* * *
They brought her back to the rest of the tribe. Voices of celebration rang out, proclaiming the dragon’s death and their lost warrior’s return. Luna’s parents found her in the crowd and embraced her.
“You’re alive!” her mother cried. She held onto Luna like she didn’t ever want to let go. Luna put her arms around her mother, returning the hug with equal fervor.
Even her father, usually stoic in hiding his emotions, let tears stream down his cheeks.
“How did you survive?” her mother asked. “How did you find us?”
“It was the moon goddess, Mama. She showed me the way.” Luna’s mother gazed into her daughter’s eyes. It was the first time that Luna had attributed anything to her mother’s favorite deity, but the smile on her face revealed her gratitude to the goddess. “There’s something wonderful that I need to tell everyone.”
“What is it?” her father asked.
“A new home for us. The moon goddess showed me our new home last night.”
Luna pulled her parents along to the area where the tribe’s elders stood with Kongzi, the leader of the warriors. As the elders saw them approach, Kongzi stepped forward and greeted Luna.
“The story of your courage against the sand dragon will be told for generations to come. Congratulations, Luna, and thank the gods for your safe return.”
“Thank you.” She then told them of her journey after the sand dragon’s first attack. She concluded with a description of the fertile valley she had found, with its lake and grass and trees and fruits.
The elders couldn’t believe that such a paradise existed within the boundaries of their barren lands. “Thank the moon goddess indeed,” Kongzi said.
News of the valley spread quickly, and Luna’s people readied their wagons for the short journey. With newfound hope in their hearts, the tribe set forth for the valley behind the mountain crevice, led by their moon warrior.
About H.S. Stone
Even before he could read, H.S. Stone wanted to write a book. Fascinated by the stories that seemed to leap from his kindergarten teacher's books, he went home and wrote his own book, with illustrations and bound by staples. Of course, since he didn't know how to read or write yet, the book was full of gibberish.
Undaunted, H.S. eventually mastered the ABC's and continued to write throughout his grade school years, adolescence, and into adulthood. Despite earning a degree and working in a field not related to writing, he continued to pursue his writing passion.
H.S. Stone's publications include novels aimed at Young Adult and Middle Grade readers as well as several short stories. He currently lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Love Me or Love Me Not
Katie Hayoz
I’m on the blowup mattress at Uncle Jared’s staring at the ceiling and playing the game. Six months is a long time for me to be staying on an inflatable bed rather than in a real one, but neither I nor Uncle Jared wants to go out and buy something sturdy. Because then it would mean this whole situation is more than temporary.
I’ve got a decent list of Love Me’s: Mom refusing to sell the painting she did of me when I was a baby. Dad letting me use the hot water for a shower in the morning and taking the cold without complaint. Mom making sand angels with me on damp, packed beaches. Dad searching out snails with me in the rain. Mom’s patience when she taught me to sketch. Dad’s patience when he taught me to plant a seed in black soil. The three of us, on the road, making home wherever we decided to stop. The three of us together, never needing anyone but each other.
For the past six months, I’ve been playing this game in my head: Love Me or Love Me Not. I pluck memories from my brain at random, and place them into a category. I’m hoping one day the Love Me category will be so full, it’ll trump the fact that they left me. And left me with a secret.
I’m fifteen and I’ve attended eight different schools. Not because I’m a head case or anything. It’s because Mom and Dad moved all the time. They put me into school when they had to, but mostly they taught me themselves so I could learn in the open and not be stuck inside concrete walls. They believed in freedom and experience and not in school system drones. Real learning, they said, was done through discovering new places. I can pass any geography test you throw at me, tell you where you are in the country by the smell and density of the dirt. I know swimming in a glacial stream is like the snap of fresh picked string beans and that swimming in the salty ocean is like the slow melt of butter in the sun. I can point out just about any constellation in the sky on a clear night. This is the kind of stuff Mom and Dad called the real essence of life. The essence you lost with your feet in one place.
So they were always on the move. And they always always took me with them. Love Me.
Until the last time, when they didn’t. Love Me Not.
That flash of memory starts me scratching. I drag my fingers up and down the length of my inner arm, expecting to feel the familiar sharpness and pain of my nails. I’m so focused on my memory I barely notice Uncle Jared come in. He sits on the mattress, his weight shifting the air in the bed and lifting me higher. He puts his hand over mine. His fingers are warm and thick and calloused.
