Moonflower by Kacen Callender

Author:Kacen Callender
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

* * *

I got so lost in thought, sitting there on that couch, that I’m surprised when the door opens again. I hear the jingle of keys as my mom walks in the door in a flurry. I can feel her exhaustion as she marches into the living room.

“Moon?” she says, surprised. “What’re you doing, sitting here in the dark?”

She flips on the light, brightness glaring into my eyes. “It’s getting late. Did you eat the food I left for you in the fridge? Did you do your homework?” She walks into the living room, clearing up the coffee table—picking up a glass, the photo albums I never look at, and the magazines. “It’s like I’m talking to myself,” she whispers. “I just don’t know what to do sometimes. What can I do? I don’t know how to try.”

My mom straightens with a sigh. “It’s getting late, Moon,” she says. “Come on. Let’s get to bed.”

I know I don’t have to speak, not if I don’t want to—but I think I want to speak now. I don’t even know what to say. I make the smallest sound, and my mom doesn’t stop walking. I’m not sure if she’s even heard me. I try again.

“I—”

My voice is soft, like a whisper. My mom once said it sounds like the beginning of a lullaby. She stops and looks over her shoulder, like she isn’t sure if she’s imagining that she heard right, or if my voice was just a sound in her head. I’m not sure of the answer to that one myself. She stops breathing, and everything stills. With her eyes on me, watching with so much gravity weighing me down to the earth, my mind becomes a blank field of white snow.

“What?” she says, breathless. “You what?”

I shake my head, my mouth squeezing shut.

“You what?” she says again. “You what? Speak, Moon—say what you were going to say.”

I can’t look at her, not with so much disappointment and desperation in her eyes. I can feel how much she wants to reach out to me, to take my hands and wrap me in her arms like she did when I was young, still so unhurt by this world, still so willing to be alive. She doesn’t try to stop me when I leave her standing there, watching me go. She’s never known how to stop me, how to make me stay in your world.

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