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Authors: Jandy Nelson

Tags: #Performing Arts, #Love & Romance, #Family, #Juvenile Fiction, #General, #Music

The Sky Is Everywhere (5 page)

BOOK: The Sky Is Everywhere
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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 quiz in a planter, Clover High)

chapter 6

There were once two sisters who shared the same room,

the same clothes,

the same thoughts at the same moment.

These two sisters did not have a mother

but they had each other.

The older sister walked ahead of the younger

so the younger one always knew where to go.

The older one took the younger to the river

where they floated on their backs

like dead men.

The older girl would say:

Dunk your head under a few inches, then open your eyes and look up at the sun

The younger girl:

I’ll get water up my nose

The older:

C’mon, do it

and so the younger girl did it

and her whole world filled with light.

(Found on a piece of notebook paper caught in a fence up on the ridge)

JUDAS, BRUTUS, BENEDICT Arnold, and me.
And the worst part is every time I close my eyes I see Toby’s lion face again, his lips a breath away from mine, and it makes me shudder head to toe, not with guilt, like it should, but with desire—and then, just as soon as I allow myself the image of us kissing, I see Bailey’s face twisting in shock and betrayal as she watches us from above: her boyfriend, her
fiancé
kissing her traitorous little sister
on her own bed.
Ugh. Shame watches me like a dog.
I’m in self-imposed exile, cradled between split branches, in my favorite tree in the woods behind school. I’ve been coming here every day at lunch, hiding out until the bell rings, whittling words into the branches with my pen, allowing my heart to break in private. I can’t hide a thing—everyone in school sees clear to my bones.
I’m reaching into the brown bag Gram packed for me, when I hear twigs crack underneath me. Uh-oh. I look down and see Joe Fontaine. I freeze. I don’t want him to see me: Lennie Walker: Mental Patient Eating Lunch in a Tree (it being decidedly out of your tree to hide out in one!). He walks in confused circles under me like he’s looking for someone. I’m hardly breathing but he isn’t moving on, has settled just to the right of my tree. Then I inadvertently crinkle the bag and he looks up, sees me.
“Hi,” I say, like it’s the most normal place to be eating lunch.
“Hey, there you are—” He stops, tries to cover. “I was wondering what was back here...” He looks around. “Perfect spot for a gingerbread house or maybe an opium den.”
“You already gave yourself away,” I say, surprised at my own boldness.
“Okay, guilty as charged. I followed you.” He smiles at me—that same smile—wow, no wonder I’d thought—
He continues, “And I’m guessing you want to be alone. Probably don’t come all the way out here and then climb a tree because you’re starving for conversation.” He gives me a hopeful look. He’s charming me, even in my pitiful emotional state, my Toby turmoil, even though he’s accounted for by Cruella de Vil.
“Want to come up?” I present him a branch and he bounds up the tree in about three seconds, finds a suitable seat right next to me, then bats his eyelashes at me. I’d forgotten about the eyelash endowment. Wow squared.
“What’s to eat?” He points to the brown bag.
“You kidding? First you crash my solitude, now you want to scavenge. Where were you raised?”
“Paris,” he says. “So I’m a scavenger
raffiné
.”
Oh so glad
j’étudie
le
français.
And jeez, no wonder the school’s abuzz about him, no wonder I’d wanted to kiss him. I even momentarily forgive Rachel the idiotic baguette she had sticking out of her backpack today. He goes on, “But I was born in California, lived in San Francisco until I was nine. We moved back there about a year ago and now we’re here. Still want to know what’s in the bag though.”
“You’ll never guess,” I tell him. “I won’t either, actually. My grandmother thinks it’s really funny to put all sorts of things in our—my lunch. I never know what’ll be inside: e. e. cummings, flower petals, a handful of buttons. She seems to have lost sight of the original purpose of the brown bag.”
“Or maybe she thinks other forms of nourishment are more important.”
“That’s exactly what she thinks,” I say, surprised. “Okay, you want to do the honors?” I hold up the bag.
“I’m suddenly afraid, is there ever anything alive in it?” Bat. Bat. Bat. Okay, it might take me a little time to build immunity to the eyelash bat.
“Never know...” I say, trying not to sound as swoony as I feel. And I’m going to just pretend that sitting-in-a-tree k-i-s-si-n-g rhyme did not just pop into my head.
He takes the bag, then reaches in with a grand gesture, and pulls out—an apple.
“An apple? How anti-climactic!” He throws it at me. “Everyone gets apples.”
I urge him to continue. He reaches in, pulls out a copy of
Wuthering Heights.
“That’s my favorite book,” I say. “It’s like a pacifier. I’ve read it twenty-three times. She’s always putting it in.”
“Wuthering Heights
—twenty—three times! Saddest book ever, how do you even function?”
“Do I have to remind you? I’m sitting in a tree at lunch.”
“True.” He reaches in again, pulls out a stemless purple peony. Its rich scent overtakes us immediately. “Wow,” he says, breathing it in. “Makes me feel like I might levitate.” He holds it under my nose. I close my eyes, imagine the fragrance lifting me off my feet too. I can’t. But something occurs to me.
“My favorite saint of all time is a Joe,” I tell him. “Joseph of Cupertino, he levitated. Whenever he thought of God, he would float into the air in a fit of ecstasy.”
He tilts his head, looks at me skeptically, eyebrows raised. “Don’t buy it.”
I nod. “Tons of witnesses. Happened all the time. Right during Mass.”
“Okay, I’m totally jealous. Guess I’m just a wannabe levitator.”
“Too bad,” I say. “I’d like to see you drifting over Clover playing your horn.”
“Hell yeah,” he exclaims. “You could come with, grab my foot or something.”
We exchange a quick searching glance, both of us wondering about the other, surprised at the easy rapport—it’s just a moment, barely perceptible, like a lady bug landing on your arm.
