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Hunter’s car is cold – the heater stopped working at the beginning of last spring and he kept meaning to get it fixed, but then the weather turned chilly faster than he could catch it. He can see his breath and the CD player stopped about an hour ago, but he hasn’t changed it.
He’s so alone – the only one in the Walmart parking lot, and the clock reads 2:00 AM but it’s an hour slow. He stopped crying a little bit ago, but there’s a balled up sock on the floor of the passenger seat that’s threatening to send him back into it.
He got a letter in the mail two days ago – postmark Notre Dame University. It was big. His dads were over the moon, his sisters hanging off his shoulders and yelling at him to open it.
It was a big letter. The kind with a “welcome to campus” brochure in it. A little part of him broke when he read the congratulations.
The thing is, MoonDancer was the one who was supposed to be there. She was the one who was going to go to the big city and design clothes for runways, send him selfies with Keith Haring and Chappell Roan. Hunter never had a plan – the nursing thing was a decision he made in spring of his junior year, when they were all getting yelled at to apply to colleges, and well, he likes taking care of people! It’s terrifying and he worries but he patches up MD’s cuts and washes his hair and he doesn’t ever want to stop doing that.
He choked up when MoonDancer picked up and he could barely get it out – “I’m going to college.”
“Oh.”
And that was it.
“Yeah.”
He hung up after that. How stupid he was to think he could live forever between the mountains and the desert, digging holes in the dirt and splashing his best friend with snowmelt in June.
~
It breaks at lunch on Monday. MoonDancer’s picking at her food, flicking the beans out of his corn and grunting in response to Hunter’s questions. Her hair is hanging in greasy, straight strands past her eyes. Hunter’s getting smaller and smaller, putting layers on and hunching low.
“Listen,” he says, almost imperceptible beneath the din. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to –”
“I’m not asking you to stay,” MD responds, curt. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. Why would he ever want to have this conversation?
“I know you aren’t, because you wouldn’t!” Hunter cries, still quiet. “You don’t tell me when you want something, you just sit with it and let yourself feel like shit! At least give me the knowledge that you want me around, even if I can’t stay.”
“Are you fucking stupid?” It’s the meanest MD’s been in a long time, the meanest she’s been to Hunter ever. “Seriously, are you stupid?”
Hunter’s scared. “I–”
“I’m not going to have this conversation. You’re going, I’m staying, we’ll get used to it. May as well start now, right?”
She shoots to her feet, takes her tray and slams it onto the counter. When he glances back, Hunter’s staring at his hands, shoulders tight and head low. It breaks something vital in her.
~
The lights are off in MoonDancer’s room. He’s piled the last of the afghans on her bed, and cannot decide whether she’s trying to smother herself or burn alive. There’s an ache in his chest like he’s never known, even before meeting Hunter.
Something is missing, and she is painfully aware of the month, the day, how close they are, in the grand scheme of things, to graduation. To August. To one last road trip.
Jesus, Jesus, she thinks. How am I supposed to get used to this?
It’s debilitating, eating him from the ribs out. She feels rotten, like she’s decomposing slowly. Something’s standing on his chest and she cannot breathe.
He bolts up in bed, gasping and clawing at her chest. Cold wind blows in through the window and she slams it shut for the first time in years.
Hunter called her two days ago, and then they were just supposed to go to school like nothing was different. Like he wasn’t leaving her.
She puts her hand down, feels the divot in the mattress that carved itself from Hunter’s hipbone, and weeps.
Jesus, Jesus.
~
The car door slams and MoonDancer’s buckling herself in. They’re driving into the mountains. She slips a CD into the player, disused until Hunter offered him a ride the first time. It’s a two hour drive, and MoonDancer apparently spent the night finding two hours worth of the worst dad jokes Hunter has ever heard.
“Why don’t seagulls fly over the bay? Because then they’d be bagels!”
“What’s the difference between a lion and a pizza? What? Please don’t go to the zoo.”
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
“How long are you going to stay with me?”
The last one isn’t a joke, and Hunter inhales. Out of the corner of his eye, MoonDancer’s chewing on his hair and staunchly avoiding Hunter’s gaze. The road stretches out ahead of them and Hunter can’t see the horizon for the mountains.
It’s with all the honesty in the world that he says, “forever.”
MoonDancer breathes out. “What do you call a bee that works for the government? A pollen-tician.”
Hunter laughs, and rain starts hitting the windshield.
~
The car door slams and MD’s buckling herself in. Hunter whips his head up so fast it cracks his neck, and he lets out a shout as MoonDancer settles, arms crossed and barefoot.
“Where the fuck did you come from?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” MoonDancer grits out, and Hunter sees that he’s shivering, even more than Hunter is.
“Did you walk here? How did you know where I was?”
“Lucky guess, I suppose,” MoonDancer mutters, and kicks her feet. “Can we go? Somewhere. North star.”
Hunter’s cold and he’s going to start crying again. “MD, what’s going on?”
“I tried not missing you, and it sucks, and I want you to stay, but you can’t and I know that, so can we just go?”
Hunter puts the car in drive. “Where the hell are we going?”
“Insomnia Cookies is open.”
It’s a twenty minute drive, and Hunter can’t take the silence. “I’ll come home every break. And… and I’ll tell everyone I meet about you. I’m not going to forget you just because I’ll be somewhere else.”
MoonDancer looks down. “You don’t know that. Take a picture of me with you and put it up on your desk and tell everyone I’m your long-lost lover fighting a space war and you’re waiting for me to come home.”
“I do know that. I will.”
Hunter buys. It’s a baker’s dozen, chocolate chip, and they split the thirteenth. It tastes like salt.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Hunter says, quiet. “I want it so bad, but I feel like I can’t breathe through it.”
“I can’t, either,” MoonDancer whispers. Hunter reaches out a hand and she grabs it, cutting off the circulation almost immediately.
“How long are you going to stay with me?” MD breathes out.
Hunter can see the outline of his rib in MoonDancer’s chest, can feel MoonDancer’s in his own. He can’t extract it, any more than he can stop his heart pumping blood.
Hunter grabs his other hand. When MD was born, Hunter decides, a part of him came screaming into the world along with her, and wouldn’t rest until they found each other.
“Forever.”
~
Alyse’s roommate is a friendly guy. He’s pre-med, just like all of them, but he’s one of those med students that was just always supposed to do this. She can picture him perfectly as a pediatrician, smiling and placing Band-Aids with the utmost care.
He’s a friendly guy. He keeps his stuff to his side of the room and turns off his light when she asks, and there’s a picture on his desk, the only one in a frame.
It’s a side profile of an elf – dark skin, green and purple hair. Alyse can’t really make out the facial features, because it’s a blurry photo and the sun is going down, but the person’s hair is thick, tight curls that take up half the picture.
It was tentative at first, Alyse’s relationship with him. She’s an only child and she’s never had to share a room before, but she thinks she’s handling it okay. She tells him about her family, and he tells her about his. He tells her about MoonDancer.
Alyse hears so much about her roommate’s best friend that she can almost start to see it, the way he carries himself like he’s making room for someone else, the way he shoves himself against the cinderblock much more than he needs to when he sleeps. He’s on the phone late into the night, and he’s got this weird Frankenstein-looking teddy bear that he explains matches one MoonDancer has, and Alyse doesn’t think she’s ever seen anyone love a person more.