The Moon Without Stars

Luna Noon is a self-described introvert entering seventh grade at Okubo Comets Middle School with exactly one friend, Scott Mango, a quiet, loyal boy she has known since early childhood. During the last days of summer, Mrs. Lee, whose daughter Poppy Lee died after a long illness, notices Luna reading in the park and offers her Poppy's books. Poppy's older brother, Palmer Lee, delivers heavy boxes, urging Luna not to waste them. Luna devours the collection, especially heavily annotated memoirs, and resolves to pay closer attention to life's emotional range.

On the first day of school, Luna observes the social landscape while waiting for Scott. When classmate Miki panics over a spider in English class, Luna anonymously leaves a book about befriending spiders in the redwood tree where she and Scott eat lunch, slipping a note into Miki's locker to direct her there. Miki later reports the book changed her perspective, and Scott coins Luna's role as book doctor: She can write literary prescriptions, using language as a balm for emotional wounds.

At home, Luna's mother has bipolar disorder and often retreats to a ceramics studio in the garage for weeks. Her father, an architect, is emotionally restrained. Luna keeps her feelings small, compressing each school day into a single word whenever her father asks about it.

When Scott creates a headstone for a classmate's dead guinea pig, Kyle Kumagi, a popular classmate and charismatic athlete, trips on it during flag football and breaks his ankle. The ensuing conflict leaves Scott working at Seascapes, a neighbor's tropical fish store, to help cover vet bills. In drama class, June, a popular girl who effortlessly attracts people, mocks classmate Lynnelle Lim's eczema-spotted legs, causing Lynnelle to withdraw. Luna writes a zine, a small, handmade booklet, comparing Lynnelle's spots to a cheetah's markings. Scott illustrates it, and they title it SPOTTED. Three days later, Lynnelle arrives transformed, wearing a cheetah-print coat and volunteering for every drama part. Boris Banes, a tall classmate and basketball player, next approaches Luna about his own skin insecurities. Luna writes about a tiny alien who lands on Boris's shoulder. Boris later gives Luna a handmade booklet ending with a drawing of a girl labeled "YOU." Luna experiences attraction for the first time.

Luna and Scott expand their zine work under the redwood. At the Halloween dance, Boris takes Luna's hand during hide-and-seek in the eucalyptus grove, and they crouch behind a tree. In a later round, everyone conspires to leave Scott searching alone while Kyle mocks him. Luna snaps a stick to alert Scott to her location. Later, Scott misreads a gesture and leans in to kiss Luna. She jolts back, and though they agree to forget the moment, their dynamic shifts.

Miki invites Luna to eat lunch with June's group at the willow tree. June flatters Luna and invites her to a sleepover at her mansion, where June reveals she is in recovery from bulimia. During a late-night prank, the girls wake Miki with fake breakfast; Miki's throat itches because Luna added sesame seeds, to which Miki is allergic. June introduces fix-its, personalized critique booklets stored in a red birdhouse on the willow, with Luna as the designated writer. Luna's own fix-it directs her to stop spending time in "Scotland," June's code for Scott's territory. Luna complies, abandons their lunches together, and changes her appearance. The fix-its spread across campus and grow ruthless. Students stop approaching Luna for book prescriptions.

At June's urging, Luna creates a fix-it for Lynnelle. Lynnelle is devastated. Scott confronts Luna, calling the booklets demented and telling her she is better than serving as the bully's secretary. Luna lashes out, accusing him of refusing to grow up. Scott walks away, and Luna later finds a "Closed" sign in the redwood tree.

On New Year's Eve, Luna attends a sleepover at June's instead of Scott's party at Seascapes. Palmer, who has been drinking, crashes a minivan through the store's front window, shattering every fish tank. Scott is alone, closing up. He kneels in dark water, bleeding from glass, grabbing at dying fish. Luna rushes to his apartment, but Scott asks for space, the same thing she had demanded of him.

When Luna's mother discovers a stolen bra tag taped in Luna's journal and calls June's mother, June is grounded. Luna explodes at her mother. On Valentine's Day, Luna's locker is empty. She spots Lynnelle on a bench, gently cupping Scott's bandaged hand in comfort. At the willow, no one makes room. Boris has given June a zine identical to the one he made for Luna. Ivy, one of June's close friends, tells Luna she is no longer welcome. At the redwood, Luna finds the desk overturned and vandalized, and Kyle nearby, hyperventilating over being benched from basketball. Luna stays beside him until he calms. She later finds Scott cleaning the desk. They try to flip it upright but cannot. Scott walks away.

Alone in a bathroom stall, Luna reads the latest fix-it entries, which call her a thief, a snitch, and a lunatic. She breaks down sobbing and calls her mother using their childhood emergency code word.

Luna turns thirteen in bed, refusing school. Her mother draws the Chinese character for depressed, yùmèn, showing the character for heart trapped inside the character for door, and tells Luna the heart must break free. Luna walks past campus to Cho's, a restaurant run by her family friend Uncle Ray, and her mother follows. Her mother explains the origin of Luna's name: The moon has phases, sometimes a sliver, sometimes full, but it is always whole.

Her parents arrange sessions with Mrs. Wawona, the school counselor. Luna recounts everything. Mrs. Wawona reframes Luna's guilt: Everyone hurts people they love, and that is part of being human. That night, Luna writes NOTES TO SELF, a list of acceptances: It is okay to cry, okay to get a D, okay to face another day. For Mrs. Koko-Gray's final art class, students find their canvases on the gym roof, left outdoors for months. Luna's portrait of Scott, painted on the first day of school, is sun-bleached and rain-warped. Mrs. Koko-Gray tells them they are co-creators with the world: Life is part effort, part chance. Luna stares at the weathered painting and vows to make an attempt.

Slowly, Luna rebuilds. She pays for the stolen bra, raises her math grade, and donates Poppy's books to the school library. She creates a PLEASE-KEEPS zine for Lynnelle, the opposite of a fix-it, listing qualities she hopes Lynnelle will keep. She makes a wordless zine for June titled Defenestration, meaning to throw something out a window, reframing a painful memory. Miki tells Luna that a bird shredded the fix-its in the birdhouse and built a nest. Lynnelle embraces Luna in forgiveness and tells her Scott misses her.

At Cho's, Ray tells Luna that a honeybee produces less than a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, and that is good enough. Luna writes From Here On Out, a poem-zine for Scott. She acknowledges she asked for space and found it lonely, closing with the moon gazing at Earth, thinking that its favorite thing is an onion, an allusion to how Scott's parents met at a grocery store.

On the last day of school, Luna places the zine in the redwood tree. By the end of lunch, it has not been taken. After school, she finds it fallen over and picks it up, fearing rejection. She opens the pages to discover that beneath her final lines, Scott has drawn a wrinkly onion and a cratered moon, side by side, surrounded by stars.