Jail was cold.
Even in the depths of a Northern Michigan summer, with temperatures reaching the low nineties and the sun pounding down on the concrete complex comprising the Upper Peninsula State Reformatory for Women, a deep, teeth-chattering chill pervaded the air. It soaked into the dirty cinderblock walls and the cracked stone floor and radiated from the metal tables in the dayroom like blocks of ice. No matter where you went, the cold followed, making even watching TV hard. Everything was made of concrete and metal and it stored the cold the way rock stored heat. Someone told Luna that the prison officials purposely kept the place cold to deter violence, and it worked; everyone was too sluggish to attack each other. That didn't stop every inmate assault, however. Every so often a girl would get jumped by five or six rivals, or two girls would start fighting in the cafeteria or dayroom. One time, a girl even got stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush. That sort of thing was all too commonplace at the men's prisons but rarely happened among the women.
Growing up, Luna had heard a million terrible things about prison, but when she went for herself, she discovered that most of them weren't true. Girls she knew used to joke about someone named Big Bertha who would grab you by your throat on your first day and give you the option to either become her bitch or take a trip to an outside hospital. Bertha, who was representative of all prison lesbians, was six feet tall and built like a truck driver. If you tried to fight her, she would kill you. If you took a stab at her with a shiv, it would bounce off her rock hard abs and she would laugh...then kill you. Once Bertha set her sights on you, it was a wrap; to save your own life, you would have to get her tray, rub her feet, and eat her pussy on command.
For the first few days after she was transferred to PSR from the Royal Regional Jail, Luna lived in stark terror of the moment Bertha would waddle into her cell, hike up her own dress, and point to her gray, furry meat curtain. You got work to do, Loud. She held her chin up and acted like she wasn't scared because they eat the weak alive in prison, but on the inside, she was so afraid she could barely keep herself from jumping at the slightest sound. Whenever another inmate spoke to her, or walked past her, or came up behind her, her chest would clench and she would think this is it.
But "it" never came.
Big Bertha, the possibly black rapist of unwilling little white girls who couldn't hold their own in prison, didn't exist and probably never had. She didn't know what it was like in the men's prison, but at PSR, no one came up behind you when you dropped the soap in the shower, and no muscle-bound woman looking like Donna from Spongebob hit you with Hey, there, Puff mama and then dragged you into their cells. There was sex between some of the women and even a few couples who held hands as they walked on the rec yard or played with each other's hair while watching TV in the dayroom, but it was all consentual. Luna heard that some women were compelled to "give it up" to cover debts they couldn't pay, but that was different than the random rape spree Luna imagined as she sat in country lockup waiting to be transferred after her trial. One of the older women she met at PSR told her that if she didn't get "involved in the bullshit" she would avoid being raped, stabbed, or otherwise attacked. In prison, most people bring that kind of shit onto themselves. They'll wager an item on a card game (usually something from the prison canteen, like a Honey Bun or a pack of peanut butter crackers) and not be able to pay up, or they'll borrow something and not be able to replace it. In those cases, some women accepted you-know-what as payment.
If you avoid that, you avoid 99 percent of problems in prison.
You can't get off scot free, though. There are dozens of other people on your cellblock and some of them like to throw their weight around and cause trouble. The worst were the ghetto bitches from Detroit who thought this was the street and that they could do you any way they wanted. Luna had never gotten into a fight herself but she'd seen other women go at it; sometimes the result wasn't that bad, other times it was. Even if no one went out of their way to mess with you, you had to always be on your guard. And whatever you do, don't look weak. The weak are extorted. Luna knew one girl who was scrawny, wore glasses, and reeked of coward; stronger inmates made her give them her valuables or do things for them. One woman took food off her tray in the cafeteria and another shook her down every time she went to canteen, where inmates can buy extra things such as snacks. The girl was too meek to fight back so her things were taken.
So it goes.
Prison is full of thieves, grifters, and conwomen, and if they think they can get one over on you, they will in a heartbeat. Every time a batch of new girls came in, at least a couple of them would wind up having their cells robbed while their backs were turned as a test. The ones who didn't say anything were targeted for further abuse, the ones who made a scene were usually left alone. One woman had some of her things stolen while she was taking a shower. When she found out, she made every woman on the block open her foot locker to prove that she didn't have any of her things. The first woman she made do it refused and the woman who had her things stolen won. A few more women refused and she beat them up too.
