The Sky is Everywhere(41)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“Are you wearing toe rings?” I ask to postpone my confession a little longer.

“Of course.” She lifts her kaleidoscopic pantalooned leg into the air to show me.

“Impressive.”

She hops on the stool across the counter from where I’m working, throws down her book. It’s by a Hélène Cixous. “Lennie, these French feminists are so much cooler than those stupid existentialists. I’m so into this concept of jouissance, it means transcendent rapture, which I’m sure you and Joe know all about—” She plays the air with invisible sticks.

“Knew.” I take a deep breath. Prepare for the I told you so of the century.

Her face is stuck somewhere between disbelief and shock. “What do you mean, knew?”

“I mean, knew.”

“But yesterday…” She’s shaking her head, trying to catch up to the news. “You guys frolicked off from practice making the rest of us sick on account of the indisputable, irrefutable, unmistakable true love that was seeping out of every pore of your attached-at-the-hip bodies. Rachel nearly exploded. It was so beautiful.” And then it dawns on her. “You didn’t.”

“Please don’t have a cow or a horse or an aardvark or any other animal about it. No morality police, okay?”

“Okay, promise. Now tell me you didn’t. I told you I had a bad feeling.”

“I did.” I cover my face with my hands. “Joe saw us kissing last night.”

“You’ve got to be kidding?”

I shake my head.

As if on cue, a gang of miniature Toby skate rats whiz by on their boards, tearing apart the sidewalk, quiet as a 747.

“But why, Len? Why would you do that?” Her voice is surprisingly without judgment. She really wants to know. “You don’t love Toby.”

“No.”

“And you’re dementoid over Joe.”

“Totally.”

“Then why?” This is the million-dollar question.

I stuff two cannolis, deciding how to phrase it. “I think it has to do with how much we both love Bailey, as crazy as that sounds.”

Sarah stares at me. “You’re right, that does sound crazy. Bailey would kill you.”

My heart races wild in my chest. “I know. But Bailey is dead, Sarah. And Toby and I don’t know how to deal with it. And that’s what happened. Okay?” I’ve never yelled at Sarah in my life and that was definitely approaching a yell. But I’m furious at her for saying what I know is true. Bailey would kill me, and it just makes me want to yell at Sarah more, which I do. “What should I do? Penance? Should I mortify the flesh, soak my hands in lye, rub pepper into my face like St Rose? Wear a hair shirt?”

Her eyes bug out. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think you should do!” she cries, but then her mouth twitches a little. “That’s right, wear a hair shirt! A hair hat! A whole hair ensemble!” Her face is scrunching up. She bleats out, “St Lennie,” and then folds in half in hysterics. Followed by me, all our anger morphing into uncontrollable spectacular laughter – we’re both bent over trying to breathe and it feels so great even though I might die from lack of oxygen.

“I’m sorry,” I say between gasps.

She manages, “No, me. I promised I wouldn’t get like that. Felt good though to let you have it.”

“Likewise,” I squeal.

Maria sweeps back in, apron loaded with tomatoes, peppers, and onions, takes one look at us, and says, “You and your crazy cohort get out of here. Take a break.”

Sarah and I drop onto our bench in front of the deli. The street’s coming to life with sunburned couples from San Francisco stumbling out of B&Bs, swaddled in black, looking for pancakes or river rafts or weed.

Sarah shakes her head as she lights up. I’ve confounded her. A hard thing to do. I know she’d still like to holler: What in flying foxes were you thinking, Lennie? but she doesn’t.

“Okay, the matter at hand is getting that Fontaine boy back,” she says calmly.

“Exactly.”

“Clearly making him jealous is out of the question.”

“Clearly.” I sink my chin into my palms, look up at the thousand-year-old redwood across the street – it’s peering down at me in consternation. It wants to kick my sorry newbie-to-the-earth ass.

“I know!” Sarah exclaims. “You’ll seduce him.” She lowers her eyelids, puckers her lips into a pout around her cigarette, inhales deeply, and then exhales a perfect smoke blob. “Seduction always works. I can’t even think of one movie where it doesn’t work, can you?”

“You can’t be serious. He’s so hurt and pissed. He’s not even speaking to me, I called three times today … and it’s me, not you, remember? I don’t know how to seduce anyone.” I’m miserable – I keep seeing Joe’s face, stony and lifeless, like it was last night. If ever there was a face impervious to seduction, it’s that one.

Sarah twirls her scarf with one hand, smokes with the other. “You don’t have to do anything, Len, just show up to band practice tomorrow looking F-I-N-E, looking irresistible.” She says irresistible like it has ten syllables. “His raging hormones and wild passion for you will do the rest.”

“Isn’t that incredibly superficial, Ms French Feminist?”

“Au contraire, ma petite. These feminists are all about celebrating the body, its langage.” She whips the scarf in the air. “Like I said, they’re all after jouissance. As a means, of course, of subverting the dominant patriarchal paradigm and the white male literary canon, but we can get into that another time.” She flicks her cigarette into the street. “Anyway, it can’t hurt, Len. And it’ll be fun. For me, that is…” A cloud of sadness crosses her face.

We exchange a glance that holds weeks of unsaid words.

“I just didn’t think you could understand me anymore,” I blurt out. I’d felt like a different person and Sarah had felt like the same old one, and I bet Bailey had felt similarly about me, and she was right to. Sometimes you just have to soldier through in your own private messy way.

“I couldn’t understand,” Sarah exclaims. “Not really. Felt—feel so useless, Lennie. And man, those grief books suck, so formulaic, total hundred percent garbage.”

“Thanks,” I say. “For reading them.”