The water in the galvanized tub was freezing, drawn straight from a rusty pump, but Jessica didn't complain. Squeaky and a girl they called Sadie—a girl with a sharp, bird-like face and eyes that moved too fast—scrubbed her skin with coarse soap until it turned pink.
"Out with the old," Sadie whispered, pouring a bucket of water over Jessica’s head. "The soap takes the suburban skin off. The water drowns the girl you used to be."
When they were finished, they didn't give her back her denim jacket or her store-bought jeans. Instead, they handed her a thin, sleeveless cotton dress that smelled of woodsmoke and lavender. It was loose and frayed, but as Jessica pulled it over her head, she felt a strange, terrifying lightness. She felt untethered.
"Now," Squeaky said, taking a pair of shears from her pocket. "The final cord."
Jessica sat on a wooden crate as Squeaky chopped several inches off her hair, letting the brown locks fall into the dirt. In her old life, her mother would have screamed about the mess, about the "ruined" look. Here, the hair was just dead weight.
The moon was a sharp silver hook in the sky when they led her to the campfire. The Ranch was transformed at night. The sagging porches were hidden by shadows, and the flickering orange light of the flames made the old movie sets look like a real frontier town at the end of the world.
The "Family" sat in a circle. There were about twenty of them now. Some were playing wooden flutes, others were humming a low, droning chord. In the center sat Charlie, cradling an acoustic guitar.
"Come here, Little Spark," Charlie commanded.
Jessica walked into the circle. The heat from the fire hit her face, and for a second, she felt like she was back at that dinner table, waiting for a judgment that never came. But Charlie wasn't looking past her. He was staring into her.
"I went for a walk in the desert tonight," Charlie said, his fingers idly plucking a dissonant string on the guitar. "And I talked to the coyotes. They told me about a girl who was lost in a house of mirrors. Every time she looked for herself, she saw her brother. Every time she reached for love, she touched cold glass."
A few of the girls sobbed softly. The air felt thick, like a storm was about to break.
"Jessica Cassidy is dead," Charlie announced, his voice dropping to a gravelly growl. "She died in a park in Simi Valley. She was a product of the 'pigs' and their plastic world. We don't want her here."
Jessica’s heart hammered against her ribs. For a terrifying moment, she thought they were going to cast her out into the dark.
"But," Charlie smiled, and the tension snapped. "A new soul has risen from the ashes. A soul that sees the truth. A soul that belongs to the sun." He stood up, walked over to her, and smeared a thumbful of campfire ash across her forehead.
"Your name is Little Moon," he whispered. "Because you reflect the light I give you. Do you accept your name?"
"Yes," Jessica—Little Moon—whispered. The name felt like a secret code. It felt like belonging.
"Then eat," Charlie said, gesturing to a large communal pot of stew. "The 'pigs' threw this away because they thought it was garbage. But we know that nothing is garbage. Everything has a purpose if you know how to use it."
As Little Moon sat on the ground, eating the lukewarm vegetables salvaged from a dumpster, she felt a sense of peace she had never known. She watched a tall, muscular man named Tex cleaning a long hunting knife by the fire. She watched Sadie dancing by herself in the shadows, her movements jerky and strange.
She didn't know that the "stew" was a symbol of how Charlie was breaking them down. She didn't know that the music was a brainwashing tool. She only knew that for the first time in seventeen years, she wasn't an outcast.
She was a Moon. And she was finally part of a galaxy.
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