Mark Waterman: The Sun In All Its Glory (Completed) Alternate Story

Chapter 2: The Spiral

It was the end of the school year so lots of people were going away on open days and work experience. Luna was one of them. She promised Mark that she would try and catch up with him over the summer holidays but if not then she would see him on the first day back.

Mark went a whole month without seeing her until he went out with his friends a week before his birthday in mid-August. They were coming back home when they got on the bus to see Luna with her boyfriend, Sol. They had just been to the gym. Mark had his heart crushed in that short bus journey, but tried to keep up a false smile, even when he looked directly at her as he got off the bus. He didn't see her for another three weeks until the second day back at school.

Everything was gone.

They were no longer in the same classes as each other. Mark had been moved up to the top set in both maths and physics meaning he couldn't be in her biology class. Mark returned to the spiral that he had entered after nothing had materialised with Christina.

Mark tried to keep in touch with her over the phone and carry on cheering her up as she had been feeling down herself the last week. Mark suggested that they tried to hang out during their free periods but she insisted on studying after her performance in recent tests and examinations. They grew further and further apart. It was as if the whole of the 5 months before the holidays had never meant anything. 5 months just gone.

Every now and then things would go back to normal and they would hang out together, but only if Paul was around. Mark started to believe that Luna didn't like him anymore as she kept ignoring him and giving him the dirtiest looks. Mark got to the point where he tried to cut himself because he couldn't take all this pain of being away from her.

Paul was the only way Mark ever saw Luna from the beginning of the academic year. Paul became Mark's best friend and Mark entrusted him with all the secrets that he didn't want anyone else knowing. Mark still kept on checking up on Luna but to no avail. They ended up fighting more times than they saw each other, often ending with Luna saying, "not everything's about you Mark, like I don't have time for you anymore, I barely get to speak to my bf and my friends". This usually left Mark crying and committing self-harm.

It came to Mark's attention, through his best friend Paul, that Luna was talking about him behind his back to her (and he thought his) friends. Even Paul was lying to him about taking his side. Paul was closest to Luna, barring Sol, and constantly reassured her that he told me to stop caring about her, and that he was done hanging out with Mark.