The Sky is Everywhere(56)
Author: Jandy Nelson

What?
In the end, Cathy and Heathcliff are together,
love is stronger than anything, even death.
Hmm…
Night, Len.

(Found on a folded up piece of music paper, in the parking lot, Clover High)

I tell myself it’s ridiculous to go all the way back to the forest bedroom, that there’s no way in the world he’s going to be there, that no New Age meets Victorian Age poem is going to make him trust me, that I’m sure he still hates me, and now thinks I’m dildonic on top of it.

But here I am, and of course, here he’s not. I flop onto my back on the bed. I look up at the patches of blue sky through the trees, and adhering to the regularly scheduled programming, I think some more about Joe. There’s so much I don’t know about him. I don’t know if he believes in God, or likes macaroni and cheese, or what sign he is, or if he dreams in English or French, or what it would feel like – uh-oh. I’m headed from PG to XXX because, oh God, I really wish Joe didn’t hate me so much, because I want to do everything with him. I’m so fed up with my virginity. It’s like the whole world is in on this ecstatic secret but me—

I hear something then: a strange, mournful, decidedly unforest-like sound. I pick my head up and rest on my elbows so I can listen harder and try to isolate the sound from the rustling leaves and the distant river roar and the birds chattering all around me. The sound trickles through the trees, getting louder by the minute, closer. I keep listening, and then I recognize what it is, the notes, clear and perfect now, winding and wending their way to me – the melody from Joe’s duet. I close my eyes and hope I’m really hearing a clarinet and it’s not just some auditory hallucination inside my lovesick head. It’s not, because now I hear steps shuffling through the brush and within a couple minutes the music stops and then the steps.

I’m afraid to open my eyes, but I do, and he’s standing at the edge of the bed looking down at me – an army of ninja-cupids who must have all been hiding out in the canopy draw their bows and release – arrows fly at me from every which way.

“I thought you might be here.” I can’t read his expression. Nervous? Angry? His face seems restless like it doesn’t know what to emote. “I got your poem…”

I can hear the blood rumbling through my body, drumming in my ears. What’s he going to say? I got your poem and I’m sorry, I just can’t ever forgive you. I got your poem and I feel the same way – my heart is yours, John Lennon. I got your poem and I’ve already called the psych ward – I have a straitjacket in this backpack. Strange. I’ve never seen Joe wear a backpack.

He’s biting his lip, tapping his clarinet on his leg. Definitely nervous. This can’t be good.

“Lennie, I got all your poems.” What’s he talking about? What does he mean all my poems? He slides the clarinet between his thighs to hold it and takes off his backpack, unzips it. Then he takes a deep breath, pulls out a box, hands it to me. “Well, probably not all of them, but these.”

I open the lid. Inside are scraps of paper, napkins, take-away cups, all with my words on them. The bits and pieces of Bailey and me that I scattered and buried and hid. This is not possible.

“How?” I ask, bewildered, and starting to get uneasy thinking about Joe reading everything in this box. All these private desperate moments. This is worse than having someone read your journal. This is like having someone read the journal that you thought you’d burned. And how did he get them all? Has he been following me around? That would be perfect. I finally fall in love with someone and he’s a total freaking maniac.

I look at him. He’s smirking a little and I see the faintest: bat. bat. bat. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “That I’m the creepy stalker dude.”

Bingo.

He’s amused. “I’m not, Len. It just kept happening. At first I kept finding them, and then, well, I started looking. I just couldn’t help it. It became like this weird-ass treasure hunt. Remember that first day in the tree?”

I nod. But something even more amazing than Joe being a crazy stalker and finding my poems has just occurred to me – he’s not angry anymore. Was it the dildonic poem? Whatever it was I’m caught in such a ferocious uprising of joy I’m not even listening to him as he tries to explain how in the world these poems ended up in this shoebox and not in some trash heap or blowing through Death Valley on a gust of wind.

I try to tune in to what he’s saying. “Remember in the tree I told you that I’d seen you up at The Great Meadow? I told you that I’d watched you writing a note, watched you drop it as you walked away. But I didn’t tell you that after you left, I went over and found the piece of paper caught in the fence. It was a poem about Bailey. I guess I shouldn’t have kept it. I was going to give it back to you that day in the tree, I had it in my pocket, but then I thought you’d think it was strange that I took it in the first place, so I just kept it.” He’s biting his lip. I remember him telling me that day he saw me drop something I’d written, but it never occurred to me he would go find it and read it. He continues, “And then, while we were in the tree, I saw words scrawled on the branches, thought maybe you’d written something else, but I felt weird asking, so I went back another time and wrote it down in a notebook.”

I can’t believe this. I sit up, fish through the box, looking more closely this time. There are some scraps in his weirdo Unabomber handwriting – probably transcribed from walls or sides of barns or some of the other practical writing surfaces that I found. I’m not sure how to feel. He knows everything – I’m inside out.

His face is caught between worry and excitement, but excitement seems to be winning out. He’s pretty much bursting to go on. “That first time I was at your house, I saw one sticking out from under a stone in Gram’s garden, and then another one on the sole of your shoe, and then that day when we moved all the stuff, man … it’s like your words were everywhere I looked. I went a little crazy, found myself looking for them all the time…” He shakes his head. “Even kept it up when I was so pissed at you. But the strangest part is that I’d found a couple before I’d even met you, the first was just a few words on the back of a candy wrapper, found it on the trail to the river, had no idea who wrote it, well, until later…”

He’s staring at me, tapping the clarinet on his leg. He looks nervous again. “Okay, say something. Don’t feel weird. They just made me fall more in love with you.” And then he smiles, and in all the places around the globe where it’s night, day breaks. “Aren’t you at least going to say quel dork?”