I look down at my arm to see my handiwork. But Uncle Jared has made sure my nails are cut to the quick. There are no bright pink scratches to reward me. Just a dull ache from pressing so hard.
“Time to go,” he tells me. “Your teacher said seven o’clock. The comet should be at its brightest tonight.”
I start trying to scrub off my skin again, but Uncle Jared squeezes my fingers to stop them. “Star,” he says. “I understand it’s got to be tough to be with all these students you’ve only just met. You don’t need to worry. I’ll be there. Okay?”
I nod, even though it’s not the crowd of students that’s getting to me. It’s the comet. But Uncle Jared wouldn’t know that. Nobody knows but me. Love Me, or Love Me Not?
We drive over to the high school with a quilt, some hot chocolate in a thermos and Uncle Jared’s camera. It’s a clear, still September night, perfect for star-gazing. If I were any other girl, I’d be excited that just showing up will count for half of my participation grade in Physics. But I’m me. I don’t care about grades or participation. I’m only trying for Uncle Jared. Because he says it’s important once you’re in the system. Thing is, Mom and Dad always said being in the system was a Bad Thing. And yet, here I am. Love Me Not.
There are blankets spread out all over the lawn in front of the school. A telescope is set up on a tripod in the middle. It’s black and short and the lens is fat. It looks like it’d grab a lot of light. Like you could see as far as the particles that make up the tail of the comet. Talons of fear and anticipation claw at my stomach.
Kids are sprawled everywhere, pointing at the sky. I take a breath and look up. The comet is visible, even without the telescope. From here it looks like a bright streak. Like a long-haired star.
A memory hits me from when I was young: Mom running a brush through my hair in the back of the RV.
Mom painted sunrises, sunsets and the night sky. We drove around the country because it was her goal to get a series from every single state. Dad would take the wheel and drive until Mom saw a vista she decided would make a great canvas. We’d park and make it home – sometimes for a couple weeks, sometimes a couple months. While Mom set up her easel, Dad would put a hand on my head and say, “You see that woman? You see your mother? She’s the next Georgia O’Keeffe. She’s got magic in those fingers.” His eyes would get that fuzzy look to them. “I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.”
“You already are, Dad,” I’d remind him. Then we’d smile at each other and laugh.
Mom and Dad knew I could take care of myself, so they let me. I wasn’t like kids who needed adults for everything. I knew how to cook, how to hitchhike, how to avoid complication
and to show up for the occasional class at a school when necessary.
Dad worked odd jobs when we stopped places. The jobs didn’t last long. Supervisors had a problem with Dad and what he called his “free-living” attitude.
“You, your Mom and me, we’re not like other people,” Dad would say. “Other people, they see us coming and they get scared. They get jealous. People’ll do all sorts of stuff when they’re jealous of what you’ve got or who you are.” He’d look at me, his dark eyes sharp. “Well, screw ‘em. We’ve got each other.”
He and Mom were always tangled in each other’s arms, always touching like it kept them breathing. When Mom was away from her easel, she fussed over Dad. Cooed at him like a dove. She fussed over me, too, during those times. I let my hair grow long and wild, braiding it tight so I didn’t have to brush it every day. Once she’d notice it, though, she’d pull the antique silver backed brush from the bathroom cabinet and sit me down. I never fought it because everything – from the gentle tugging, to the familiar smell of paint on her fingers, to the feel of her knees against my back – everything reminded me that we belonged to each other.
In the memory that comes to mind, I was probably six or seven. Mom sat beside me in the booth with the sticky vinyl seats that we used as both an eating and living area. I was turned sideways, my back to her, her knees warming the lower right side of my hip. She ran the brush through my blond waves, section by section, the rhythm of it making me sleepy.
“My long-haired Star,” she said, her voice soft. “That’s what they used to call comets hundreds of years ago. They used to think they were long-haired stars.”
When I looked up at the night sky, it felt cold and lonely and way too vast. But when I looked at Mom’s paintings the brightness of the stars were warm dots of fire and the dark sky was a cozy blanket. Maybe it was the colors she used. Maybe it was the way she spread the paint on the canvas. Or maybe it was how she felt about space. Not that it was an open, unexplored area, but rather that whatever was out there was really the root of us all.
