or communicate in anyway. They tell me it was almost like I was deaf too, and not just blind in one eye. But they were patient, and waited until I started to recover from whatever had happened to me. I had nightmares every night then, I’d wake up with my sheets wrapped around me, my skin warm and my eyes watering. Mary would come in and comfort me, I guess I screamed in my sleep, until I calmed down and went back to bed.

The first time I tried to communicate with any of them was a year later when I was eight and Jason, the Haddox’s only child was six. During that year I would sit out on the beach behind our house and watch the waves. I can’t remember if I did it because I wanted to be alone or because it made me calm, but no one had ever tried to bother me when I was out there. Not until Jason came out and sat down next to me, his legs crossed and his eyes expectant as he looked out at the waves, then back at me.

Before then Jason had always kept his distance from me, later he told me it wasn’t because he didn’t like me or because I scared him, but because his parents had asked him to let me adjust to everything. Even then Jason had been caring and friendly, it was actually a miracle that he was able to keep a distance from me for a year.

But that day on the beach he couldn’t wait anymore, so he took the first step for me, and helped me escape the darkness that had hung around me. It just took his hyperactive personality to come out and his innocent curiosity to do it. We hadn’t even been sitting there for two minutes when Jason started getting anxious, his knees jumping up and down because he couldn’t sit still. I had been wondering then what he was doing there and trying to ignore him when he asked me, “Why do you sit out here all the time? Are you waiting for something?”

And suddenly, with just these two sentences I snapped back into reality and felt human for the first time. I turned my head to look at him and blinked. But I didn’t talk to him, not that first day, talking was something that came gradually. It did come though, thanks to Jason. Instead I shrugged, and then looked back at the water, expecting him to leave. Instead his knees paused for a moment and I could feel him watching me when he said, “Can I sit with you then?”

It wasn’t the last time he would sit there with me, watching the waves, but the first of many. After that it was like we were inseparable, I couldn’t go anywhere without him, it was like he was my only link to reality, like if he wasn’t there I couldn’t function. We became best friends and I started talking, though I never talked as much as Jason did, who said everything that came to mind, but I did talk. At first it was just with Jason, and then the rest of the world.

When I had nightmares Jason would come to my room, along with Mary, who at first tried to shoo him out of the room. But not long after trying this she realized that nothing could stop Jason from coming to me. He would crawl onto my bed as I sat up from a nightmare crying and he would put his little arms around me and hug me until I stopped. He’d whisper to me, “Its okay Moon, I’m right here.” And I would feel safer, the darkness would recede from my mind and Jason and I would fall asleep holding hands.

After a while though Jason just started sleeping with me in my room, we’d snuggle close and Jason would put his hand on my cheek and whisper, “Good night Moon. I’ll keep the bad dreams away from you.” and then he’d hold my hand and we’d fall asleep. He would keep the bad dreams away, for some reason when I was with him I felt safe, like nothing could get at me. It was the first time I could actually sleep through the night without a waking up from a bad dream.

At this point I hadn’t been officially named yet, though Jason called me Moon or Moony, he had started calling me Moon after telling me that my eyes reminded him of the moon, how that had become Moony I’m not entirely sure. But it wasn’t until they registered me for school that I was Luna Grey. After I started interacting with people Ma thought that it would be a good time for me to start school. When we got there she asked if I was on their record, wondering if I had gone to school before I had met them even though I told her I hadn’t. When they said they had no record of me she registered me. “Name?” The lady at the desk asked.

Mary looked down at me then at the lady, she knew I didn’t know my name, and it wasn’t like at that moment I would suddenly remember. It was then that Jason spoke up. He had been holding my hand the whole time, knowing how nervous I was. “Moony,” he said, trying to look over the counter at the lady, even on his tip toes he couldn’t see. “Her name is Moony.”

Mary wrinkled her nose and the lady at the desk peered over to look at Jason, then up at Ma questioningly. “No, that’s not her name.” Mary said after shooting a look at Jason. Then after a moment of silence and a sigh she said, “Its Luna, Luna Grey.” And that’s how I started school and got my name. Really it had been Jason who had named me, or the name he had called me that inspired it.

I was put into Jason’s class since I had never gone to school and Ma wasn’t sure how things would work out if we weren’t together. Later though I would be bumped up a grade because I caught on quickly and because the school thought it would be better if I was with a group of kids closer in age.