People who haven't been to prison don't understand how it works. You have to be tough but you also have to be respectful. Prison, in a way, is like the hood. Respect is the only thing people on the inside have to hold onto, even if they don't deserve it, especially if they don't deserve it. If you're disrespectful, you're going to have a bad time. And if you're weak or cowardly, no one will respect you. Luna grew up in a middle class neighborhood and wasn't prepared for the jungle rules that the women incarcerated at PSR operated under. It wouldn't be far off to compare them to animals. In here, there is no civility, and a lot of things that someone like Luna took for granted didn't fly. If someone stole something from her on the outside, she'd be upset but not go crazy over it or anything. In here, if you didn't go crazy, you were opening yourself up for disrespect. The women here were always watching, always scheming. It was exhausting and she could never understand why people didn't just leave each other the hell alone.
One thing she had heard about prison was that the food sucked. That was 100 percent true. It was bland and often undercooked and no one liked it. Even so, everyone ate everything on their tray because for many of them, that was it. Luna had a loving family on the outside who regularly put money on her books, so she could visit the canteen. Other girls weren't so lucky. The food was bad but that was manageable. What wasn';t manageable was that they never gave you enough of it. In prison, you were always hungry, always thinking about food and suffering from near debilitating hunger pangs. If you didn't have money on your books and couldn't visit the canteen, you were miserable.
And that's what prison was all about. Misery. Luna understood that prison wasn't supposed to be a nice place, but it didn't have to go out of its way to be an awful place. There's a difference between punishment and forcibly starving people, and prison walked that extremely fine line like a trained trapeze artist. Sometimes Luna would sit in the dayroom and surreptitiously study the other women, feeling sorry for them just as she felt sorry for herself. Maybe they were criminals, maybe they were all losers and crooks and, yes, killers, but they were still people, and prison served not to reform or rehabilitate them but to crush them - physically, metally, and emotionally. The guards all looked down on them and abused their power, meting out beatings and punishments for the smallest thing. Under the penal law, the women in the Michigan correctional system weren't even allowed to masturbate. If you were caught, they'd call it self-harm and write you a disciplinary slip. If the guard who caught you was in a particularly bad mood, they would use the "self-harm" excuse to put you on suicide watch. You'd be stripped naked, put in a smock, and shoved into a cell for 12 to 72 hours with nothing - no books, no magazines, and definitely no writing implements.
The hands down worst part of prison, however, wasn't the food or the violence or even the abuse, it was the long, empty hours. When you have nothing to do, you think. In prison, you're not just locked in with a bunch of other women, you're also locked in with your own demons. In the day, you could find something to occupy your time, like cards or writing letters, but at night, when the lights were out and the cell block was so quiet you could hear a woman on the bottom tier clearing her throat and sleep wouldn't come no matter how tired you were, you were at the mercy of your mind, and unless you lacked a conscious (which many women in prison did), your mind was a far crueler master than any guard. Night after night, Luna lay in her bunk reliving that terrible night in graphic detail. She was drunk when she wrecked the van and killed Sam, so her memory was hazy, but her guilty mind filled in with blanks with the most awful sounds, images, and sensations. Sam's head was not served from her body in the crash, but in Luna's memories, she clutched Sam's headless corpse to her breast and sobbed, her tears mixing with the warm blood spurting from Sam's ragged stump.
Then when Luna mercifully slept, she dreamed about it. Locked in a six by six concrete cell, she had so much time to was like her life was on pause and she couldn't get over what had happened. It was a deep wound that constantly oozed and wouldn't close.
It would only heal when she was able to get out of here and go on with her life.
That day came three and a half years after the night she killed Sam. It was late summer and the Midwest was gripped in a region-wide heatwave that left the world dry and brown. At 5am on the appointed day, a guard came to Luna's cell and took her to a holding cell while her release paperwork was finalized. After so long, Luna had only a single bag containing a few toiletries, a couple notebooks full of drawings and songs, and the clothes she was wearing the night she wrecked the van: A purple tank top with a sull across the chest and a pair of jeans that were skin tight then but baggy now. She had gained muscle mass in her arms, legs, and torso from working out, but she was rail thin and her face bordered on gaunt. With her sunken cheeks and the heavy bags under her eyes, she could pass for a restless spirit.
Which, she reflected, she was.
At 10am, she was allowed to change into her street clothes and taken to the front office where she called Mom. Mom wasn't able to pick her up but had put money on her books so that she could get a bus ticket home. "When you get in," Mom said, "come to the restaurant. We're going to have a special welcome home party."
While Luna was in prison, her father bought the old Italian place on Mercer Street and turned it into a family restaurant, whatever that meant.
As soon as she hung up with her mother, a guard escorted her out the door and through the parking lot to the front gate. As she approached the high guard towers flanking the exit, her heart began to race. If you got too close to the fence, you would get a write-up...or shot.
