The Sky is Everywhere(11)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“You duck! You flying yellow duck! And you took this long to tell me?!” When Sarah gets excited, random animals pop into her speech like she has an Old MacDonald Had a Farm kind of Tourette’s syndrome. “Well, what’s he like?”

“He’s okay,” I say distractedly, looking out the window. I can’t figure out whose idea it could’ve been that we play together. Mr James, maybe? But why? And argh, how freaking mortifying.

“Earth to Lennie. Did you just say Joe Fontaine is okay? The guy’s holy horses unfreakingbelievable! And I heard he has two older brothers: holy horses to the third power, don’t you think?”

“Holy horses, Batgirl,” I say, which makes Sarah giggle, a sound that doesn’t seem quite right coming out of her Batgoth face. She takes a last drag off her cigarette and drops it into a can of soda. I add, “He likes Rachel. What does that say about him?”

“That he has one of those Y chromosomes,” Sarah says, shoving a piece of gum into her orally fixated mouth. “But really, I don’t see it. I heard all he cares about is music and she plays like a screeching cat. Maybe it’s those stupid Throat Singers she’s always going on about and he thinks she’s in the musical know or something.” Great minds … then suddenly Sarah’s jumping in her seat like she’s on a pogo stick. “Oh Lennie, do it! Challenge her for first chair. Today! C’mon. It’ll be so exciting – probably never happened in the history of honor band, a chair challenged on the last day of school!”

I shake my head. “Not going to happen.”

“But why?”

I don’t answer her, don’t know how to.

An afternoon from last summer pops into my head. I’d just quit my lessons with Marguerite and was hanging out with Bailey and Toby at Flying Man’s Gulch. He was telling us that Thoroughbred racing horses have these companion ponies that always stay by their sides, and I remember thinking, That’s me. I’m a companion pony, and companion ponies don’t solo. They don’t play first chair or audition for All-State or compete nationally or seriously consider a certain performing arts conservatory in New York City like Marguerite had begun insisting.

They just don’t.

Sarah sighs as she swerves into a parking spot. “Oh well, guess I’ll have to entertain myself another way on the last day of school.”

“Guess so.”

We jump out of Ennui, head into Cecilia’s Bakery, and order up an obscene amount of pastries that Cecilia gives us for free with that same sorrowful look that follows me everywhere I go now. I think she would give me every last pastry in the store if I asked.

We land on our bench of choice by Maria’s Italian Deli, where I’ve been chief lasagna maker every summer since I was fourteen. I start up again tomorrow. The sun has burst into millions of pieces, which have landed all over Main Street. It’s a gorgeous day. Everything shines except my guilty heart.

“Sarah, I have to tell you something.”

A worried look comes over her. “Sure.”

“Something happened with Toby the other night.” Her worry has turned into something else, which is what I was afraid of. Sarah has an ironclad girlfriend code of conduct regarding guys. The policy is sisterhood before all else.

“Something like something? Or something like something?” Her eyebrow has landed on Mars.

My stomach churns. “Like something … we kissed.” Her eyes go wide and her face twists in disbelief, or perhaps it’s horror. This is the face of my shame, I think, looking at her. How could I have kissed Toby? I ask myself for the thousandth time.

“Wow,” she says, the word falling like a rock to the ground. She’s making no attempt to hold back her disdain. I bury my head in my hands, assume the crash position – I shouldn’t have told her.

“It felt right in the moment, we both miss Bails so much, he just gets it, gets me, he’s like the only one who does … and I was drunk.” I say all this to my jeans.

“Drunk?” She can’t contain her surprise. I hardly ever even have a beer at the parties she drags me to. Then in a softer voice, I hear, “Toby’s the only one who gets you?”

Uh-oh.

“I didn’t mean that,” I say, lifting my head to meet her eyes, but it’s not true, I did mean it, and I can tell from her expression she knows it. “Sarah.”

She swallows, looks away from me, then quickly changes the topic back to my disgrace. “I guess it does happen. Grief sex is kind of a thing. It was in one of those books I read.” I still hear the judgment in her voice, and something more now too.

“We didn’t have sex,” I say. “I’m still the last virgin standing.”

She sighs, then puts her arm around me, awkwardly, as if she has to. I feel like I’m in a headlock. Neither of us has a clue how to deal with what’s not being said, or what is.

“It’s okay, Len. Bailey would understand.” She sounds totally unconvincing. “And it’s not like it’s ever going to happen again, right?”

“Of course not,” I say, and hope I’m not lying.

And hope I am.

Everyone has always said I look like Bailey,
but I don’t.
I have grey eyes to her green,
an oval face to her heart-shaped one,
I’m shorter, scrawnier, paler,
flatter, plainer, tamer.
All we shared is a madhouse of curls
that I imprison in a ponytail
while she lets hers rave
like madness
around her head.
I don’t sing in my sleep
or eat the petals off flowers
or run into the rain instead of out of it.
I’m the unplugged-in one,
the side-kick sister,
tucked into a corner of her shadow.
Boys followed her everywhere;
they filled the booths at the restaurant
where she waitressed,
herded around her at the river.
One day, I saw a boy come up behind her
and pull a strand of her long hair.
I understood this—
I felt the same way.
In photographs of us together,
she is always looking at the camera
and I am always looking at her.

(Found on a folded up piece of paper half buried in pine needles on the trail to the Rain River)

I am sitting at Bailey’s desk with St Anthony: Patron of Lost Things.

He doesn’t belong here. He belongs on the mantel in front of The Half Mom where I’ve always kept him, but Bailey must’ve moved him, and I don’t know why. I found him tucked behind the computer in front of an old drawing of hers that’s tacked to the wall – the one she made the day Gram told us our mother was an explorer (of the Christopher Columbus variety).