The Sky is Everywhere(20)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“This is nice, cooking together again, isn’t it, sweet pea?”

I smile at her. “It is, Gram.” Well, it was, because now she’s looking at me in her talk-to-me-Lennie way. The Gramouncements are about to begin.

“Lennie, I’m worried about you.” Here goes.

“I’m all right.”

“It’s really time. At the least, tidy up, do her laundry or allow me to. I can do it while you’re at work.”

“I’ll do it,” I say, like always. And I will, I just don’t know when.

She slumps her shoulders dramatically. “I was thinking you and I could go to the city for the day next week, go to lunch—”

“That’s okay.”

I drop my eyes back to my task. I don’t want to see her disappointment.

She sighs in her big, loud, lonely way and goes back to the crust. Telepathically, I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her I just can’t confide in her right now, tell her the three feet between us feels like three light-years to me and I don’t know how to bridge it.

Telepathically, she tells me back that I’m breaking her broken heart.

When the boys come back they introduce the oldest Fontaine, who is also in town for the summer from LA.

“This is Doug,” Marcus says just as Joe says, “This is Fred.”

“Parents couldn’t make up their mind,” the newest Fontaine offers. This one looks positively deranged with glee. Gram’s right, we should sell them.

“He’s lying,” Marcus pipes in. “In high school, Fred wanted to be sophisticated so he could hook up with lots of French girls. He thought Fred was way too uncivilized and Flintstoneish so decided to use his middle name, Doug. But Joe and I couldn’t get used to it.”

“So now everyone calls him DougFred on two continents.” Joe hand-butts his brother’s chest, which provokes a counterattack of several jabs to the ribs. The Fontaine boys are like a litter of enormous puppies, rushing and swiping at each other, stumbling all around, a whirl of perpetual motion and violent affection.

I know it’s ungenerous, but watching them, their camaraderie, makes me feel lonely as the moon. I think about Toby and me holding hands in the dark last night, kissing by the river, how with him, I’d felt like my sadness had a place to be.

We eat sprawled out on what is now our lawn furniture. The wind has died down a bit, so we can sit without being pelted by fruit. The chicken tastes like chicken, the plum tart like plum tart. It’s too soon for there not to be one bite of ash.

Dusk splatters pink and orange across the sky, beginning its languorous summer stroll. I hear the river through the trees sounding like possibility—

She will never know the Fontaines.

She will never hear about this dinner on a walk to the river.

She will not come back in the morning or Tuesday or in three months.

She will not come back ever.

She’s gone and the world is ambling on without her—

I can’t breathe or think or sit for another minute.

I try to say “I’ll be right back,” but nothing comes out, so I just turn my back on the yard full of concerned faces and hurry toward the tree line. When I get to the path, I take off, trying to outrun the heartache that is chasing me down.

I’m certain Gram or Big will follow me, but they don’t, Joe does. I’m out of breath and writing on a piece of paper I found on the path when he comes up to me. I ditch the note behind a rock, try to brush away my tears.

This is the first time I’ve seen him without a smile hidden somewhere on his face.

“You okay?” he asks.

“You didn’t even know her.” It’s out of my mouth, sharp and accusatory, before I can stop it. I see the surprise cross his face.

“No.”

He doesn’t say anything more, but I can’t seem to shut my insane self up. “And you have all these brothers.” As if it were a crime, I say this.

“I do.”

“I just don’t know why you’re hanging out with us all the time.” I feel my face get hot as embarrassment snakes its way through my body – the real question is why I am persisting like a full-fledged maniac.

“You don’t?” His eyes rove my face, then the corners of his mouth begin to curl upward. “I like you, Lennie, duh.” He looks at me incredulously. “I think you’re amazing…” Why would he think this? Bailey is amazing and Gram and Big, and of course Mom, but not me, I am the two-dimensional one in a 3-D family.

He’s grinning now. “Also I think you’re really pretty and I’m incredibly shallow.”

I have a horrible thought: He only thinks I’m pretty, only thinks I’m amazing, because he never met Bailey, followed by a really terrible, horrible thought: I’m glad he never met her. I shake my head, try to erase my mind, like an Etch A Sketch.

“What?” He reaches his hand to my face, brushes his thumb slowly across my cheek. His touch is so tender, it startles me. No one has ever touched me like this before, looked at me the way he’s looking at me right now, deep into me. I want to hide from him and kiss him all at the same time.

And then: Bat. Bat. Bat.

I’m sunk.

I think his acting-like-a-brother stint is over.

“Can I?” he says, reaching for the rubber band on my ponytail.

I nod. Very slowly, he slides it off, the whole time holding my eyes in his. I’m hypnotized. It’s like he’s unbuttoning my shirt. When he’s done, I shake my head a little and my hair springs into its habitual frenzy.

“Wow,” he says softly. “I’ve wanted to do that…”

I can hear our breathing. I think they can hear it in New York.

“What about Rachel?” I say.

“What about her?”

“You and her?”

“You,” he answers. Me!

I say, “I’m sorry I said all that, before…”

He shakes his head like it doesn’t matter, and then to my surprise he doesn’t kiss me but wraps his arms around me instead. For a moment, in his arms, with my mind so close to his heart, I listen to the wind pick up and think it just might lift us off our feet and take us with it.

The dry trunks of the old growth redwoods creak and squeak eerily over our heads.

“Whoa. What is that?” Joe asks, all of a sudden pulling away as he glances up, then over his shoulder.

“What?” I ask, embarrassed how much I still want his arms around me. I try to joke it off. “Sheesh, how to ruin a moment. Don’t you remember? I’m having a crisis?”