But she was free now, and no one stopped her or spared her a second glance. The gate slid open with a metallic clang and she walked out. She turned around and it closed behind her, cutting her off from everything she had known for nearly four years.
An inexplicable sense of loss came over her, and anxiety clutched her chest. Wait...let me back in.
The prison sat off a long, arrow-straight two lane highway surrounded by fields. Signs reading PRISON, DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS dotted the gravel shoulder and roadkill littered the gullies running alongside the road. The air was hot and dry and by the time Luna had walked half a mile, she was drenched in sweat. Every so often she looked over her shoulder, and the prison seemed to always be in the same place as before, like the road was a treadmill track and she was going nowhere. Its ramparts, towers, and razor wire fences stood stark against the dusty blue sky like the buttresses of a Medieval castle.
It seemed like a bad omen to her.
I'll follow wherever you go, Luna, it seemed to say. And deep in the pit of her being, she knew that that was true. Her time in prison had left an indelible mark on her and she would be forever changed.
Those worries would have to wait for later, though; right now, it was hot as balls and she needed to get to the bus station.
Three miles later, she reached a dusty crossroads. To the right was a tiny Greyhound station attached to a cafe. Inside the latter, Luna bought a bottle of Pepsi with some of the money Mom had sent her and drank half of it in a single go. She went to the ticket window outside, bought a one way ticket to Royal Woods, and sat in the waiting area inside. Cold air blew from overhead vents but the sunlight falling through the glass windows forming the front of the building was so strong that it rendered the AC moot. A TV mounted in the corner played an endless stream of bad news on CNN; the volume was so low that she couldn't hear it but subtitles flashed across the bottom of the screen in case she wanted to follow along.
She didn't.
An hour and a half later, the bus pulled up to the platform and Luna got on. It was surprisingly full and there were only a few seats free. She sat at the very back and held her bag on her lap. The air was hot and still, and when she sniffed the air, she detected the overpowering scent of body odor. She was so used to it that she hardly noticed it.
The bus moved away from the platform and turned right onto the highway. Luna leaned back in her seat and stared absently out the grimy window. Dry fields fell away from the roadside and gave way to dense pine forests, and farmhouses baked in the summer sun. The simple act of being free and watching the countryside flash by was enough to make Luna's head spin. Over the years, she had stood at her window and gazed past the razor wire fence, contemplating life beyond the gate and imagining herself in a place of light and freedom. But now that she was here, she had the feeling of foreboding. Though it had only been three relatively short years, her life was ruined and she would have to build it from the ground up again. Not only that but she would have the added burden of having a serious criminal conviction hanging like a millstone around her neck. Finding a job and a place to live would always be difficult because she had a record and not just that, she had done time in prison.
Though she had long pined for her freedom, she was not looking forward to the long, hard journey to getting her life back on track. Uncertainty lie ahead of her and that was almost worse than prison. At least in prison she knew what waited for her in the future. Right now, she did not. She felt like a child taking its first steps. It was almost as if she had never known freedom before even though she had. Then again, she was still living at home when the accident happened. She had only had one job and had never lived on her own. She hadn't led her own life and didn't know what to do first. It had only been there years...but it might as well have been forever.
The trip to Royal Woods took several hours; the closer she got to home, where all of this had started in another lifetime, the more tangled her stomach became. Part of her couldn't bear the thought of seeing everyone again. She was ashamed of what she had done and felt like everyone would hold a grudge against her for it.
By the time the bus finally got to the station at Royal Woods, the sun was beginning to set and rich amber light drenched the world. If possible, it was even hotter, and Luna pissed sweat as she walked through the tranquil streets of her hometown. Before leaving, she had taken Royal Woods for granted, but now, after all this time, she realized just how perfect and beautiful it really was.
It was twilight when she reached the restaurant. It had a low roof, wrought iron lampposts shining onto the brick patio, and a green awning. The writing in the window, blocky and red and trimmed in yellow, said LYNN'S TABLE.
Taking a deep breath, Luna went inside. A server brought her to a darkened private room off the main dining room. The server turned the lights on.
"SURPRISE!"
Luna jumped a little and then smiled at how edgy she was. She was surprised alright, and she smiled despite herself. Her whole family was there. Mom and Dad (how could they look exactly the same after so long?), Lisa, Lola, Lana, even Lori and Leni, both of whom had their own lives on opposite sides of the country and must have flown in especially to see her. The passage of time was most evident in Lily, who had just turned six. She was so much taller and older now. Where was the baby Luna knew? Was she really gone forever? Had the caterpillar turned into a beautiful butterfly already?