Putting down the brush and running her hand over my head, Mom smiled at me. “Don’t ever cut your hair short, Long-Haired Star. That way, you’ll always be my personal comet.”
Mom’s paintings of sunsets were beautiful, but her paintings of stars were amazing. They sold out right away at art fairs and galleries. And even they were nothing compared to her paintings of comets. Love Me, I tell myself now.
My breath is coming fast and quick, though I don’t know why. The memory isn’t a bad one. But my whole body starts shaking. I sit on the quilt, hoping to calm down while Uncle Jared sets up a tripod for his camera. I reach up to twist my braid, but instead my fingers meet the scraggly ends of my pixie cut. I hacked my hair off three weeks after Mom and Dad left.
In the months before they took off, money had been tight. Dad was jumping from job to job more than usual, and Mom’s paintings weren’t selling like they did before. And then Mom got the news that Grandma died. We’d been on our way to see her at the hospital, but we were still three states away when Uncle Jared called.
The sun was melting to a pool of orange in the sky and for once Mom didn’t say a word about its beauty. She dropped her phone onto her lap, staring out the windshield as Dad repeated over and over, “Janine? Baby, are you okay?”
“Pull over.” Mom’s voice was rough and deep.
“But we’re –”
“Park it!”
Dad pulled into a ginormous parking lot in front of an abandoned grocery store. There were no other cars or campers. Just a few birds picking at a small animal carcass near the handicapped spots.
Mom pushed through the RV to the back and started pulling paintings from the sleeping area that filled up half of the vehicle. It was where she kept everything she’d ever done. Her face was slick with tears as she kicked the door open and threw the canvases on the ground. She kept grabbing her paintings and hurling them out of the RV.
“Janine! Stop!” Dad tugged at her shoulders. “You can’t do this.”
“The hell I can’t. Don’t stop me. Don’t you dare.” She shook herself from his grip and rummaged through the drawer near the kitchen sink until she found a box of matches.
They sky had turned a bruise-colored purple when she hopped out of the RV, me and Dad on her heels. The heap of artwork in front of us reached my chest. It was everything, absolutely everything she’d ever done and hadn’t yet sold. Mom lit a match, the scratch of it against the flint strip on the box loud in the still air. Dad yelled like she was setting him on fire. I watched with a tight heart as the pile of paintings turned into a bonfire on the blacktop.
A sob dribbled out of Mom’s mouth and Dad took her into his arms. “What’s the point,” she said. “Why are we even here?”
Dad began to whisper to her like they were alone in the world. I stood close enough to the fire to feel it hot against my nose and cheeks and chest. The painting that Mom had done of me when I was a baby -- the one she’d always refused to sell despite the hefty offers – was already black around the edges. The smoke made my eyes water. Love Me Not.
Uncle Jared stops messing with his camera and looks at me. His eyes are hazel and his hair is near white blond, like my Mom’s. “Hey?” he says. “You cold?”
I’m not, but I can’t stop shivering. I hug my knees to me as he gets the thermos of hot chocolate out of our bag. Steam wafts out, the bitter-sweet smell of chocolate drifting upwards. I look down into the depths of the thermos then take a long drink, the heat of it scorching the inside of my throat.
“Thanks,” I tell him. Not just for the hot chocolate. For so much more.
After Mom’s bonfire, she insisted we keep driving. We didn’t settle in one place for more than three days. Until we hit Louisiana.
The first night we were there, Mom spotted a handout tacked up to the local supermarket’s bulletin board. It was glossy -- a brilliant picture of space with a glowing comet streaking across the middle. You Have a Higher Purpose was printed in a bold yellow font. She stood there, arms around a paper grocery bag and just stared at the paper. She wasn’t used to doing the shopping. She was out of place in the aisles with the boxes and bottles; she’d looked at the products like she was confused or lost. Even the bulletin board was distracting her.
“Mom,” I said. “Let’s go. The ice cream will melt.”
She pointed to the information stamped at the bottom of the paper. “There’s a meeting tonight. Maybe your Dad and I will go.”
