Even the Moon Has Scars (2 page)

I was born a miracle. I don’t mean that in the generic way that all babies are a miraculous gift of life. I mean, my parents were told that they couldn’t have any more children after my older sister Kaydi was born, and yet, four years later they got the good news that I was on the way.
A miracle.

And not just any miracle, the type of miracle that years later, still causes your parents to pause outside of your bedroom door, shaking their heads, staring at you with such fervor that you expect the skies to part and angels to drop down playing little harps— even when all you’re doing is sitting in bed reading a book. The kind of miracle that makes them obnoxiously say,
‘We’re so lucky,’
over and over while you’re just trying to spread some Nutella on your wheat toast in the morning—because miraculously, I’m able to make my own breakfast.

You think I’m joking.

I wish I were.

My parents
are
lucky, but honestly, that’s a lot of pressure for anyone to live up to every day.

I’m the kind of miracle that when you go to the doctor and they do an ECHO, they say things like,
‘I’ve seen a lot of things in my years of practice, but I’ve never seen anyone as sick as she was doing so well now.’

A miracle that was born with a rare heart condition. But I survived. Miraculous.

I still pause to look at the long scar on my chest every day before I get into the shower. It’s less angry looking than it used to be, but it’s still noticeable. I still have to cover it in medicated cream to try to soften its appearance and wear certain shirts to cover it. It’s grown with me rather than fading away. It’s always there. Just like my parents.

Everyone always told me that it was a mark of bravery.

The truth is, I was just a newborn when I had my surgery, I don’t remember any of it.

I don’t remember being brave. I don’t remember the long nights in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit that my parents still talk about like it all happened last week. I don’t remember the cabinets full of heart and lung medications that I used to have to take every day. This scar is the only thing that proves to me that those things really did happen.

Well, this scar, and the way my parents treat me.

If it weren’t for those things, I might have had a shot at being a normal teenager.

There’s a box of cards my mom keeps on her vanity from when I was a baby. Back then, everyone wrote messages of hope to my parents that I would survive. They told them that I was destined for great things.

That my life had a grand purpose. That God had plan for me.

I just haven’t seen any of that yet. So far, my life has been in this house.

As best as I  can remember, my parents have told me every single day of my entire sixteen years that I am
the miracle.

“Don’t tell her she can’t have one more hour of TV,” my mom would say to Dad, her arms crossed tightly across her chest.
“She’s a miracle.”
They’d said it so often, with such vehemence, that you’d think I would eventually believe I was really something special.

But I’m not. I’m just me. I’m just Lena Claire Pettitt.

I just want to be the
normal
version of me. Because for every bit of daily spoiling they’ve done in response to my miraculous status, they took something away daily, too.

I’ve lived in a bubble. Preserved for no reason.

I was born with half of a working heart, and as a consequence, I will only live half of a life.

Healed physically, but barred from any true experience.

I should feel grateful, but instead, I feel robbed. Why bother saving someone only to force them to live halfway?

As far as prisons go, I guess my home isn’t so bad. My mom is a great cook, my house is nice and comfortable, and there are beautiful, scenic views in the seaport town we live in just outside of Boston. I’m allowed to walk around and explore our city. I can take my easel up to the cove and paint for hours in the sunshine if I want. Our town also happens to be the oldest art colony in the US, so that makes it perfect for me—but it’s still small.

It’s still claustrophobic.

It still makes me ache for bigger cities and a bigger life.

And while I can go to my art classes, the mall, or the movies with my best friend, Lily, I can’t ever go alone. Even though my last surgery was sixteen years ago, and the cardiologist said as long as the valves they created on my heart grow with me and nothing becomes blocked by scar tissue I’m in the clear, my parents can’t see past the
what-ifs
. 

They live their lives so terrified that something will go wrong and they won’t be there to recognize it.

Like the time we went to Tennessee for a family vacation. I had a headache so they let me stay in the cabin while Mom, Dad, and Kaydi went for a hike. I was fourteen and they were only gone for a couple of hours, it wasn’t a big deal. Except that it was. Because by the time they got back, my fever was up to one-hundred-and-three and my head hurt so badly, I couldn’t pick it up from the pillow. It turned out to be strep, but to a kid with an already compromised immune system—one who isn’t even allowed to have her ears pierced
(doctor’s orders!)
because the infection could go to my heart, strep
is
a big deal. You’d think by my age I’d know my body better than I do after all of the procedures and scares, but maybe I don’t.

Maybe Mom and Dad are right.

They smother me, because they’re scared of losing me.

I can’t fully understand how it must feel to walk in their shoes, but I try. I really, really do. I work hard to keep my frustration inside and not to complain too much when it feels like I’m watching the outside world through a viewfinder. Like everything I want is so close, but still so far out of my reach.

“Lena, two minutes,” my mom peeks her head into my bedroom and says.

“‘K,” I say. I give a quick nod but keep my eyes trained on the mailbox at the end of our driveway.

“Two,” Mom repeats before closing the door. 

I look down at the time on my iPhone: 2:53.

The mail always comes by three. Every single day.

