S1 Week 6 Bonus Story: Distance

This is Halloween

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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Duke shivered as he stood on the Cruz family’s front porch, waiting for someone to answer the door. The sidewalk was crowded with trick-or-treaters, ghouls and princesses and Frankenstein’s monsters that only came up to his elbow, clutching plastic jack-o-lantern pails full of candy and shrieking at the top of their lungs. If he hadn’t been so committed to his Monkey D. Luffy costume, he’d have put a coat on, but alas. He was doomed to freeze to death on this godforsaken—

The front door opened, revealing Luna in a frilly pink dress with a huge pink bowtie, what appeared to be a nurse’s cap, and more white ruffles than a person could count. “You a maid?” he asked.

“I’m Cardcaptor Sakura!” Luna replied indignantly. She grabbed his bare arm and pulled him inside the house. “We really need to get you watching shoujo anime.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

Mrs. Cruz came scurrying out of her bedroom, dressed in a Sleeping Beauty costume and carrying a huge bowl of candy. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought I’d missed some trick-or-treaters.” She handed Duke a full-sized KitKat bar. “Sorry honey, you must have been cold!”

Duke reassured her he was fine before following Luna upstairs. He’d seen Dimitri’s car in the driveway, so it didn’t surprise him to find the Hale siblings in the den. True to form, Dimitri wore a bedsheet with eyeholes cut into it, and Duke would have been grateful to not have to look at his face if the costume hadn’t allowed him to run his mouth as usual. He’d have to ask Luna if they could mummify him sometime.

What did surprise him was that Victoria had dressed up for the occasion. She wore a long black robe with a green and silver striped scarf wrapped around her neck. “You’re a Slytherin?” he asked.

“What the hell else would I be?” Victoria replied with a scowl. “What are you supposed to be, a homeless person?”

Duke shook his head. Why did he bother trying to make conversation with her? Oh, right, because Luna expected him to be nice. And because Victoria was cute. Mostly the first reason, though.