The Sky is Everywhere(57)
Author: Jandy Nelson

I would say a lot of things right now if I could get any words past the smile that has taken over my face. There it is again his I’m in love with you obliterating all else that comes out of his mouth with it.

He points to the box. “They helped me. I’m kind of an unforgiving doltwad, if you haven’t noticed. I’d read them – read them over and over after you came that day with the roses – trying to understand what happened, why you were with him, and I think maybe I do now. I don’t know, reading all the poems together, I started to really imagine what you’ve been going through, how horrible it must be…” He swallows, looks down, shuffles his foot in the pine needles. “For him too. I guess I can see how it happened.”

How can it be I was writing to Joe all these months without knowing it? When he looks up, he’s smiling. “And then yesterday…” He tosses the clarinet onto the bed. “Found out you belong to me.” He points at me. “I own your ass.”

I smile. “Making fun of me?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter because you own my ass too.” He shakes his head and his hair flops into his eyes so that I might die. “Totally.”

A flock of hysterically happy birds busts out of my chest and into the world. I’m glad he read the poems. I want him to know all the inside things about me. I want him to know my sister, and now, in some way, he does. Now he knows before as well as after.

He sits down on the edge of the bed, picks up a stick and draws on the ground with it, then tosses it, looks off into the trees. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be. I’m glad—”

He turns around to face me. “No, not about the poems. I’m sorry, what I said that day, about Bailey. From reading all these, I knew how much it would hurt you—”

I put my finger over his lips. “It’s okay.”

He takes my hand, holds it to his mouth, kisses it. I close my eyes, feel shivers run through me – it’s been so long since we’ve touched. He rests my hand back down. I open my eyes. His are on me, questioning. He smiles, but the vulnerability and hurt still in his face tears into me. “You’re not going to do it to me again, are you?” he asks.

“Never,” I blurt out. “I want to be with you forever!” Okay, lesson learned twice in as many days: you can chop the Victorian novel to shreds with garden shears but you can’t take it out of the girl.

He beams at me. “You’re crazier than me.”

We stare at each other for a long moment and inside that moment I feel like we are kissing more passionately than we ever have even though we aren’t touching.

I reach out and brush my fingers across his arm. “Can’t help it. I’m in love.”

“First time,” he says. “For me.”

“I thought in France—”

He shakes his head. “No way, nothing like this.” He touches my cheek in that tender way that he does that makes me believe in God and Buddha and Mohammed and Ganesh and Mary et al. “No one’s like you, for me,” he whispers.

“Same,” I say, right as our lips meet. He lowers me back onto the bed, aligns himself on top of me so we are legs to legs, hips to hips, stomach to stomach. I can feel the weight of him pressing into every inch of me. I rake my fingers through his dark silky curls.

“I missed you,” he murmurs into my ears, my neck and hair, and each time he does I say, “Me too,” and then we are kissing again and I can’t believe there is anything in this uncertain world that can feel this right and real and true.

Later, after we’ve come up for oxygen, I reach for the box, and start flipping through the scraps. There are a lot of them, but not near as many as I wrote. I’m glad there are some still out there, tucked away between rocks, in trash bins, on walls, in the margins of books, some washed away by rain, erased by the sun, transported by the wind, some never to be found, some to be found in years to come.

“Hey, where’s the one from yesterday?” I ask, letting my residual embarrassment get the better of me, thinking I might still be able to accidentally rip it up, now that it’s done its job.

“Not in there. That one’s mine.” Oh well. He’s lazily brushing his hand across my neck and down my back. I feel like a tuning fork, my whole body humming.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he says. “But I think the roses worked. On my parents – I swear, they can’t keep their hands off each other. It’s disgusting. Marcus and Fred have been going down to your place at night and stealing roses to give to girls so they’ll sleep with them.” Gram is going to love this. It’s a good thing she’s so smitten with the Fontaine boys.

I put down the box, scoot around so I’m facing him. “I don’t think any of you guys need Gram’s roses for that.”

“John Lennon?”

Bat. Bat. Bat.

I run my finger over his lips, say, “I want to do everything with you too.”

“Oh man,” he says, pulling me down to him, and then we are kissing so far into the sky I don’t think we’re ever coming back.

If anyone asks where we are, just tell them to look up.

Bails?
Yeah?
Is it so dull being dead?
It was, not anymore.
What changed?
I stopped peering over the ledge…
What do you do now?
It’s hard to explain — it’s like swimming,
but not in water, in light.
Who do you swim with?
Mostly you and Toby, Gram, Big,
with Mom, too, sometimes.
How come I don’t know it?
But you do, don’t you?
I guess, like all those days we spent
at Flying Man’s?
Exactly, only brighter.

(Written in Lennie’s journal)

Gram and I are baking the day away in preparation for Big’s wedding. All the windows and doors are open and we can hear the river and smell the roses and feel the heat of the sun streaming in. We’re chirping about the kitchen like sparrows.

We do this every wedding, only this is the first time we’re doing it without Bailey. Yet, oddly, I feel her presence more today in the kitchen with Gram than I have since she died. When I roll the dough out, she comes up to me and sticks her hand in the flour and flicks it into my face. When Gram and I lean against the counter and sip our tea, she storms into the kitchen and pours herself a cup. She sits in every chair, blows in and out the doors, whisks in between Gram and me humming under her breath and dipping her finger into our batters. She’s in every thought I think, every word I say, and I let her be. I let her enchant me as I roll the dough and think my thoughts and say my words, as we bake and bake – both of us having finally dissuaded Joe of the necessity of an exploding wedding cake – and talk about inanities like what Gram is going to wear for the big party. She is quite concerned with her outfit.