Mom and Dad came forward and Mom swept her into a big hug. "I'm so happy you're home," she said in a tearful whisper. Stinging moisture filled Luna's eyes and she hugged her mother fiercely.
"I'm happy too," she said.
And she was. All of the dread and misgivings she had felt that day, and, indeed, for the weeks and months approaching her patole, werte gone, replaced by a deep, fuzzy sense of warmth. Each one of her siblings came to meet her: Lori and Leni both hugged her, Luan grasped her hand and shocked the shit out of her with a joy buzze ("Welcome back, sis," Luan said with a wink), and Lynn punched her in the arm. "Holy muscles," she said. "You're cut like Lincoln from the football team. "Remember that fight we had about you leaving cigarette butts in our car? I bet if that happened today you could whoop me." She playfully half-lidded her eyes. "Unless you still hit like a bitch." She stepped back, rolled up her shirt sleeve, and presented her arm. "Go 'head. Let me have it."
Same old Lynn, Luna thought fondly. She wound up and punched her sister's arm as hard as she could. Lynn's face turned bright red and she hissed through her teeth. "Not bad," she grunted and rubbed her wounded arm.
"I may have worked out a little," Luna said meekly. "Or a lot, since there wasn't much else to do."
Lucy came up with a spellbook in her hands and said a few words in Latin. "I'm putting a good luck curse on you,' she deadpanned. "From now on, things should go your way."
Oh, well...it's the thought that counts.
"No need to thank me. It's what sisters are for."
That sentiment inexplicably choked Luna up and a lump welled in her throat. She pulled Lucy into an embrace and hugged her tightly. "Thanks," was all that Luna could say.
"You're welcome," Lucy said and hugged her back.
Lincoln was next. He was fourteen when she left, now he was seventeen. At some point in the intervening three years, he hit a growth spurt and shot up to nearly six feet tall. He was gangly and had a little patch of white hair on his chin that reminded her of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. When she hugged him, his bones poked her and she shuddered. "You don't eat much anymore, huh?" she asked.
"On the contrary," Lisa said and adjusted her glasses like a character in an old movie. They weren't crooked. "Lincoln has a prodigious appetite and consumes the daily caloric intake of three men. He simply has an advanced metabolism. Which, of course, I have been studying. If i can find a way to biologically rewire the metabolic systems of others to mimic Lincoln's, I can eradicate obesity and possibly win a Nobel Prize."
It struck Luna that three years ago, fresh out of high school, her own goal was to become a famous rock star much the way Lisa wanted to be a famous scientist. Looking back on that dream, Luna realized how foolish she was. As a musician, she was mediocre at best. Maybe she could have gone somewhere in the sixties or seventies if she worked hard enough and got the right breaks, but things are so much different now. Anyone with internet connection and upload their own music to the internet. There were thousands, millions, of people just like her out there and it was so easy to get lost in the shuffle. For what it was worth, Lisa was a far better scientist than she was a musician and she stood a good chance of actually accomplishing her life goals.
Following the whirlwind of hugs and catching up, everyone sat at a long banquet table laden with food. All of Luna's old favorites were present and accounted for: bangers and mash, shepard's pie, fish and chips, blood pudding, even mutton chops. It had been a long time since she had seen so much food and it was a little overwhelming. There was no way on earth she was going to be able to eat more than a small helping or two.
Dad stood up and held a glass of Pepsi into the air. "It's really good to have you back, Luna. I think I speak for everyone when I say we missed you very much."
When he sat down, Luna herself stood up. Her cheeks burned hot and that sense of shame she had felt before came creeping back. She darted her eyes to the table and took a deep, fortifying breath. "I just wanted to...apologize...to everyone for what happened. I was a spoiled little shithead and I made a terrible mistake. I wasn't the easiest person to deal with, I had a chip on my shoulder and thought I was better than everyone else, but I wasn't, and I'm not. I know this has been just as hard if not harder on all of you than it has been on me and I'm sorry."
She thought of Sam and tears threatened to well in her eyes. Toward the end, hers and Sam's relationship wasn't doing as good as it had when they first started dating but Luna loved her, and knowing everyday that Sam was dead because of her gutted her. That was the worst punishment of all. She could walk away from jail, she could walk away from her conviction and find a way to carry on, but she couldn't walk away from that horrible knowledge. She once had the perfect girl, and instead of cherishing her the way she deserved to be cherished, she killed her.
Maybe some people in her position could get over that, but not Luna. She would likely dream about Sam every night for the rest of her life and everywhere she looked, if she didn't leave Royal Woods, she would see a ghost of a memory. This town was full of ghosts; there wasn't a single place that didn't have a beautiful memory of Sam attached to it. Not a single one. She hadn't thought about her future, only about her literal next step, but she was sure that she couldn't stay here. Too many phantoms, too many reminders of what she had - and what she lost.