Dad’s coming home early today and I have to catch it before he does on his way in. I’ve been playing this game of who can make it to the mailbox first for the last three months. I never lose because I’m
always
home. Waiting anxiously for Maggie, our mail carrier, to drop the mail into the box.

“Waiting on something good?”
Maggie has asked dozens of times.

Yep. For life.
Real life
to start.

I hear the hiss of brakes and press my face to the glass to peer down the street as far as I can. But instead of the mail truck, it’s the familiar red Honda Insight that belongs to my older sister, Kaydi.

I watch her through the window as she parks in the shell-covered drive, gets out, slams her door dramatically, and then stomps toward our front door. Her brown hair swirls around her face, but I can still make out the way her brows are pulled down and her lips puckered into a scowl.

Normally, I’d roll my eyes and wish her away in my mind, but now, I selfishly see her as a welcome distraction. Whatever is upsetting her today will buy me a few minutes to get to the mailbox first.

I pad across the creaky hallway and to the top of the stairs where I can now hear Kaydi’s choking sobs. She could be crying over something major, or she could just as easily be upset over losing an earring. I think having so much of the attention on me all the time made her more than a little dramatic and attention starved.

“What is it, sweetheart?” I hear my mom coo.

“Brian—he hates—broke up—” Her words are all a jumbled, tear-filled mess, but I get the gist before silently making my way out the front door, taking extra care to close it behind me as quietly as possible.

I rush to the end of the driveway and pause for a long second before I pull open the mailbox and shove my hand inside while keeping my eyes on the front door. My palm is icy in the cold metal box, but apart from the dampness, there’s nothing there.

It’s empty.

I can’t remember the last time we didn’t receive even a single ad.

Something. Is Maggie late today?

I peer down the street hoping I’ll see the truck but there isn’t anyone on our tiny, one lane road.

Back inside the house my sister is snotting into her tea. Like, legitimately snotting.

Her cheeks are bright red and her bangs are damp from tears.

“What’s going on?” I ask, slumping into one of the dining room chairs. The chairs are too formal for the rest of the house and we never have enough people over to fill all eight of them. More people around mean more germs. And more germs mean that I might get sick. Mom can’t handle it when I do. Her world grinds to a halt. She follows me around the house enough on a normal day, but when I’m sick, even with just a seasonal thing, she takes my temperature around the clock and gives me hourly  pulse ox tests.

And honestly, I can’t handle
that.

My sister looks up from her cup with red-rimmed eyes and says, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Are you and Dad still going to go?” I ask my mom.

Mom looks from me, then back to Kaydi. She pulls her bottom lip in and her eyes are wide as if they’re pleading with Kaydi to say the thing she so desperately wants her to.

“I guess...I guess I’ll have to check when your father gets home,” Mom finally says after Kaydi refuses to give in.

“I’m okay alone,” I offer. “If Kaydi isn’t up to watching me.”

I know it won’t fly, but it’s worth a shot. It feels so stupid. I’m sixteen, yet I have a babysitter. It’s just a quick weekend trip for my parents, of course I’ll be fine on my own.

“Absolutely not,” Mom shoots me down.

“I’ll still watch her,” Kaydi says, raising her chin and straightening her posture. Always the martyr. “Not like I have anything better to do now that my boyfriend—my
ex-boyfriend
—hates me.”

She slouches back down and makes this strangled-cry type of noise that sounds like some kind of wildlife when a poacher takes their young. I try not to roll my eyes, but I don’t think I’m successful.

“Why does Brian hate you?” I ask.

Both Kaydi and Mom ignore my question. It’s clearly beyond my comprehension.

“I don’t know, Kaydi, you’re pretty upset, leaving you wouldn’t be right.” Mom says the words, but her half-grin cancels them out.

“I said I’d watch her,” Kaydi says. She’s still sobbing. I swear I just saw some liquid fall back into her teacup. I can’t be sure of where it fell from. Gross. And they’re worried about my germs.

“Can I get you anything, Kayd?” Mom asks, rubbing soft circles on my sisters back. Always the comforter.

“A tissue?” I suggest.

“Why don’t you shut up, Lena Claire!” Kaydi yelps.

“I was just trying to help.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Kaydi says.

“Lena, you can go upstairs now,” Mom says.

“Okay,” I say.

Back in my room I hear my dad come home, listen to Kaydi cry some more about the unfairness of life and the loss of her love—who she’s maybe only known for three months and, yet, has devoted two pens worth of ink to drawing ‘
Mrs. Whateverhislastnameis
’ doodles on the notepad near the phone in the kitchen.

Despite this Romeo and Juliet level tragedy, Dad and Mom decide to take their trip and after kisses good-bye, I am left alone. I pull my hair back into a long ponytail, then pull out the water colors from under my bed and set up my easel.

The canvas on the easel is already stained with a blend of blues around the outer edges that get deeper and deeper—almost purple. It looks like a dark cave until halfway to the center, where the colors explode into shades of red and orange. It’s abstract, and maybe that’s why when Mom, Dad, or Lily come in and look at my paintings, they don’t understand them. Maybe they aren’t meant to. Maybe unless you’ve lived your life in a cave and haven’t yet found anything in your life that resembles an explosion of colors, you can’t.