Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“I know,” I mutter. Silence stretches more tension.
Moffy clears it. “Ready to see your room?”
My biggest gateway back to Original Luna.
Anxiety flits away, replaced by more eagerness. “Yeah, let’s do it.” I hope my confidence vanquishes my brother’s worries.
“Think of the penthouse like a square box,” Maximoff tells me while we walk down the wide hall. “Emergency staircase is in the middle, along with the elevator lobby or foyer, whatever you want to call it, and the elevator. Then this hall pretty much connects everything. You can do an entire loop of the house just following it.”
That’s not so hard to figure out.
He points to a door. “Game room.” Then another door. “Your room.” He opens the door for me but lets me be the first to enter. Well, technically, I’m the first human.
Orion barrels ahead. Plopping down on a fuzzy dog bed, he pants and drools.
One step inside, I take it all in.
Plastic glow-in-the-dark stars are stuck to the ceiling. Same ones I had in my bedroom growing up. A lava lamp projects violet colors on dark-painted walls. I recognize the beanbags and tapestries. My pillowy comforter is new, but it looks as cozy as the purple nebula quilt I once had. A multi-colored woolen blanket I knitted in high school rests at the foot of the bed.
For the most part, everything is somewhat familiar.
It relaxes me. Maybe I haven’t personally changed so much in the last three years that I’d be perceived as a stranger. Maybe I am still me.
Then I see the desk.
A goldfish is swimming in a glass tank—or I guess it’s more of a bowl, complete with purple coral and a treasure chest. “I have a fish,” I say, confused. “I’d never get a fish. Mom couldn’t keep a goldfish alive. Why do I think I can?”
“Wait, what?” Moffy is at my side in a flash, confused. “You have a fish…?”
Whaaaaat?
“You didn’t know?” I frown deeply.
He’s my memory guide. He should know, right? Only, I understand I’m not in a cool sci-fi thriller. My older brother isn’t all-knowing about my daily life, even if we’re super close. And he has no mind-reading superpowers (that I know of).
Still, he should know I have a fish.
He shakes his head once. “I had no clue.”
“You’ve been in my room before, right?” I bend down to the bowl.
“Yeah, a bunch of times.”
“Maybe I just got the fish?”
“Yeah,” he nods, but his brotherly worry hardens his face.
I make eye contact with the goldfish. What’s your name? Sadness grips every part of me, thinking I’ve erased this fish from existence. If I don’t remember it and I didn’t tell anyone about it, then it might as well be gone.
I turn to Moffy. “So I’m guessing you don’t know its name?
“Sorry,” he says, shoulders squared. “I wish I did.”
Maybe Tom or Eliot know. Still, I can’t get over how I kept this from my brother. Why? Why did I not tell him about my pet fish?
I just don’t fucking understand. “Did we grow apart?” I ask suddenly.
Moffy is taken aback. I give him a second to collect his thoughts. He gestures to his head. “I think about everything all the damn time. Me. You. Xander. Kinney. The four of us and our lives from childhood to now, and I could spell out exactly where I thought our relationship was and where I think it is—but I doubt that’d even help, Luna.”
I still don’t understand. “Why not?”
“Because I know how I saw you, but I couldn’t tell you how you saw me. Do I think we grew apart? No. Even after my marriage and a baby, I believe we’re close. But I also have no damn idea why you would’ve hidden a goldfish from me.” He makes a face at the bowl. “I should’ve seen it. It was probably here this whole time, and I just didn’t see.”
“It feels like a me thing,” I say quietly. “I could’ve just been cagey with everyone.” If Original Luna hid a lot from those around her—which I’ve been known to somewhat do—then I’m in serious trouble. “I haven’t told you that I had my first kiss yet.”
Creases line his forehead, and he swings his arms, maybe to shake out the strain. “You did end up telling me.”
“I did?” Pride for myself swathes me like a comfy blanket. I wanted to confide in Moffy about my life while I was in high school, even at the risk of flipping the Big Brother Protect Little Sister switch.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t tell if you were joking or not. Which was a hundred-and-twenty percent a me thing that time.”
I smile a little, but my lips droop fast. I can almost see that moment. Almost. “When did I tell you?”
“Sometime before Halloween, around the start of your memory loss, I think.”
I sigh, frustrated. “I can almost picture the leaves in October and hearing about Camp Calloway for some reason.”