"We all make mistakes," Mom said. "You didn't mean for that to happen. You shouldn't blame yourself, honey, I'm sure Sam wouldn't want that."
Wouldn't she? Sam was young and pretty and had her entire life ahead of her. She was going to go to college and be somebody. She had so much promise, so much potential, but Luna ruined it.
"I know," she said out loud, but didn't fully mean, "I can't help it, though." She sat down and forced a smile. "Anyway," she said, "let's eat."
She was not hungry but she forced down some food anyway.
Talking and laughing with her family, whom she had always been close to but hadn't seen in what felt like decades, Luna loosened up a little, but having fun and feeling good were hard for her. Every time something positive happened and her mood soared, her mind would force her to think of Sam. How could she feel good when Sam was dead? Sam couldn't have fun or chat with her family; she couldn't have a good meal and smile; all she could do was lay in the bosom of the earth where Luna had put her.
That always brought her back to reality.
The festivities ended around 10pm and she climbed into the van with Lincoln and their younger sisters. Lori and Leni were both flying out tomorrow to return to their lives and Luan was driving back to the clown college she had been attending for the past year. It was in Iowa, of all places. Lynn still lived at home and was going to Royal Woods Community College. She had a boyfriend and, Mom said, they were talking about moving in together.
"Now I need to worry about the fine," Luna said.
A condition of her parole was that she pay a 10,000 dollar fine within six months of release. She had no idea how she was going to come up with the money.
"We took care of that," Mom said.
Luna blinked. "You did?"
"Yep," Dad said. "We took out a second mortgage on the house but it's paid."
Now Luna felt like shit.
To Luna's surprise, the house on Franklin Ave looked just like it always had. Luna kept having to remind herself that it had only been three years. Three years feels like forever when you're in jail, but it's really not that long at all. It was barely a day, not even a twinkle in God's eye. Of course nothing had changed. The furniture was still in the same spots, the same framed pictures crowded the walls. Life went on without her but it didn't go very fast.
Mom led her up the stairs to her bedroom. "I made the bed with fresh sheets and dusted from time to time, but otherwise, it's just the same as you left it."
Indeed it was. Walking in and seeing all her things as they were the night she left to play that ill-fated gig made her head spin. It was almost like the place had been put on pause for three years.
Just like her.
Luna sat her bag on her bed and gave her mother a hug. "Thanks, Mom."
"I love you," Mom said.
At least, tears welled in Luna's eyes. "I love you too," she whispered.
When Mom was gone, Luna sat on the edge of her bed and looked around the room with a sigh. Here she was, back to starting line, almost as if the past three years hadn't happened at all. Two of her younger sisters were in college and her two older ones were living full and competent adult lives.
Then there was here, pretty much back in high school. Do not pass gp, do not collect 200 dollars.
She buried her face in her hands.
And wept.
The next afternoon, Mom took off work to drive Luna to her first meeting with her parole officer. His office was housed in the basement of the county courthouse: You went down a set of stone stairs to a glass door and there it was, a tiny, harshly lit space with cubicles and gray industrial carpeting that was splotched and stained in places. Being the basement, the air was cold and stale and there were bugs and spider webs in the corners. Her parole officer was a gaunt old man with sunken cheeks and sallow skin. Sparse white hair dotted his liver-spotted head and his hands shook as he shuffled through a stack of papers looking for Luna's paperwork. There were certificates on the walls dating back to the late seventies. God, how old was this cat?
He laid out the conditions of Luna's parole. She was to get a job within 90 days, live with her parents for the duration (two years), not leave the state, not drink, not get into trouble, and check in with him twice a week. If she violated the terms of her parol, she would be sent back to prison to serve out the remainder of her sentence.
All six years of it.
Luna's stomach knotted.
After the meeting, Mom drove Luna home. "I can drive you around to put in applications tomorrow if you'd like," Mom offered. "It's my day off."
Luna sighed. "I feel like I'm burdening you guys, First the fine, now this."
"Don't, honey," Mom said. "We would do this for any of our kids."
Yeah, but it wasn't any of the kids, it was her. She was the one who fucked up and killed her girlfriend in a drunk driving accident, she was the one who did three years in prison and kept Mom and Dad worrying constantly, she was the one they had to get another mortgage on their house for. Every family has their black sheep, Luna supposed, that one member who just can't make things go right for themselves, and she was the Loud family's. She had already caused her parents so much pain and suffering and now she was poised to keep on doing it,
What if she couldn't find a job?
