Page 1 of Lavender Moon

PROLOGUE

KALEB

My heart turns to ice and drops into the pit of my stomach when I roar into the driveway, finding her car gone. Cutting the engine, I dismount the bike and hightail it as fast as my sore thigh will let me up the front porch steps.

“Luna?” I call out, not recognizing the desperation in my own voice, surging from the back of my throat. You just saw her car wasn’t here, you fucking idiot, my brain tries to tell me, but I bash the thought away because my heart doesn’t care and wants to call out to her. I make myself stop in the open floor space, looking around the main living area. None of her shoes by the door… her gym bag isn’t here either.

I whip around, trying to jog down the hall to the bedrooms, despite the screaming muscles in my leg. I charge into my room first, looking around for any obvious evidence that she’s not gone. Her purple panties aren’t on the floor where they were this morning. None of her clothes are on the chair, there’s nothing.

I quickly dart to the spare room - her room - as my heart starts to crack, one fissure threatening to spread and branch out into more. And when I push through the door, it splits wide open. Everything is gone. All of her clothes, art supplies, easels, canvases, brushes… they’re all gone. The room is completely sterile. The bed is made, and there’s just one art piece left behind. The one I hate. The one that represents what I did to her. I walk towards it, my eyes fixated, even though I want to pretend this painting doesn’t exist, let alone look at it. All the darkness that takes up the canvas, all the blacks and greys twisted together… I feel sick to my stomach as I run my finger over one of the brush strokes, trying to feel what she must have been feeling when this came out of her and onto the textured surface… because I deserve to feel that way, not her.

I chipped away at her for all of this past year by being a pathetic, self-loathing bastard, and just when I thought we were both healing, today I gave her the final blow, smashing us to smithereens.

The dark monstrosity turns fuzzy as my vision blurs with moisture, and I angrily try to blink it away. No… this can’t be over. It can’t be too late.

Whipping around, I storm back down the hallway on a mission. Reaching the kitchen, I scan the surface of the round dining table, as well as that of the kitchen counter. It’s not here. It has to be around here somewhere, please tell me I’m not too late, that I can fix this. Please tell me she left it behind…

Beginning to panic, I head for the desk in the foyer, rifling around for the large 8 x 12 envelope that holds my future inside it, but all my efforts come up empty. I stand here, my entire body heaving with the deep breaths necessary to fill my lungs. I feel the back of my neck go hot and my fists clench as I look down at the dark oak of the desk, my mind itching to reach out and overturn it, sending it and its contents crashing to the floor. Mere weeks ago, I would have done just that, and though I have the urge, I’m able to tamp it down. Luna did that. She brought me back home and helped me to no longer be a slave to my anger. While part of me tries to say it shouldn’t matter now that she’s not here, I can’t bring myself to let go and go for it because the other part is telling me if I act on it, I’ll only take myself further away from her. I can’t go back to that if I have any prayer of being with her again… which means that part of me still has hope.

1

KALEB, AGE 10

Iremember feeling completely amped as the counselors strapped a harness around me, adjusting carabiners while I fiddled with the strap of my helmet. I loved climbing and did so on anything I could. Bookshelves, the roof of the garage, and no tree in town was safe from testing my weight. I loved being up high. It was my escape. Any surroundings, no matter how boring, seemed beautiful from a certain height – and I enjoyed the quiet. It was for sure like being in my own little world.

As I gave the helmet strap a final jerk to secure it in place, I thanked my lucky stars one more time that Pops was able to send me there to Mystic Hills, and I was looking forward to two whole weeks doing things like this ropes course. There was no better way to let out my adventurous side without getting into trouble, not to mention it kept me safe while Pops dealt with my shitshow of a father.

“Kaleb, we’ve found you a partner,” Sheila, one of the senior counselors, announced as she walked a brown-haired girl over my way. She looked to be my age, with wide brown eyes that looked like they were swimming in contained terror as she pressed her lips together so hard they mottled white. She walked tentatively , leaning back slightly on the hand Sheila had on her back as she ushered her toward me. “This is Luna,” she introduced the girl when they stopped in front of me. “Luna, this is Kaleb.”

Luna attempted a half smile and a nervous wave as Sheila walked away.

“Hi,” I said, taking in the way she wrapped her arms around herself nervously. I could tell she was trying not to shake. “Are you scared?”

She nodded. “I don’t like heights.”

“I love heights,” I shared with her, but it didn’t change the frightened look in her eyes, despite her efforts to hide it. “It won’t be so bad,” I continued. “We’ll be harnessed together and I climb all the time so we won’t fall, and even if we do, the ropes will catch us,” I tried to reassure her, and to my satisfaction, her face did relax slightly as she drew in a breath.

“What do you climb?” Luna asked as we approached our first obstacle, a rock wall, that leads us to the rest of the rest of the course.

“Whatever they tell me not to.” I gave her a cheesy grin that actually made her smile and her slim shoulders shake slightly with a giggle. “For real,” I surged on as I grabbed onto one of the foot holds and she did the same. “Last week I figured out how to get on the roof by grabbing onto the gutter from our back deck railing. My pops was super pissed.” I smiled at the recent memory of Pops yelling up at me from the ground to get off the damn roof.

“No way,” she laughed at the same moment her foot slipped, turning it into a terrified yelp. She grappled tight to the holds, scrambling to find her footing, and I could practically hear her heart galloping as she hungrily panted for air.

“Don’t look down,” I gently instructed, holding a hand out for her to grab. She looked at it and then at me before taking it and letting me pull her up a little higher so she could get her feet secure before letting go to grab back onto one of the hand grabs. “Just watch my hands and my feet and do what I do. It will be okay,” I reassure and give her another smile.

I didn’t know why I cared so much when I hardly knew this girl. For some odd reason, I wanted her to be okay. I’d never had much need for friends, being so used to being on my own and entertaining myself, but something about helping her made me feel something good. And it got better and better the more I saw her laugh at my jokes as we climbed, forgetting about how high up we were. She got shaky again on the Burma loops, but I offered to go behind her so that I could watch out for her and stay close as she got across. With each element she conquered, I felt a sense of pride in her, as well as feeling good about myself. Both feelings were foreign, but surprisingly welcome. The endorphins they produced surpassed the ones I got from climbing tree tops and roofs – and maybe even the ones I got from careening down the midtown death hill on my skateboard.

After an hour of yakking and laughing while maneuvering ourselves to around thirty feet in the air, we completed the course with all of our limbs still intact.

“Thank you,” Luna said sweetly with a grateful smile, and held her hand up which confused me for a moment, until I realized what she was waiting for. Feeling another rush of that unfamiliar sensation, I brought my hand up to slap it against hers. High-fives were yet another thing I didn’t come by often;. not by my peers, anyway. They mostly steered clear of me at school, and I didn’t miss the looks their parents gave me when they picked them up afterward. I expected as much there at camp, but Luna was treating me like a friend she’d known all her life within the duration of one ropes’ course.

“What swimming group are you in?” I dared to ask her after we’d discarded our climbing gear and given it back to the counselors.

“Green,” she beamed brightly back at me, looking proud. “ What about you?”

“Green too,” I was happy to tell her, excited I might see her again in the green swim zone.

“So where are you from?” She asked, clasping her hands behind her back while we walked. Her question caught me off guard. I wasn’t used to having an interest taken in me. At home with Pops, I was to help out or stay the hell out of the way, either around the house or in his shop where he repaired Harleys.

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