“Fine with me.” I shrugged and headed out the door. She and Dad had “date night” pretty often but this would be the first time since the bonfire. Since she’d stopped painting. Normally, when they went out, I’d get to stay in the RV and make myself popcorn for dinner rather than cook up something for the three of us. I’d read a book or watch a movie then listen to the crickets while I mapped out the stars. I liked being alone from time to time. And Mom and Dad were always happy when they came back from wherever they were.
That night they weren’t just happy. They were giddy. Ecstatic. And the next night, Mom picked up her paintbrush. It was like the sun came out again after a long, hard rain. We stayed in Louisiana for enough time that I even had to enroll in school. Mom and Dad were busier and would leave me to eat popcorn alone more and more often. But they smiled all the time. Dad whistled and Mom hummed.
I never expected they’d just up and leave me.
Getting to and from school involved walking twenty minutes on the side of a highway to the bus stop. The day they left, the air was thick and sticky. By the time I got to the RV park, sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging them. I blinked and blinked, looking at the spot where our RV should have been. Gone. It was weird for them to take the whole vehicle to go into town – they had Dad’s motorbike for that. I sighed and threw my backpack onto the picnic table in the grass behind our empty slot. I wanted a shower, but didn’t even have a towel or change of clothes.
For the
first hour, I flipped through my Math book and swatted at the bugs that kept buzzing around my head. I was hot and hungry. And ticked. Where were they that they took the whole freaking house? The second hour I started to worry. What if they’d been in an accident? I trudged across the park to the bath house/recreation center. There were a few people around; no one I knew. We never made friends when we went places. We kept to ourselves. I found a dollar in my backpack and got a Snickers from the vending machine. I downed it in three bites, but it wasn’t just hunger that was making my stomach churn. I went to reception. The park owner’s daughter was behind the desk, scrolling through messages on her phone.
“Hi. Um, I was just wondering if my parents left a note or something for me?”
She responded without even looking up. “Dunno. Just got here. Woulda been Dad that took any info.”
“Well, can you find out?” Panic had already started clawing at my throat and chest so I spoke louder than I’d intended. The girl gave me a death stare then got up to find her dad. When she came back, he was with her, a long envelope in his hands.
“Star?” he asked.
When I nodded he gave me the envelope. It was plain white with my name in blue on the front. Dad’s writing.
The park owner leaned on the reception desk. “They had to take off fast. They paid for a tent cabin for you to sleep in tonight. Normally I wouldn’t let a minor stay alone, but I guess this once…” He studied at me, his eyes threatening. “They said you wouldn’t be any trouble. You tell anyone I let you stay, I’ll deny it.”
He handed me a flashlight (“you might need it to get to the toilet in the middle of the night”) and led me to the tent. Inside were two cots, stripped bare, and a table. When he was gone, I sat on one of the cots and slid my finger under the flap of the envelope. Inside was twenty dollars and a piece of lined paper, the left edge jagged from where it was ripped from a notebook. Mom’s slanty cursive filled the page with an explanation written in red. Underneath was a telephone number and a line of Dad’s tight printing in blue ink: “We know you can take care of yourself, but call your Uncle Jared. He’ll be good to you.”
It was like something ripped opened in my chest. Like there was a huge crater where my heart was supposed to be. It hurt and yet felt like absolutely nothing at the same time. I lay on the cot, staring up at the mildew spots on the tent ceiling until the sun came up.
I didn’t go to school the next day. Instead, I called Uncle Jared. I’d only seen him twice in my life before that, but he flew down from Wisconsin to get me 12 hours later.
The first week after Mom and Dad left, Uncle Jared and I were still checking our phones every five minutes, still jumping up at the sound of a car door slamming. I hadn’t shown him the note, but I told him where I thought they’d gone. He did his best to track them down, contacting police and hospitals and friends. Yet it seemed they’d disappeared off the map.
The second week, he was reassuring. “They’ve been under a lot of stress, Star. They probably needed to get away for a bit. It was stupid to leave like that, but they’ll be back in the next couple days. You’ll see.”
A week after that, I heard him on the phone with his girlfriend. “I know my sister is selfish; she’s been all about herself her whole life. But this takes the cake. I don’t care what kind of money problems you have. I don’t care who you’re grieving. And I really don’t give a rip what’s involved in a spiritual cleansing. Who has a kid and leaves them from one day to the next? What the hell? I mean, really? What kind of person does that?”