As we grew older Jason would always be getting us into mischief, once when I had been eleven and he was nine we had been exploring in our dad’s fish cleaning shed, Jason had been pretending to clean a fish like their dad when he accidently cut my right hand. Ma was furious, and made Dad put a lock on the shed door. But I don’t think Jason would have ever gone back in there, he had gotten very shook up after what had happened. The last thing he wanted was for me to get hurt.

Once I turned twelve Mary put her foot down about us sharing the same bed and made Jason sleep in his room again. Sometimes though he would sneak in and sleep on the floor then go back to his room before it was time to get up. I started having nightmares again, not every night like before, but maybe one or two every month.

But even though Jason couldn’t always save me from my nightmares we were still close. No matter what grade separated us, or the friends Jason made nothing could keep us apart, nothing except each other. When Jason turned fifteen he asked if we could go for a walk on the beach. I had agreed because he had looked like he needed someone to talk to and the scar on my hand had been bothering me, telling me that something was wrong. We had been walking in silence, something we rarely did. Through all the years the beach had been our place, the place we went when we needed to talk to someone, when we needed to get away.

Jason's brown hair had been growing, it flew back from the breeze of the ocean waves and tickled his ears. His blue green eyes were troubled as he looked down at his feet as we walked side by side. He had his hands in his pockets too, and I didn't take any of this as a good sign. Jason rarely looked unhappy, troubled, or looked down at his feet. He was the type of person to be smiling all the time and pointing out the nice scenery. That's why we got along so well, he was always able to cheer me up and make me feel human.

I wanted to ask him what was wrong but before I got the chance Jason said, "I have something to tell you but I'm not sure how you'll react." He still looked down at his feet.

"Don't worry it'll be fine, what's bothering you?" I asked watching my brother's face.

He looked up at me then and gave a small smile, "If you insist." He said then stopped in the sand, he turned so we were face to face, "I've been waiting for a good time to tell you this and well now that I'm fifteen I thought this might be the right time."

I could feel my heart thumping, was he going to say that he didn't want to hang out with me anymore? That he wanted to be with people his own age? "What is it?"

He swallowed for a moment then put his hands on my arms, his palms warm. "Luna I've been in love with you for a long time now but I've been afraid to tell you."

I was speechless, didn’t know what to say. I could feel the world tilting, turning into something I didn't recognize. I had never thought of him like that, he was my brother, my best friend. "But- but your my brother."

Jason's face turned serious, and suddenly I felt like I didn’t know Jason at all. “I was never your brother Luna.”

“Yes you were,” I said, trying to make sense of everything, “When we were younger we would always-”

“That was when we were younger Luna, but after a while I started realizing that I was in love with you.” Jason said, “And I hope maybe you can feel the same.”

I just looked at Jason, he had always been my brother, my best friend, he couldn’t be anything more, “I’ve always thought of you as my brother, I can’t imagine you being anything else.” I told him.

“Look I know I’m younger then you but I know that we could work, you’re my best friend Luna. There’s never been anyone else I cared about as much as I care about you.” Jason said, trying to convince me about something I could never agree to. The thought of losing what we had now, losing the one person that made the world bearable, scared me to death, I couldn’t risk it even if I didn’t feel the same way about him.

I shook my head, “I can’t Jason, I’m sorry.” I could feel a lump rising in my throat as I saw his eyes loose the brightness they had always held, he looked down at his feet again and let go of me, starting to walk again.

“That’s fine,” He said, even though it clearly wasn’t. His hands were in his pockets again and the silence fell over us. I didn’t know what to say to make this better. I had never been the one to cheer him up, always the one receiving the words of comfort. I wanted to erase what had just happened, but there was no way I could. Our relationship could never be the same after this and I was mad at him for causing it.

The next day I hoped that everything would be fine, that he would go back to the boy I knew so well and we would be back to normal. But that morning I woke up to the sound of Ma’s crying, and Jason gone. He didn’t leave a note for us, just took a few changes of clothes and left. And of course I felt like it was my fault, that because of me he had left.

It’s been four months since he left us, since the nightmares came back and we all had to learn how to go on without him, without knowing if he was okay or where he was. Now I walk the beach alone, in the moonlight, going over that day in my head, regretting what I had said if only he could still be here to save me. To keep the darkness away.


Codeword: odair
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Color Codes-
Title=616D7E
Present=747170
Memory=737CA1
Thought=AFC7C7
Speaking=95B9C7
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