Текст книги "Love Letters to the Dead"

Автор книги: Ava Dellaira

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

All of a sudden, I didn’t want to be alone. The rain was blurry, and I was scared of something I couldn’t see, but it felt close enough to breathe on me. And I got worried that somehow the XTC guy at the store that we ran away from would come back and find me.

So I went inside and found Natalie and Hannah in the bedroom. They were kissing again. Or more like making out, really. Their shirts were still off and their wet hair was stuck to their heads. When I opened the door, they didn’t notice for a minute. Hannah saw me first. She jumped off Natalie and started laughing.

Natalie said, “We were just cold. We were trying to get warm.”

“Come on, you can, too,” Hannah said.

“That’s okay,” I said, and closed the door.

I don’t think they worried as much, because last time I didn’t tell anyone. They probably kept kissing. I went to the den, and I found where the heat comes out of the floor and fell asleep next to it until it was time to go home.

Maybe Hannah wants to kiss Natalie even without any booze, but she can’t admit it. Hannah says that Natalie knows her better than anyone in the world. She says they are soul mates. But I think maybe Natalie loves her as more than a soul mate. I wonder if Hannah loves her like that, too, and if there’s a reason she’s too scared to say.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear Kurt,

When I was in English today, I looked up from my test to see Mrs. Buster staring at me with her big eyes, bugged out like I make her sad. After the bell rang, she said, “Laurel, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I thought, Oh no, not again. I walked up to her desk and didn’t look up and hoped she wouldn’t pretend to know anything about my sister or ask what’s wrong with me. She ran her fingers through her ironed-flat blond hair and paused for a moment. Then she said, “You never did turn in your letter assignment, even after I gave you an extension.” It felt weird that Mrs. Buster was bringing this up. I mean, that was nearly a month and a half ago. Why did she care?

“I know,” I said. I worried that somehow she could see through me. “I’m still working on it.”

“I normally wouldn’t accept something this late, but I’d like to see you finish it. I think that it’s important for you…” And with that she trailed off. I guess she didn’t want to say since your sister died. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t understand. She wouldn’t. This is our world. And she can’t have it. But instead of saying any of that, I nodded and left.

Then I went to my locker, and I was looking at the picture of you I have hanging inside of it, when I noticed something else. A homecoming invitation. It was cut from red construction paper into the shape of a rough heart. Like a kindergartner had done it for a valentine. For one hopeful moment, I thought that it could have been from Sky. But it wasn’t. Will you go to homecoming with me? it said. Evan F. I felt queasy.

I’ve only talked to Evan Friedman once before. He’s a popular boy, one of the most popular in the freshman class. His face is very pale, and honestly, it kind of looks like an albino monkey. But that makes him sound ugly, and he’s not. Also, he’s very good at sports and skateboarding and school, like everything in the world is easy for him. We are in algebra together. A couple of weeks ago, I turned around to ask him to borrow a pencil, because my lead had broken off. His hand was sort of down his pants. My eyes went there, and then darted back up. My throat got dry, but I had to say something so he didn’t think I was just looking. So I just stuttered out my original question. “Do you have an extra pencil?” He took the one off his desk and put it in my hand. After that, I caught him looking at me more than once.

Why was he asking me? I am nothing like his ex-girlfriend, Britt, who is blond with cherry-kissed lips and bubbly like cream soda. I wondered if it was just because I looked at his crotch that time or what.

Secretly I had been hoping that Sky would ask me. I’ve been looking for him since we went on our drive, one week and a day ago. But he hasn’t been at lunch. I saw him only once, walking in the hall with some other junior guys and a girl who had dyed-black hair that matched her tall black boots. She was laughing and touching his arm. Sky looked up as he passed by and saw my eyes on him. He held them for just a moment before tilting his head up in greeting. I must have pretty much seemed like a freak, just staring.

At lunch today, Kristen and Tristan came to sit with me and Natalie and Hannah at our table, and I told them about Evan’s invitation.

Hannah exclaimed, “Mr. Popular is totally trying to get in your pants.”

“Well, I know he gets in his own pants,” I said.

This made everyone laugh, because I never say things like that. Hannah almost spit out her Capri Sun.

“Are you going to say yes?” Natalie asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Then I asked Tristan and Kristen, “Are you guys going?”

“We’re over school dances, right, babe?” Tristan answered.

Kristen nodded.

“Do you think Sky’s over school dances, too?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, I’d have to answer that in the affirmative,” Tristan said.

