Even the Moon Has Scars

by Steph Campbell

  With her rise to fame came even longer hours than before and, eventually, the demise of their marriage. Dad’s no longer a bailiff. He took off on a fishing boat two days after my grandfather died, and no one has heard from him since.

  I guess Mom was right all of those times she said he didn’t know how to be a real grownup.

  And once again, I was left feeling like a fool for believing too much in people who don’t deserve it.

  “Have a good day. I’ll see you later, Gabriel.”

  “See ya, Babs.”

  “And keep the cursing to a minimum today, wouldya? I think all of Cape Ann must have heard you yesterday. You’ve got a mouth like your father.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  I take the wrapper from her snack and toss it into the garbage on my way to the garage. It’s where I’ve been spending most of my time since Mom shipped me off here. It’s cramped as hell in the garage, but it’s quiet and working on the car keeps me busy. Because other than googling parts, doing the online correspondence courses Mom set me up with when she pulled me out of my high-end private school, and trying to keep Babci entertained, I don’t have much going on outside of this garage—unless you count avoiding my ex, Jemma’s, calls. I spend a lot of time doing that, too.

  My grandfather was a career bellman, a driveway mechanic, and, apparently, a champion hoarder. This garage houses every single tool you could ever want or need, probably multiples of each—but good luck finding anything.

  That’s what caused most of my cursing in frustration yesterday—needing a tool, knowing it was around somewhere, and not being able to put my hands on it. Stacks of wrenches, ratchets, and sockets cover every surface, Chilton manuals and other random handbooks are sticking out of partially closed cabinet drawers, and absolutely nothing in the entire space is labeled.

  Once the weather is nicer, if I’m still around, I’m going to open up the garage and clean it all out. If Babci will let me. It’s been snowing, but the main reason I haven’t cleaned it up is that I don’t know if it’ll upset her to see it different than the way Gramps left it.

  I press my body flat against the old, Crocus Yellow Corvair—the car my grandfather spent most of his retired life trying to meticulously restore. I know the exact color because my father and I had to go to five different places to find the perfect shade of 1965 Chevy paint that Gramps wanted a few years ago.

  I literally have to shimmy sideways around the car to the other side of the garage where the creeper is. I lay back on the board and am halfway under the car when my iPhone rings in my pocket.

  I roll out from under the car and answer, “Hello?”

  “Is this Gabriel?” A husky adult voice asks on the other end.

  “Who’s asking?” I can’t hide the paranoia that claws at my voice. I’ve tried my damndest to stay out of trouble since I’ve been here, and I hope to God it’s not managing to find me on its own.

  “Settle down kid. This is Paul over at Paul’s Beantown Classics. Listen, I’ve had a note here for a few weeks that you were looking for an aluminum valve cover for a Corvair?”

  I try to sit up but end up smacking my forehead against the metal light clamped on the table behind me.

  “Hell yes,” I say. Five-and-a-half-weeks. That’s how long I’ve been trying to hunt down this particular part. I know because I’ve been here for six weeks.

  Six weeks holed up in my grandmother’s house outside the city.

  Six weeks watching Babci sneak cakes into the house and me having to explain to her over and over that even though they’re from a local place—a tiny store at the bottom of the hill that her house is perched on—they still raise her blood sugar.

  Six weeks of avoiding Jemma’s calls.

  Six weeks of my mother texting me to remind me that she pulled all the strings she could to keep me out of juvenile detention this time, and I’d better be staying out of trouble.

  Six weeks of wheeling myself under this damn car and trying to forget that it wasn’t that long ago that Gramps and Dad were working out here together.

  Six weeks of trying to silence the stupid, childish voice in my head that tells me if I fix it up the way they dreamed, maybe one of them will come back…

  “So are you coming to get it? I don’t hold parts that haven’t been prepaid. And I don’t have the space to keep them just sitting around. I can set it aside till closing tonight for you—”

  “I’ll be right there,” I say. This guy is probably full of shit. I seriously doubt he’d be able to turn over this part that quickly if I don’t make it, but I can’t take my chances. I need this part.

  I leap to my feet, smacking my face on the lamp again. When I steady myself I hear it.

  It’s the tiniest of knocks. So small that I pause, pressed up against the car and listen for it again.

  “Hello?” I hear a voice on the outside of the garage. At least I think I do.

  “Hang on!” I yell back. I make my way to the side door in slow motion, trying not to knock anything over that will set off a domino effect in the cluttered garage.

  I pull open the door and expect to see a delivery person or the kid up the street who keeps dropping by to see if we want to buy any overpriced, mediocre lobster rolls for her class fundraiser.

  Instead, I’ve got a girl standing in front of me, hugging herself tightly, with her teeth chattering. She’s a stranger, but before I even bother to ask her name or what she’s doing here, I reach out and grasp her forearm, tugging her into the cramped but warm garage.

  “It’s freezing out there!” I say as I slam the door closed behind her. I sound like an old curmudgeonly man, hollering at kids for stepping on his freshly mowed lawn. I have to bite back asking her what the hell she’s doing out in nothing more than shorts and a light sweater when it’s barely above freezing.

