Today

Donna was out of town today. (Possibly job-related? I'm not really sure what her job is. She never talks to me about it.) I didn't know that, so I went to our usual lunchtime meeting spot and waited for half an hour. She's never been later than a couple minutes before, so once enough time had passed I decided to swing by her house and see if she was there.

As I've already explained, she wasn't there. No car in the driveway. Luna's dad was home (actually, he was outside mowing the lawn rather badly). I was going to leave when Luna came out, yelling "JACK!" at the top of her lungs (I've never heard her yell before). She was waving frantically at me, and for a minute I thought something was wrong.

I got off my bike and ran over to her. "Hey, everything okay?"

"Fine," she said, at a more normal volume this time. "Can we hang out?" When I hesitated, she pressed on. "I'm really bored, Jack, pleeeease."

I gave in. Wasn't like I had much else to do anyway.

We ended up browsing Netflix on her mother's laptop for a while. Neither of us could decide what to watch; it was one of those situations where Luna swore she'd be happy with whatever I chose, but no one ever says that honestly so I didn't want to choose anything lest she find my choice disappointing. Finally, I just said something like "I can't think of anything, how about we go on YouTube or something?"

Luna's eyes immediately lit up and she grabbed the laptop from me. When she handed it back, she'd fullscreened a video. It took me a second to realize that she'd put on an episode of My Little Pony.

"I know it's for babies," Luna said, "but it's a good cartoon! I like it."

I was really tempted to hightail it out of there. I'd never watched My Little Pony before, but naturally I'd heard about it — the show and its fandom are, of course, notorious online. I didn't want to hurt Luna's feelings, so I kept my mouth shut and decided to just watch it.

It actually wasn't bad. I don't think I'll ever call myself a fan, but I can see why it's got its fans; the cartoon is surprisingly well-made. Despite it being a little too saccharine for my tastes, the animation is visually appealing. Surprisingly, I even ended up liking the characters.

The first episode is a two-parter, and we only watched part 1 before YouTube decided to stop loading properly. (Luna's mom's laptop is kind of old, and their internet doesn't seem to be particularly fast, either.) I was relieved for the interruption as I was beginning to question my own sanity in liking a show about colorful cartoon ponies.

"So how'd you get into this show?" I asked Luna.

"I just found it on YouTube the other day," Luna said. "I did a search for my name and pony videos came up."

(Luna shares a first name with one of the My Little Pony characters. A villainous one, too.)

Luna asked me what I thought of the show. I told her that I liked it more than I expected to. That kind of killed the conversation, and after about thirty seconds of awkward silence I brought up a new topic.

"How's school going?"

"Fine," Luna said.

"Make any friends?"

"No."

This conversation wasn't really going anywhere either.

"Do you have friends at school?" Luna asked me.

"I'm homeschooled." I told her. "Remember?"

"Oh," she said, suddenly disinterested. "Right."

There was another pause, then:

"Why do you hang out with me?"

For a crazy instant I thought she was onto me. I thought she knew I was getting paid; maybe she'd overheard Donna say something, or simply guessed. How hard could it be to figure it out? In what normal world are twelve-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds friends voluntarily?

"Why do you think?" I said defensively.

"I don't know," Luna shrugged, and I relaxed. She didn't seem to have any damning evidence of my guilt after all. "It's just funny because you're so much older than me. I've never had a friend that much older than me."

I wondered if she'd ever had many friends at all, but didn't say that.

We were sitting up in Luna's room, on her bed. The room was looking a lot tidier than last I saw it; bed actually made, most of Luna's things put away, only a few moving boxes left out.

"I'm really glad we're friends," Luna told me. She leaned up against me.

It was the first time she'd touched me, apart from holding my hand a few times. It was kind of strange.

"I'm glad too," I told her.

We just sat there for a bit. I had this feeling that if I moved or said anything, I'd push her away — like she was a cat or something and the slightest motion from me would offend her. As odd as it may sound, I didn't want that moment to end. It felt like we had an actual connection. It felt like we were really friends, and if I moved it would break the moment and I'd remember that I was there because I get paid to be there.

Donna's car finally drove up and Luna immediately hopped up from the bed and ran downstairs. I followed her. Donna seemed pleasantly surprised to see me there. She sent Luna into the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water while she explained to me that she'd tried to send me an email about not being there for lunch, but her internet was having some issues.

She invited me to stay a little longer, but I declined and said I had things to do at home. Left before Luna came back; I was afraid she'd convince me to stick around.