The Sky is Everywhere(30)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“Whew,” Sarah, says, sweeping her hand off her brow dramatically. “Who then? Who could you be in love with? You haven’t gone anywhere, at least that I know of, and this town is beyond Loserville, so where’d you find him?”

“Sarah, it’s Joe.”

“It’s not.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“No!”

“Yup.”

“Not true.”

“Is true.”

“Nah-uh, nah-uh, nah-uh.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.”

Etc.

Her previous display of enthusiasm was nothing compared to the one that is going on now. She’s doing circles around me, saying, “Oh my God. I am soooooooooooooo jealous. Every girl in Clover is after one Fontaine or another. No wonder you’ve been a shut-in. I would be too, if I could shut in with one of them. God, let me live vicariously through you. Tell me every freaking detail. That beautiful, beautiful boy, those eyes, those eyelashes, that unfreakingbelievable smile, that trumpet playing, wow, Lennnnnnnnnie.” She’s pacing now, has lit another cigarette, is chain smoking in glee – a naked smokestack maniac. I’m so happy to be hanging out with the marvel that is my best friend Sarah. And I’m so happy to be happy about it.

I tell her every detail. How he came over every morning with croissants, how we played music together, how he made Gram and Big so happy just by being in the house, how we drank wine last night and kissed until I was sure I had walked right into the sky. I told her how I think I can hear his heart beating even when he’s not there, how I feel like flowers – Gramgantuan ones – are blooming in my chest, how I’m sure I feel just the way Heathcliff did for Cathy before—

“Okay, stop for a second.” She’s still smiling but she looks a bit worried and surprised too. “Lennie, you’re not in love, you’re demented. I’ve never heard anyone talk about a guy like this.”

I shrug. “Then I’m demented.”

“Wow, I want to be demented too.” She sits down next to me on the rock. “It’s like you’ve hardly kissed three guys in your whole life and now this. Guess you were saving it up or something…”

I tell her my Rip Van Lennie theory of having slept my whole life until recently.

“I don’t know, Len. You always seemed awake to me.”

“Yeah, I don’t know either. It was a wine-induced theory.” Sarah picks up a stone, tosses it into the water with a little too much force. “What?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer right away, picks up another stone and hurls it too. “I am mad at you, but I’m not allowed to be, you know?”

It’s exactly how I feel toward Bailey sometimes lately.

“You’ve just been keeping so much from me, Lennie. I thought … I don’t know.”

It’s as if she were speaking my lines in a play.

“I’m sorry,” I say again feebly. I want to say more, give her an explanation, but the truth is I don’t know why I’ve felt so closed off to her since Bailey died.

“It’s okay,” she says again quietly.

“It’ll be different now,” I say, hoping it’s true. “Promise.”

I look out at the sun courting the river’s surface, the green leaves, the wet rocks behind the falls. “Want to go swimming?”

“Not yet,” she says. “I have news too. Not breaking news, but still.” It’s a clear dig and I deserve it. I didn’t even ask how she was.

She’s smirking at me, quite dementedly, actually. “I hooked up with Luke Jacobus last night.”

“Luke?” I’m surprised. Besides for his recent lapse in judgment, which resulted in his band-kill status, he’s been devotedly, unrequitedly in love with Sarah since second grade. King of the Nerdiverse, she used to call him. “Didn’t you make out with him in seventh grade and then drop him when that idiot surfer glistened at you?”

“Yeah, it’s probably dumb,” she says. “I agreed to do lyrics for this incredible music he wrote, and we were hanging out, and it just happened.”

“What about the Jean-Paul Sartre rule?”

“Sense of humor trumps literacy, I’ve decided – and jumping giraffes, Len – growth geyser! The guy’s like the Hulk these days.”

“He is funny,” I agree. “And green.”

She laughs, just as my phone signals a text. I rifle through my bag and take it out hoping for a message from Joe.

Sarah’s singing, “Lennie got a love note from a Fontaine,” as she tries to read over my shoulder. “C’mon let me see it.” She grabs the phone from me. I pull it out of her hands, but it’s too late. It says: I need to talk to you. T.

“As in Toby?” she asks. “But I thought … I mean, you just said … Lennie, what’re you doing?”

“Nothing,” I tell her, shoving the phone back in my bag, already breaking my promise. “Really. Nothing.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” she says, shaking her head. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Don’t,” I say, swallowing my own atrocious feeling.

“Really. I’m demented, remember?” I touch her arm. “Let’s go swimming.”

We float on our backs in the pool for over an hour. I make her tell me everything about her night with Luke so I don’t have to think about Toby’s text, what might be so urgent. Then we climb up to the falls and get under them, screaming over and over into the roar like we’ve done since we were little.

I scream bloody murder.

There were once two sisters
who were not afraid of the dark
because the dark was full of the other’s voice
across the room,
because even when the night was thick
and starless
they walked home together from the river
seeing who could last the longest
without turning on her flashlight,
not afraid
because sometimes in the pitch of night
they’d lie on their backs
in the middle of the path
and look up until the stars came back
and when they did,
they’d reach their arms up to touch them
and did.

(Found on an envelope stuck under the tire of a car on Main Street)

By the time I walk home from the river through the woods, I’ve decided Toby, like me, feels terrible about what happened, hence the urgency of the text. He probably just wants to make sure it will never happen again. Well, agreed. No argument from demented ol’ moi.