  She pulls her brows down and bites her lip, looking embarrassed.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. There barely room for one person in this space, much less two. And we definitely do not fit comfortably. That means this girl—this stranger—is nearly pressed up against my chest.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you. I just—I live a couple of houses down and I locked myself out. I tried the other neighbors but I guess those houses are only occupied in the summer, they all look empty. And then I tried the front door but there was no answer. I heard your voice in here—”

  “My grandmother, she’s probably napping—” She smells powdery and soft and slightly fruity.

  “God,” she smacks her tiny palm to her forehead. “I hope I didn’t wake her. I’m so sorry. So sorry. I’m such a moron.” She keeps mumbling, but it’s so low I can’t make it out, and I think she’s maybe not even talking to me anyway.

  “So, you need to use the phone?” I offer.

  “No,” she says and shakes her head. “I don’t exactly have anyone to call…”

  I pull my brows together and cock my head to the side, confused. Something isn’t adding up. Not in a sinister way, in a this-girl-is-mysterious-and-I-want-to-figure-her-out-way. Or maybe I’m just starved for human interaction, and I’m making more out of this than there really is.

  Either way, I take a chance and ask, “But you live right down the street? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I do. I’m not—I’m not crazy or anything if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Right, well, you’re looking at me like—”

  Like you’re adorable, because that’s what you are. But even if I’m thinking it, I don’t say it, because I’m not a total creep. Or, at least I’m trying not to be since I’ve been handed my second and final chance out here in Gloucester. And this girl doesn’t seem like the kind who is in any way impressed with guys like me.

  “Like you’re dressed in shorts when there’s still snow on the ground, and you have no one to call when you’re locked out? What’s your name?”

  She pulls back and squints her eyes a
t me. She’s trying to look fierce but the way the left side of her lip twitches with nervousness gives her away.

  “I don’t know if I should tell you now.”

  “Right, well, you look like you have tons of options,” I say with a laugh and extend my hand. “I’m Gabe.”

  She pulls her hands out of the pockets of her cardigan and shakes my hand. Her fingers are tiny icicles in mine. “Lena. The white house with the blue trim is mine.”

  “Ah, the one that looks too modern to really fit in out here?” I don’t mean to insult her house, but it sticks out on this street of historic homes.

  She shrugs. “I guess. Could you help me.”

  “Help you what? Break into your house?”

  “It’s not breaking in. I live there. I swear.”

  “Right—”

  “Listen,” her voice firms up more than it has been. “My parents are out of town, my sister is in the middle of a serious breakup, or breakdown, or whatever you want to call it, and I was stupid enough to lock myself out after only being home alone for a few minutes. I don’t need your raised eyebrow or snarky attitude. What I need is a way into my house. Please.”

  “Ouch, didn’t realize my eyebrows were so upsetting,” I say with a laugh. She doesn’t smile back.

  We stand there staring at each other for a long moment before she asks, “Can you help me get in or not?”

  I pull my phone back out of my pocket and look at the time. I have to get moving if I’m going to make it into Boston to the parts shop and pick up that damn valve cover before Paul supposedly slaps it up on eBay and makes a nice profit.

  “I—shit, I honestly don’t think I can.”

  I want to help this girl out, I do, but I don’t know if she’s got a regular lock or a steel fortress she needs me to get her past, and I need to have my ass on a train in no more than thirty minutes if I’m going to make it to the parts shop in time.

  “But you have all of these tools,” she says, motioning around to Gramps’s well-outfitted garage.

  She’s as close to me as she can be without touching me, but somehow I want her closer. Or I at least don’t want her to leave.

  But that’s stupid, because I literally just met her a few minutes ago. And all of the problems that landed me in trouble and out here with Babci started with a girl, so I should want to keep my distance more than I do.

  Still, the way her mouth pouts in adorable disappointment makes saying ‘no’ to this particular girl more difficult than it should be.

  I swallow hard. “Right, but I also have somewhere I have to be.”

  “Oh,” she says. She takes the biggest step backward that the tiny space will allow—back away from me. It’s less than two inches, but it feels wrong.

  It feels like I should pull her back. I’m such a goddamn sucker.

  “Listen, I have to go into the city to pick something up. I have a really tight amount of time to get there, so…” I say the next part slowly, gauging her reaction to each word so I have the chance to backtrack if it goes wrong and she looks spooked. “You could…come with me. And I can help you get into your place when we get back? It won’t take long, just a quick train ride into the city and back.”

  “Okay,” she says, nodding her head way too fast.

  “Yeah?” And that was way too easy.

  “Yes. I want to. Definitely.”

  “Really?” I try not to sound so surprised, but damn, that was way easier than I thought it would be. “Cool. We just need to get you some clothes first.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. Those shorts are like, paper thin,” I say, and watch her tiny shoulders straighten up at the observation. “Not that I noticed, but, Lena—it’s Lena right?”

  “Yes, Gabe, it’s Lena.” Her voice is rigid and filled with annoyance. Funny how someone who thirty seconds ago asked me to basically break into her house for her is now annoyed with me.

