So, I stay in my bed, crying silently with my patterned quilt drying my tears.
Knock, knock.
I whimper, a scream stuck in my throat.
“Luna?” A whisper blows through my window like the wind, wrapping around my neck and trailing into my ears and belly. “It’s me, Roman.”
My shaky hands pull the comforter off my body. I pad across my orange carpet and to my window. His figure is barely visible in the night, but I can still see him through my sheer curtains. He has a frown on his face as he stares at me, his dark outline filled with concern.
I pull the curtain back, seeing him standing there in pajama pants, a t-shirt, and nothing else. “What’re you doing here?”
“I could hear you crying all the way from my house. Where are your parents?”
“Sleeping,” I grumble, wiping my eyes. My tears fight to break free, but I don’t want to cry in front of Roman.
“They didn’t wake up? You sounded like you were hurt.” He steps forward, standing against the cracked open window. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I just had a bad dream.” I take a step back, suddenly feeling like a baby. Turning around, I walk back toward my bed. I already feel like a baby, mostly because yesterday I freaked out on him and told him he can’t like my sister.
I see how he looked at her. That’s howeveryonelooks at her. Like she’s the most beautiful person on the planet, and I’m nothing but the leftover pieces in the cereal box. The stale ones. No one wants the leftovers.
I don’t even know what came over me. I just know he needs to be my friend. It’s like nothing else matters in the world. From the first moment that I saw him, I knew that we were going to be best friends. My heart warmed and my belly ached. It sounds really weird, but I know this is where I’m supposed to be.
He might be a dumb jerk sometimes, but I just want him to like me. It’s like we were supposed to meet or something.
I was so angry at my dad for taking a job in Wisconsin to make cheese, or sell cheese, or whatever he does. Before here, we lived in Illinoi; and before Illinois, we lived in Kansas. We never stay anywhere for long. It’s like every time I start to settle in somewhere, make friends, and feel like I’m starting to be at home, my parents up and leave. They always say it’s because of a job, but I think it’s just the fact that my parents get bored easily.
When we came to Wisconsin, it was right when my friends started being mybestfriends. Every move we make across the country gets harder. It gets harder for me to find friends, and now, living in Wisconsin, I see Roman in front of me and there isn’t anything more that I want than to be the best friend he’s ever had.
Forever.
I turn around when I hear a squeak coming from my window, watching as Roman pushes the window up, swinging his leg inside. He presses his bare foot against my carpet as he ducks and slips into my room. “What was your dream about?” he asks, taking a step closer to me. He stares at me quizzically, like he isn’t sure what to think of me.
It’s hot in here, and my matching pajama set feels like wool as it scratches against my skin. We don’t have air conditioning in our new house and have been using fans to get us by during the day. In Wisconsin, the summer air is filled with a dewy moisture that sticks to your skin, and at night, that dewy moisture turns cool, but it never quite goes away. The bugs come out, smelling the sweet scent of sweat on your skin. The mosquitoes leave big welts on my arms and legs, finding their way through the cracks in the old screens on the windows and buzzing a tiny humming noise around the shells of my ears.
I shrug at him, wiping the trail of sweat that drips down the back of my neck. “It was kind of weird.”
His eyes brighten at this. “I like weird. Tell me.”
I sit on the edge of my mattress, my toes pressing into my orange carpet as I scoot further onto the bed. Roman walks toward me, grabbing one of the two pink pillows from my bed. He drops it on the floor and plops down, lying on his back. His arms fold with his hands going beneath his head. With his eyes on mine, he crosses one ankle over the other and asks again, “Tell me.”
I fold over onto my side, my heart suddenly beating quicker than it ever has before. I almost wonder if I’m sick or something. “I was on a tall hill, like a mountain. The ocean swirled below me like the water in the bath when it goes down the drain. It looked angry. It was super windy, too, like a tornado, but it was full of sand. It was in my hair and in my mouth and it hurt as it hit my skin. It pushed me over the edge.”
“And then what happened?” Roman asks, his voice enthralled. Like he’s listening to an action book or something,
I look up at him, noticing I’ve been picking at some loose threads on my quilt. “I woke up.”
He blinks at me, his eyes worried but also curious. He blinks again, his vision clearing, and a fierceness lights up his eyes, the dark brown glowing around the edges. “I wouldn’t let you fall.”
I frown. “You weren’t even there.”
“I’ll be there next time.”
I want to burst out laughing. How could he be there? He can’t come into my dreams. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I don’t want to ruin the moment, so instead I smile at him and roll onto my back. “Okay, Roman.”
I can hear him settle down, and I tilt my gaze to his. “What’re you doing?”
His brows furrow. “Going to sleep?” He poses it as a question, like I’m being stupid for even asking.