S1 Week 8 Bonus Story: Portrait of a Boy in Blue

In the Valley of the Shadow of Death

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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March 3, 2002

Luna’s temple bumped the window as the family SUV rolled over another pothole. She’d hoped to alleviate her headache with the coolness of the glass, but there seemed to be no point. She’d begin her twelfth year of life with a migraine and a concussion if she didn’t sit up. She leaned away from the window and winced as a passing streetlight’s beam swept over her body. With rain battering the roof of the car, she could close her eyes and pretend she was a sailor returning from months at sea, cold and sick and half-starved and ready for her warm, dry bed. But it was difficult to pretend she was at sea when her parents, seated up front, sang along to a Salvador song at the top of their lungs.

“Ma, keep it down. Luna has a headache,” Sebastian piped up from his seat beside Luna. He almost blended into the shadows with his black hoodie, black jeans, and black sneakers.

Luna’s mother immediately turned the car radio down. “Ay, disculpe, mi amor.” She reached back and put her hand on Luna’s knee. “Did you have fun tonight?”

Luna smiled at her, the Girl Who Loves Life act in full swing. “Yup!” They’d held a birthday party for her at the bowling alley, just the four of them.

“It’s too bad Dimitri couldn’t come,” her mother said as the SUV wound up the long road towards their subdivision.

Luna scrunched her nose up. “Dimitri’s a turd. He thinks he’s too cool for us now.” She could picture the exact expression he would make when delivering his excuse for missing her birthday party: the slightest crinkle at the corner of his eyes, the easygoing smile of sixteen-going-on-seventeen that never failed to irritate her. He’d ruffle her short brown hair and say something like, “Am I supposed to attend kiddie birthday parties forever?” like he had better places to be. Luna’s head throbbed at the mere thought of it.

“He is getting older,” her father said as he steered the SUV into their subdivision. “You guys might grow apart for a while, but I doubt he thinks he’s too cool for you.”

“If anything, you’re too cool for him,” Sebastian said in a rare betrayal of his best friend.

Luna giggled at that. Between the boy genius who’d graduated high school at age eleven and had taken no friends with him, and the fat girl who no one wanted to hang out with, she doubted there was a cool bone in either of their bodies. But it was the only theory she had for Dimitri’s increased absence in their lives. He used to be over at their house constantly. Now they were lucky if they saw him once a week.