  “Alright,” I say, around a grin. “I have to run inside and let my grandmother know I’m headed out. My room is at the top of the stairs, you can grab something—”

  “I said I’m okay.” I get the feeling this girl would rather freeze to death than have me tell her what to do, so I give up. Besides, my ex wore crazier shit in the dead of winter, and we’re just making a quick in-and-out of the city.

  “Alright,” I say, holding up my palms surrender style. “Whatever you say, Lena. I’ll be right back then.”

  I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m not supposed to be in the city at all and bringing a stranger along with me—especially a stranger with a hazel eyes that look like there is liquid copper running through them—a stranger who smells like wild berries even though a blizzard just came through—a stranger whose soft hands fit a little too well in mine—doesn’t feel like the best way to stay out of trouble, but dammit, after only talking to Babci for the last several weeks,

  I couldn’t turn this girl away.

  The truth is all sorts of complicated, even if it’s simple: something in me just isn’t ready to say goodbye to Lena yet.

  “Hey Babs,” I say. I lean over the couch where she’s laying down. Her eyes are still heavy with sleep so I whisper. “I’m heading into town to grab a part for Pop’s car, okay?”

  “Gabriel? What are you doing here?”

  As the words leave her mouth, I pull out my phone and send a quick text to Ms. Seale next door, asking her to check in on Babci a few times while I’m out.

  She won’t mind looking in on her, especially because it’ll mean she has an excuse to park herself at our kitchen table to give me a full report tomorrow—whether there’s actually anything to report or not.

  She brings me food and insists on me eating it all while she’s here, no matter how much I protest that I’m stuffed, that I don’t, in fact, need to eat an entire pot roast on my own.

  She talks while I eat. Her food is decent, so at least there’s that.

  I guess Ms. Seale is just lonely.

  Same as the rest of us.

  “Go back to sleep, Babci. I’ll be home soon.” My phone dings, and it’s a message from Ms. Seale saying she’ll be right over to sit with Babs.

  I feel lucky to have at least one reliable person in my life, even if she’s a mildly crazy old woman who happens to be a wicked flirt.

  “Tell your grandfather and your daddy that there’s roast chicken in the oven when they’re ready for dinner. I didn’t make them a pie tonight, though. Your daddy didn’t get any lemons. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll make a pie.”

  I pull in a long breath. My sweet grandmother. I hope she’s at peace in her own mind at least.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I swallow hard, trying to dislodge the burning feeling in my throat before I walk back into the garage to find Lena.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  “Sure,” she says.

  “Because you can stay here until I get back. I shouldn’t be that long, and my grandma is inside—”

  “I said I’m good. Let’s go.”

  “Okay.” I can’t help but smirk at this strange girl, acting tough in her shorts in the snow.

  “Do you need to get that?” I ask this guy—I ask Gabe—as his phone buzzes in his hand for at least the fourth time since we left Gloucester.

  He shakes his head, taps on the screen and then slides it into his coat pocket. “No, I’m good.”

  I don’t know who is trying to get ahold of him, but whoever it is, they’re awfully persistent. Not that it’s my business. At all. I’m just a weirdo who agrees to go into the city with a stranger. Who does that? People that are bored, that’s who. And locked out of their houses.

  I lean in closer to the warm air piping from the heating system, trying to soak it all up before the doors open again and the outside air freezes me to the core.

  I should have taken Gabe up on his offer of pants. He’s several inches taller than me, but even extra-long sweatpants would have been b
etter than these shorts.

  In actuality, what I should have done is turned him down altogether. That’s what a sane person would do, right?

  I should have called Kaydi and hung out in Gabe’s nice warm house with his sweet grandmother until my sister made it back across town to let me back in the house. Sure Kaydi would have yelled at me and told me how I’d ruined her life. Again.

  Her complaining about me isn’t anything new, and at least I’d be warm.

  But I wasn’t going to do that.

  Not just because scooping my eyeballs out with a melon baller sounded preferable to calling my sister, but because right now, I’d take freezing over passing up the chance for a little adventure.

  A trip into the city with someone new? Someone new with nice, broad shoulders and a wicked grin that he flashes to cover up what’s really going on inside?

  No way.

  I’m all in.

  And maybe a little crazy.

  Even though I’ve lived just outside the city my entire life, I’ve only been on the train once before. Mom and I stopped for lunch at a place around the corner from the Children’s Hospital my doctor’s office is in, and when we got back to our car late that afternoon, the battery was dead. Dad was out of town for a meeting and it was, of course, freezing.

  So, we hopped on the train back to Gloucester, then had to take the bus back to our house. It was one of the coolest days ever, even though Mom was rocking back and forth with nervousness the entire time.

  Sometimes I wonder what my Mom was like before the life crushing anxiety of being my parent took over her soul.

  The train is packed pretty tightly with people tonight. More crowded than the one and only other time I was on it.

  There’s something about sitting so close to people, when everyone is on their way to entirely different places that is so fascinating. Outside the train, the world flashes too quickly to focus on one thing, but inside there’s plenty of time to wonder what everyone’s story is.