The fluorescent light above my head fizzes in and out, giving us students below a meager amount of light to see, while holding on for dear life. It flickers, black-white, black-white, a vicious cycle it’d cling to until the elongated bulb was replaced. I try to concentrate on Physics--The Law of Conservation of Mass states that mass is neither created nor destroyed during a chemical equation--but the changing colors, black-white, black-white, distracts me.
My eyes scan my notebook. My notes start out pretty: Lomonosov was the first to outline this law. Then: Lomonosov is Russian. After: Russians are cool. The last word I am unsure of; I don’t know if I wrote it in English or Spanish. It’s probably Spanish, because I’ve been trying to learn the Latin language for years, so sometimes it fits its way into my vocabulary. Although, the most coherent thought I’m able to string together in it is “No habla Espanol. Habla inglés.”
At the very bottom of my notes sit a very well-drawn map of Spain, highlighting the provinces of Madrid and Navarre. Madrid is the capital of Spain. Navarre is the most French-speaking Spanish place in the world, but the name sounds like the titular character of a bad telenovela to me.
I look at my hands. As the color fades, so do they. In the light, wrinkles, lines, scratches, and bruises show. They are bitten to the quick. Spots of black polka dot them. I don’t have enough money to afford nail polish remover, and I don’t have enough time to paint them again. They remind me of Beth’s; the thought worries me.
The clock dings, a quiet hum, but it was enough for the students, who quickly file out of the classroom while ignoring the teacher’s protest of “Hey! Wait! Your homework!” I leave too, because just like them, I didn’t want homework.
The school hallway is filled with people. Jocks, emos, and preps--it will not be inaccurate to say that every cliche high school film modeled itself off of us. The social configuration is as follows: popular people, semi-popular people, unpopular people, losers, then me. I’m special, and I’m in a category of my own. Stacy’s somewhere in there with the semi-populars, but I think her freshmen status (and her status of being my friend) are the only things keeping her from hitting that top tier.
My school’s cavernous enough to enroll over 900 students, but I didn’t think it was big enough to fit Beth. I blink for a moment when I see her, standing outside the school office door. She doesn’t look like the Beth I knew. No, no. She is the effigy of the mother I once had, the mother who’d let her hair fall in ringlets down her back, the mother who you’d write about in an idyll, the mother who’d read me bedtime stories at night. This woman is my mother, my mother. I walk faster to her, so that this time she won’t leave me. This time, she’ll stay. I’ll catch her before she leaves again.
But as I approach, I’m hit with the harsh reality of life. Disappointment, I know by rote. It is an ideology carved into my heart, and when future people excavate my body from whatever grave I’m sleeping in, they’ll see the very emotion tattooed
on that red muscle as they cut me open.
This is not my mother. This is Beth. She’s got those tell-tale wrinkles around her droopy eyes, and her back stoops too low for her to be my mother. This is Beth. This is the woman I’m stuck with.
But her eyes read something different. This isn’t tiredness or irritability. This is sadness, pure sadness. I know it because I know how sadness feels. It is with this same sadness lacing her voice that she tells me,
“Moon, your dad--Greg--Gregory--he’s dead.”

The ocean, wide in her bearing and expanding upon everything I can see, churns and twists within herself, creating white frosts and toxic undercurrents designed to take any unsuspecting under its claws. The ocean, big as my eye could see, is deadly.
The sun, a giant orb of yellow, is in its fiery state, not its awe-inspiring one on the horizon, and because of such, I wear Beth’s old church hat, the one she doesn’t wear anymore because she doesn’t go to church, Sun’s flip-flops, almost falling off my feet because she’s got this weird thing going on with her toes where her second one is the tallest, and a striped collar shirt and loose flare jeans. The water laps against my feet, staining my denim. It tickles as it dries.
A bird--I don’t know what type it is, but it looks kinda like a Pelican--looms above, swarming and dipping in circuitous motions, then back up again, soaring high enough it could reach the sun. Then back down, low enough for its beak to lower to the ocean and snap up a fish, a struggling, jumping fish. I watch as the fish stills, and the bird devours it while in air.
There’s something about solitude that I know extremely well. Silence is my acquaintance; loneliness, my best friend.
My feet burn as the saltwater hits them. Each cut and laceration stings. I walked here from school. Three miles and all.

