Luna III

Luna opened her eyes. Bright daylight shone into her room. How long was she out for? Not long enough. Her head felt groggy as ever — tired from sleeping not enough and then too much. Luna may have been a musician, but her circadian rhythm was one she couldn't play. What was rhythmical was her headache. Thump. Thump.

Luna stared at her alarm. "16:43." It seemed scream at her in blocky red numbers. She had slept through the entire morning — most of the afternoon too. She was going to have to face Lincoln and her sisters at dinner soon, and she still hasn't had any time to process what the hell was going on. Lincoln. Lucy. Luan. Who else knew? Who else was going to find out? Luna was no strangers to hangovers, but this was the worst kind.

She decided she had to get out of her room. Luan would be back, and Luna needed alone time. She got dressed in comfortable clothing — a band shirt, black hoodie and jeans — and grabbed her electric guitar. The only cure for a broken heart is music. Loud, rocking music. She had a guitar amp in the garage, and since the weather was nice, most of her sisters would be playing outside. She knew that it was the perfect place to be left alone for the day.

Luna headed downstairs and locked herself in the garage. She plugged her headphones into the amp and shredded all her feelings out. She didn't sing out loud, but composed lyrics in her head and hummed them along. What rhymes with Lincoln? Lincoln rhymed with Lincoln. Shit, at this rate the lyrics are just going to be Lincoln over and over. That wasn't better than thinking about him. She turned the volume up to eleven, so that the music could drone the indecent thoughts out of her head. She clenched her eyes closed. Now it was just Luna and the loud, indignant shreds of her guitar.

...

Luna lost track of time. She spent some time shredding her guitar, but she had no clue for how long. Eventually, her fingertips started to hurt from pressing down on the steel strings so much. Usually, the pain would've stopped her earlier, but her mental pains had given her greater fortitude to withstand the physical pains.

When she left the garage and entered the house, she saw Lori behind the kitchen counter. Lori turned the sound of the door.

"Ah Luna, there you are!" Lori seemed to be relieved at the sight of her, as if she had been worried about something. "Mom and dad were like, freaking out that no one knew where you were."

"Oh, shit, sorry Lori. Didn't want to freak you dudes out, I just needed to be alone for a while, and I lost track of time." Luna felt guilty for making people worry about her.

Lori took note of Luna's gloom. "Hey, it's totes fine. You wanna help me with these dishes?" Lori spoke calmly.

"Sure." Luna stepped up and grabbed a towel, and started to dry the soapy-wet dishes that Lori was cleaning. "Why are you doing it by yourself, anyway?"

"Well, it was Lincoln's turn to help, but, he's not home either."

Luna subtly flinched from hearing Lincoln's name. She let out the shortest "Oh." Shredding her guitar did help her get her mind off of things, but it hadn't made her feelings go away. A single mention of his name and all the feelings come rushing back again. She drew her lips in self-loathing.

"Hey," Lori started, with clear concern in her voice. "Are you alright, Luna?"

"Huh? Yeah, why?" She lied.

"Well, you've literally been drying the same plate for a full two minutes." Luna realised she was right. Her mind was elsewhere. "What's up?"

Luna started drying a different plate. "I'm..." Luna needed some kind of explanation that would stop her prying too much. "I just haven't been getting much sleep lately, is all."

"Oh, I feel you. It's hard to fall asleep in this heat. I am, literally, sweating to death each night. Leni comes downstairs to drink water straight from the faucet several times a night." Lori's intonation indicated that she was about to continue that story, but she apprehended herself abruptly, as if she realised something.

"Yeah, exactly." Luna is glad that her story was believable. She really had been sleeping poorly, after all. Not because of the heat, of course, but it sure didn't help. "I'm just — too hot."

Luna and Lori cleaned up the remainder of the dishes, accompanied by small talk. For Luna, it was nice to be in the company of one of her sisters that didn't pry any further than necessary.

As Lori went up to her room, Luna's eye fell on an object on the kitchen table. It was a book, and on its cover was a man rolling a large rock up on a hill. Luna picked it up to examine. The Myth of Sisyphus. Albert Camus. She recognised the name, it's that French philosophy bigwig Luan's always raving about. She must have left it here.

Luna sat down and started reading. Initially, she remembered Luan mentioning something about absurdity, and assumed that the book would be riddled with absurd jokes that could cheer her up. The second she starting reading, she realised that that was definitely not the case, but her curiosity was piqued, and she kept reading anyway.

Luna read about Sisyphus, about how he rolled a rock up a hill every day, only to have it roll back down. A struggle that ends in failure each time. Luna identified with Sisyphus. She felt like Lincoln was her rock, and she was Sisyphus rolling him up a hill. It never goes anywhere. The difficulty of processing her complex emotions was the ordeal she was tasked with. It was senseless. It was absurd. A sense of understanding slowly dawned on her as she read on. When Luna thought of Lincoln as some greater purpose of hers, she felt — for the first time in a long time — happy.

But the happiness was short-lived, as she realised that her only source of happiness was her love for her little brother. And it wasn't a normal, sororal love — but an unnatural, sexual desire. Did Luna really feel like there was nothing more to her life than fucking her little brother? The only absurd joke she found in the book was herself. Now her shame and guilt returned, and this time, they were paired with a dangerous conclusion:

She wanted more rock 'n roll.