The Sky is Everywhere
Author: Jandy Nelson

Part 1

Gram is worried about me. It’s not just because my sister Bailey died four weeks ago, or because my mother hasn’t contacted me in sixteen years, or even because suddenly all I think about is sex. She is worried about me because one of her houseplants has spots.

Gram has believed for most of my seventeen years that this particular houseplant, which is of the nondescript variety, reflects my emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing. I’ve grown to believe it too.

Across the room from where I sit, Gram – all six feet and floral frock of her, looms over the black-spotted leaves.

“What do you mean it might not get better this time?” She’s asking this of Uncle Big: arborist, resident pothead and mad scientist to boot. He knows something about everything, but he knows everything about plants.

To anyone else it might seem strange, even off the wall, that Gram, as she asks this, is staring at me, but it doesn’t to Uncle Big, because he’s staring at me as well.

“This time it has a very serious condition.” Big’s voice trumpets as if from stage or pulpit; his words carry weight, even pass the salt comes out of his mouth in a thou-shalt-Ten-Commandments kind of way.

Gram raises her hands to her face in distress, and I go back to scribbling a poem in the margin of Wuthering Heights. I’m huddled into a corner of the couch. I’ve no use for talking, would just as soon store paper clips in my mouth.

“But the plant’s always recovered before, Big, like when Lennie broke her arm, for instance.”

“That time the leaves had white spots.”

“Or just last fall when she auditioned for lead clarinet but had to play second chair again.”

“Brown spots.”

“Or when—”

“This time it’s different.”

I glance up. They’re still peering at me, a tall duet of sorrow and concern.

Gram is the town of Clover’s Garden Guru. She has the most extraordinary flower garden in Northern California. Her roses burst with more color than a year of sunsets, and their fragrance is so intoxicating that town lore claims breathing in their scent can cause you to fall in love on the spot. But despite her nurturing and renowned green thumb, this plant seems to follow the trajectory of my life, independent of her efforts or its own vegetal sensibility.

I put my book and pen down on the table. Gram leans in close to the plant, whispers to it about the importance of joie de vivre, then lumbers over to the couch, sitting down next to me.

Then Big joins us, plopping his enormous frame down beside Gram. We three, each with the same unruly hair that sits on our heads like a bustle of shiny black crows, stay like this, staring at nothing, for the rest of the afternoon.

This is us since my sister Bailey collapsed one month ago from a fatal arrhythmia while in rehearsal for a local production of Romeo & Juliet. It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.

The morning of the day Bailey died,
She woke me up
by putting her finger in my ear,
I hated when she did this.
She then started trying on shirts, asking me:
Which do you like better, the green or the blue?
The blue.
You didn’t even look up, Lennie.
Okay, the green. Really, I don’t care what shirt you wear…
Then I rolled over and fell back asleep.
I found out later
she wore the blue
and those were the last words I ever spoke to her

(Found written on a candy wrapper on the trail to the Rain River)

My first day back to school is just as I expect, the hall does a Red Sea part when I come in, conversations hush, eyes swim with nervous sympathy, and everyone stares as if I’m holding Bailey’s dead body in my arms, which I guess I am. Her death is all over me, I can feel it and everyone can see it, plain as a big black coat wrapped around me on a beautiful spring day. But what I don’t expect is the unprecedented hubbub over some new boy, Joe Fontaine, who arrived in my month-long absence. Everywhere I go it’s the same:

“Have you seen him yet?”

“He looks like a Gypsy.”

“Like a rock star.”

“A pirate.”

“I hear he’s in a band called Dive.”

“That he’s a musical genius.”

“Someone told me he used to live in Paris.”

“That he played music on the streets.”

“Have you seen him yet?”

I have seen him, because when I return to my band seat, the one I’ve occupied for the last year, he’s in it. Even in the stun of grief, my eyes roam from the black boots, up the miles of legs covered in denim, over the endless torso, and finally settle on a face so animated I wonder if I’ve interrupted a conversation between him and my music stand.

“Hi,” he says, and jumps up. He’s treetop tall. “You must be Lennon.” He points to my name on the chair. “I heard about – I’m sorry.” I notice the way he holds his clarinet, not precious with it, tight fist around the neck, like a sword.

“Thank you,” I say, and every available inch of his face busts into a smile – whoa. Has he blown into our school on a gust of wind from another world? The guy looks unabashedly jack-o’-lantern happy which couldn’t be more foreign to the sullen demeanor most of us strove to perfect. He has scores of messy brown curls that flop every which way, and eyelashes so spider-leg long and thick that when he blinks he looks like he’s batting his bright green eyes right at you. His face is more open than an open book, like a wall of graffiti really. I realize I’m writing wow on my thigh with my finger, decide I’d better open my mouth and snap us out of this impromptu staring contest.

“Everyone calls me Lennie,” I say. Not very original, but better than guh, which was the alternative, and it does the trick. He looks down at his feet for a second and I take a breath and regroup for Round Two.

“Been wondering about that actually, Lennon after John?” he asks, again holding my gaze – it’s entirely possible I’m going to faint. Or burst into flames.

I nod. “Mom was a hippie.” This is northern Northern California after all – the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia and Poppy – all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton truck of a guy who would be the star of our football team if we were the kind of school that had a football team. We’re not. We’re the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym.