Текст книги "Love Letters to the Dead"

Автор книги: Ava Dellaira

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

She said, “You know when you think you know someone? More than anyone in the world? You know you know them, because you’ve seen them, like, for real. And then you reach out, and suddenly they are just … gone. You thought you belonged together. You thought they were yours, but they’re not. You want to protect them, but you can’t.”

I told her I did know. And in that moment, Hannah came running out. She was giggling too loudly, in a weird way, like she was trying to cover up some big cry. And then she saw Natalie’s face. She said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She just kept saying it. And stroking her hair. “It was terrible. I hated it. All I could think of was you. All I could think of was you. I only love you.”

I tried to look away, and the only other thing to see was the moon.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear River Phoenix,

I read that when you were little, before you were famous, your family moved around a lot. You lived in communes, and then you guys joined a cult for a while called the Children of God. Your family did missionary work for them in Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and finally Venezuela. The cult called your father the Archbishop of Venezuela and the Caribbean, but they didn’t give your family any money to live on, so you and your next-oldest sister, Rain, used to sing in the streets for change. People would gather around to hear the two of you.

Your family quit the cult when your parents heard about what the leader was asking the women to do, “flirty fishing,” they called it, which was to have sex with men to recruit them. When you left Venezuela, your family got back to Florida by being stowaways on a ship carrying Tonka toys. The crew discovered your family, but they were nice to you and gave you some damaged toys for presents.

After the cult, your parents changed your family’s last name from Bottom to Phoenix—to symbolize the mythical bird that rises from the ashes. Then your family moved to Hollywood when you were nine so that you and Rain would have a chance to become stars. You loved to sing together, and you decided you wanted to be an actor, too.

At first, it was hard. Your family had no money, and you got kicked out of your apartments every few months, and you and your sister kept singing on street corners. But your mom got a job working for a casting agency, and then a famous talent agent signed you and Rain and your other two sisters and brother, too. Soon she started getting you small jobs, and then the jobs got bigger and bigger.

When you became an actor, you had the ability to dissolve your own personality and inhabit any character. You were brilliant at it. We can lose ourselves, I guess. And you used that. You found the magic in it.

You and your siblings always supported each other. You loved your family so much and talked about your childhood as being happy. But I wonder if there was something that happened to you when you were little that you couldn’t talk to them about. People have said that a lot of bad things went on in that cult, like the cult leader said it was okay to do sexual stuff with kids. When I read that, it made me so angry. I wondered if there was someone who hurt you. You said once in an interview that you lost your virginity when you were four. But then you took it back and said that it was just a joke. So I don’t know. But maybe there was a time that you needed someone to protect you and they couldn’t.

I am writing to you now because there is something that I can’t talk about, too. Something that I wonder if you would understand. I keep trying to get rid of it, to push it out of my head, but it keeps coming back in. I am worried, because I am falling in love with Sky, but I feel like one day, he’ll find out everything and leave me.

Last night, I snuck out to meet him. Since it was a cold night, instead of walking through the neighborhood, he picked me up and we decided to drive in his truck. We blasted the heater and rolled the windows down and listened to music, and finally we pulled over on a dark street and made out in the car. We made out so much, my whole body was burning up, and the windows were frosted with breath. I finally pulled away from him and sat up a moment. I was trying to remind myself of where I was, and I turned to the glass and drew a heart in it with my finger. That’s when he asked, “Do you want to come over?”

His mom was sleeping when we got there. In the low light I could see that the house, which looked so perfect on the outside, was different indoors. Every surface was piled high with fading housekeeping magazines, abandoned library books, scattered crafts. A half-finished needlepoint sampler with a scene from summer. A pile of cutout snowflakes and their paper scraps for the winter. Sky wanted to go quickly to his bedroom, but I lingered. I wanted to see everything, as if the house were full of clues to him. Then, in a cabinet crowded with delicate china, I saw that there were soccer trophies and a framed photo of Sky. He was younger, maybe twelve. He was in his uniform, grinning with a ball in his hands. There was something about seeing him like that—the same boy I loved looking out at me as a kid who smiled for the camera. I wanted to pull him out of the picture and protect him from everything between then and now.

