Luna's Arc

Chapter 10 of 29

The letter shook in Luna's hand. She folded it and looked past the oldest boy, at the ragged children crowding the sagging porch. She needed answers, but not with all of them watching. She knelt beside Luke. "Go play with the others," she told him. "I want to talk to him alone." Luke hesitated, then let a small girl in a green hood tug him inside. Luna climbed the steps. The oldest boy stayed on the porch, arms crossed, guarding the doorway like it was his job. He watched her the way a stray watches a stranger who might have food. "You're the one the note wanted," he said. "You came. So now what?" "Now you tell me things." Luna sat on the top stair. After a moment, he sat too, a careful arm's length away. "How long have you been here?" He shrugged. "Long. Before I could count good." He picked at a torn thread on his sleeve. "They left me by the trees. Others came after. We just started calling ourselves the Ghost Kids." "Who left you?" Luna kept her voice soft. "Do you remember them at all?" His brow creased. "A man. A woman. Young." He rubbed his eyes. "I don't remember faces. Just... they weren't rough. The man set me down slow. The woman fixed my collar before they went." He looked at Luna, almost ashamed. "They were gentle. That's the only part I kept." Gentle. The word stopped Luna cold. She had built a story of cruel strangers, of someone hard and careless. Gentle did not fit. Or it fit too well. Her hand moved before she decided. She drew the locket from under her shirt and pressed the clasp. It opened. The young man and woman smiled up from the small picture, cheek to cheek. She turned it toward him. "Was this the man and the woman?" The boy leaned in. His tired face changed. His eyes went wide, then bright, and he nodded fast. "Yeah. That's them. That's the two." He almost smiled. "You know them?" Luna could not answer. The porch seemed to tilt. Her parents. The faces in her locket, the ones she had carried through the woods like a promise, were the same faces this boy remembered setting him down under the trees. Not one child. Not two. All of them. The book of names. The hundreds. She closed the locket. Her fingers were steady, but something inside her had cracked and would not close. "You okay?" the boy asked. "They're my parents," Luna said. The words tasted wrong. "My mother and father. They left you here too." The boy stared at the shut locket. His hope drained out slow, and his face went blank. "Then they're not coming back for me," he said. "They never were." Luna looked at the door where Luke had gone. She had wanted the truth. Now she had it, and it named the people she loved. She stood. She had to know why. This is when Luna realized that maybe she could give this boy some hope. And she shared the note, addressed to her, stating that her Mom and Dad were going to come back for her. “If they mean this, then my guess is they don’t just mean coming back for me. But coming back for us all.” Luna stated. Ghost Kid 1 let out a small smile. “You are right. I think that’s enough interrogation for now. Let’s go inside and find something to eat. You look starved.” Ghost Kid 1 offered his hand to Luna and she followed him inside.