The Sky is Everywhere(47)
Author: Jandy Nelson

Her face drops as she studies mine. “You look miserable.”

“Sucky week all around.”

“It’ll be fun tonight, promise.” She takes one hand off the wheel and pulls a brown sack out of a backpack. “For the movie.” She hands it to me. “Vodka.”

“Hmm, then I’ll for sure fall asleep in this action-packed, thrill-a-minute, black-and-white, silent movie from Norway.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not silent, Lennie.”

While waiting in line, Sarah jumps around trying to keep warm. She’s telling me how Luke held up remarkably well at the symposium despite being the only guy there, even made her ask a question about music, but then mid-sentence and mid-jump, her eyes bulge a little. I catch it, even though she’s already resumed talking as if nothing has happened. I turn around and there’s Joe across the street with Rachel.

They’re so lost in conversation they don’t even realize the light has changed.

Cross the street, I want to scream. Cross the street before you fall in love. Because that’s what appears to be happening. I watch Joe lightly tug at her arm while he tells her something or other I’m sure about Paris. I can see the smile, all that radiance pouring over Rachel and I think I might fall like a tree.

“Let’s go.”

“Yup.” Sarah’s already walking toward the Jeep, fumbling in her bag for the keys. I follow her, but take one look back and meet Joe’s eyes head on. Sarah disappears. Then Rachel. Then all the people waiting in line. Then the cars, the trees, the buildings, the ground, the sky until it is only Joe and me staring across empty space at each other. He does not smile. He antismiles. But I can’t look away and he can’t seem to either. Time has slowed so much that I wonder if when we stop staring at each other we will be old and our whole lives will be over with just a few measly kisses between us. I’m dizzy with missing him, dizzy with seeing him, dizzy with being just yards from him. I want to run across the street, I’m about to – I can feel my heart surge, pushing me toward him, but then he just shakes his head almost to himself and looks away from me and toward Rachel, who now comes back into focus. High-definition focus. Very deliberately, he puts his arm around her and together they cross the street and get in line for the movie. A searing pain claws through me. He doesn’t look back, but Rachel does.

She salutes me, a triumphant smile on her face, then flips an insult of blond hair at me as she swings her arm around his waist and turns away.

My heart feels like it’s been kicked into a dark corner of my body. Okay I get it, I want to holler at the sky. This is how it feels. Lesson learned. Come-uppance accepted. I watch them retreat into the theater arm in arm, wishing I had an eraser so I could wipe her out of this picture. Or a vacuum. A vacuum would be better, just suck her up, gone. Out of his arms. Out of my chair. For good.

“C’mon Len, let’s get out of here,” a familiar voice says. I guess Sarah still exists and she’s talking to me, so I must still exist too. I look down, see my legs, realize I’m still standing. I put one foot in front of the other and make my way to Ennui.

There is no moon, no stars, just a brightless, lightless gray bowl over our heads as we drive home.

“I’m going to challenge her for first chair,” I say.

“Finally.”

“Not because of this—”

“I know. Because you’re a racehorse, not some stupid pony.” There’s no irony in her voice.

I roll down the window and let the cold air slap me silly.

Remember
how it was
when
we
kissed?
Armfuls
and
armfuls
of
light
thrown
right
at
us.
A
rope
dropping
down
from
the
sky.
How
can
the
word
love
the
word
life
even
fit
in
the
mouth?

(Found on a piece of paper under the big willow)

Sarah and I are hanging half in, half out my bedroom window, passing the bottle of vodka back and forth.

“We could off her?” Sarah suggests, all her words slurring into one.

“How would we do it?” I ask, swigging a huge gulp of vodka.

“Poison. It’s always the best choice, hard to trace.”

“Let’s poison him too, and all his stupid gorgeous brothers.” I can feel the words sticking to the insides of my mouth. “He didn’t even wait a week, Sarah.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. He’s hurt.”

“God, how can he like her?”

Sarah shakes her head. “I saw the way he looked at you in the street, like a crazy person, really out there, more demented than demented, holy Toledo tigers bonkers. You know what I think? I think he put his arm around her for your benefit.”

“What if he has sex with her for my benefit?” Jealousy mad-dogs through me. Yet, that’s not the worst part, neither is the remorse; the worst part is I keep thinking of the afternoon on the forest bed, how vulnerable I’d felt, how much I’d liked it, being that open, that me, with him. Had I ever felt so close to anyone?

“Can I have a cigarette?” I ask, taking one before she answers.

She cups a hand around the end of her smoke, lights it with the other, then hands it to me, takes mine, then lights it for herself. I drag on it, cough, don’t care, take another and manage not to choke, blowing a gray trail of smoke into the night air.

“Bails would know what to do,” I say.

“She would,” Sarah agrees.

We smoke together quietly in the moonlight and I realize something I can never say to Sarah. There might’ve been another reason, a deeper one, why I didn’t want to be around her. It’s that she’s not Bailey, and that’s a bit unbearable for me – but I need to bear it. I concentrate on the music of the river, let myself drift along with it as it rushes steadily away.

After a few moments, I say, “You can revoke my free pass.”

She tilts her head, smiles at me in a way that floods me with warmth. “Done deal.”

She puts out her cigarette on the windowsill and slips back onto the bed. I put mine out too, but stay outside looking over Gram’s lustrous garden, breathing it in and practically swooning from the bouquet that wafts up to me on the cool breeze.

And that’s when I get the idea. The brilliant idea. I have to talk to Joe. I have to at least try to make him understand. But I could use a little help.