S1 Week 5 Bonus Story: Survivor's Guilt

A Day in the Life of Luna Cruz

Welcome to Trainwrecks, a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.

Friday posts are for paid subscribers. For $5 a month or a discounted rate of $50 a year, readers get four bonus stories which dive into character backgrounds or expand on the present day narrative. This bonus content is not necessary to understand the main story. Money raised by paid subscriptions gets reinvested into the series in the form of art and advertising, so do consider upgrading if you’d like a more robust Trainwrecks experience!

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Trigger Warning: Suicidal thoughts, bullying, mentions of miscarriage. If you find this content triggering, please feel free to skip this week’s bonus story. A non-triggering summary will be provided in next week’s bonus episode.

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When eleven-year-old Luna Cruz opened her eyes in the morning, her first instinct was to get angry. She stared up at her bedroom ceiling, covered in its glow-in-the-dark stars, her vision swimming with unshed tears. Alive. She was still alive. Why, why, why?

Then her anger ran its course, leaving a cavernous emptiness in its wake. She sat up and cast a vacant look at her closet, overstuffed with bright, glittery clothing in every color of the rainbow. Emptiness, she’d decided a while back, didn’t have to be a bad thing. It was a blank canvas ready for decoration. She could be whoever she wanted to be that day. Except Dead Girl. Whichever role she played, she’d have to play it alive.

A knock on her bedroom door. Enter her mother, the beautiful and graceful Whitney Cruz, professional dancer, blonde and petite and thin. “Oh good, you’re up already. Breakfast will be ready soon,” she said in her soothing, melodious voice. She floated into the room on her tiny feet. “Nena, how many times have I told you to put your dirty clothes in the hamper?” She whisked the pile of clothes Luna had covered her full-body mirror with into her arms and carried them to the pink cloth bin in the corner.

By the time she turned around, Luna’s perfectly rehearsed smile had snapped into place. “Sorry, mami!” She jumped out of bed, her performance as Girl Who Loves Life in full swing. “I’ll do better next time.” She shoved her bulky body past her wafer-thin mother, ignoring her reflection along the way, and rummaged through her closet. “Let’s see, what should I wear today?”

“Choose quickly. I don’t want to be late dropping you and Sebastian off,” her mother said as she drifted back out of the room.

Luna grabbed something at random. Lately, even the joy of picking out her clothes had abandoned her. It was only a matter of time before she lost the joy of self-expression altogether, and then she’d really have to die, whether by God’s hands or her own.

She paused in the middle of her bedroom, dug her pudgy toes into the carpet, sniffled a couple times, then pulled herself together. Girl Who Loves Life did not cry her eyes out first thing in the morning. She put on a cute outfit and seized the day!

With her smile firmly in place, she stepped out into the upstairs den and headed for the bathroom, but not before stopping by the small side table in the middle of the hallway. Five seashells were arranged on a decorative tray. Behind them stood a wooden cross. “Good morning,” she said to her five unborn siblings, and then continued onwards.