The Sky is Everywhere(26)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“That sounds like a plan,” Gram says. She’s taken the still despairing Lennie houseplant out from under the pyramid and is sitting beside it at the table, singing to it softly, something about greener pastures. “I’ll just freshen up and get my bag, sweet pea.”

She can’t be serious.

“I’ll go too,” says Big, who is hunched over a crossword puzzle. He’s the fastest puzzler in all Christendom. I look over and note, however, that this time he’s putting numbers in the boxes instead of letters. “As soon as I finish this, we can all head up to the Fontaines’.”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” I say.

They both look up at me, incredulous.

Big says, “What do you mean, Len, he’s here every single morning, it’s only fair that—”

And then he can’t keep it up anymore and bursts out laughing, as does Gram. I’m relieved. I had actually started to imagine trucking up the hill with Gram and Big in tow: the Munsters follow Marilyn on a date.

“Why, Big, she’s all dressed up. And her hair’s down. Look at her.” This is a problem. I was going for the short flowery dress and heels and lipstick and wild hair look that no one would notice is any different from the jeans, ponytail, and no makeup look I’ve mastered every other day of my life. I know I’m blushing, also know I better get out of the house before I run back upstairs and challenge Bailey’s Guinness-Book-of-Changing-Clothes-Before-a-Date record of thirty-seven outfits. This was only my eighteenth, but clothes-changing is an exponential activity, the frenzy only builds, it’s a law of nature. Even St Anthony peering at me from the nightstand, reminding me of what I’d found in the drawer last night, couldn’t snap me out of it. I’d remembered something about him though. He was like Bailey, charismatic as anything. He had to give his sermons in marketplaces because he overflowed even the largest of churches. When he died all the church bells in Padua rang of their own accord. Everyone thought angels had come to earth.

“Goodbye, you guys,” I say to Gram and Big, and head for the door.

“Have fun, Len … and not too late, okay?”

I nod, and am off on the first real date of my life. The other nights I’ve had with boys don’t count, not the ones with Toby I’m actively trying not to think about, and definitely not the parties, after which I’d spent the next day, week, month, year thinking of ways to get my kisses back. Nothing has been like this, nothing has made me feel like I do right now walking up the hill to Joe’s, like I have a window in my chest where sunlight is pouring in.

When
Joe
plays
his
horn
I
fall
out
of
my
chair
and
onto
my
knees
when
he
plays
all
the
flowers
swap
colors
and
years
and
decades
and
centuries
of
rain
pour
back
into
the
sky

(Found on the bathroom wall, music room, Clover High)

The feeling I had earlier today with Joe in The Sanctum overwhelms me the moment I see him sitting on the stoop of the big white house playing his guitar. He’s bent over it, singing softly, and the wind is carrying his words through the air like fluttering leaves.

“Hey, John Lennon,” he says, putting aside his guitar, standing up and jumping off the front step. “Uh-oh. You look vachement amazing. Too good to be alone with me all night long.”

He’s practically leaping over. His delight quotient mesmerizes me. At the human factory, someone must have messed up and just slipped him more than the rest of us. “I’ve been thinking about a duet we could do. I just need to rearrange—”

I’m not listening anymore. I hope he just keeps talking up a storm, because I can’t utter a word. I know the expression love bloomed is metaphorical, but in my heart in this moment, there is one badass flower, captured in time-lapse photography, going from bud to wild radiant blossom in ten seconds flat.

“You okay?” he asks. His hands are on either side of my arms and he’s peering into my face.

“Yes.” I’m wondering how people breathe in these situations. “I’m fine.”

“You are fine,” he says, looking me over like a major dork, which immediately snaps me out of my love spell.

“Ugh, quel dork,” I say, pushing him away.

He laughs and slips his arm around my shoulders. “C’mon, you enter Maison Fontaine at your own risk.”

The first thing I notice about Maison Fontaine is that the phone is ringing and Joe doesn’t seem to notice. I hear a girl’s voice on an answering machine far away in another room and think for a minute it sounds like Rachel before deciding it doesn’t. The second thing I notice is how opposite this house is to Maison Walker. Our house looks like Hobbits live there. The ceilings are low, the wood is dark and gnarly, colorful rag rugs line the floors, paintings, the walls, whereas Joe’s house floats high in the sky with the clouds. There are windows everywhere that reveal sunburned fields swimming in the wind, dark green woods that cloister the river and the river itself as it wends from town to town in the distance. There are no tables piled with weeks of mail, shoes kicked around under furniture, books open on every surface. Joe lives in a museum. Hanging all over the walls are gorgeous guitars of every color, shape and size. They look so animate, like they could make music all by themselves.

“Pretty cool, huh? My dad makes amazing instruments. Not just guitars either. Mandolins, lutes, dulcimers,” he says as I ogle one and then the next.

And now for something completely different: Joe’s room. The physical manifestation of chaos theory. It’s overflowing with instruments I’ve never seen before and can’t even imagine what kind of sound they’d make, CDs, music magazines, library books in French and English, concert posters of French bands I’ve never heard of, comic books, notebooks with tiny boxlike weirdo boy writing in them, sheets of music, stereo equipment unplugged and plugged, broken-open amps and other sound equipment I don’t recognize, odd rubber animals, bowls of blue marbles, decks of cards, piles of clothes as high as my knee, not to mention the dishes, bottles, glasses … and over his desk a small poster of John Lennon.

“Hmm,” I say, pointing to the poster. I look around, taking it all in. “I think your room is giving me new insight into Joe Fontaine aka freaking madman.”