The Sky is Everywhere(2)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“Yeah,” Joe says. “My mom too, and Dad, as well as aunts, uncles, brothers, cousins … welcome to Commune Fontaine.”

I laugh out loud. “Got the picture.”

But whoa again – should I be laughing so easily like this? And should it feel this good? Like slipping into cool river water.

I turn around, wondering if anyone is watching us, and see that Sarah has just walked – rather, exploded – into the music room. I’ve hardly seen her since the funeral, feel a pang of guilt.

“Lennieeeee!” She careens toward us in prime goth-gonecowgirl form: vintage slinky black dress, shit-kicker cowboy boots, blond hair dyed so black it looks blue, all topped off with a huge Stetson. I note the breakneck pace of her approach, wonder for an instant if she’s going to actually jump into my arms right before she tries to, sending us both skidding into Joe, who somehow retains his balance, and ours, so we all don’t fly through the window.

This is Sarah, subdued.

“Nice,” I whisper in her ear, as she hugs me like a bear even though she’s built like a bird. “Way to bowl down the gorgeous new boy.” She cracks up, and it feels both amazing and disconcerting to have someone in my arms shaking from laughter rather than heartbreak.

Sarah is the most enthusiastic cynical person on the planet. She’d be the perfect cheerleader if she weren’t so disgusted by the notion of school spirit. She’s a literature fanatic like me, but reads darker, read Sartre in tenth grade – Nausea – which is when she started wearing black (even at the beach), smoking cigarettes (even though she looks like the healthiest girl you’ve ever seen) and obsessing about her existential crisis (even as she partied to all hours of the night).

“Lennie, welcome back, dear,” another voice says. Mr James – also known in my mind as Yoda for both outward appearance and inward musical mojo – has stood up at the piano and is looking over at me with the same expression of bottomless sadness I’ve gotten so used to seeing from adults. “We’re all so very sorry.”

“Thank you,” I say, for the hundredth time that day. Sarah and Joe are both looking at me too, Sarah with concern and Joe with a grin the size of the continental United States. Does he look at everyone like this, I wonder. Is he a wingnut? Well, whatever he is, or has, it’s catching. Before I know it, I’ve matched his continental USA and raised him Puerto Rico and Hawaii. I must look like The Merry Mourner. Sheesh. And that’s not all, because now I’m thinking what it might be like to kiss him, to really kiss him – uh-oh. This is a problem, an entirely new un-Lennie-like problem that began (WTF-edly?!) at the funeral: I was drowning in darkness and suddenly all these boys in the room were glowing. Guy friends of Bailey’s from work or college, most of whom I didn’t know, kept coming up to me saying how sorry they were, and I don’t know if it’s because they thought I looked like Bailey, or because they felt bad for me, but later on, I’d catch some of them staring at me in this charged, urgent way, and I’d find myself staring back at them, like I was someone else, thinking things I hardly ever had before, things I’m mortified to have been thinking in a church, let alone at my sister’s funeral.

This boy beaming before me, however, seems to glow in a class all his own. He must be from a very friendly part of the Milky Way, I’m thinking as I try to tone down this nutso smile on my face, but instead almost blurt out to Sarah, “He looks like Heathcliff,” because I just realized he does, well, except for the happy smiling part – but then all of a sudden the breath is kicked out of me and I’m shoved onto the cold hard concrete floor that is my life now, because I remember I can’t run home after school and tell Bails about a new boy in band.

My sister dies over and over again, all day long.

“Len?” Sarah touches my shoulder. “You okay?”

I nod, willing away the runaway train of grief barreling straight for me.

Someone behind us starts playing “Approaching Shark”, aka the Jaws theme song. I turn to see Rachel Brazile gliding towards us, hear her mutter, “Very funny,” to Luke Jacobus, the saxophonist responsible for the accompaniment. He’s just one of many band-kill Rachel’s left in her wake, guys duped by the fact that all that haughty horror is stuffed into a spectacular body, and then further deceived by big brown faun eyes and Rapunzel hair. Sarah and I are convinced God was in an ironic mood when he made her.

“See you’ve met The Maestro,” she says to me, casually touching Joe’s back as she slips into her chair – first chair clarinet – where I should be sitting.

She opens her case, starts putting together her instrument. “Joe studied at a conservatory in Fronce. Did he tell you?” Of course she doesn’t say France so it rhymes with dance like a normal American-speaking human being. I can feel Sarah bristling beside me. She has zero tolerance for Rachel ever since she got first chair over me, but Sarah doesn’t know what really happened – no one does.

Rachel’s tightening the ligature on her mouthpiece like she’s trying to asphyxiate her clarinet. “Joe was a fabulous second in your absence,” she says, drawing out the word fabulous from here to the Eiffel Tower.

I don’t fire-breathe at her: “Glad everything worked out for you, Rachel.” I don’t say a word, just wish I could curl into a ball and roll away. Sarah, on the other hand, looks like she wishes there were a battle-ax handy.

The room has become a clamor of random notes and scales. “Finish up tuning, I want to start at the bell today,” Mr James calls from the piano. “And take out your pencils, I’ve made some changes to the arrangement.”

“I’d better go beat on something,” Sarah says, throwing Rachel a disgusted look, then huffs off to beat on her timpani.

Rachel shrugs, smiles at Joe – no not smiles: twinkles – oh brother. “Well, it’s true,” she says to him. “You were – I mean, are – fabulous.”

“Not so.” He bends down to pack up his clarinet. “I was just keeping the seat warm. Now I can go back to where I belong.” He points his clarinet at the horn section.

“You’re just being modest,” Rachel says, tossing fairy-tale locks over the back of her chair. “You have so many colors on your tonal palette.”

I look at Joe expecting to see some evidence of an inward groan at these imbecilic words, but see evidence of something else instead. He smiles at Rachel on a geographical scale too. I feel my neck go hot.