Hannah said, “My analysis is that it appears that he’d like to spend as little time at school as possible, since he’s been ditching lunch. And although he has license to stand with the cool kids, he still doesn’t fully belong anywhere and hasn’t relinquished his title of Mr. Mystery. Hence the throng of girls who are always leaning in and touching his arm. But of course, my money’s on you.”

Kristen added, “Mine, too, but I know his type, Laurel. He’s not a girlfriend kind of guy. He’s the type that just, like, has girls sometimes.”

“Is Tristan the girlfriend kind of guy?” I asked, because I was trying to figure out what this meant.

Kristen laughed. “He wasn’t before I met him,” she admitted.

“But she converted me!” Tristan said. “I’m living proof it’s possible.”

“Maybe you’ll convert Sky,” Kristen offered.

“We haven’t even talked since last week. I don’t know if he actually likes me.”

“I hypothesize that Sky does like you,” Tristan said. “He asked you to ride in his Chevy lovemobile after all—and the fact that he hasn’t spoken to you since is evidence that you make him nervous. Which is evidence that he likes you. Guys get shy, too, you know.”

It’s hard for me to imagine that I make Sky nervous, but I hope Tristan is right.

When lunch was finished, I still wasn’t sure what to do about Evan. In Algebra, I sat on the other side of the room from him and tried not to look over. After class, I took a long time placing my notepaper in my binder and snapping and resnapping the rings, hoping he’d leave. But when I looked up, he was there.

“Did you get my note?”

I looked at him blankly for a moment. “Yeah.”

“Does that mean yeah you’ll go with me or yeah you got it?”

After what Hannah and Kristen said, I figured my chances of Sky asking were pretty much none, especially since there’s only a week and a half left before the dance. And it seemed hard to say no to Evan and his paper heart. So I said, “Oh. Uh. Yeah, I’ll go.” Then I added, “But I kind of have plans beforehand. So, can we meet there?”

I’ve seen plenty of versions of homecoming dates on TV—the girls in their satin dresses cutting tiny pieces off of rib eyes they won’t finish at somewhere like Outback Steakhouse, drinking Shirley Temples and virgin piña coladas, while the guys scarf their whole plates and then tackle the girls’. And I know that Evan probably has popular friends who do this kind of thing. But what would I say to them?

Honestly, I don’t want him to pick me up, because I couldn’t stand him coming to our quiet house. I don’t want him to see inside it. And I don’t want Dad feeling like he should have to pretend and pull out the camera. We don’t take pictures anymore.

Evan was still looking at me.

I tried to give him a way out. “You know, if you want to ask someone else who can go to dinner first, I totally get it. It’s totally okay.”

Evan just said, “No, it’s cool. You can come out after, right?”

I guess this was the part that really mattered. If he thought we would make out or not.

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.

So now, this is going to be my first dance. With Evan Friedman and his jagged red heart. It was supposed to be Sky.

At May’s first dance her freshman year, I watched her get ready in her red dress, not satin, but silk. She was so perfectly alive. Her date, Justin Alvarez, a senior boy, rang the doorbell like he should and pinned on a corsage. I stayed hidden in the door frame, watching. Even though they’d already split up by then, Mom and Dad both wanted to be the ones to see her off to her first dance, so Mom came over that night. She took pictures of May being beautiful. Dad shook Justin’s hand and said, “Be home by twelve.” I had this feeling that the boy dressed in a suit was carrying her away, into her new life that I couldn’t see. I wished I could go.

When she got back that night at two a.m., she tiptoed into her room. She’d called Dad and told him what a great time she was having and begged for a couple extra hours. He’d finally agreed and gone to sleep, but I had been in bed waiting up, my eyes open to the moonlight. I heard her and pushed open her door. She said, “You have to hear this.” She put on a CD and played “The Lady in Red.” Over and over and over. I lay on her bed and watched her unpin her hair, placing freed bobby pins on the dresser, and wiping off the lipstick. When her curls were a mess over her shoulders, she lay in the bed next to me, starting the song over again and closing her eyes. She fell asleep in her red dress. I saw the hem of it with its sequins crumple between her thigh and the sheet. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I wondered if anyone could ever think that about me.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear Allan “Rocky” Lane,

I wanted to know who you were, besides the voice of Mister Ed, so I looked you up online. I found a picture of you, and I was surprised to see you were really very handsome. A Western man. Rough and kind at once. Up until then, I had only seen the face of Mister Ed when I pictured you in my mind. But I discovered you were a boy who grew up in Indiana and left school because you dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star. Before you were Mister Ed, you were Harry Leonard Albershart from Indiana, and then Allan Lane the actor, nicknamed Rocky. The article said you made thirty B Westerns—the low-budget kind—riding a horse called Black Jack through movie sets. It’s strange the way even dreams turn into jobs.