While he was still on the phone, I took Mom and Dad’s note out and read it again. Then I found a pair of kitchen scissors and tore through the blonde waterfall that fell to my waist. When I was done, I could have passed for military personnel.
I never wanted to be Mom and Dad’s Long-Haired Star again. Love Me Not.
“Star!” Uncle Jared says now. “Come check this out!” He’s looking through the school’s telescope, waving me over. Next to him is my Physics teacher, Mr. Greene, who’s checking off names on a clipboard, making sure everyone is there and accounted for.
I pick my way through the crowd, stepping between stretched out bodies. A couple of people smile as I pass; most just eye me in curiosity. I’m the new girl. Uncle Jared says I should make an effort to be friendly and fit in. But I don’t smile back or say, “Excuse me.” It doesn’t seem to matter enough.
Mr. Greene gestures to the telescope and says to me, “Have a look-see. You just might be tested on this in the morning.” He winks at Uncle Jared.
There are only two steps between me and the telescope yet I’m not sure I can breach that gap. My whole head prickles as sweat beads up around my hairline. I take in a breath and it’s razor-sharp. My legs shake. I’m afraid if I move, I’ll fall to the ground. Or even worse, I’ll make it to the telescope and see it – the comet’s tail, glowing brighter than it should be. Glowing bright with promise.
My feet inch forward, the grass squeaking under the soles of my shoes. I reach out to the cool surface of the telescope and stand in front of it, sweat now gathering in between my breasts and on my lower back. It takes a second when I peek through the lens to focus on the comet, but then there it is. It’s a bluey-white fuzzy-edged ball, outshining everything else in the sky. And behind it is not a faint streak of a tail like those you see in textbooks. No. Behind it is a wide spray of light, with plumes like a feather. Behind it, the tail steals the show.
Mr. Greene is talking to me or Uncle Jared or maybe even everyone. He’s going on about dust tails and ion tails and perihelion. I’m not listening. The nearly inexistent edge of my nails find the tender part of my skin and scratch and scratch and scratch. I’m keeping Mom and Dad’s secret under my skin. It itches like hell.
It’s only when I feel the thick wetness of blood on my fingers that I step away from the telescope and stop scratching. I look at Uncle Jared and feel for the note in my pocket. But while I do so, I’m playing the game.
The memory I pull forward is the most important one. I didn’t know it then, but Z had already changed everything. Mom and Dad met Z when we came to Louisiana, when they went to that meeting about higher purpose that was advertised on the paper Mom saw at the supermarket.
I never officially met Z. The day after Mom and Dad went to the meeting, my stomach hurt and I skipped out of school early. My bed was in the overhead cab and I had the curtains pulled, so when Mom and Dad came in they didn’t know I was there.
I was about to call out to them when I peeked through the curtains and saw they were with someone else.
He was thin and pale, his dark hair streaked with silver. He looked clean, almost sterile, his shirt pressed, his face glowing. His smile was small but he gave off a feeling of pure euphoria. His eyes were the kind of blue that made you blink it was so bright. The kind of blue that kept you captured.
Dad made him herbal tea while Mom sat across from the man in the kitchen booth. Their conversation was hard to follow most of the time, but I understood Z’s name and that he was some sort of spiritual leader. His voice was like rich chocolate and I saw Mom’s shoulders relax at the sound of it. He spoke of a higher purpose, of a higher plane, of a fulfillment of the soul’s tasks on Earth. “Once our work here is finished, we must move on or wither. It is no longer family or friends who are important. It is the soul and only the soul.”
Dad set the tea in front of Z and slid in the seat next to Mom. They leaned into each other and held hands. I saw Dad gently squeeze Mom’s fingers when Z said Utopia could be found on the tail of a comet.
I knew about comets. We’d been studying them because the comet Promise was nearing Earth and had become visible to the naked eye. It was expected to get brighter over the next few months before continuing its trajectory away from us. A comet was like a big, rocky snowball. Not a road to paradise. I didn’t understand what Z meant calling its tail Utopia.