He rests the flower on my leg and I feel the brush of his fingers through my jeans. The brown bag is empty now. He hands it to me, and then we’re quiet, just listening to the wind rustle around us and watching the sun filter through the redwoods in impossibly thick foggy rays just like in children’s drawings.
Who is this guy? I’ve talked more to him in this tree than I have to anyone at school since I’ve been back. But how could he have read
Wuthering Heights
and still fall for Rachel Bitchzilla ? Maybe it’s because she’s been to Fronce. Or because she pretends to like music that no one else has heard of, like the wildly popular Throat Singers ofTuva.
“I saw you the other day,” he says, picking up the apple. He tosses it with one hand, catches it with the other. “By The Great Meadow. I was playing my guitar in the field. You were across the way. It looked like you were writing a note or something against a car, but then you just dropped the piece of paper—”
“Are you stalking me?” I ask, trying to keep my sudden delight at that notion out of my voice.
“Maybe a little.” He stops tossing the apple. “And maybe I’m curious about something.”
“Curious?” I ask. “About what?”
He doesn’t answer, starts picking at moss on a branch. I notice his hands, his long fingers full of calluses from guitar strings.
“What?” I say again, dying to know what made him curious enough to follow me up a tree.
“It’s the way you play the clarinet ...”
The delight drains out of me. “Yeah?”
“Or the way you don’t play it, actually.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, knowing exactly what he means.
“I mean you’ve got loads of technique. Your fingering’s quick, your tonguing fast, your range of tones, man ... but it’s like it all stops there. I don’t get it.” He laughs, seemingly unaware of the bomb he just detonated. “It’s like you’re sleep-playing or something.”
Blood rushes to my cheeks. Sleep-playing! I feel caught, a fish in a net. I wish I’d quit band altogether like I’d wanted to. I look off at the redwoods, each one rising to the sky surrounded only by its loneliness. He’s staring at me, I can feel it, waiting for a response, but one is not forthcoming—this is a no trespassing zone.
“Look,” he says cautiously, finally getting a clue that his charms have worn off. “I followed you out here because I wanted to see if we could play together.”
“Why?” My voice is louder and more upset than I want it to be. A slow familiar panic is taking over my body.
“I want to hear John Lennon play for real, I mean, who wouldn’t, right?”
His joke crashes and burns between us.
“I don’t think so,” I say as the bell rings.
“Look—” he starts, but I don’t let him finish.
“I don’t want to play with you, okay?”
“Fine.” He hurls the apple into the air. Before it hits the ground and before he jumps out of the tree, he says, “It wasn’t my idea anyway.”
chapter 7
I WAKE TO Ennui, Sarah’s Jeep, honking down the road—its an ambush. I roll over, look out the window, see her jump out in her favorite black vintage gown and platform combat boots, back-to-blond hair tweaked into a nest, cigarette hanging from bloodred lips in a pancake of ghoulish white. I look at the clock: 7:05 a.m. She looks up at me in the window, waves like a windmill in a hurricane.
I pull the covers over my head, wait for the inevitable.
“I’ve come to suck your blood,” she says a few moments later.
I peek out of the covers. “You really do make a stunning vampire.”
“I know.” She leans into the mirror over my dresser, wiping some lipstick off her teeth with her black-nail-polished finger. “It’s a good look for me ... Heidi goes goth.” Without the accoutrements, Sarah could play Goldilocks. She’s a sun-kissed beach girl who goes gothgrungepunkhippierockeremocoremetalfreakfashionistabraingeekboycrazyhiphoprastagirl to keep it under wraps. She crosses the room, stands over me, then pulls a corner of the covers down and hops into bed with me, boots and all.
“I miss you, Len.” Her enormous blue eyes are shining down on me, so sincere and incongruous with her getup. “Let’s go to breakfast before school. Last day of junior year and all. It’s tradition.”
“Okay,” I say, then add, “I’m sorry I’ve been so awful.”
“Don’t say that, I just don’t know what to do for you. I can’t imagine ...” She doesn’t finish, looks around The Sanctum. I see the dread overtake her. “It’s so unbearable ...” She stares at Bailey’s bed. “Everything is just as she left it. God, Len.”
“Yeah.” My life catches in my throat. “I’ll get dressed.”
She bites her bottom lip, trying not to cry. “I’ll wait downstairs. I promised Gram I’d talk with her.” She gets out of bed and walks to the door, the leap in her from moments before now a shuffle. I pull the covers back over my head. I know the bedroom is a mausoleum. I know it upsets everyone (except Toby, who didn’t even seem to notice), but I want it like this. It makes me feel like Bailey’s still here or like she might come back.
On the way to town, Sarah tells me about her latest scheme to bag a babe who can talk to her about her favorite existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre. The problem is her insane attraction to lumphead surfers who (not to be prejudicial) are not customarily the most well-versed in French literature and philosophy, and therefore must constantly be exempted from Sarah’s Must-Know-Who-Sartre-Is-or-at-Least-Have-Read-Some-of-D. H.-Lawrence-or-at-the-Minimum-One-of-the-Brontës-Preferably-Emily criteria of going out with her.
“There’s an afternoon symposium this summer at State in French Feminism,” she tells me. “I’m going to go. Want to come?”
I laugh. “That sounds like the perfect place to meet guys.”
“You’ll see,” she says. “The coolest guys aren’t afraid to be feminists, Lennie.”
I look over at her. She’s trying to blow smoke rings, but blowing smoke blobs instead.
I’m dreading telling her about Toby, but I have to, don’t I? Except I’m too chicken, so I go with less damning news.
BOOK: The Sky Is Everywhere
10.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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