The Sky Is Everywhere

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

DIAL BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Published by The Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria
3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand,
London WC2R ORL, England

Copyright © 2010 by Jandy Nelson

 

All rights reserved

 

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

 

S.A.

 

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-22286-7

[1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Death—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. 4.
Musicians—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.N433835Sk 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009022809

GRAM IS WORRIED about me. It’s not just because my sister Bailey died four weeks ago, or because my mother hasn’t contacted me in sixteen years, or even because suddenly all I think about is sex. She is worried about me because one of her house-plants has spots.

Gram has believed for most of my seventeen years that this particular houseplant, which is of the nondescript variety, reflects my emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. I’ve grown to believe it too.

Across the room from where I sit, Gram—all six feet and floral frock of her, looms over the black-spotted leaves.

“What do you mean it might not get better this time?” She’s asking this of Uncle Big: arborist, resident pothead, and mad scientist to boot. He knows something about everything, but he knows everything about plants.

To anyone else it might seem strange, even off the wall, that Gram, as she asks this, is staring at me, but it doesn’t to Uncle Big, because he’s staring at me as well.

“This time it has a very serious condition.” Big’s voice trumpets as if from stage or pulpit; his words carry weight, even pass the salt comes out of his mouth in a thou-shalt-Ten-Commandments kind of way.

Gram raises her hands to her face in distress, and I go back to scribbling a poem in the margin of
Wuthering Heights.
I’m huddled into a corner of the couch. I’ve no use for talking, would just as soon store paper clips in my mouth.

“But the plant’s always recovered before, Big, like when Lennie broke her arm, for instance.”

“That time the leaves had white spots.”

“Or just last fall when she auditioned for lead clarinet but had to be second chair again.”

“Brown spots.”

“Or when—”

“This time it’s different.”

I glance up. They’re still peering at me, a tall duet of sorrow and concern.

Gram is Clover’s Garden Guru. She has the most extraordinary flower garden in Northern California. Her roses burst with more color than a year of sunsets, and their fragrance is so intoxicating that town lore claims breathing in their scent can cause you to fall in love on the spot. But despite her nurturing and renowned green thumb, this plant seems to follow the trajectory of my life, independent of her efforts or its own vegetal sensibility.

I put my book and pen down on the table. Gram leans in close to the plant, whispers to it about the importance of
joie de vivre
, then lumbers over to the couch, sitting down next to me. Then Big joins us, plopping his enormous frame down beside Gram. We three, each with the same unruly hair that sits on our heads like a bustle of shiny black crows, stay like this, staring at nothing, for the rest of the afternoon.

This is us since my sister Bailey collapsed one month ago from a fatal arrhythmia while in rehearsal for a local production of
Romeo & Juliet.
It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.

MY FIRST DAY back to school is just as I expect, the hall does a Red Sea part when I come in, conversations hush, eyes swim with nervous sympathy, and everyone stares as if I’m holding Bailey’s dead body in my arms, which I guess I am. Her death is all over me, I can feel it and everyone can see it, plain as a big black coat wrapped around me on a beautiful spring day. But what I don’t expect is the unprecedented hubbub over some new boy, Joe Fontaine, who arrived in my month-long absence. Everywhere I go it’s the same:

“Have you seen him yet?”

“He looks like a Gypsy.”

“Like a rock star.”

“A pirate.”

“I hear he’s in a band called Dive.”

“That he’s a musical genius.”

“Someone told me he used to live in Paris.”

“That he played music on the streets.”

“Have you seen him yet?”

I have seen him, because when I return to my band seat, the one I’ve occupied for the last year, he’s in it. Even in the stun of grief, my eyes roam from the black boots, up the miles of legs covered in denim, over the endless torso, and finally settle on a face so animated I wonder if I’ve interrupted a conversation between him and my music stand.

“Hi,” he says, and jumps up. He’s treetop tall. “You must be Lennon.” He points to my name on the chair. “I heard about—I’m sorry.” I notice the way he holds his clarinet, not precious with it, tight fist around the neck, like a sword.

“Thank you,” I say, and every available inch of his face busts into a smile—whoa. Has he blown into our school on a gust of wind from another world? The guy looks unabashedly jack-o’ -lantern happy, which couldn’t be more foreign to the sullen demeanor most of us strove to perfect. He has scores of messy brown curls that flop every which way and eyelashes so spider-leg long and thick that when he blinks he looks like he’s batting his bright green eyes right at you. His face is more open than an open book, like a wall of graffiti really. I realize I’m writing wow on my thigh with my finger, decide I better open my mouth and snap us out of this impromptu staring contest.

“Everyone calls me Lennie,” I say. Not very original, but better than
guh,
which was the alternative, and it does the trick. He looks down at his feet for a second and I take a breath and regroup for Round Two.

“Been wondering about that actually, Lennon after John?” he asks, again holding my gaze—it’s entirely possible I’m going to faint. Or burst into flames.

I nod. “Mom was a hippie.” This is
northern
Northern California after all—the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy—all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of our football team if we were the kind of school that had a football team. We’re not. We’re the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym.

“Yeah,” Joe says. “My mom too, and Dad, as well as aunts, uncles, brothers, cousins... welcome to Commune Fontaine.”

I laugh out loud. “Got the picture.”

But whoa again—should I be laughing so easily like this? And should it feel this good? Like slipping into cool river water.

I turn around, wondering if anyone is watching us, and see that Sarah has just walked—rather, exploded—into the music room. I’ve hardly seen her since the funeral, feel a pang of guilt.

“Lennieeeee!” She careens toward us in prime goth-gonecowgirl form: vintage slinky black dress, shit-kicker cowboy boots, blond hair dyed so black it looks blue, all topped off with a honking Stetson. I note the breakneck pace of her approach, wonder for an instant if she’s going to actually jump into my arms right before she tries to, sending us both skidding into Joe, who somehow retains his balance, and ours, so we all don’t fly through the window.

This is Sarah, subdued.

“Nice,” I whisper in her ear as she hugs me like a bear even though she’s built like a bird. “Way to bowl down the gorgeous new boy.” She cracks up, and it feels both amazing and disconcerting to have someone in my arms shaking from laughter rather than heartbreak.

Sarah is the most enthusiastic cynical person on the planet. She’d be the perfect cheerleader if she weren’t so disgusted by the notion of school spirit. She’s a literature fanatic like me, but reads darker, read Sartre in tenth grade—
Nausea
—which is when she started wearing black (even at the beach), smoking cigarettes (even though she looks like the healthiest girl you’ve ever seen), and obsessing about her existential crisis (even as she partied to all hours of the night).