“But I—“

He took my hands, drawing my curled fists to his chest and coiling his long, pale fingers over them. His chest was warm. I don’t know why it surprised me. He looked cold as a tombstone. I’d always thought of him as a cold-blooded creature. A brutal, callous crocodile.

“Stop,” he hissed. “You’re good, Luna. Anyone can see that from a mile away. You volunteer at shelters. You take care of your own. You’ve always done right by people. I bet if your shitty mom showed up, you’d give her a free pass, too.”

I winced at the mention of Val.

“He pities you.” He let the word roll across the ground. It exploded between us like a smoke bomb, and I found myself coughing. “By the same token, you should show him mercy.”

I couldn’t believe what Vaughn was asking me to do. Except I could. I was frightened that if I let my guard down and truly let Knight in, he’d use me and dump me, and there’d be no escaping him, because he was everywhere. We’d grown up together, and our parents were best friends. Our families were tangled like a tight French braid, with no beginning, middle, or end. And if I stayed, it would be more of the same: us circling around one another. Always in the same universe, never on the same planet.

Vaughn noticed the shift in my expression, a cunning smirk playing on his face. Boon College had a good creative writing program. He knew it was my passion and hit the final nail in that coffin.

“Artists are terminally dissatisfied. With life. With love. With their work. You like being tortured, don’t you, little Luna? Sadness has a bittersweet aftertaste. Keeps us going.” He lit up his joint. “Being an artist is a miserable job. You’re pregnant with your work, only to give the baby away. An entire year of careful strokes of a brush, just to have someone else buy the painting. You can be miserable anywhere, Luna. But Knight? Knight could be happy. Right. Fucking. Here.”

On one hand, I was scared to death. What if I was like the Bubble Boy of Houston? He came out of his bubble to be touched by his mother for the first time, only to die moments later. What if I couldn’t survive outside my bubble?

On the other, I wanted freedom. To make my own choices. Even if just to show Knight I wasn’t a permanent feature in his life, like a piece of furniture. And to shut up arrogant, awful Vaughn Spencer.

He was right, though. The only way to deserve Knight was to outgrow my need for him.

“Put yourself out of your misery.” Vaughn straightened up. His clothes were holed almost as much as his heart. “Because he never will.”

That night, Knight didn’t show up to hold me.

To protect me.

To save me.

The moon shone, peeking back at me, asking why?

I turned around, giving it my back, ignoring its invasive question.

The sun will rise tomorrow, I reminded myself. It has to.

September, one month later

“She doesn’t even speak in sign language much. Dude, she doesn’t speak at all. Trust me. I’ve tried. She’s a freak. A genius freak, because hell, she hardly ever studies and apparently aces all her courses. She straight up has a seahorse poster on her wall. I can’t even tell you what insane Rain Man vibes I’m getting from her. Oops, I think there’s someone at the door. Gotta go. Bye.”

April, my high-pitched roommate, swung the door open. When she saw it was me fiddling with my key, her face fell.

Initially, I’d been a little worried about my multicolor-haired roommate. Dad and Edie had prepped the college prior to my arrival, so they’d roomed me with someone whose mother was deaf. April spoke sign language fluently, and was a tiny thing from Montana with eyebrows so blond you could barely see them. She liked Dierks Bentley and soul food and whistling loudly when attractive guys walked by, which I found horrifying and amusing in equal measure.

“I didn’t think you’d come back so early.” She didn’t sidestep to let me in.

I checked the time on my phone and shrugged, shouldering past her. My daily meeting with my counselor, Malory, had been canceled. Apparently, she’d come down with a stomach bug. But who knew? Maybe she, too, had gotten tired of trying to reach a breakthrough with me.

I flung myself on my bed, opening my message box with Knight.

Nothing.

I didn’t know which part shocked me the most: the fact that I’d actually taken the step and gone to Boon, or the fact that Knight had disappeared from the face of the Earth since I had.

I was dwelling. Obsessing. Fixating.

I swung my legs sideways and perched in front of my typewriter. Dad had gotten it for me last summer after I decided to go away to school in the hopes it’d inspire me to write. Typewriters are everything laptops are not: authentic, romantic, and unforgiving when you make a mistake. If you spell a word wrong, you must start over.

Dad knows I love a good challenge, but right now I was also wildly out of my element.

Write.

Write what you know.

What’s bothering you.

What you love.

What you hate.

Just do it.

My fingers hovered over the keys. I needed an outlet. April, in my periphery, squinted as she examined me like I was a wild raccoon that had burst into her dorm room.

“Right. Heading out now, Raymond. Ping me if you need anything. Not that you would, you little vampire, you.”

She had compared me to Dustin Hoffman’s character and Twilight in one sentence. Awesome. I wondered if she knew just how offensive that was to both autistic people and myself.

“Yo. Earth to Raymond.”

That’s it. I flipped her the finger. Screw that.

“Whoa. There she is. Alive and kicking. Digging it.”

I stared at my blank page, waving her out.

“Okay. Okay. I’m going.”

I heard her on the phone as she blazed through the narrow corridor of our dorm, laughing and laughing and laughing, and I smiled to myself. April was so happy.

Clearly, she wasn’t an artist.

October

Anxiety laced my legs like ivy, climbing all the way up to my neck. Some days, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I still attended my daily meetings with my counselor, but whatever courses I was able to switch to online, I did. One of my promises to Malory was to study at Starbucks at least twice a week. Be out and about. Let the world stain my otherwise pristine, sheltered life.

Knight was still MIA. He wouldn’t answer my messages, and I wondered if he’d truly moved on, if all he’d needed was a bit of space from me.

I sent an email to Edie every week, and every week I received one back, always saying the same thing:

Make mistakes.

Be free.

Be bold.

Treat teenage as a verb, Luna.

Love you,

E

It felt like life continued without me, and my bubble hadn’t just burst…

It had exploded all over my face.

Malory insisted I ask April to have lunch with me.

She said otherwise she’d have to report to my parents that despite my amazing grades, I was not making any real progress in the ways that mattered.

She dangled that negative, lackluster report about my progress, threatening to send it to Sonya, my long-time therapist back home, too.