The Boy that Lived on the Moon (The Girl that did not)

The Boy came to the moon with his mother when he was just seven. More accurately, he was brought there, while his father stayed on Earth to watch over their things. His mother promised The Boy his father would come to visit them, that he’d have chances to go back home every so often as well. The Boy never saw his father again, and he hasn’t stepped foot on Earth since he left it.

His mother brought him to the moon because she thought they’d be safe there. She grew up on the moon and knew all about it, the most beautiful spots, the best ways to survive the cold. The Boy was excited to see his mother’s birthplace, to learn about the place she was raised. He looked up to his mother; she was his entire world. He thought of what an amazing place the moon must be to produce such a legendary figure. He imagined busy streets filled with people shuffling this way and that. He saw visions of cafes and bookstores, of record shops and quiet park benches. He thought of warm colors engulfing him, a sea of comfort and peace nurturing a love for all things.

So you can imagine his surprise when their ship landed on the same barren, desolate wasteland we know of as our moon.

His mother brought him in a sailboat, one that glided gracefully through the sky, then the stars, and onto the cratered surface of the moon. As they sailed past Earth’s atmosphere The Boy felt a tight sensation in his chest. Something was tugging on his heart, trying to pull him back down to Earth. It was so powerful that it yanked him to the back of the boat, his back against the wall. Then the boat started to slow. The Boy’s heart was so strongly tethered to the ground that it threatened to bring the whole ship crashing down. Fearing this, The Boy’s mother left the steering wheel and started to maneuver the sail, trying to catch more wind, or whatever propels sailboats in space. First the boat tilted to the left, then the right, then back left again. And slowly, like pulling a loose tooth, the boat dislodged the lump in The Boy’s heart and made its way out into space. The Boy felt broken, incomplete, sickened. He wanted to vomit, he wanted to cry. But when he looked to his mother she seemed so happy, so he figured the problem must be with him. After all, it was him who made it so difficult to leave Earth in the first place. The Boy steadied his nerves, grit his teeth, and reached his hand off the edge of the boat, trying to catch a star.

After landing, The Boy’s mother brought him to the house she was raised in. From the ship The Boy couldn’t see a thing. It seemed uninhabited, like they might really be the first ones to actually make it out here. His mother assured him there were people here, and that they just didn’t land very close to any major cities. It’s been so long since she was out here, she told him. Must’ve lost her sense of direction.

The Boy and his mother trekked for about an hour until they reached the mouth of a cave. The boy could see faint flickers of light inside and grew excited. This must be the entrance to some underground city, he thought. Finally, he’d see people. He’d know he was going to be alright, that he wouldn’t starve or go insane. His mother smiled down at him.

“This is it,” she said. She took his hand and led him inside. The cave was of decent size, for a personal dwelling. There was furniture strewn about, a sofa, recliner, bookshelf, etc. A couple of doors that probably led to bedrooms and bathrooms and such. The source of the light in the cave was a candle nearing the end of its wick. Seeing it, The Boy’s mother exclaimed, “Whoops! Guess I forgot to put this out before I left.” She walked over and blew out the flame, drowning the room in darkness. The Boy, still being very young, was terrified of the dark. He wanted to scream, but he knew better than that, so he stood very still for a few seconds before light once again filled the room. His mother had turned on a lamp.

“Thank goodness this still works!” She looked in the Boy’s direction and saw him trembling, trying to recover from the various layers of shock and fear he’d just been through. She walked toward him, each step growing louder, somehow shaking the foundation of the cave itself.

“Hey, brat,” she said pointedly, “I brought you all the way out here. The least you could do is be grateful.” The Boy said nothing in response to this, but he silently agreed with her. She’s right, he thought. The least I can do is be grateful.

As inhospitable as it may have seemed, the moon wasn’t entirely uninhabited. There were people strewn about, and you could find houses here and there, albeit far apart. There were a few businesses too, a convenience store, a bar, even a bakery. It seemed like the general consensus among the populace was that life was much easier when nobody got in anybody else’s way. At the store, only minimal communication was used to make purchases. Many didn’t even speak to the cashiers, preferring instead to use closed-mouth mm’s or mhmm’s to communicate. Others simply nodded. The workers at these establishments didn’t mind, however. In fact, they were happy to avoid the unnecessary small talk usually associated with these kinds of encounters.

