I rapped my knuckles against his front door and waited. No response. I knocked again, this time louder. No response. I pounded on his door and put my ear against it, listening for any signs he was in there. Nothing. I rolled my forehead against the door, closing my eyes and sighing. “Moon?” I spoke against it. “Moon, are you in there?” Of course, nothing.
The worst part was that he didn’t have a car, so it wasn’t like I could just look around the parking lot to make sure he was home. “Moon, open the door. I’m getting worried about you.” I pounded on it again, the frame rattling with the force. My phone pinged in my back pocket.
Brat
Go away, Emerson.
What the fuck? “Are you okay? Are you sick? Just open the door.”
Brat: I said go away. Do you lack reading comprehension skills?
“Very funny, brat. Come on, we’re all worried about you.”
Brat: Don’t call me that. Don’t come to my door. Go away.
I squinted at my phone, confused. Don’t call him that? It was his favorite nickname, though. “Okay, now you’re scaring me. Are you
okay?”
Brat
I’m fine. This is the last text I’m sending, and I expect you to leave after. Go away.
This wasn’t like him. I may not have known him very long, but I knew this wasn’t something he’d do unless something was really wrong. Somethinghadto be wrong. We’d just made our relationship official—we just became boyfriends. I thoughtback to the night I’d gone to his apartment and held him while he cried. I thought about his broken, shattered pieces he kept talking about.
Running back to my car, I found the small notepad and pen I kept in the center console and scribbled on it. I tore the paper and ran back up to his door, reading it back over.
There is nothing broken, but I will hold your pieces together, anyway. I’m here for you. Don’t shut me out.
-Your boyfriend, your Daddy, your friend, Emerson.
I slid it beneath his door, watching it go through the crack. I just hoped it made a difference.
“Hashe ever done something like this?” I swirled my straw around my cup, the ice hitting the sides.
Crescent shook his head, swallowing a bite of his sandwich. He seemed to always have a sandwich. “No, he hasn’t. I mean, he’s always been a hard ass. He was never exceptional at school or anything, so he just became super independent. Like he was trying to level it out or something. It makes me wonder if something happened at work. Or maybe everything with Star is getting to him. But going ghost like this? Nah, it’s really unusual.”
Moon seemed to have high standards for himself in everything except taking care of himself. “I thought he and Star had smoothed things out.”
“A little bit, but not all the way. Once you piss Star off, you gotta work really hard at rebuilding that trust. Moon is in the process of that, but it may take a minute for things to get back to the way they were before. Trust me, I’d know.” He sighed. “She once didn’t talk to me for a month because I forgot to pick her up from school twice. She said if she couldn’t trust me to remember to pick her up, how could she trust I cared about anything else?”
“Oh wow. So I shouldn’t get on Star’s bad side, huh?”
“Best not to, no.”
“Noted. How worried should I be, Cres? I mean, real talk.”
He shrugged. “I can’t say that I know, man. He isn’t the type to ask for help, but he also isn’t the type to suddenly stop speaking to everyone.”
I leaned back in the booth, kicking my feet out a bit. “How long has he struggled with his mental health?”
Crescent’s hand paused midair, his sandwich hovering there. His eyebrows pulled down. “It’d be a more recent development related to what happened in Lindenbergh. I’ve never seen him struggle otherwise. Of course, now that you say that, I don’t guess I’d know for sure if he was or not.”
From how Moon had vaguely mentioned things to me, it sounded more like it’d been an issue since he was fifteen and was “broken” because of whoever hurt him. Had he hidden it from his family this whole time?
“Well, now I am getting worried. We knew he was hurting, but if it's bad enough to make him do this, then it must be bad. You know how important we are to him. And if he’s truly my brother, then he won’t say anything until it’s dire.”
The back of my tongue started to tingle, rapidly going numb as the ringing in my ears picked up volume. “Until it’s dire?”