“I didn’t know you played soccer,” I whispered. “Are all of those trophies yours?”

“Yeah,” he said, shifting, like he didn’t want to be there. “That was my past life.”

Then he took my hand and pulled me through the maze back to his bedroom. I wanted to know more, but he started kissing me. He started kissing me hard, and hungry, and for some reason it scared me. But I tried to go with it. Because I was in his house. Because I could feel the moths that needed a light beating hard, and I wanted to keep glowing for him.

Soon he had my shirt off, and he had his hands up my skirt, and everything felt confusing. I wanted him to love me. I wanted to be a light. So I told my brain to be quiet. I told my brain to just go somewhere else. And I went. I went somewhere I didn’t mean to go. I went back to May, when we were kids.

I remembered the night I asked her, “If we are fairies, why can’t we fly?”

I was scared that somehow the seventh generation inheritance missed me. That I wasn’t a real fairy and she’d find out. More than anything, I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me.

“Only the oldest child inherits the flight gene,” she told me. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t a fairy.”

“But you can fly?” I asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” she said.

I was so excited. “Can I see you?”

“No one can see my wings, or it breaks them.”

“Oh,” I said, trying not to show her I was devastated. “When do you use them then?”

“At night. When I know everyone is sleeping and no one can see me.”

“Can I just see you once?”

“You don’t want my wings to break, do you?”

“No,” I said.

But still, I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help how badly I wanted to see her wings. If I saw them, I would know for sure I was part of the magic.

Some nights, I used to beg her to let me sleep in the top bunk with her. I’d climb up the ladder and curl in next to her. After she fell asleep, I’d stare up at the ceiling, looking for patterns in the splotches of paint—a dragon, and the cave he’d set fire to by accident, trapped in his own flames. The princess who would come to rescue him. I’d tell myself stories and try to keep my eyes open all night, so that if May went out on a flight, I wouldn’t miss it. I thought that maybe if I just saw by accident, it wouldn’t count. But eventually, sleep would take over. I’d open my eyes again at dawn, and she would be turning under the blankets.

“Did you fly tonight?” I’d whisper.

“Mmm-hmm,” she’d murmur.

And I’d imagine her adventures.

I was staring up at Sky’s ceiling now, trying to find pictures in the walls the way I used to do, when he asked me, “Laurel?”

I tried to shake myself out of it. “Yeah?”

“Where did you go?”

“Nowhere. I’m here.”

“You left me.”

“No, I … I didn’t mean to…” I started crying. I couldn’t help it.

“Laurel, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to wipe the tears away.

I had that same feeling that I did when I was a kid. She was a real fairy, and I was faking it. I knew that eventually, Sky would find out.

“You can’t always do this,” he said. “You can’t just disappear on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

I pulled him closer and tried to keep kissing. Sky’s hands were hot on me. I wanted to like it, but the world was spinning. I tried to focus on his face, but I couldn’t. I was going backward through a tunnel. I was seeing magic carpets, riding on one with Aladdin. I was seeing May, her lips turning dark with lipstick. May leaving the movie theater in Paul’s car. I saw her look back at me, and all of a sudden her smile that had looked so bright seemed scared.

“We don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to,” Sky said.

“Okay.”

“But you have to talk to me.”

“I—I don’t know what to say.” I wondered again how he knew May. I couldn’t help it anymore. After a moment, I asked, “Sky? What was your old school?”

“Sandia.”

My heart stopped for a beat, or maybe three. It was true. “So you went with May.”

“Yeah,” he said.

I imagined him seeing her, turning a corner in the hallway. She would be wearing her pink sweater, cut to show her collarbone, her hair flowing behind her. She would have taken his breath away. I wonder if when he sees me coming around a corner, sometimes he thinks for a moment he sees her there.

