Page 48 of The Edge of Always

‘Course I do, she’s your mum.’

‘Not everyone is like you, Luna.’

She didn’t know how to respond.

‘I’ve missed you this summer,’ Emmett said suddenly. They were at the edge of the sea now, dipping their toes in the freezing water. ‘I don’t think I realised…’ He paused and Luna was sure the world held its breath. ‘How much I would until you weren’t there.’

‘I’ve been right here,’ she told him, half laughing, half worried that she might cry.

‘I know, it’s just, I don’t know. It felt different.’

Oh god, she thought. He knows, he knows it all.

‘Not bad different.’ Something in her face must have given away. ‘Just different.’

‘I suppose we’re both growing up,’ Luna tried.

‘Yeah, it’s probably that.’

They kept walking, skirting the edge of the water.

‘But promise me,’ he said, stopping to turn to her, ‘promise you’ll never leave me, Luna.’

‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’ Luna felt urgent, for what she wasn’t exactly sure.

‘Not in that way. Promise me I’ll never lose you.’ She saw his desperation in the white of his eyes.

‘You won’t,’ she told him, meaning it but not asking for the same from him.

They walked some more. Emmett was calmer, now that he’d extracted the promise from Luna.

‘Earl said your drawings this summer have been amazing,’ he said. ‘You’re so talented. He said you could be a prodigy.’

A red flush hidden by the darkness appeared over Luna’s face. ‘I’m definitely not. I’ve been frustrated all summer, trying to capture the uncapturable.’

‘And what’s that then?’

Obviously, she wasn’t going to tell him about drawing dismembered body parts and what that may or may not have to do with unrequited love so instead she said, ‘I’ve just got really interested in anatomy. It started last year, with hearts, I suppose. Thinking about how intricate they are but also how we give them so much power, on lots of different levels. Like emotional, biological. I don’t know, I’m not making much sense. But yeah, hearts, I think I like drawing them. I even painted some. And eyes. Ears even. I drew a single finger last week. It’s a bit weird. I liked the hearts the best.’

‘Not weird,’ he said. ‘Awesome.’

Growing up where she did and with whom she did, Luna wasn’t quite sure what to do with such a persistent stream of compliments.

‘Thank you.’ She was stiff and awkward as she stopped walking. They were facing each other now. Emmett’s eye looks so sore, it made Luna want to weep, or else break something.

There was a pause.

‘I’m worried that my brain is broken,’ Emmett admitted. ‘Sometimes I just think what’s the point, things will never be good.’

‘You can’t think like that,’ Luna rushed out. ‘It’s just a bad patch now but you’ll get away, like you want to. You’ll have a good life, Emmett.’ Emmett having a good life, Luna realised, was what she wished for more than anything else in the world.

‘Do you think I should feel broken-hearted about Cadence?’ he asked.

And still, they were on the edge of… something?

‘Only you can know that, Emmett.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t. I don’t even care. I don’t like the thought that someone could ever break my heart in that way.’