When you were on set shooting all of those B movies with titles like Desperadoes’ Outpost and Frontier Investigator, I wonder if in your head you were riding a real horse across the desert, galloping off to somewhere else. It might not be what you’d imagined when you wanted to become a star, but when you were Mister Ed, you galloped yourself into the living rooms of so many people who loved you. I know that.

Aunt Amy has watched your show since she and Mom were kids. I think it reminds her of when the world seemed safe. The way you make us laugh, it’s clean—a talking horse goes to a dentist, makes phone calls to movie stars, watches too much TV. Nothing really bad ever happens.

I wish that Aunt Amy could meet somebody like you. Someone who could make her laugh and look good in his cowboy hat as he tipped it toward her. If you were here, you could do your Mister Ed voice and make her crack up. Instead, Aunt Amy just has the Jesus Man, who never calls back.

When I see her putting on her apron in the morning to go to work, I can see the days stretch ahead of her like a desert. Even if it didn’t come perfectly true, you got to live close to your dream. But she works at the Casa Grande diner, where people go for lunch, people who seem like they wish they were meant to go to lunch somewhere else. The cooks put too much chicken salad on the sandwiches. A huge ice cream scoop of it, over a slippery tomato. They don’t bother spreading it out. And the whole thing slides off.

Last weekend, she asked me to come and visit her there. It was near the end of her shift, and I was one of only four tables. Across the room, there was a man wearing a tee shirt that said ABSTINENCE: 99.9% EFFECTIVE, with a picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. When his iced tea was empty, he sucked at the crushed ice through a straw. He sucked out all the liquid the ice was willing to give up. When no refill came, he snapped his fingers. Aunt Amy probably didn’t like him on account of his shirt, and she walked over without her iced tea pitcher and told him that was rude. They got in an argument, and the manager ended up giving him his glass of tea for free. Another table sitting next to me sent back their fries because they were too crispy. I watched Aunt Amy behind the counter. She sneezed into her hand, and then when she thought no one was looking, she subtly touched the new plate of fries. It surprised me that someone who believes in Jesus would do this. But it’s a hard job.

Homecoming is this weekend (thank god I’ll be with Dad), but Aunt Amy saw it marked on the school calendar, so she knew it was coming up. After her lunch shift she wanted to give me a little pep talk. She said that if I was going to be attending the school dance, she wanted to remind me to use good judgment. Then she started on a lecture about not dancing too close. “Make sure you leave some room for the Holy Ghost.” You might be laughing at that, but although she tried to smile at me when she said it, I don’t think it was meant to be a joke. She reminded me of the pitfalls of sin, and then asked me if I wanted to go shopping. Even though I need a dress, I didn’t want to go with her, because she disapproves of spaghetti straps, and all good homecoming dresses have them. I knew I’d end up with a church dress that I would feel guilty for not wearing. So I told her I had homework. Then she gave me $20 to shop with, but I didn’t want to tell her that you can’t buy a dress with that much. So I took the $20, and even though I felt bad, I figured I could get Nutter Butters for pretty much the rest of the year with it.

Today at lunch before I went to buy one, I looked for Natalie and Hannah. When I saw them, Natalie was giving Hannah a single tulip. Hannah took the tulip and put it to her face as if to smell it, even though tulips don’t smell. Natalie giggled and said, “Will you go to homecoming with me, dah-ling?”

Hannah dropped the tulip on her tray. She looked at Natalie. “What do you mean?” she asked with an edge in her voice.

Natalie said, “I just think the whole thing of dances is so stupid. I thought we should have fun with it, you know, not worry about boys or anything. We can wear flapper dresses and eat at the fondue place first.” Her voice went up at the end, in a sort of hopeful way. Then she turned to me quickly and said, “Laurel will go with us, too. Sorry I didn’t bring you a flower, Laurel. I didn’t know what kind you like. I stole the tulip from my neighbor’s yard. Mr. Dickie came out and started yelling, so I had to run. He chased me down half a block before his asthma kicked in.”