“I bet everyone loved her,” I said.

Sky was quiet.

“Right?” I asked softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“All right,” I said. “I guess.”

So we drove in his truck, the quiet of the night stifling us. I wished that I wouldn’t have been weird. I wished that I hadn’t broken the spell. I was scared, and there was nothing to stop it.

We pulled up in front of my house.

“Good night,” Sky said. “Get some sleep.”

And I snuck back into our house full of shadows.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear Kurt,

I have this picture of you in my locker, with Courtney and baby Frances. You are holding her in your arms, peering down at her. Courtney is leaning over your shoulder, looking, too. Her shirt is cut to show her stomach, which has FAMILY VALUES written on it in black scratchy letters. It would almost be ironic, but it’s real at the same time, because you are there, Kurt and Courtney, with your baby girl. Your family got broken when you were a kid, but then you made your own. And at the same time, you became a father, in a way, to all of us. I know you didn’t want that. But you couldn’t help it. You didn’t want to be the spokesperson of a generation. But you couldn’t help singing.

I don’t know anyone who has a perfect family to start with. And I think that’s why we make up our own. Regular weirdos together. I feel that way about my friends.

Yesterday was the last day of school before Christmas break. We all met in the alley after school to celebrate. I made everyone clove oranges, which are oranges with cloves pressed into the skin and ribbons attached to make them into ornaments. I felt like making them because May and I always did at Christmastime. I put Kristen’s cloves in so that they spelled NYC, which is where she wants to go to college. Tristan’s said Slash.

For vacation, Tristan and Kristen are going to Hawaii with her family. They’ve been dating since the beginning of high school, so I guess her family lets him go along to stuff like that. It’s funny to me, because when I think of Hawaii I think of hula, and neither of them seems like the type for leis or swimsuits with birds-of-paradise. Tristan says that he’s going to stay in the hotel room and order piña coladas and watch Oprah reruns all day, but Kristen has to finish her college applications. She says he better watch on mute.

Tristan smokes pot a lot and didn’t take the right tests, and he likes shop and art the most of his classes. But more than that, even, he likes rock music and playing guitar. I think he really wants to be a musician, but not just because he wants to be famous. He wants to be one because of what Slash said, about how being a rock star is the intersection between who you are and who you want to be. He plays guitar so well, you wouldn’t believe it. But he doesn’t have a band. And he doesn’t try really hard to get one. He mostly plays alone in his room instead. That’s what Kristen says. I think he does this for the same reason Hannah doesn’t turn in her work when her teachers say she is smart. I think a lot of people want to be someone, but we are scared that if we try, we won’t be as good as everyone imagines we could be.

Kristen is different. She studies all the time, and she got a 2180 on her SAT. She’s always talking about going to Columbia. She flips through magazines and cuts out pictures of people who look like they’d live in New York or other cities where things happen. She lets me and Natalie and Hannah come over to her house after school sometimes, and we always just get a snack then sit in her room and actually do homework. Her bedroom walls are covered with the magazine pictures, so that the walls don’t end at the walls. They go outward, to a dream of somewhere else.

I think that it makes Tristan feel like she doesn’t want to be here, with him. But the thing is, even though Kristen wants to go, I think she wishes he would come, too. See, last month she gave Tristan this stack of college applications in the cafeteria at lunchtime. She smiled a little smile and said, “Hey, baby. I got you something.” Like it was a good surprise. Then she pulled them out from behind her back and handed them to him.

He took the stack of papers. He said, “What’s this?” already with an edge in his voice. He flipped through them and then he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I can see the headlines now! Tristan Ayers attends backwater bumfuck college in the city of Poughkeepsie.” He said it like he was joking, but his voice had a razor in it. Then his eyes got really angry, and he turned to Kristen and said, “That shit’s not even in New York City.” Like, Who do you think I am?

Her eyes were still as usual. She said, really quietly, “It’s close.”

