Sarah Allen - The Girl Who Chased the Moon

It was all going to be worth it, this sacrifice. She had to keep telling herself that. She had a whole other life waiting for her, one where she could control memories of her past. When she got back to Baltimore, she would pick up where she’d left off and reconnect with friends who only knew her as she was now, not who she’d been then. Nice blank-slate friendships. She’d find a new place to live, get her things out of storage, then find the perfect spot for her bakery. She had worked in other people’s bakeries for a long time. When she got her own place, she would bake with all the windows open and make nothing but purple cookies if she wanted to. Blue-Eyed Girl Bakery . That was going to be the name. That Julia’s eyes were brown didn’t matter. It wasn’t about her, anyway.

“Julia!” Sawyer called.

She felt a prickle along the back of her neck and picked up her pace. Regardless, Sawyer soon jogged up and fell into step with her.

She cut her eyes at him. “Did you actually run after me?”

He looked indignant, like he’d been caught doing something uncouth. “I wouldn’t have had to if you had waited.”

“What do you want?”

“I told you. I want to talk to you.”

“So talk,” she said.

“Not like this.” His hand wrapped around her arm and made her stop. “I’ve kept my distance since you’ve been back, because I thought that’s what you wanted. When I heard you were moving back to Mullaby, I had… hope. But the moment I saw you again, and you gave me a look that could kill, I knew it was still too soon.”

“I haven’t moved back,” she said, wriggling her arm free.

“But I’ve been doing us both a disservice,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “This has gone on too long. I want to talk about it, Julia. I have some things to tell you.”

“Talk about what?” she asked.

He was silent.

She tried to laugh it off. “Does this have something to do with thinking I’ve been baking cakes because of you?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

They stared at each other for a moment before she said, “I have nothing to say to you. And I doubt you have anything to say that I want to hear.”

Undeterred, he said, “Have dinner with me on Saturday.”

“I have plans on Saturday,” she said.

“Oh?” His hands went into his pockets and he rocked back on his heels with surprise. This was a man who wasn’t used to being turned down. “With whom?”

“I was thinking of taking Emily to the lake,” she said, off the top of her head.

“You’re showing a remarkable amount of interest in this girl.”

“Does it surprise you that much, Sawyer?” she shot at him. “Really?”

She could tell that hurt him. And it didn’t make her feel as good as she thought it would. He hesitated before asking quietly, “Are you ever going to forgive me?”

“I forgave you a long time ago,” she said as she turned and walked away. “That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.”

His voice carried after her. “Neither have I, Julia.”

THE WEIGHT of Julia’s unhappiness took her breath sometimes when she was sixteen. It had been building for years, brick by brick: adolescence, her father remarrying, her unrequited love for the cutest boy in school, the misfortune of having Dulcie Shelby as a classmate. Still, up until she entered high school, she’d always had friends. She’d always been a good student. She’d always been able to function . But then a gradual depression settled over her like someone flipping out a bedsheet and letting it float down to cover her. By the time her sophomore year rolled around, she’d given up on trying to compete with her stepmother, Beverly. Her pink hair and black makeup were attempts to fight the overwhelming sense that she was disappearing. Her friends started avoiding her as her appearance changed and she became more sullen, but she didn’t care. She would gladly lose them if it meant her father would just look at her.

It didn’t work.

Sometimes she would hear Beverly tell her father not to pay her any attention, that it was just a phase, that she would grow out of it. And of course, he did exactly as Beverly suggested.

Then the cutting started.

Her unhappiness and self-loathing got the better of her one day when she was in her World History class. Mr. Horne was writing something on the whiteboard and Julia was sitting in the back of the room, Dulcie Shelby a few seats in front of her. Julia looked up from doodling in her notebook to see Dulcie whisper something to one of her friends, then take something out of her purse. Seconds later, a small canister of flea powder rolled down the aisle and stopped at Julia’s feet.

Dulcie and her friends laughed and Mr. Horne turned around.

He demanded to know what was so funny, but no one in class said a word. Julia kept her eyes down, staring at the canister touching the toe of her Doc Martens knockoffs.

Mr. Horne finally turned back around, and as soon as he did, Julia took the sharpened pencil she was holding and dragged it heavily across her forearm. She didn’t realize what she’d done at first. She simply watched the pebbles of blood form on her skin with a weird sense of satisfaction, of release.

At first it was random, using whatever she had on hand, but it soon became more deliberate and she started using razor blades she hid under her mattress at home. Every time she cut herself, it was intense and dramatic, like being jerked from the gaping maw of nothingness and back into life. It not only made her feel, it made her feel good . At one point she realized she couldn’t stop, that she couldn’t get through the day without cutting herself, but she didn’t care. She truly didn’t care. It wasn’t long before her forearms were covered in angry spider-webs of scabbed-over cuts, and she wore long-sleeved shirts even on the warmest days.

She’d been cutting her arms for months before Julia’s father and stepmother found out. It was Beverly who first saw the marks. Julia had just stepped out of the shower one morning and had wrapped a towel around herself, when her stepmother tapped on the door and waltzed in, saying, “Don’t mind me. I’m just getting my tweezers-”

She stopped short when she saw Julia’s bare arms.

When Julia’s father got home from work that evening, he came into her bedroom. His face was pinched and worried and he approached her cautiously, as if trying not to crush her with the weight of his presence. He wanted to know what was wrong, and Julia resented the question. How could he not know?

Her sophomore year ended not long after, and her father and Beverly never let her out of their sight that summer. Instead of feeling like she’d finally gotten what she wanted, she hated that they were trying to stop her from doing the one thing that made her feel better.

The entire summer was one long power struggle. She actually started looking forward to the school year so she could get away from them. And of course, the new school year meant she would get to see Sawyer. Beautiful Sawyer. But just a few days before the start of school at Mullaby High, Julia’s father told her that he was sending her away to boarding school. It was a special school, he said. For troubled teens. They were supposed to drive to Baltimore to the school the next day. He’d given her only one day’s notice. One day . He’d been planning this behind her back all summer!

That night, she crawled out of the laundry room window and ran away. If her father didn’t want her around, fine. But she wasn’t going to some stupid school. The problem was, she had no idea where else to go. So she ended up on her favorite perch on the high school bleachers.