That thought came suddenly and made her stomach turn. What if it took her longer than 90 days and they sent her back to prison? She didn't want to go back. The thought made her feel cold and shaky. She would rather die than go back.
"I wanna do something to give back," Luna said, then an idea came to her. "How about I make dinner tonight?"
"That would be nice," Mom said.
"Great," Luna flashed a feeble smile. It wasn't much and didn't really do anything toward paying Mom and Dad back for everything they had already done for her, but it was all that she could do.
For now.
When she got a job, she would start paying them back. She didn't know how long it would take to entirely square up with them, but she decided right then and there to do it.
Of course, she was getting ahead of herself. The first thing she needed to worry about was getting a job.
Even before she went to jail, the job market was tight, but from what she had heard on the radio and read in the papers over the past three years, it was even worse now.
At home, Luna went through the contents of the fridge and pantry before settling on beans and franks. It made enough to fill everyone up and was easy to make. At 4, she started cooking. She wanted to make Pilsbury crescent rolls with it but didn't realize that she didn't know how to make them until the canister was open. The directions were clear enough but they looked sloppy after she put them on the cooking sheet. She put them in the oven and then started on the beans and franks. The rolls were supposed to be in for twenty minutes but after fifteen, Luna detected the scent of burning. She opened the oven and gasped when a cloud of acrid smoke rushed out at her. She grabbed a potholder and pulled the sheet out. It started to burn her through the pot holder and she hissed through her teeth as she rushed the sheet to the opposite counter.
As it turned out, she forgot to spray the sheet with Pam so the bottoms of the rolls stuck to the metal/ Damn it. She grabbed a spatula, jammed the flat end under the rolls, and separated them from the pan, leaving burned chunks behind.
While she was busy with that, the beans and franks burned. She tried them and gagged; they tasted like straight up ash. She dumped salt, pepper, and other seasonings in to mask the taste, but they did little to disguise her failure.
She hoped no one would notice, but as soon as Lola forked a frank into her mouth, she dry heaved. Lana chewed very slowly, eyes rolled up to the ceiling in contemplation, and Lincoln swallowed what he had in his mouth then gasped for air. "I may have burned it a little," Luna said with a sheepish smile.
"It's fine, honey," Dad said queasily, "I couldn't have done it better myself."
Mom nodded her agreement. "It's fine, honey."
No, it wasn't; everyone was eating only the rolls and avoiding the beans and franks. Now Luna felt sorry for herself. She wanted to repay her parents for going above and beyond to help her in her time of need and she bombed.
After everyone found a reason to excuse themselves and slunk away, Luna did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen.
She would do better tomorrow.
That was a promise.
The next day, Mom drove her around town to put in applications. Luna went everywhere, even to Flip's. As soon as she walked through the door, Flip did a double take from behind the counter. "Well," he said, "if it isn't The Royal Woods Butcher. We're out of 24 packs so you'll have to settle for 12. That should be enough to claim your next victim."
She turned around and walked out.
At one point, Mom dropped her off at town square and left to pick up Lincoln from school for a dentist's appointment. Luna shoved her hands into her pockets and walked around with her head down and her shoulders slumped. Flip's words echoed through her head and her stomach bubbled with cold dread. Is that what people really thought of her? The Royal Woods Butcher? A few times, the people manning the counters at the stores and restaurants she applied to gave her funny looks and she got the impression that they knew who she was and were silently judging her.
Then something terrible happened.
She was walking through the park on her way home with a pocket full of promises ("We'll call you,") when she bumped into someone. She looked up and her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach.
Sam's parents stood side by side in front of her. When they saw who she was, their expressions turned cold and hard. For a second, Luna gaped up at her, too shocked and horrified to even breathe. Finally, she got hold of herself and swallowed around a cold lump of fear in her throat. "Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Sharp," she stammered.
"Hello, Luna," Mrs. Sharp said tightly. "I heard they were letting you out."
Luna's face flushed with shame. "Look, I'm so sorry about what happened. I loved Sam and I never meant to -"
"That's nice but it doesn't bring our daughter back," Mrs. Sharp said.
Luna flinched.
Mr. Sharp took his wife by the arm and led her away. Luna watched them go, sighed, and walked the rest of the way home, feeling even worse than before. When she got there, she dragged herself to her room and flopped face first onto her bed. Burying her face in the pillow, she took a deep breath and fought back tears.
She didn't blame them for hating her. She killed their daughter pure and simple. Luna could say that it was a mistake and that she didn't mean to, but it really didn't bring Sam back. What was done was done and there was nothing Luna could do to ease their pain or to give Sam back what she had stolen.
Not for the first time since that, she wished she had died instead of Sam.