When he turned nine, The Boy’s father bought him a telescope. It was delivered through the mail, as things tend to be when one’s two-hundred thousand miles away from home. The telescope was state of the art and very expensive. To The Boy it was such a kindness that he almost felt guilty for having received it. To his father it was the minuscule bit of love he could show his son while they were so far apart. The money spent wasn’t much of an issue, either. After all, two less mouths to feed saved him plenty of money over the years. The Boy’s father was by no means a rich man, but he lived fairly comfortably. Money wasn’t an issue, and he liked to send his son expensive gifts whenever he could. It was his way of making up for years of lost time, countless conversations that could’ve been, a real relationship that never got a chance to blossom. The Boy thanked the father as cordially as he could in the letters he’d send down to Earth, but each new present filled him with immeasurable guilt. His father tried so hard to reach out, to talk to him, to love him. Still, The Boy made little effort to meet his father halfway, and he rarely showed interest in coming back home, even just to visit.

The Boy loved his high-tech telescope. With it, he could watch Earth from the comfort of the moon, without ever having to make an effort to go there himself. The telescope allowed him to see such high-quality images of the surface that he could see beyond just landscapes and skylines — with proper adjustments to the zoom and the lens, he could even make out faces. He’d sit on the moon with his telescope for hours at a time just watching people on Earth. Sometimes he’d choose one person and follow them around all day with his lens. He’d find someone on the street and watch them get in their car, go get groceries, walk their dog, and so on. The Boy grew to love his telescope, and it soon became an extension of himself, something he couldn’t go without. He’d carry it around in his backpack wherever he went (although it was a large machine, it collapsed into a manageable size for travel) and bring it out whenever he got bored or lonely, which was often. There isn’t much to do on the moon, so one has to learn to entertain himself.

And finally, we get to the start of the story. The exact year is unimportant, as is the date, the surrounding geopolitical struggles, the lives of those not directly involved, and most other things in the universe. By now The Boy is fourteen years old and still deeply attached to his telescope. His life practically revolves around the thing, but it’s a much more mundane thing now. Almost like watching TV, he simply pops it out and searches for something worth looking at whenever there’s nothing else to do. Let me remind you, out there on the moon, there is literally nothing else to do, save for books and booze. And he’s far too young to get drunk anyway.

He’s still allowed to purchase alcohol from the local convenience store, though. He buys it for his mother, and the employees don’t give him any trouble. The first time he went in he explained that he was just there to buy it for his mom. The cashier still sold it to him, as did every other cashier he bought from, but this was less of a courtesy and more of a way to avoid having to talk to the kid. So he bought his mom her liquor, and he learned quickly enough which brands she preferred, which drinks she liked and how she liked them made. He learned this partly out of necessity and partly out of a desire for acknowledgement. She would usually give him five or ten bucks more than he needed and let him keep the change, but there wasn’t much to buy on the moon, so the money piled up with nowhere to go. What he really wanted was a conversation, a hug, even just a smile in his direction. But her face would be buried in a book or glued to the TV, so he’d hand her her drink and just stand there awkwardly, waiting for some kind of reassurance that he was real, that he actually mattered to her. She’d notice him after a few seconds, and looking at him without turning her head, say, “Is there something I can do for you?”

He learned pretty quickly not to hang around like that.

Gazing at Earth from the white, barren desert one morning, The Boy sat unaware that everything was about to fall apart. Well, that’s one way of looking at things. It could also be said that nothing really mattered until then, that his life didn’t truly begin until he had a reason to end it. But there he was, looking at nothing in particular, waiting for something to catch his attention, for someone to give him a reason not to jump as high as he could and drift aimlessly into space.

It should be said that this isn’t usually the best way to go searching for purpose. Aimless wandering tends to leave one more lost than when they began their quest for meaning, after all. The Boy, however, had no one to point him in any direction besides his mother, who was reluctant to have anything to do with him at all. So he had a huge arrow pointing both towards and away from his mother, a Freudian knot he had no way of understanding, much less untangling. Luckily for him, purpose did happen to fall directly into his lap that morning, in the form of a little red-haired girl from Louisville, Kentucky.

It was love at first sight, at least on his end. Say what you will about falling in love with someone you’ve never met from two-hundred thousand miles away; to The Boy, this was love. This was meaning, this was real, this was the only thing in the world that mattered. The sun could’ve exploded then and there, but he wouldn’t have given a damn as long as the two of them were alright. They could drift alone in space, just talking, napping, occasionally kissing. They’d hold hands the whole way, and maybe someday they’d end up on Jupiter or Neptune. The gas giants would have no surface for them to stand on, so they’d float straight through the planets together, cracking jokes and making out for the hundreds of years it would take to reach the other side. Thinking of this, The Boy realized for the first time that he could use his telescope to look at something besides Earth. That there were so many interesting things to see on the other planets, that he’d have such a great view of them all from his spot on the moon. Despite this, he refused to turn his lens from the great blue marble. More specifically, he refused to turn away from the little red-haired girl. He needed to talk to her. He needed to know her. But from so far away it seemed almost impossible. He did the only thing he could think to do. He went to the convenience store, bought a bottle of Fanta, and chugged the whole thing right there.