I tried to laugh.

Hannah said, “Laurel is going with Evan Friedman. Remember? Anyway, Kasey’s going to take me. I talked him into it. He’s borrowing his dad’s convertible. But I guess you can come with us if you want.”

Natalie looked annoyed. “Why would he want to go to a high school dance? He’s, like, nineteen.”

Hannah gave a sly smile and said, “I told him if he came, afterward I’d give him an extra good surprise.”

I could see then that something in Natalie got crushed. The look on her face was like when you just finished making a waffle in the morning, and you got it out of the toaster, and you put on the butter and the syrup and had it cut along the lines into square inches, and you were carrying it into your room, so excited, but then you dropped it facedown on the floor. And you felt so sad about the whole thing, you didn’t even want to make another.

Natalie just said, “Okay, that’s cool. Actually, someone asked me, anyway.”

Hannah looked at her and said, “Who?”

Natalie looked down at the floor, and then back up at Hannah. Her cheeks were red. If she was angry or embarrassed, I don’t know. But it was their moment. So I mumbled something about Nutter Butters and went away.

As I was going up to get in the lunch line, I saw Sky standing there. I started to walk the other way. But I turned back and stood in line behind him. I stared at the back of his head and didn’t say anything for a while. I kept opening my mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, I said, “Hey.”

He turned around, surprised to see me. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hey,” I said again, stupidly.

“What’s up?”

I was trying to think of how to answer that question again, such a terrible question. Instead I said, “So, are you going to the dance this weekend?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“Going to the dance?”

He looked at me like, Yes, obviously.

“I don’t know, either.” Then I said, “Well, yeah, I guess I am. Someone asked me.”

Sky tensed up, I swear the muscles in his arm got the teensiest bit harder, and he said, “Who?”

“Just this guy.” It was too quiet. So I continued. “But I don’t even know if I want to go anyway. I mean, it’s like that kind of thing that’s never what it’s supposed to be, you know?”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Sky said, “Your sister was May, huh?”

I felt frozen. How did he know that? No one here has asked me about May, except Mrs. Buster. Maybe Sky had friends who went to May’s old school. He’s a junior, the same age as her. Or maybe he went there before he transferred. It wouldn’t be impossible.

“Yeah,” I finally replied.

“You look like her.”

“Really?” I felt like someone was waving sparklers inside my chest. I could feel hot stars jumping off of them. He thought I looked like her.

I never want to talk about May with any of my friends. But now, with Sky, it felt good almost, like he was part of her secret world. And he didn’t ask any questions he shouldn’t. He just said, “Yeah. You have her eyes.”

Then we were quiet again, until he said, “I don’t know if I’ll show up.”

“At the dance?”

“Yeah.”

“You should.”

“Why?”

“Just ’cause. What if it does actually turn out like it’s supposed to? You know, like Christmas when you were little and it didn’t make you sad.”

Sky laughed a little and said, “You think a lot about that, don’t you? How it’s supposed to be.”

Before I could answer, Sky was at the front of the line. He ordered his pizza, which came in a tinfoil triangle. When it was my turn, Sky looked like he didn’t know if he should wait for me or carry his shiny pizza away. I looked at him as the lunch lady tapped her fingers impatiently on the counter. I was holding up the line. I knew there was something to say. But he just smiled, a smile that seemed to understand, before he walked away.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear Kurt,

The night of the dance, I ate cold potato pancakes with Dad. That sounds sort of depressing, but I didn’t mind really. The only thing is I didn’t have a dress. I tried on a few old ones, but they were all stupid and frilly and didn’t fit right anymore. I wanted to look pretty, in case Sky came and saw me. So I went into May’s room. I opened the closet, which has her cut-off-at-the-neck sweaters folded on the shelves with the arms behind them and her stuffed animals stuffed into the back, and I found the dress, the red silk one. I tried it on. It fit almost right. It was longer on me, and the open top hung lower on my chest (because I don’t have that much of one), but I felt almost beautiful. The hem was cut in flowy spikes with sequins on them. I turned around and around until I was dizzy, in a good way. I put on eye shadow until my eyes seemed to smolder.

The bad part was I had to ask Dad to drive me. I think he thought I was lying when I said my date was waiting for me at the dance. I think he felt sorry for me, because he thought I was going alone. I told him that I’d get a ride home later, since I know he likes to go to bed early, but he made sure to say that I could call him if I needed to be picked up. Then he said, “Sweetie, you look beautiful,” the way a dad does. I wondered if he remembered it was May’s dress.