A small, selfish part of her was glad that she didn't, though.
When she had herself under a semblance of control, she got up and started cleaning the house. She vacuumed, dusted, and polished the woodwork in the living room. Since she was home all day while everyone else was at work and school, she figured it was only right for her to do everything around the house. She collected everyone's dirty clothes hampers and did a few loads of laundry, cleaned the toys and trash out of the front yard, and pulled weeds in the back. Every so often she would think of Flip and Mr. and Mrs. Sharp, but she pushed those thoughts away before they could bother her.
That night, she cooked dinner again.
This time, she did not burn it.
Two weeks after getting out of prison, Luna found a job at a cafe on Main Street. It was by pure happenstance: She came in to apply only minutes after one of the servers had walked out over some kind of dispute. The lady who owned the place was named Betty and reminded her a lot of Leni, only shorter, older, and fatter. The restaurant was so busy that day that she had Luna start immediately. Luna didn't know how to work the register so she served. She did surprisingly well at it. She was nervous and terrified that she was going to drop something on someone, so she was extra careful; that made her slow, but not so slow that it caused a problem. Betty would just tell her periodically to pick up the pace and she would.
The base pay was retardedly low but she made some of it up in tips. She was shocked when she got her first paycheck and a hefty amount was missing. "Where's the rest of my money?" she asked her parents in astonishment.
"Welcome to the wonderful world of taxes," Dad said archly.
"Now you know why we're Republicans," Mom said.
That day, Luna herself became a Republican - if being a Republican meant being against low-wage workers getting raped by the IRS. Her politics didn't matter, though, since she was a felon and couldn't vote anyway. She didn't care about all the other crap that Republicans and Democrats carried on about, she just wanted more money in her paycheck at the end of every week.
Luna met with her parole officer twice weekly and gave him updates. At first, the meetings took up to forty-five minutes a pop, but after a while, once he presumably came to trust her, they got shorter. She'd come in and sit down and he'd ask her how things were going. She would tell him and then he'd sign off on her paperwork. She was in and out in twenty minutes.
Having a job helped improve Luna's confidence. She paid her parents a little bit in rent every week and helped out with groceries. She wasn't doing the best when compared with someone like Lori or Leni, but she was getting her feet underneath her and that felt good. As good as she felt, however, she still had nightmares about Sam at least three times a week. In most of them, Luna was lost in a vast, moon lit graveyard filled with gray, twisted trees, alone save for the howl of the icy wind and the hooting of owls. She moved hesitantly between rows of ancient headstones, looking over her shoulder because she was certain that something was following her. When she turned back around to face forward again, Sam was there, glowing white like the moon itself, her face splattered with blood. Luna would wake from these dreams in tears in her eyes and an aching in her chest.
A few weeks after she got her job at the cafe, Luna went to visit Sam's grave for the first time ever. Just seeing it brought her to tears and knowing that she was the reason for all of this made her want to shrink up and disappear. She sat beside Sam's tombstone and talked for a long time, pouring out her heart and giving voice to all of the emotions that had been festering unspoken inside of her since that night. It felt good to finally get it all out, but the stone didn't reply, and she realized how pointless it all was. She had to live with herself for a very long time and it was only right that she get used to carrying the weight of what she had done on her shoulders.
Before she left, she kissed her hand and touched the stone. "I'm sorry," she said simply. It wasn't a fancy, Shakespearean soliloquy, but it was ernest.
Three months after she got her job, Luna was at the register when a woman she didn't know came in and crossed her arms. She glared at Luna like she had done something wrong and Luna knew from her Karen cut that she wanted to speak to the manager.
What she said shocked her. "It's really sad that this place employs a murderer now."
It took Luna a full five seconds to process what she had said. "Excuse me?"
"Convicted felons have no business handling people's food."
The dining room was largely empty save for another waitress wiping down tables and an old man eating a bowl of oatmeal. Still, Luna's face burned with shame. "Ma'am," she said, "I'm sorry -"
"Yes, you are sorry. And the courts are going to be sorry when you kill again."
A ball of anger formed in Luna's chest. She gritted her teeth and balled her hands. "You need to leave," Luna said.
"You need to gp back to that prison you slithered out of."
Something came over Luna and before she knew it, she was throwing a glass of tea into the woman's face and screaming at the top of her lungs, calling her every name she could think of. Looking scared, the woman ran off. Betty came out and Luna told her everything. Even so, she fired her. "I can't have you fighting with my customers. I'm sorry but you're fired."
