I had to drop out of school.
CHAPTER 1
LUNA
I pulled the last box from the rental car and spun around, determined to start a new chapter in my life. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the makeshift parking lot that I halted on the concrete ground littered with weeds sprouting through the cracks.
It was scary, for more reasons than I could comprehend.
I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and with what most people would assume a limited life experience.
Most people were wrong though.
Very wrong.
I’d witnessed and been part of more things than anyone could dream of.
I’d watched my parents take so many drugs that they’d had to have their stomachs pumped.
I’d witnessed them overdosing and tried to bring them back from the brink.
I’d been both the victim and
a perpetrator of theft.
I’d lied.
I’d cheated.
But it was so that I could survive. Each day had been a war I waged, not sure where my next meal would come from. And now we were all here, moving into a new apartment, taking the first step in our new lives.
My gaze drifted to the third floor and to the door in the middle of the walkway. The green paint was peeling, one of the numbers was upside down. All it needed was a missing screw, a job Dad has said he would do, but I still had my doubts.
Both Mom and Dad were on one of their clean spurts, no drugs, no alcohol, no parties in the middle of the night. It had been three months so far—the longest they’d ever gone—but that didn’t mean I was getting my hopes up. I’d done that once when I was twelve, and I’d promised myself I never would again after they relapsed.
I just hoped this time was different.
“Hey, lady!” a small voice shouted. “Why are you standing there?”
I glanced down in the direction of the voice and raised a brow as a boy stopped next to me, turning to look where I was. His dark-brown hair was a little long to suit his face, his straight nose led up to knowing eyes. Eyes that seemed to grasp me and not let go. He couldn’t have been more than seven, but the way he stood told me he didn’t live the life of a normal seven-year-old. He was wise beyond his years, something that I understood.
“I’m looking at my apartment door,” I told him, shuffling a step closer.
“Why?” He tilted his head back and stared at me, waiting for an answer. But I wasn’t sure what I was meant to tell him. I didn’t know why I was standing here staring at my door, but what I did know was that I wasn’t ready to go into my apartment just yet. I needed a minute—just a little time to collect my thoughts.
“Because…” I bit down on my bottom lip, glancing around the building. The apartment building had four floors, but it wasn’t one of those fancy ones that you saw on the TV shows. No, this was the kind that most low-income families lived in. The entire building was like a giant L shape with all of the stairwells and hallways leading to the apartments outside. You only had to stand outside the front door and you could see almost the entire block.
It was different, quieter, at least, so far anyway.
I couldn’t remember ever living anywhere but in the chaos I’d been brought up in, but now we were here, ready to start new lives. I just wasn’t sure whether to be on my guard or let the hope that was desperate to bubble up inside me come to the surface.
It was only toward the end of my senior year that my parents had gotten clean again, and instead of me preparing to move away from home to go to the college I’d gotten a scholarship for, I was getting ready for us all to move.
I wasn’t sure whose idea it was at first, but once it was out on the table, we all knew it was the right thing to do. Moving away from the area where the temptation was always there would help not only them, but me too.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know my mom and dad loved me, in fact, I knew they did. But it was hard to believe it when I would watch them destroying themselves all for a small bag of powder. They’d tried their hardest though, and more times than not, only one of them would be completely sober, but this time, they both were.
We knew no one here, it was a true fresh start, and now all that was left to do was move in and start our new lives. I shook my head and held in a laugh. I was eighteen, an age where I was meant to be moving away from my parents, and yet, here I was, grateful that they’d moved with me.