This story is part of a series! All stories are spin-offs of each other and do not need to be read in order but may have some spoilers in the stories that come before them. Here's the order:

1- Lie Until You Laugh- Sienna Mast (Complete)

2- Laugh Until You Cry- Stella Wayne (Complete)

3- Cry Until You Bleed- Ana Shaw (Complete)

4- Bleed Until You Heal- Jo Mast (Complete)

——————————————————————————————————

"If I could live forever, I'd want it to be with you."

"If I could live forever, I'd want it to be with you too. But also on a rocket ship. How do you feel about Saturn?"

"No way. There's too many rings," I tell my best friend with a shake of my head. "What about Pluto?"

"Pluto isn't a planet," Scott tells me.

"Shut up, it is too a planet," I argue stubbornly.

"How would you know?"

"Well, if your mommy just decided one day that you weren't her son anymore, would you believe her? You can't just decide things like that! Pluto stays."

"Fine," He resigns, kicking his foot around the wooden floor of the tree house that's built in his backyard around a large leafy tree. We're so high up in the sky that we can see the roof of his house and we can see into my house, the one right next door. Right now, looking out the window of the tree house, I can see my mom and dad fighting in the kitchen. They're just fighting right now but I know what comes next and I don't want to see it so I shut the window door thing.

I don't want Scott to see it either because when he sees them really fight, it scares him so bad. He's only seen it happen a few times, when he's at my house playing, and we have to hide under my bed until it's over. That's why he doesn't come over to my house anymore, because I don't like to see him so scared.

"Pluto wins again!" I shout cheerfully as I sit down in the bean bag chair that's beside Scott's.

"You always win but it's only because I let you win," He tells me.

"I know," I laugh and then there's a small silence before I speak up. "Hey, Scotty?"

"Yeah?"

"What's your favorite thing to do ever?" I ask him curiously. "We play a lot but what's your favorite?"

"Why?"

"Because..." I pause before continuing. "I don't think that I'm going to be here for very much longer and I want to do whatever you want to do."

"You're leaving?"

I nod and I try not to cry but I'm always so bad at not crying. "I think so. Nenna said that she's going to rescue me and my mommy soon."

"Why can't you just live here with me?" Scott wonders. "And when your daddy gets too mad, you can just hide in here with me."

"I don't want to leave you," I say to him. "But Nenna says that it's the only way. I have to go."

"No you don't," He shakes his head at me. "I don't want you to."

"My daddy hurts me, Scotty," I remind him. "I have to go. Maybe you can come with me instead."

"But my mommy would miss me," He tells me. "And she makes pancakes every Saturday."

"I know. It's okay," I mumble. "Anyway, let's play astronaut. That's your favorite game, isn't it?"

"Wait, I want to give you something," Scott says suddenly as he stands up from his bean bag chair and walks over to the little cupboard in the corner of the tree house. "It was for your birthday but I can give it to you now."

"You didn't steal it from your mommy, did you?" I wonder cautiously. "Because I know that you get in trouble every time that you do that."

"No, I didn't steal it. I bought it," He tells me. "I had to give Brutus five whole baths."

I watch from my bean bag chair as he turns around with a little gift bag with tissue paper jaggedly poking out of the top of the bag. He hands it to me and I take the bag in my hands to inspect it before I take the tissue paper out and then I see inside, there's a pretty gold necklace with a moon and a little star with a diamond on the star.

"I like it, thank you," I say with a broad grin.

"Good. I got it for you because we both love space so much," He explains to me as I loop the gold chain over my head so that the moon and star dangle on my t-shirt. I'll have to hide it when I go back home because it'll make my daddy angry but that's okay. I don't mind, it'll definitely be worth it.

"I'll keep it forever," I promise him.

"Now we can play astronaut," Scott says, grabbing my hand in his tiny hand and pulling me up off of the bean bag chair that I was sitting in. "Put on your helmet."

"Oh, right," I say, dropping the now empty gift bag on the bean bag chair so that I can grab my astronaut helmet, which is just a plastic fishbowl, and so is Scott's, and then we grab the little paper star cutouts in our palms to get ready for blastoff.

"Are you ready to go to space, Astronaut Jo?" Scott yells as if he's yelling over the roar of a rocket ship engine.

I giggle and then nod. "Yes! Are you ready to go space, Astronaut Scott?"

"Of course I'm ready," He responds. "Where shall we go today?"

"I don't know, Astronaut, we've already gone everywhere," I tell him. I mean, we've already traveled to the sun, the moon, all of the planets, and even to the Milky Way.

"There must be someplace that we've never been," Scott tells me, frowning in thought.