The Boy felt terribly sick immediately following this, but he still managed to bounce all the way home, past the telescope he left firmly in place, past his barely-conscious mother leaned back in her recliner. He bounced all the way to his room and found a pen and some paper. He wrote a letter to the little red-haired girl. This is what he wrote:

Hello,

You don’t know me, but my name is Harper Lee Diaz. I’m fourteen years old and I live on the moon. I have a telescope I use to look at the Earth from up here, and I saw you today. I think we should talk and maybe be friends. I saw you reading Murakami on a park bench all by yourself. I like his books a lot too. I don’t find TV all that interesting, but I like to read. Anyways, write me back if you would like to be friends, or something.

Sincerely,
Harper

Harper was embarrassed about the “or something,” he added at the end, but it was the most direct way he could hint that he was madly in love with this girl he’d never met. So he rolled up his note, shoved it in the bottle, grabbed a marker, and bounced back out to his telescope. Only twenty minutes had passed, but he was relieved to see that she was still there on that park bench reading her book. Coming outside he’d been terrified he would look back down and be unable to find her, but she hadn’t moved an inch. She had curly red hair reaching down to her shoulders, a black skirt, pink t-shirt, and a black cardigan. He watched her for another twenty minutes, and she finally got up, put her book in the bag on her shoulder, and started to walk home. She spent almost as much time walking home as she did reading her book, but eventually he saw her pull out her keys, unlock her door, and walk inside. Oh, crap. The realization hit him that he couldn’t easily see the house number from his angle up above everyone else. He went into a frenzy and curled up in a ball, sobbing and pounding the ground beneath him. Finally he pulled himself together and looked back down at her house. He peered around and quickly noticed the street number painted on the curb, making it easier for postmen to see. Making it easier for him to see. He uncapped his marker and wrote her address on the bottle. Then he wrote, “Red haired girl,” for good measure. Harper stood up, aimed himself at the marble, and chucked the bottle toward it as hard as he could.

The next week was excruciating for Harper. He had no way of knowing whether she got the message at all, if it landed in the middle of the ocean, if the post office would even be willing to deliver it. Then there was the question of her responding once she got it. If the letter did reach her, what guarantee was there that she’d want to respond at all? To some creep she’s never met living up on the moon, some kid that doesn’t even know how to properly address a letter. Still, he waited through seven anxious days. His thoughts rarely drifted from the little red-haired girl, and he spent much of his time watching her from afar. Creepy, yes, but what else is there to do?

Eventually he realized his stalking was hurting him more than it helped him, so he decided to do something else. He pointed his telescope in the other direction and looked to the stars. He saw moons of other planets, with little alien boys looking this way and that. He witnessed the evolution of a new lifeform as slimy creatures on Europa took their first steps onto the icy surface. He saw me in my Venusian condo, writing him into existence. Somehow the cigarette in my mouth didn’t light the atmosphere on fire, it being ninety-something percent carbon dioxide and all. Harper didn’t know who I was and he didn’t know about Venus’s abundance of CO2, so this was of little concern to him.

Before, as he stared at the red haired girl waiting for her to get his message, praying she’d want to respond — it was masochistic. Each hour stretched out tenfold, each minute became two-thousand seconds long. He just waited, and waited, and waited. A nagging voice in the back of his head begged him to look away, but he couldn’t bear the thought of missing a possible reply from her. Focusing his energy elsewhere, however, Harper finally stabilized somewhat. The days weren’t quite as long, and each minute was only a hundred seconds max.

Less hopeful for any kind of response, Harper finally turned his lens back down to Earth. He scanned the countryside; it didn’t take him long to find Kentucky, then Louisville, then…

There she was, standing in front of her house, staring straight at him. She held an empty soda bottle in one hand and his letter in the other. Harper couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He moved his head from the eyepiece, not sure if she really could see him. He put his eye back to the telescope. She stayed where she was, staring up at him. Then she waved. Harper wanted to cry, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of the red-haired girl. He watched her walk inside, and kept his lens trained on her front door. She came out a few minutes later, shoving a rolled-up paper inside a soda bottle as she walked. Hers was a Coke. Then, as if she were on the moon with him, the girl hopped up and floated a few meters above the street. She landed lightly, and at that exact moment propelled herself up once more, even higher than before. She repeated this about a dozen times, and soon she had bounced high enough to reach the surface of the moon itself. She floated there, affected by Earth’s gravity, by the moon’s, by Harper’s. At the apex of her jump her face was mere inches from Harper’s. Mesmerized, he barely realized what was going on as she put the bottle in his hand before falling back down to Earth.

