The Sea of Tranquility(55)
Author: Katja Millay

“Kara Matthews must have been on the phone half the night,” he says flatly. I already know this. At this point I’ve learned that Josh and I have been secretly screwing for weeks, but that now, he and Drew are just passing me back and forth. I guess he’s heard it, too, but I don’t have to answer to it. I just play dumb and walk away. I doubt Josh has to answer to it, either. I’m surprised anyone even got close enough for him to hear what they were saying. Most of them are usually too terrified that they’ll drop dead from being too near him, or worse, that they’ll have to acknowledge that he exists. I don’t know what this has to do with him calling me over in the middle of the courtyard. Giving them more ammunition is not usually his M.O.

“Sit,” he repeats, and it’s gentle. Not a command. Not a request. Just the only thing left to do. “There’s no reason to keep hiding in the bathroom. Hide here. There’s a force field, you know.” He lowers his voice when he says it, like he’s telling me a secret and then just barely hints at a smile that no one but me would catch before he puts it away and sobers, adding quietly, “No one will bother you.”

So I sit. He’s on the backrest and I’m on the seat. We don’t touch. We don’t speak. We aren’t even at eye level with one another. And today, for the first time since I came to this school, the courtyard isn’t nearly so horrible after all.

CHAPTER 31

Josh

My grandfather died this morning. Nothing changed.

I thought, when he died, I would crack and cry and get drunk and throw shit because it was over, because he was the last one. But I didn’t. I didn’t break down. I didn’t punch holes in the wall. I didn’t start fights with every ass**le in school. I just kept going like nothing even happened. Because it was all so incredibly normal.

***

“Where are we going?” Sunshine asks when she climbs into my truck. I don’t feel like being here. The garage doesn’t offer me anything today. That workshop is the only thing in the world that I count on, and I don’t want to think that it’s powerless for me right now. I’d rather just leave it for a little while so I don’t have to be afraid that I’ve lost that, too. I don’t really know where we’re going. I just want to go.

We drive for a long time. I haven’t said anything since we got in the truck. I never even answered her question. Sunshine is good with silence. She leans her head against the window and looks outside and she just lets me drive.

We end up stretched out in the bed of the truck, staring up at the sky in the parking lot of a closed down car dealership.

I haven’t started counting yet. I wonder if it’s just me or if it’s like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they’ve been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren’t counting anymore, and you don’t even know when you stopped. That’s the moment they’re gone.

“My grandfather’s dead,” I say.

“If we had a telescope, I could show you the Sea of Tranquility.” She points up at the sky. “See? Up there on the moon. You can’t really tell from here.”

“Is that why you have a picture of the moon in your bedroom?” At this point I’m an expert at going along with her tangents.

“You noticed that?”

“It was the only thing on the wall. I thought you were into astronomy.”

“I’m not. I keep it there to remind me that it’s bullshit. I thought it sounded like this beautiful, peaceful place. Like where you’d want to go when you die. Quiet and water everywhere. A place that would swallow you up and accept you no matter what. I had this whole image of it.”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad place to end up.”

“It wouldn’t be, if it were real. But it’s not. It’s not a sea at all. It’s just a big, dark shadow on the moon. The whole name is a lie. Doesn’t mean anything.”

Her left hand is resting on her stomach, opening and closing. She does that all the time but I don’t think she realizes it.

“So your warped fascination with names extends beyond people?”

“They’re all lies, really. Your name could mean to excel and you could be useless and crap at everything. You can put a name on anything, call it whatever you want, doesn’t make it real. Doesn’t make it true.” She sounds bitter. Or just disillusioned.

“So if they’re all such meaningless crap, why are you so obsessed?” I can’t count how many mutilated newspapers she’s left on my kitchen table once she’s cut her way through the birth announcements. At first, I thought she was one of those girls who takes pre-naming her future children to the extreme, but apparently it’s just some weird hobby.

“Because it’s good when you find one that does mean something. Makes all the empty ones worthwhile.” The faintest smile crosses her face and I wonder what she’s thinking about, but she doesn’t give me the chance to ask.

“Where do you think he is?” she asks, still staring at the sky.

“Someplace good, I guess. I don’t know.” I wait and she does too. “I asked him once if he was afraid. Of dying. Then I realized it was kind of a shit thing to ask someone who’s dying, because if they weren’t thinking about it before, they definitely would be after.”

“He was upset?”

“No. He laughed. Said he wasn’t afraid at all. But he was on a lot of drugs by then, so he wasn’t all there. He told me he already knew where he was going because he’d been there before.” I stop because I think that’s all of my grandfather’s craziness that I want to share. He wasn’t always like that. Just at the end, with the drugs and the pain. But then she’s looking at me with the curiosity of a hundred questions in her eyes and I feel like I have to answer her. “When he was like twenty, he was working construction and he fell and his heart stopped, so I guess he was technically dead for like a minute or something. He told the story a thousand times.”

“Then why would you think it was the drugs talking if you’d heard it before?”

“Because he always said he didn’t remember. Everyone asked him if there was a light and all that bullshit, but he always said he couldn’t remember any of it once he woke up. Then the night before he left, he sat me down and said he had two things he wanted to give me‌—‌one final piece of advice and his last secret. And that’s when he told me that he always remembered it, where he went when he died. He said he remembered exactly what it was like.”