"I've got it!" I shout when an idea hits me in the head.

"What is it, Astronaut Jo?" He shouts at me.

"Let's go chase a shooting star," I suggest.

"That's crazy!"

"I know!" I shout back.

"Let's do it," He agrees with me. "It's brilliant."

"We can do it," I say with a nod. "We can do anything."

"We can do anything at all," Scott agrees with me again and then he grips his paper stars firmly in his fists as I do the same.

"Are you ready for the countdown?" I ask him, preparing myself for the rocky takeoff.

"No," He tells me, taking me off guard because he was supposed to say yes. "I don't want this to be our last adventure."

"This isn't our last adventure," I assure him. "Even when I leave, I'm going to come back and then we'll be older. We'll have even bigger adventures."

"Bigger than chasing shooting stars?" He asks me skeptically.

"It'll be tough to beat," I say. "But we can do it. We can do anything, remember?"

"Okay, you're right," Scott concedes. "I'm ready for the countdown, Astronaut Jo."

"Good. Let's go on an adventure," I grin excitedly at him as we stand up tall with our fishbowls on our heads so that we can still breathe air even up in space.

"10! 9! 8!" We start shouting the countdown from ten all the way down to "3! 2! BLASTOFF!"

When it's time for blastoff, we throw our paper stars into the air and they float all around us, landing in my hair and on Scott's shoulders. We twirl around in circles and stomp our feet really loudly and we laugh like crazy. My blonde hair spins around me as we fly into space in Scott's tree house to go find a shooting star.

The last of the stars touch the ground and I stop spinning and then I look out the window that's facing Scott's family's pool. "Do you see a shooting star out there, Astronaut Scott?"

"Negative," He tells me, which is space talk for 'no'. "What about you, Astronaut Jo?"

"I SEE ONE!" I shout, pointing excitedly out the window where the pretend shooting star is right in front of us but it's running away so we have to go fast. "Step on the gas, we have to hurry!"

"We're going as fast as we can!" Scott shouts back at me. "It's too fast!"

"No, it can't be," I deny. "We can do anything, remember? We are going to catch that star!"

"You're crazy, Astronaut Jo," He says, his voice full of laughter.

"A little bit of crazy never hurt anybody," I tell him although I'm not really sure that I know what it means. I just know that that's what my mom tells me whenever I call her crazy so that's what I tell Scott. "NOW GO FASTER!"

We stomp our feet faster and louder and shake our whole tiny little bodies with such determination that it probably looks like we really are crazy to people who don't understand our game. "We're almost there!" Scott shouts, pointing out the window at the shooting start that we're chasing.

We chase it and we chase it and we believe as hard as we can believe and then, "We got it!"

"We did it!" Scott yells with me as we attach our rocket ship to the shooting star like the people did with the moon so that we don't lose the shooting star.

"Get the flag ready," I say.

"I can't find one," He tells me after a moment of looking around. We usually have a stash of victory flags around the tree house but we do go through them pretty rapidly so I guess we didn't realize last time (we had discovered a new planet and named it Brutus, after Scott's puppy) that we had used the last flag.

"That's alright, we can just make one," I assure him, grabbing a piece of paper and some crayons from the cupboard of craft stuff that's held in the tree house.

"I don't want this to be our last shooting star mission," Scott speaks up as we're coloring our victory flag with bright colors like yellow and orange and red.

"This isn't our last shooting star mission," I say. "I mean, there has to be at least a bazillion shooting stars out there, we can find them all."

"But you said that you're leaving soon," He reminds me.

"I am, but I'll come back," I tell him. "And then we'll find the rest."

"I guess so," He sighs.

I don't want to see him so sad anymore so I finish my part of the flag and slide it over to him. "But while I'm gone, you can keep this shooting star for yourself until we find another. Alright?"

"Promise?"

"Pinky promise," I hold my pinky up for him and he wraps his own pinky around mine and we shake. "We're astronaut buddies, I can't leave you for long."

"Good because space needs us," Scott reminds me.

"Exactly," I agree with him.

"And I'm happy that your daddy won't be able to make you sad anymore," He tells me. "It makes me sad that you have to leave but happy too."

"I wish that I didn't have to leave," I say, starting to cry now and, in turn, Scott starts to cry too. So scared for the future, even at just seven years old.

We were too young but the world didn't slow down just for us. The world didn't care about my age at all when my daddy started hitting my mommy and then he started hitting my sister and even sometimes me. Sometimes, I had to act thirty when I was only seven and the world didn't care at all.

Maybe that's why I loved our shooting star so much, because it wasn't part of the world that didn't care.

_______________________________

Song: seven by Taylor Swift

Picture: Another cover that I made