LUNA HOU
Emilia
Emilia and I have the same taste in music—soft, lyrical, and sad. Before we know anything else about each other, we’ve decided to be freshman-year college roommates. Over time, I will learn to angle my bedroom lamp so the least amount of light slivers beneath the doorframe; to listen for the creak of my parents’ footsteps in the hallway as Em and I whisper late into the night. Curled beneath the covers, phone cradled in my hands like an offering, there are times I forget to process the words she says. Each time she smiles, a gleaming white moon in the darkness, the way her face colors and blooms is all I can see.
Em is an easy person to love. Not long after we’ve met, she writes me a poem, one that floats and shimmers in my chest like a round, brilliant balloon. When she learns my first and middle names both translate to mean “moon,” she rechristens me “Moonmoon,” using the nickname every evening to wish me good night. She dresses too nicely, and laughs too freely, and loves with her entire self.
One night, months after we move in, Em and I will drag two pink saucer chairs onto the balcony of our dorm to watch the last lunar eclipse of the year. We are both in our pajamas, and the cold November air bites at our ankles and cheeks as we huddle together in the dark. It is nearly five a.m. when she will ask me, at the drowsy tail end of the night, if I believe in soulmates. In the moment, I will reel off all my usual answers: no, it’s complicated, I don’t know. It is only after she slips into sleep I will realize what I mean is, not until you.
What I don’t know, yet, is that Emilia is bipolar; that memories of trauma mottle her past like old skin; that she has attempted suicide twice. Even now, after everything, there are moments I still can’t wholly reconcile the version of herself she describes—“broken,” “selfish,” “depressed”—with the person I have come to know. They flit back and forth in my mind, these two Ems, like opposite lanes on a two-way street: connected, but separated, too, by the double white line painted on the asphalt and the supposition that every driver on the road wants to live. Sometimes, though, a collision is inevitable.
Sometimes, all you can do is watch the fallout.
* * *
The third time Em tries to kill herself, I am away. I’ve gone home for the weekend, like I do every other week—and, in the process, nearly sentenced my roommate to death. Monday morning, I creak open the door to our room to find Em still in bed, limbs tangled in her baby-blue comforter. This in itself is strange: Em has a class at 9:30, and is almost always gone by the time I drag myself awake. Then my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I am acutely aware of how different everything looks from how I left it. Clothes and books and papers are strewn all over Em’s side of the room; I spot a pleated skirt slung over her signature rose-pink combat boots, her tan corduroy backpack crumpled carelessly on the floor. The pungent scent of salt-and-vinegar chips—the culprit a gaping bag on Em’s bedside shelf—wafts through the air. I’ve just crept across the room to my desk, eyeing the lump of fabric that is Em for any sign of movement, when I hear a soft shuffling at the door. It’s Marie, one of my suitemates. Her face is gray and drawn, the skin beneath her eyes dark, purplish, like the beginnings of a bruise. Wordlessly, she motions me out of the room.
In the hallway, Marie and her roommate, Grace, recount to me the events of the past few hours in hushed voices. Last night, at one in the morning, they were just about to sleep when they heard an erratic knocking on their door. They opened it to find Em, shaking, body dwarfed by an oversized T-shirt, fist clenched around a small orange prescription bottle—empty. She’d poured the pills out onto her dresser, counted the exact number she’d need to overdose into her hand, and stopped. Felt the world sharpen, tighten, around her, lungs prematurely constricting. Dropped the pills. Watched them scatter to the floor like pearls. Stumbled out of the room, into the hallway, to Grace and Marie. Scared them half to death.
Grace tells me she hasn’t slept, that she’s planning to skip her classes for the day. “We made a plan to walk with her to CAPS this morning,” she says, twisting a lock of hair around and around her finger. “But I still couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop worrying that if I did, I’d wake up and she’d be gone.”
“We’re just so glad she told us,” says Marie. “We’re just so glad we were there.” Guilt gnaws at my chest, thorny and sharp. I’m not sure how to feel as Marie nudges Em awake, as Grace stifles a yawn and moves to hug her. I hug her, too, tight, like she might disappear—like at any moment, I might look at her and see through her skin to the bone. But, of course, she remains solid, opaque, unreadable. My mind careens as we break apart; there are so many things I need to tell her. Words claw at my throat, ones I can’t quite dislodge. “I love you,” I say finally, though the words tumble out of me on fawn legs, clumsy and bowed. “I love you so much.”
Em smiles. It’s not her real smile. Her features are wan and washed-out in the dark. “I love you too, Moonmoon.”
The words slip from her mouth so effortlessly it scares me.
* * *
CAPS transfers Emilia to a general hospital for an indefinite amount of time. Hours later, it is one a.m.—exactly twenty-four hours since Em’s attempt—and I can’t sleep. Instead, I lie spreadeagled on my bed, counting gray speckles on the ceiling. The overhead lights—too harsh and fluorescent even on the best of days—glare brightly across my skin. It is amazing to me that their bulbs haven’t sputtered out; that I still have fifty pages of reading due tomorrow; that the rest of the world has simply chosen to move on.
I blink, once, twice; will myself to listen to the breath shivering in and out of my lungs. Suddenly, the hollow silence of the room feels unbearable. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, survey the room as if for the first time. My gaze snaps to Em’s desk, to the papers strewn across the wooden surface. I spot a crumpled essay, marred with red ink, protruding from a jumbled pile of biology notes; a stack of books, tabs poking out from the pages, perched precariously in the corner; a barrage of Sharpies and highlighters and crinkled receipts littering the floor below. It’s a mess demanding to be dealt with—one, I convince myself, Em shouldn’t have to return home to. At a time when it no longer matters, I am desperate to make myself useful.
Over the next hour, I restore order to Em’s side of the room. I organize all her class materials by subject and arrange them in a neat grid on her desk, then straighten the books and knick-knacks on her shelf. Move, next, to the clothes heaped at the foot of her closet, folding and hanging and putting out of sight. Turn my gaze to her bed, and hesitate; the way Em’s comforter is slumped just so, I can almost imagine her body is still cocooned somewhere underneath. Then I shake the thought and climb up, sweeping salt-and-vinegar crumbs from her sheets. There is something perversely therapeutic about it all, this whole cold, clinical affair: in the waning hours of the night, I can almost imagine that in sorting out Em’s things, I am simultaneously sorting out something bigger. Like maybe I can learn to understand her again.
The last thing I do before going to bed is write a haiku. Over the next two weeks, I will pen nearly twenty more onto pastel sticky notes of every color, one for each day Em is gone, and tape them onto the cold metal frame of her bed. Em will leave them up even after she returns, telling me, many times, that she doesn’t deserve me as a roommate. I want to laugh every time she does. Want to tell her she deserves every kindness the world has given her and more—that when I stand beside her, beside her silver-mooned smile, I am not sure anything I can do will ever be enough.
Still, I find myself trying to love her; trying to pick up all these broken pieces off the floor.
Still, I wonder whether I do it for her, or for me.
Previously published in The Kudzu Review
Luna Hou is a Chinese American writer studying English and Creative Writing at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is the Ages 18-19 Category Winner of the 2023 One Teen Story contest and a 2020 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards National Gold Medalist in Flash Fiction. Her work is published in the blue route and The Kudzu Review.