“It’s not close. It’s a fuckin’ world away.”

She told him he could transfer after a year if he got his grades up. Tristan just looked at her and said, “I’m not good enough for you. We both know it.” He tore the stack of applications in half. And threw them on the table and walked out.

Kristen turned her head and watched him go. Finally she said, so close to her breath you could barely hear it, “You’re wrong.”

I’d never seen her cry or get emotional in front of people. Her face always looks the same. But when she swept the torn papers into a neat pile and then off the table, she wiped her eyes with the long sleeve of her gypsy shirt. She walked through the cafeteria and threw out the applications in the trash by the door.

Now they both act around each other like you do when you know something is going to end and you’ve decided not to know. But for today, they are still here. We were happy, smoking cigarettes and laughing in the alley under the December sky, bright with possible snow. Everyone liked their oranges. Hannah laughed at hers, which I had decorated with a stick horse made of cloves.

When Natalie walked up, she was carrying a painting-sized package, wrapped in a sheet with orange paisleys on it and tied with an orange cloth bow. She giggled and pushed it toward Hannah and said, “Open it.”

Hannah looked suspicious, like she was worried that suddenly everyone could see through her. Even with our friends, Hannah still likes to pretend that she and Natalie aren’t in love like that. Finally she untied the bow and pulled off the sheet and screamed, “Oh my god!” like she didn’t know how to take it. Maybe no one had given her something that good before. It was the tulip painting Natalie had made her in art class.

Natalie shifted back and forth between her feet. “You don’t like it.”

But Hannah kept looking at it, like she didn’t want to take her eyes away. The way there were so many shades of color in the tulip petals, opening and closing at once, it reminded me of the feeling of watching a sunset—you are in awe of something so beautiful, and at the same time, you know that particular sunset will only be there for a moment.

Hannah said, “Thank you.” She meant it. She could have cried, I could see, but she was in front of everybody, so she shook herself out of it.

When we were walking to the parking lot, Natalie said to Hannah, “I made the tulip that way, I made it a painting, because now you’ll always have it. It can’t wilt or die.” Natalie had taken what’s ephemeral and turned it into something that Hannah can keep. Hannah looked at Natalie like she was trying to make herself understand what it means to have someone love you like that.

At least that’s what I imagined, because I know that it can be hard to believe that someone loves you if you are afraid of being yourself, or if you are not exactly sure who you are. It can be hard to believe that someone won’t leave. Since that night at his house a week ago, things have been strange between me and Sky. He’s trying to act like they’re not, and when I asked him if he was mad at me, he said, “No. Forget about it, all right?” So I am trying my best.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear River,

I watched My Own Private Idaho last night. In the movie, you’d changed, like I have. You weren’t the kid from Stand by Me anymore. You’d grown up, and I could see that it hurt. You play Mike, a narcoleptic who lives on the streets as a hustler. The movie opens on an empty open road. You are stuck there, alone, waiting for sleep to take you over. The clouds roll away, so fast through the wide-open sky.

When you fall to sleep by the side of the road, you dream of your mom rubbing your head, telling you everything will be okay. “I know you’re sorry,” she says. In the movie, your mom abandoned you when you were little, and you want more than anything to find her.

My mom went away, too. I know how it feels to be sorry for something you can’t say. If I could have walked through the screen, I would have taken you in my arms. And I knew what you meant when you said, “The road never ends.” I know a road like that. It’s the last road I drove on with May.

It stretches past the cottonwood trees lining the river and the railroad tracks and the bridge. It stretches past when me and May were kids making spells, past climbing trees and picking apples and past the first time I saw her wearing lipstick, past the look on her face when she met Paul, past the movies that we never saw. It goes into a place where none of it ever existed, where it always did, where there is no such thing as time, but just a feeling that goes on forever. A feeling I can’t escape from. I’m sorry. I made her leave me.

