Zane had potential

There’s something comforting about the moon, Zane decided, as he stared at it from his bedroom window. He could hear Garroth downstairs charming their guests. It was past midnight now, and they were supposed to be gone by 10 but their car still blocked up the neighbors driveway. Zane was starving, but the thought of going downstairs and seeing all those people turned his gnawing hunger into something scratching inside him, twisting and turning and begging him to stay were he was, lest something went wrong and it was proven all over again how he just wasn’t good enough. He didn’t want to think about it, but the thought of people forced situation after situation displaying his humiliation through his mind. He began to claw at his skin and his scalp to try and drag them out.

The moon didn’t judge him they way the people downstairs would. The way just about everyone did. The moon was the patron god of all the lonely kids. All of them would stare up at the same moon when they couldn’t sleep and their rooms were lit up by the reflection of the sun on it, turning the fiery daylight into something gentle, something soft, something that didn’t glare in your eyes and hurt, but a kind of light that helped you see through the darkest nights without forcing you into a world where everyone could see your every mistake.

He laughed to himself, though it was more bitter and weak than anything actually funny. This was edgy, even for Zane. There was a pang in his chest and a sting behind his eyes with that realization and the shame brought with it. There was something about his real feelings and world being mocked for being extreme that made him more uncomfortable than anything else people said to him. Being made fun of for the feelings was worse than feeling them in the first place.

Something inside him ached and screamed for him to run away. To leave all the people and live in the stars were no one could see him and no one could tell him that who he was was wrong. He thought maybe once he escaped from everyone he might find peace, but he couldn’t even get out of bed, so there was no way he’d make it to space when he felt like his blood was made of lead.

He thought perhaps the moon was the only one who would understand. He wished he could find someone else in the world who would understand.

There was something comforting about the moon, Kawaii~Chan decided, as she craned her neck to see it overhead. The wind rustled through her hair, and she hated the inky black that swept through the edge of her vision. An urge to shave it all off surged through her, but it melted back into heavy misery as she thought of what her parents might say, if they noticed at all. They were so busy with her siblings, they were so proud of them. KC just melted away behind them. She might as well not have been real.

The moon always saw her. She could look at the moon and all the stars twinkling in the sky and they would look right back. Even lovelier, they would look back and they would see KC as she was. It wouldn’t see her as what people wanted her to be but what she wasn’t, or as the person she was trying to leave behind. The moon didn’t want anything from her, and she felt more comfort in that than she had ever felt in her mother’s lap.

KC’s lips started to tremble and suddenly the roof felt so much colder and the space around her so much more empty. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had hugged her, and she pressed her hands around her ears as she tried to block out the thoughts creeping into her mind about how she wasn’t even worthy of her mother’s love. She thought it was pathetic, but something wormed into her heart that stung more than anything her mother could’ve told her. It hurt more that her mother didn’t say anything at all. Her mother didn’t think she was pathetic because her mother didn’t think of her at all.

She looked back up at the moon, and something inside her eased. People were always talking about the sun and basking in that heat, but she thought the moon was infinitely more beautiful. She supposed the moon was used to being ignored. Still, the moon united people. All the lonely kids were staring up at it like her, and she wondered if there was anyone looking up at it along with her, feeling the same melancholy misery that was consuming her there.