Luna was crushed. She understood Betty's point but that didn't make it any easier. She left the restaurant and walked home with her head down, feeling somehow lower than she did right after being released from prison. The first thought that occurred to her was that she needed to find a new job and fast. She didn't think her parole officer would violate her just for losing her job, but she didn't want to find out. She'd have to tell him but if she had another job, it would possibly soften the blow.
That night, she confessed to her parents that she had lost her job. She wanted them to react with the anger or disappointment she felt she deserved, but instead they were kind and understanding, which was somehow worse.
No matter how badly she screwed up, they were there to love and encourage her. She had put them through so much and failing now, even a little, felt like the ultimate betrayal.
For the next three days, she put in applications, mainly online, away from Royal Woods. On day three, she left the house with her guitar, sat in the park, and played for the birds and mosquitos. She was half way through a meandering composition that she made up as she went along when she became aware of someone standing over her. She looked up to see a slim blonde girl with green eyes. She was roughly nineteen or twenty and wore a T-shirt and jeans. For a terrible second, Luna almost thought it was the specter of Sam come to exact her revenge at last, but realized that it wasn't. She resembled Sam (vaguely...if you turned your head and squinted) but, thankfully, she was someone else.
"Hi," the girl said, "I heard you playing. It's really nice."
"Thanks," Luna said awkwardly. "I'm just..,winging it, I guess."
The girl sat beside her. "Really? You're just doing that off the top of your head?" There was something like amazement in her voice.
Luna shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah. I do that sometimes."
"It's really nice. You should be famous."
That made Luna laugh. It would be a lie to say that there was not more than a hint of bitterness in it. She had tried and it led to her girlfriend dying. "I used to post music online but...I just do it for fun now."
"That's really cool. I'm Taylor, by the way."
"Luna," Luna said.
"Do you come here a lot? I'm new in town so I don't know. Maybe you're a local fixture or something. Are you a street person?"
Luna blinked in surprise. "No," she said. "I have a home...with my parents."
She felt a rush of shame saying that.
"That's good. I have my own place. I can barely afford the rent but it's pretty awesome having a space that's just mine, you know?" She let out a big, contented sigh, then looked at Luna. "Do you smoke weed?"
Luna shook her head. "No. No, I can't. I have to worry about drug tests."
"Well, that sucks." Taylor got up. "I gotta go, but I'll see you around."
"Alright," Luna said.
When the girl was gone, Luna went back to playing. She had lost the melody so she made up another one. An hour later, she walked home through the gathering gloom. When she got there, Mom and Dad sat her down in the dining room. They only did that when they wanted to talk about something important. "Your mother and I were talking," Dad said. "One of my cooks walked out today and I need a replacement. Since you need a job…"
Luna missed a beat. "I don't know," she said. "I'm not very good."
"I can teach you,' Dad said. "It's really easy and all the food on the menu is simple stuff."
Though she wanted to turn him down, Luna needed a job.
So she reluctantly accepted.
She started the next day, getting there with Dad at 6am. For an hour until the restaurant opened, Dad walked her through how to make everything on the menu. Luna practiced on a few dishes that intimidated her and thought she had a decent handle on it.
The breakfast rush started at 7 and kept on until 10. Orders came back at a steady pace but Luna was able to keep up. At one point, a waitress poked her head through the order window. "I need three sunny - oh, hey, it's you."
For a second Luna didn't know who the hell she was, then it hit her. That girl from yesterday,. Taylor. "I didn't know you worked here," Taylor said.
"It's my first day,' Luna said.
"Cool. It's my third. Anyway, I need three sunny side up eggs."
And there was one of the dishes that intimidated Luna. She managed to make them without breaking the yoke, however.
At the end of the day, she hung her apron up and rode home with Dad. She was tired and sore, but happy. She didn't think she would like cooking but she did.
Things fell into a routine. Every morning Luna would go to the restaurant with Dad and work until 4pm. Taylor worked almost everyday and when she wasn't serving, she came into the kitchen to talk and laugh with Luna. It took a month for Luna to realize that she kind of liked the blonde, and another two months for her to realize that Taylor liked her back.
Luna hadn't been interested in a girl since Sam and she was wracked with guilt. Even so, her nightmares faded until she was having only one a week. In one, she was in the cemetery, and when she turned around, Sam was there. Instead of attacking her, Sam simply broke down crying, and Luna cried too. This happened for weeks until finally, in her dream, Luna held Sam in her arms and whispered how sorry she was into Sam's ear. That was closure enough that Luna felt slightly better afterward.
She would never forgive herself for what she did to Sam but she could learn to live with it. It would take time, but Luna was determined. This was her life, her story, and she had written herself into a bad spot.
Now it was up to her to write the next chapter.
This time, she decided, she was going to get it right.