Harper sat in disbelief as he watched her float back home. He couldn’t believe it had worked. That his message had reached her, that she’d actually wanted to respond. Part of him feared the letter would tell him to leave her alone, to stop spying on her where everyone can see. He knew it wouldn’t be like that, but it still made him anxious. This is what her letter said:

Dear Harper,

I don’t know you well enough yet to know if we could be friends, (or something) but I’d certainly be willing to get to know you. I saw you looking out into space before you saw me. What were you looking at?

-Sophia Rose

An invitation to start a conversation. Harper ran inside for more paper, a pen. He came outside with a notebook he planned to rip pages out of. He sat down and started writing.

Once he finished his letter, he rolled it up in Sophie’s coke bottle and tossed it down to Earth. A few minutes later, the bottle came back with the letter switched out for one of hers. These are the letters exchanged by the two:

Sophia,

It’s so nice to finally know your name! I spend most of my time looking at Earth, to be honest. Only recently started pointing my telescope in the other direction. I’d like to take a trip out to Saturn someday, once I’m a little more grown up. I think it’d be fun to run around and play on its rings. What do you do for fun on Earth?

Harper,

You know Saturn’s rings aren’t solid objects, right? They’re made up of billions or trillions of tiny rocks and specks of dust. So you couldn’t actually walk around on them. We could go swimming in the oceans on Ganymede. I’ve heard the weather’s almost somewhat hospitable this time of year. Not that any of the logistics matter anyway. We can go for a stroll on Saturn’s rings, if you really want to.

I like to read, and I like going for walks by myself. I don’t have any friends down here so I spend most of my time alone. That’s my choice though. I’m sixteen and I’m a sophomore in high school. My favorite class is Calculus and my least favorite class is English.

Sophie,

It’s so surprising that you like math class more than English. Considering you read books and all.

I don’t go to school here. I don’t think there’s any other kids on the moon. It gets lonely sometimes, but it’s a feeling you get used to. Sorta. Like walking around with a thumbtack in your foot. It never stops hurting, but it’s never so bad you can’t walk.

I spend my days doing the same, but there’s not much to see here on the moon. Rocks, dirt, more rocks. It’s the same wherever you go. So I look at Earth. There’s a lot more going on down there than there is up here.

Harper!

I wish I could go to the moon! I think I’d like it there. There aren’t that many people there, right?

Sophie,

No, there aren’t many people here. They keep to themselves, nobody ever wants to talk to me.

Harper,

I think I’d fit right in. That sounds like a jab at you but I do like talking to you. I just don’t feel the need to talk to people I don’t know, don’t want to know, don’t care about, you know? I’d be so quiet they’d fall in love with me, even though they’d never say it. They’d build a statue of me and look to me for approval. I’d give them a nod and walk away silently. Their hearts would burst with the purest joy imaginable, and I wouldn’t have to say a word, our unspoken bond reaching beyond the logos of normal relationships.

Sorry for getting kinda wordy, I’ve been reading while I wait for your letters to come.

As all this was going on I was sitting on Venus, pulling on my cigarette, watching from afar but not paying too much attention. I’d got them to a place where they could run on autopilot for a bit. Of course I’d steer them back in the right direction if they went too far off course, but for now it seemed like they’d be fine on their own. I took out the notebook I carry around with me and jotted down some thoughts. New story ideas, a rough draft of a text I knew I had to send, a grocery list. I decided to pop back down to Earth for a bit so I could visit the supermarket.

Things were going pretty well between the two lovebirds. They continued to exchange letters as one might send texts to a high school crush. Harper would read through each of her letters voraciously, regardless of whether they contained paragraphs or mere syllables. He’d throw the bottle down nervously and twiddle his thumbs while he waited for a response. He wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about him, but as long as she was responding it must mean she didn’t hate him, at the very least. Then the bottle would return and his face would become so bright that it confused astronomers all around the world. Nobody was sure why the moon was full in the middle of the month, and so suddenly, too. But they’re not important here. When she saw the moon light up, Sophie couldn’t help blushing. And when he read through her letters there was nothing Harper could do to keep that dumb smile off his face.

