The Sky is Everywhere(8)
Author: Jandy Nelson

It’s just that he’s the only one who understands, I add. Oh brother.

After a wordless while, he pulls a bottle of tequila out of his jacket pocket, uncaps it.

“Want some?” he asks. Great, that’ll help.

“Sure.” I hardly ever drink, but maybe it will help, maybe it’ll knock this madness out of me. I reach for the bottle and our fingers graze a moment too long as I take it – I decide I imagined it, put the bottle to my lips, take a healthy sip, and then very daintily spit it out all over us. “Yuck, that’s disgusting.” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve. “Whoa.”

He laughs, holds out his arms to show what a mess I’ve made of him. “It takes time to get used to it.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Had no idea it was so nasty.”

He cheers the bottle to the air in response and takes a swig. I’m determined to try again and not projectile spew. I reach for the bottle, bring it to my lips, and let the liquid burn down my throat, then take another sip, bigger.

“Easy,” Toby says, taking the tequila from me. “I need to tell you something, Len.”

“Okay.” I’m enjoying the warmth that has settled over me.

“I asked Bailey to marry me…” He says it so quickly it doesn’t register at first. He’s looking at me, trying to gage my reaction. It’s stark, raving WTF!

“Marry you? Are you kidding?” Not the response he wants, I’m sure, but I’m totally blindsided; he could have just as easily told me she’d been secretly planning a career in fire-eating. Both of them were just nineteen, and Bailey a marriage-o-phobe to boot.

“What’d she say?” I’m afraid to hear the answer.

“She said yes.” He says it with as much hope as hopelessness, the promise of it still alive in him. She said yes. I take the tequila, swig, don’t even taste it or feel the burn. I’m stunned that Bailey wanted this, hurt that she wanted it, really hurt that she never told me. I have to know what she’d been thinking. I can’t believe I can’t ask her. Ever. I look at Toby, see the earnestness in his eyes; it’s like a soft, small animal.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” I say, trying to bottle my incredulity and hurt feelings, but then I can’t help myself. “I don’t know why she didn’t tell me.”

“We were going to tell you guys that very next week. I’d just asked…” His use of we jars me; the big we has always been Bailey and me, not Bailey and Toby. I suddenly feel left out of a future that isn’t even going to happen.

“But what about her acting?” I say instead of: What about me?

“She was acting…”

“Yeah, but…” I look at him. “You know what I mean.” And then I see by his expression that he doesn’t know what I mean at all. Sure some girls dream of weddings, but Bailey dreamt of Juilliard: the Juilliard School in New York City. I once looked up their mission statement on the Web: To provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers and actors from around the world, so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders and global citizens. It’s true after the rejection she enrolled last fall at Clover State, the only other college she applied to, but I’d been certain she’d reapply. I mean, how could she not? It was her dream.

We don’t talk about it anymore. The wind’s picked up and has begun rattling its way into the house. I feel a chill run through me, grab a throw blanket off the rocking chair, pull it over my legs. The tequila makes me feel like I’m melting into nothing, I want to, want to disappear. I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls – I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind. I drop my head on Toby’s shoulder. “We’re the saddest people in the world.”

“Yup,” he says, squeezing my knee for a moment. I ignore the shivers his touch sends through me. They were getting married.

“How will we do this?” I say under my breath. “Day after day after day without her…”

“Oh, Len.” He turns to me, smoothes the hair around my face with his hand.

I keep waiting for him to move his hand away, to turn back around, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t take his hand or gaze off of me. Time slows. Something shifts in the room, between us. I look into his sorrowful eyes and he into mine, and I think, He misses her as much as I do, and that’s when he kisses me – his mouth: soft, hot, so alive, it makes me moan. I wish I could say I pull away, but I don’t. I kiss him back and don’t want to stop because in that moment I feel like Toby and I together have, somehow, in some way, reached across time, and pulled Bailey back.

He breaks away, springs to his feet. “I don’t understand this.” He’s in an instant-just-add-water panic, pacing the room.

“God, I should go, I really should go.”

But he doesn’t go. He sits down on Bailey’s bed, looks over at me and then sighs as if giving in to some invisible force. He says my name and his voice is so hoarse and hypnotic it pulls me up onto my feet, pulls me across miles of shame and guilt. I don’t want to go to him, but I do want to too. I have no idea what to do, but still I walk across the room, wavering a bit from the tequila, to his side. He takes my hand and tugs on it gently.

“I just want to be near you,” he whispers. “It’s the only time I don’t die missing her.”

“Me too.” I run my finger along the sprinkle of freckles on his cheek. He starts to well up, then I do too. I sit down next to him and then we lie down on Bailey’s bed, spooning. My last thought before falling asleep in his strong, safe arms is that I hope we are not replacing our scents with the last remnants of Bailey’s own that still infuse the bedding.

When I wake again, I’m facing him, our bodies pressed together, breath intermingling. He’s looking at me. “You’re beautiful, Len.”

“No,” I say. Then choke out one word. “Bailey.”

“I know,” he says. But he kisses me anyway. “I can’t help it.” He whispers it right into my mouth. I can’t help it either.

I
wish
my
shadow
would
get
up
and
walk
beside
me

(Found on the back of a French exam in a flower bed, Clover High)

There were once two sisters who shared the same room,