Z stopped talking and gazed up at the overhead cab. I
knew I was hidden, but I still felt his eyes spear me when he started speaking again. “Most people are limited in their knowledge. They only know what science tells us.” The blue of his irises flashed under the florescent lights. “Even science agrees that comets brought life to this planet. I can tell you they bring life beyond it, too, because I’ve experienced it. The bright tails you see are souls. Giddy, happy souls on their way to a new level of existence.”
The following day, Mom took the silver backed brush and her ruby ring from Grandma into town and came back with a telescope in their place. It was long and thin, and wobbled on the stand she planted into the grass next to the RV. It wasn’t very powerful, but it worked well enough. That night she set up an easel and a canvas and painted the comet Promise. It looked like a tiny circle of light back then, but she brought out its mystery and grandeur in her painting. I didn’t know what she and Dad did during the day – it’s only now that I realize they spent hours with Z – but at night Mom painted the comet. For the next two months we saw the comet grow brighter in the sky as well as on canvas. Dad was nearly in tears when he looked at her new work. “It’s her best ever,” he’d say. “She’s been touched by God.”
I should have known something wasn’t right. I should have wondered why we didn’t move anymore and why Mom was no longer interested in the sun. But it didn’t seem important, because Mom and Dad were happier than they’d ever been. And they were there every day when I got home after school.
Well, every day except that last one, six months ago. Love Me Not. Did they ever?
Now I take the note from my pocket. It’s worn soft from me caressing it over and over these past six months, from me transferring it from jean pocket to jean pocket. I look one more time through the telescope. That fanned tail of the comet illuminates the sky like a firework. I kept their secret and I hope it did for them exactly what they wanted it to do. Tears prick the backs of my eyeballs as I make a choice and hand my parents’ note to Uncle Jared. He takes in my bleeding arm and my wet face and his voice goes down a pitch. “What is it, Star? What’s happened?”
I shake my head. “It’s what’s happening.”
Uncle Jared knows about Z. He knows Mom and Dad took off to follow some man across the country. They’d left no forwarding address, no identifying information behind. Not even the name of the cult.
But he didn’t know what they’d planned on doing. I’ve been keeping that knowledge to myself. Until now.
I hand him the note and hear him breathe in and out, a slight rasp on the inhale. He glances at me then down to the note again. “Star…what…what is this?” I don’t answer. Instead, I wait for him to read it all. I keep my eyes on the comet, on its super bright tail. For me, there’s no need to see the paper. The words burn through my brain. They live under my skin:
It is with infinite joy that we follow Z on the road to Utopia. We are preparing for the final ascension to a higher plane. In a few months, the comet Promise will be at its brightest. It will be a beacon to lead the way.
You must tell NO ONE, Star, or our path home will be thwarted and we will forever be plunged into darkness. You must tell NO ONE, for there will not be such a chance as this for hundreds of years. We are blessed to go together.
When Promise ignites the sky, gaze upon it with awe and wonder. You will see our souls illuminating its tail. Gaze upon it with joy and love, for we are going to the happiest place we shall ever know.
Uncle Jared lets out a moan like he’s in pain. He shakes his head. “No. This can’t be. This just can’t… What does this mean, Star? Where are your parents?”
The comet Promise shines above us and for a split second I revel in how beautiful it is. For a split second I’m happy for my parents, hoping they got there, to their Utopia. That their souls are the reason the comet’s tail is so amazing.
“Gone,” I say to Uncle Jared.
I don’t know how they did it. I imagine once the police find all the bodies – Z and Mom and Dad and maybe some others – we’ll find out whether it was a lethal cocktail or carbon monoxide or suffocation. But I know that it’s done. And that they wanted it more than they wanted anything else. Ever.
They went to what they believed to be the happiest place in the universe. They made their plans and set out for paradise. But they didn’t take me with.
Love Me, or Love Me Not?
About Katie Hayoz
Katie Hayoz is a popcorn addict and lover of YA fiction. She is the author of Untethered, which was a finalist in the Mslexia novel competition and the recipient of an Indie B.R.A.G. medallion. She is currently acquiring a taste for strong coffee while working on several new novels. Born in the Midwest, she now lives in Geneva, Switzerland, where she shares an apartment with her husband, kids and cats.
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