Then he threw down a letter, and no letter came back.

He didn’t want to watch her in between their exchanges, he thought it might be a little weird — and it’s a good thing he didn’t, because it would’ve been pretty weird — but when he looked back through his telescope to the place where she had been, she’d disappeared.

There are a couple different ways you can take something like this. One or two right answers, a million wrong ones. I’m sure you can figure how well the fourteen year-old boy handled it. Like an infant caught in a game of peek-a-boo, the second she left his sight she was gone to him. He thought she must have grown tired of him. Figures, he thought, that last thing I said was so obnoxious. He went through everything he’d sent in his head and more and more stupid mistakes started to pop out. It never occurred to him that most people wouldn’t leave over one slightly annoying comment, one mean little jab. To Harper, he wasn’t someone worth loving. Worth liking, even. If someone was near him they were probably just looking for an excuse to get away. And so it made perfect sense to him that Sophie, the girl he knew nothing about but who was nonetheless interested in him, had left him. Decided he wasn’t worth her time, probably found someone more interesting to talk to. Sophia was in her house eating dinner with her family.

She’d tossed up a last minute note before she ran inside, a simple “BRB.” But she hadn’t thrown it hard enough, so it never managed to escape Earth’s atmosphere. The bottle landed in Corpus Christi, Texas. A close friend of mine found it and thought it was a message from God.

Harper walked over to the convenience store and bought a few more Fantas. He also bought a six pack of beer. He walked back over to his telescope, sat down beside it, and opened a bottle of beer. He then opened one of the Fantas and poured it into the dirt while the beer flowed down his throat. He poured out the rest of the sodas, four in total. Then he started to write, each letter written about twenty minutes apart. These are the letters he wrote:

Dear Sophia,

How’s it going? The view up here is great, I really wish you could see it. There’s a satellite passing by right now.

Come on by sometime,
Harper

Sophie,

I haven’t heard from you in a while, is everything okay? Just wanted to make sure. You don’t seem like the kind to just up and desert me, but it’s hard to think of any other reason why you wouldn’t have responded by now.

Hope all is well,
Harper

Sophie,

If you’re going to pretend I don’t exist you could at least do me the courtesy of letting me know. So I don’t have to sit here wondering what’s going to happen next.

Harper

Sophie,

I’m sorry. I overreacted, I shouldn’t have said those things. I really do hope you’re okay.

Harper

Harper sat on the ground, head in hands, silent. He felt as though he was being smothered, like there was nothing around him but pressure. Like he was at the bottom of the ocean, or in space. Then, slowly, a plastic bottle drifted down and tapped him on the head. His eyes lit up as he snatched it out of the sky.

Hey,

My mom called me in for dinner. I sent you another letter but I guess you didn’t get it.

Relieved that she’d responded and embarrassed by his actions, Harper excitedly scribbled:

It’s fine! Don’t worry, I get it. Moms can be real assholes, huh?

To which Sophia replied:

I love my mom. She made dinner, plus it was getting dark anyways. This isn’t her fault.

Once again filled with shame, Harper wrote:

I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I assumed because of how my mom is. I’m sorry.

And Sophia’s blunt response:

Let’s talk later. I have to go to bed.

They didn’t talk any more after that, although Harper did send her letters for the next few months, none of which she responded to.

Down on Earth I walked through the grocery store, pushing my basket and marking things off my list. I was in the soda aisle when I saw her. I was getting a twelve pack of Red Bull. She was lost in thought, wistfully staring down at a bottle of Fanta in her hand. She was the only one in that aisle before I came in. She put the soda back and straightened her face upon seeing mine. She’ll be alright, I thought. Harper, on the other hand…

Harper’s doing better these days. He’s mostly past blaming it on Sophia. Of course, things are never so simple. Sure, Harper knows logically why things didn’t work out. He could explain to you where he went wrong, what led him to lash out, even the roots of his many insecurities; but on an emotional level, one he can’t very easily parse with reason or logic — He’s still pretty angry with Sophia for leaving him hanging.

Ah, well. He’s got his whole life ahead of him. No point in dwelling on it now. Maybe someday he’ll make it down to Earth. Maybe he’ll die on that lifeless rock. I don’t see him staring down at Earth nearly as much as he used to, though. He seems to be more interested in something beyond the scope of our planet, the scope of this story, even. I should mention before I forget, however, that I actually received a message from Harper himself just a few days ago. It drifted down as I was coming inside with my groceries, so I set my bags down and walked over to retrieve it. I untwisted the soda bottle and pulled out a message that read:

STOP STARING AT ME!