“Moon, your dad--Greg--Gregory--he’s dead.”

Beth’s lying. I know she is. This is her way of getting back at me. Gregory--dad--Gregory isn’t dead. He’s gonna come behind me. He won’t say a word. But he’ll come behind me and do something. I don’t even know what he’ll do. I don’t even know him. I didn’t even know my dad, and he died.
My silence, my torturing, horrid silence, is ended as voices and sounds creep closer and closer. I move, dragging my red feet along until I am out of view of the people, but they are in mine. I feel circumspect, like one of those ancient Chinese watchman who guarded the Great Wall. Only, I wasn’t trained in an encyclopedic knowledge of Sun Tzu and Confucius. I have no Emperor to serve until my last dying breath. But I can paint a nice nailpolish sun, and I take pride in that.
The voices are faces now. One’s Stacy, which surprises me. She got Rex for the weekend, but she said she’d be driving down to the Lakes to see her grandparents. Why is she here?
“And she’s like,” Stacy is saying. “‘So, I finalllyyyy have enough money to, like, repair Rex--that’s what she calls that ugly car--and you can help me!’ Like, what?” She laughs. “As if I’m going to waste my money on that when I can just buy my own car. I’ll just ask my dad for one or something.”
“Her name’s Moon. What did you even expect?” This is Darya. Darya hates me. “I bet even her parents hate her. They named her Moon and stuff.”
“Probably ‘cuz she’s a werewolf. Have you seen her hairy she is?” Darlene’s, another person who hates me, words make the other two laugh, and she wears a proud smirk while my heart crumbles to pieces.
“So,” Darlene and Darya’s eyes roam over the waters in a nonchalant, lazy way. “Why are we here?”

“Oh!” Stacy looks nervous. “Well, I just thought this place was cool and all. So, maybe we could go for a swim?”
“A swim?” Darya laugh, and she and Darlene share a look. “Sure. But not here.”
“Where?” Stacy looks excited, too excited, and both of them notice it. They’ve got these grins on their faces, and I know that wherever go or whatever they do, it’ll be at Stacy’s expense. But I don’t make a sound or a noise, because I’ve made a choice not to, just like Stacy made a choice to join them.
I think that we all dig our graves slowly. You start digging with a spoon--in pre K, you might’ve lied to the teacher or tripped another kid on purpose. Then that spoon becomes a small paddle, big enough to make a hole but small enough that the hole isn’t that bad. This is where you start ignoring your parents and hanging out with people because your parents dislike those people. Afterwards, you get a shovel, and with every sin you make, your hole gets deeper and deeper ‘til you’re knee-deep and you can’t see the sun. Congrats, you’re an adult now. You make your own choices. You dig your own grave. But that shovel isn’t at fault. You were the one wielding it. You were the one digging. It’s not the shovel; it’s you.
“Come with us,” Darlene says, barely containing her smirk. Darya’s shoulders quake with silent laughter.
Stacy, ignorant or too oblivious to notice their laughing at her, follows them as they turn and walk away. The trio hops into a sleek, silver car--the image of it next to Rex creates a juxtaposition--and Stacy looks out the window one last time at Rex. The trepidation on her face is the last thing I see of her before the car speeds off, leaving dust in its wake and tire marks on the ground.
The sky melts into a strange array of purples, oranges, yellows, and red, all mixing together to form a cascading sunset. Its reflection rippled on the looping waters. Slowly, my tired legs carries myself to Rex. The keys were left in the ignition, and it takes only one turn of them  for its engine to rumble.
The car hums to life, and the fuel and mileage meters moves side-to-side like a steady metronome. Its windows are in need of a decent cleaning, and I’d plan to do so this weekend, but now I have no desire to.
I steer the car forward using one hand, and I am so concentrated on steering that I can almost ignore my tears. I hiccup and shake with each sob, but I refused to think of the reason why. The sun stands, only a small yellow part of it over the water, mocking me. It can go away and leave its problems. It can go halfway around the universe, and it’s only a ball of gas. I’m a person with two feet and I can’t even run from my own issues.
The car lurches forward as I let go. I watch as the hood goes first, then the middle, then the trunk. It disappears under the water, and like Stacy, I never see it again. But as I stood there under the veil of the night, under the quiet cacophony of crickets, under the rapidly changing sky, I contemplated if I should go after it.