Burning Moon (Wattpad Version)

Chapter 12

When I was six, I was the only girl in my class who didn’t get a Valentine’s gift. I'd started at yet another new school because my mother had moved us halfway across the country to be with her yoga instructor, an old white guy named Bhagavaan. He was a freak, and my mother forced me to do his morning yoga classes, where he said things like;

"Breathe in through your toe nails and out through the top of your head, Lilly."

“Imagine your buttocks are flowers, Lilly, blossoming in the spring.”

“Your spine is a rainbow and it wants to be outside in the rain, Lilly. Release it. Set it free. Let it fly.”

A week before Valentine's Day, the boys' craft teacher had them make gifts for the girls. It was very sweet, one of the boys made a heart from bent paper clips and someone else made a necklace with bottle tops. Come Valentine's Day, they whipped out their respective creations, brimming with pride and accomplishment and handed them over. But they’d forgotten about me -- yes, I was new, but it still hurt. I remember standing there among the sea of shiny crafty things feeling like no one cared about me. It was also embarrassing, and I didn’t want anyone to notice, so I snuck outside and hid in the playground.

And that's how I felt right now.

It hurt that Damian regretted kissing me. It was the sharp pain of rejection, mingling with the sting of embarrassment, mixing with the dull ache of disappointment that took me right back to being that little girl who'd climbed into the colourful tunnel and cried softly to herself.

God, I felt pathetic. But I was also angry with myself for letting it get this far. I was clearly vulnerable and this was no time to open myself up to anyone, certainly not to Damian. And I didn’t even like him... did I? Whatever feelings I thought I had for him were obviously of the rebound ilk. I couldn’t afford to go there, not with Damian, not with anyone. What I really needed right now was to close all the doors and windows, lock all the shutters and retreat into a padded cell for my own safety. 

I felt so alone and was overcome -- once again -- with a need to spy on Michael. I took out my phone and realised that it was flooded with messages; Mom, Dad, Val, Sue and even Stormy. I flicked through them quickly, not really absorbing much, although I did see that Stormy had cast a spell on Michael and with any luck, she said, he should have genital warts within a day or so. I logged onto Facebook and was about to go to Michael's page, when I saw I had a friend request. I clicked.

Damien Bishop.

Damien with an 'e'. I'd spelt his name incorrectly. My heart conveniently forgot that it was on lockdown and I accepted his request, went straight to his page and opened his photos.

And there he was. Beautiful Damien with an ‘e’. I got this strange feeling as I scrolled through his pictures, it was a feeling of familiarity; as if I was looking at photos of my oldest and dearest friend. But then I stopped. All the blood that usually pumped around my body drained out of me in one fast whoosh.

A photo caught my eye. It was of Damien, happy, smiling Damien, with his arm around a hot chick. She looked like his type too; she was petite and her dark hair was cut into a severe bob with a dead straight fringe. She had huge blue eyes and was dressed in black skinny jeans and a casual T-shirt with a Barbie Doll print on. Is there a shop somewhere that sells ironic T-shirts to cool people? I kept scrolling and she kept making more and more appearances. Yup, there they were in London together, yup, that’s them in front of the Eiffel Tower and yup, that looks like them having lots of fun at some party somewhere. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Damien might have a girlfriend.

Suddenly, I felt cheated on. Damien was cheating on me with some hot, skinny hipster chick. She was probably cool, but in that “I so don’t care what’s cool” kind of way. She was probably fun and rebellious and had tattoos and a nipple ring. They probably tattooed each other as foreplay. She probably didn’t even need to read Fifty Shades of Grey; she’d moved on from whips and ties years ago and was probably doing something that hadn’t even been invented yet. She and Damien probably had wild, loud, hot sex while hanging upside-down like vampire bats and listening to obscure bands that made Avant Garde Noise music on Vinyl. I continued to scroll through the pictures and she was everywhere. Wearing more ironic T-shirts, large black framed Urkel glasses and strange vintage shoes that might have been worn by a vagrant, but with the addition of knitted laces made from reclaimed wool, the look went from ‘Homeless' to 'Hipster'. But the photo that grated me the most was the one of her lying on the beach wearing a yellow polka-dot bikini, ironically. She had one of those thin, hipster girl bodies and you just knew she'd probably Instagrammed a photo of herself eating some kind of fattening Vegan treat just minutes previously.