The Lonely Moon

The Boy Behind the Mask

After I had made my response to her question, Sarah spent the rest of the day with a smile on her face so bright that it made me smile every time I saw it. The day had gone by without much happening until after dinner that night, Sarah stood up and went over to were I put my mask and picked it up. She looked over at me and said, "I think you should try going without your mask on." I replied by saying, "I don't know if that's a good idea, I don't feel uneasy having it off around you, but other people might not be so easy for me." She puts the mask down and comes over to me, embracing me from behind and saying in a soft voice, "Who cares what other people will say about it, you told me yourself that others opinions don't really matter to you anymore." I take a second to reply and then say, "While you do have a point there, I still don't know if it's a good idea, but since you seem very insistent on it. I will try to go without it." She stands back up and moves over to the couch, gesturing for me to join her. I stand up from the table and sit on the couch next to her, putting my arm around her, as if the naturally thing to do, she leans her head onto my shoulder. We stay like that for a little until I say, "Hey, you want to go to the lookout with me tonight, I'm going to go and I thought I would like some company and maybe I can finally introduce you to Cindy." She sits up stretching her arms and says, "Sure, I would like to." So we made our way to the lookout, where as I thought she would, Cindy was sitting on the railing staring into the sky. We walked up to her and I said, "Hey Cindy, been a while hasn't it been,  I'm sorry I haven't been here as often, I just had some stuff going on." She looks over at us with a smile and says, "So I see that you finally let someone in. Did you...tell her about what happened?" I look up at the moon with a sad smile and say, "I did, I told her everything, even about you. That reminds me, can you see Cindy?" Sarah replies while looking at Cindy, "Yes I can. It's nice to finally meet you Cindy, I'm Sarah." Cindy looks at Sarah and says, "I'm sorry for whatever made you able to see me, but that might just have made you the right person to reach out to John, I have been watching slowly drift in a emotionless state for years and it made me feel guilty." I look away from the moon and pay attention to Cindy, "You know why I blame myself for what happened. If I had just stayed down, you wouldn't have been killed." She quickly retorts, "Why don't you understand that I don't hold that against you, you did exactly what any brother would do to try and save their sister, of course you choose your sister you love over some random girl you have never seen before." Sarah says, "I agree with Cindy, not that I have any room to really say anything, but you tried to protect someone you loved, what those men did isn't your fault, they sound like they were cruel and unfair." Cindy nods in agreement, " They were, but I had nowhere else to go, so I didn't really have a choice to as whether I was with them or not." I take my attention back to the moon and take my mask off. Cindy is surprised by me doing this and says in an astonished voice, "So you can finally take your mask off around someone other then me. That moon doesn't seem so lonely and sad anymore, now does it?" Sarah seems confused by Cindy's comment, so I say this without averting my gaze from the moon, "The moon I see isn't pretty, it isn't wonderful. The moon I see is lonely and painful as if it's mocking my own existence when I look at it. That's why I told myself that as long as my moon appeared in the sky for me to see, that I could live knowing that I wasn't the only one who was lonely and in pain." Sarah comes up next to me and puts her hand on mine and looks up to the moon with me, she says in a hushed tone, "I can see what your getting at, the moon sits in the night sky, all alone, always moving, never in one spot for too long, always having to start everything over again and again." Cindy raises an eyebrow at our hands being together and asks me, "Are you guys together?" I forgot to tell Cindy about that, so I spent the next few minutes telling her what had happened in the last couple of weeks and when I was finally finished she looked at me with a smile and said in a proud tone, "You've come a long way from when you used to come here and cry so nobody would see. I'm happy that you can finally feel something other then sadness and loneliness. It's also good that you finally got away from your dad, if anyone should feel bad about what happened it should be him, it was his fault that happened in the first place." I reply to her, "What happened, happened, I just want my dad to love me again, instead of calling me a murder, but for now I have to accept that he just can't do that. I think I'm going to head back I'm starting to get tired and I would like to get up for school tomorrow, you going to come with Sarah?" Sarah reply's, "I'll go back in a little bit, I would like to talk to Cindy some more." With that I walk back to the house. Once I get there, I go immediately to bed and fall asleep.