When I got there, I stood in front of the double doors of the gym, waiting for Evan. He’d texted me that we were supposed to meet at eight thirty. It was 8:43 when he finally came up behind me and grabbed my sides. I let out a little yelp, pretending to be surprised. He was wearing a black shirt and a purple tie.

“Hey. Did I scare you?” he asked. His eyes were red, like he was stoned. I realized that our clothes didn’t match at all.

“Yeah. A little.”

He looked like he already regretted asking me to the dance, but he tried to cover for it. “Are you ready?” He linked his arm in mine and we walked in. I felt bad for him, having to go with someone who is so not good at this stuff, and I thought I’d try to make the best of it for us both. But I just couldn’t make myself say the right things. When he said, “You look pretty,” I mumbled, “No, I don’t.” What I meant, I guess, was that he didn’t understand. It was my sister’s dress.

We got inside and I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Finally Evan asked if I wanted some punch.

“Sure,” I said. He said he’d get some and left me standing alone in the middle of the bright room with the entryway and the picture booth.

I am usually good at finding things to look busy with, but there was nothing. I unstuck a bobby pin from my hair and stuck it back. I could hear a muffled version of “Bad Romance” coming from inside the gym.

Finally, I saw Natalie walk in with this boy Brian, who sits alone at the double lab table in Bio and raises his hand all the time. She had on a floor-length black dress that fit perfectly on her body. Her skin was smooth like usual, with no makeup. Brian trailed behind, wearing a bow tie and too much hair gel. She looked as relieved to see me as I was to see her, and we rushed over to each other.

“Why do people do this?” I asked.

Natalie laughed. “No idea. But I guess we’re as stupid as the rest.” She pulled out a little flask from her purse and handed it to me. “Schnapps?”

I took a swig. And another. Natalie loved May’s dress, and I spun in it for her, and spun again and again. I spun until I was almost happy.

Natalie did a bang-up job of more or less ignoring Brian until Hannah came in. She was wearing satin like most of the girls there, but it looked beautiful on her. Her pale freckled shoulders stood out against the straps of the midnight blue dress. She was holding on to Kasey’s arm. It was the first time I’d seen him. He’s short, and even without heels on, Hannah must be taller than him. But he’s made of big stocky muscles, the kind that you only get if you work really hard on them. As she maneuvered him over to say hi to us, all of a sudden Natalie pulled Brian closer. Clearly Hannah didn’t feel the way we did about the dance, or she didn’t let it show, or her piña coladas weren’t virgin, or all of the above. Because she was a perfect girl on a college boy’s arm, chatting and giggling at a private triumph, and finally dragging Kasey off to the photo booth.

When Evan finally returned and handed me a half-drunk glass of punch, I didn’t ask what had taken so long. He shifted from foot to foot, looking unhappy about the company. Finally he said, “We’re here to dance, yeah?” Then he reached his hand out to me. “Shall we?” I tried to be a good date and followed him into the gym. I was high enough on the swigs of Schnapps that I had stopped caring that this was not the way my first dance was supposed to be. They were playing a Jay-Z song. Evan was mouthing along, except he sang the real “Can I get a fuck-you” lyrics over the bleeped-out “Can I get a what-what” version they had on. He thrust around from foot to foot and put his hands halfway into his pants.

I tried to go with Evan’s rhythm, but when it came down to it, he had none, and when he put his hands on me and tried to move me around, all I wanted was to wriggle away. Evan kept thrusting his hips, and the more I danced away from him, the more he tried to grab me, and the harder I danced away. As the song was ending, I saw him watching Britt, his ex, across the room. She was blowing pink bubble gum that matched her pink satin dress and shifting from foot to foot. He wanted her satin and watermelon. Evan probably asked me to the dance ’cause he thought I’d say yes, and then he’d have someone to make Britt jealous with. I should have been mad, I guess, but it didn’t matter.

I said, “You should go ask Britt to dance.”

He looked at me, caught off guard.

“Look,” I said, “she’s staring at you, too.”

“Are you sure?” Evan asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “She totally is. Go for it. Anyway, I’m kind of thirsty.” And I walked off.

I went to the punch table and took a long time choosing one of the identical glasses. I put the pink stuff to my lips and let the ice clink on my teeth before I chewed it. And do you know what happened then? They started playing “The Lady in Red.” I saw Evan across the room, dancing with Britt now. I must have been a good ruse, because they looked like they couldn’t get close enough. Her watermelon gum had probably made its way into his mouth. I saw Hannah, dancing with Kasey. She looked over his shoulder at Natalie, who was dancing with Brian. Natalie was looking back. Hannah blew her a kiss. Natalie turned her face away. But then she changed her mind and reached her hand and caught the kiss from the air behind her. She put it softly to her lips. But Hannah’s face, by then, was hidden in Kasey’s shoulder.

I couldn’t watch them anymore. I stared into my punch glass. I picked a sequin off the hem of my dress and folded it between my fingers. I licked my lips and tasted the crayon color of the lipstick I had on. I thought of May wearing this dress at her first dance, brown curls all falling around her face, gliding across the floor in someone’s arms. I tried not to cry.

Then, out of nowhere, Sky came up beside me. “Hi,” he said.

I turned. He still smelled of the clean cold of the night outside. He was wearing his leather jacket over suit pants and a button-up shirt.

“Hi.”

“You’re wearing red,” he said. “Like the song.”

“It’s my sister’s dress.”

Sky smiled a little half smile that made me feel like he understood what this meant. He held out his hand to me.

The touch of his fingers sent everything that was electrical in us toward each other. And then we were dancing. The bleachers with their wood smell, the perfume of everyone, the twinkle of the white Christmas lights, all of it came together to build a place that was just for us. Somewhere I’d never been before.

I wished I could stay forever inside of the song with him, but it was over too fast. Sky whispered, “Thank you for the dance,” and I watched him start to disappear into the crowd.

But then he turned back. “I’m going to get out of here,” he said. “Do you want a ride?”

“Sure.” I could hardly hide the excitement in my voice. I felt giddy as I followed him out of the gym, just as they started playing the electric slide song. I caught Natalie’s eye as I was leaving and waved bye. She grinned back at me, because she could see I was with Sky. As we walked through the parking lot, I quickly texted Dad that I was getting a ride home. I told him good night and sweet dreams, and that I wouldn’t be late.

When we got in his truck, Sky turned on the stereo, and “About a Girl” came on. It was the beginning of your MTV Unplugged album. A little part of me thought that maybe Sky had planned that on purpose, because he knows that we both love you. Maybe he cared that much.

We sat there in silence for a moment, listening to the song. I wanted to think of something to say out loud. Finally I said, “It’s like part of what’s so great is he’s not afraid of his voice.”

“You mean Kurt?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Sky turned to look at me, his eyes amused. “Are you?”

“Afraid of my voice?” I laughed, nervous. “Yeah, I guess.”

Then Sky tilted his head to the side a little and got more serious. “I think we all are. With Kurt, it’s more like he just faces the fear, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

“I think that’s why he’s so loud. I mean, he has to be. Because he’s staring the monster in the face, and the only thing to do is fight back.”

“Do you think,” I asked, “do you think he won?”

“The obvious answer is no, ’cause he died. But I think he did in a way. I mean, listen.” Sky turned up the stereo. “We have this now. And we’ll always have it.”

I knew then that I was right when I used to sit by the fence watching Sky and thinking that we were connected somehow.

I pointed ahead, to our exit off of the freeway. “You get off up there,” I said. “Rio Grande.”

“You live pretty far from school.”

“Yeah. I was supposed to go to Sandia, but instead I go in my aunt’s district. I live with her part-time.” I paused a moment. “May went to Sandia…” I said, trailing off. I waited to see if Sky would say he went there, too. Did he? I wanted to ask him how he knew May, but I was afraid of breaking the spell.

He just said, “I transferred to West Mesa, too. Only two more years left, and then I’m free.”

“What are you going to do after that?” I asked.

Sky shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s funny, if you’d asked me that at the beginning of high school, I’d have told you my whole plan of escape, all laid out.” He paused. “Pre-law at Princeton or Brown. Amherst, maybe. Somewhere far away, with snow.” I could tell by the tone of his voice that it was an ambition he’d created for himself, not one handed down by his parents. “But now,” he said, “well, I don’t exactly have the grades for that anymore, or the permanent record. I don’t know … maybe it wasn’t meant to be.” He was quiet for another moment. “I guess I sort of want to be a writer now.” He glanced at me. “But it’s not like I’ve ever written anything. And that’s not something I tell most people.”

“You’d be a really great writer,” I said.