It’s the feeling that I am afraid will make Sky go, too, eventually. And it’s the feeling that was with me all night when Tristan and Kristen took us to a senior’s party before they left for their trip. They said it’s a big holiday party that happens every year, where they like to go to watch the straight-edge kids cut lose. It was at a huge house with a Christmas tree and parents who were out of town and spiked eggnog and lots of kids I’d never seen before, some of them from other schools, I guess. Kristen wore a necklace that lit up with mini Christmas lights. She’s the kind of girl who can do stuff like that and make it seem cool, paired with her long tangled hair and her broomstick skirt.

Kristen had hijacked the iPod, and she and Natalie were dancing together and singing “Freedom’s just another word…” at the tops of their lungs. Hannah had brought Kasey along, and the two of them were sitting at the dining room table nearby, doing shots with some other guys. Natalie kept glancing over her shoulder at Hannah as she danced.

I was standing off to the side, thinking of calling Sky. He’d said he was tired and didn’t feel like coming out tonight. I wished I were somewhere with him, instead of there. I was feeling like some kind of strangely shaped balloon whose string he was holding, and if he let go, I’d float off into the ether.

I was thinking about that, how high a balloon could fly before it popped, and what the world would look like from there, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janey, my old friend from elementary and middle school. She was with that soccer player she’d been with when I saw her outside the supermarket. I tried to look for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. She’d let go of his hand and was walking over. Her already rosy cheeks were a few shades brighter than usual, and I guessed she’d been drinking.

“Laurel!” she shouted, throwing her arms around me. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but Natalie and Kristen were now dancing to “This Is What Makes Us Girls,” and Hannah was licking salt off Kasey’s wrist.

“Hey,” I said, and smiled weakly. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are, I guess,” she replied, her voice turning suddenly curt. Then she added, “Landon’s older brother is friends with the guy who lives here.”

“Is Landon your boyfriend?” I asked, gesturing to the guy I’d seen her with.

“Yeah,” she said.

“That’s cool. He’s cute.”

“It’s so weird,” she said, “that I haven’t even seen you since … I mean, where have you been?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just, you know. I’ve been busy, I guess. With the new school and stuff.”

“So, you’re here with those girls?” she asked, pointing toward Natalie and Hannah, who she’d seen outside the supermarket.

“Yeah.”

“They seem sort of weird.”

“No, they’re actually, I mean, they’re really nice.”

Natalie and Hannah are obviously different from Janey, who now looked like a popular girl through and through, in her red-for-the-holidays minidress and matching headband. Janey stared at them for a minute. Natalie had stopped dancing and walked over to Hannah and Kasey at the table. She took the shot out of Hannah’s hand. Hey! Hannah mouthed. Natalie threw it down and then left and went back to dancing, dancing like if she stopped, she would collapse.

Janey leaned in and said, real soft, “Are they, like, in love or something?”

“Who?” I thought she meant Hannah and Kasey. “Oh, no. He just—I think he makes her feel safe or something.”

“No, them. The girls.”

I was really surprised that Janey had noticed this. I was impressed. They did a good job of covering it up. I think what Janey must have recognized is the look of hurt in Natalie’s eyes when she took the shot. I nodded, slightly. I made a shh finger over my lips. Janey nodded back, like, I get it.

Then she said, “Well, are you going to introduce me?”

“Yeah. Just don’t, um, don’t say anything about my sister or whatever, okay?”

Janey looked back at me, her face falling into a worried frown. Before she could say anything else, I led her over to the table where Hannah was.

“Hey, Hannah,” I said, “this is my friend Janey, from—”

Janey broke in. “From forever. Only she doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

Hannah nodded, studying Janey. “You’re pretty,” she said. “You look like a Disney princess or something.”

I think Hannah meant that as a compliment, but it didn’t quite come out that way. Janey let it roll off. “Thanks,” she replied. “I like your dress.”

Then Janey looked at Kasey next to Hannah, and she looked back at Natalie dancing, and she did something pretty great. She grabbed Hannah’s hand and said, “So, do you want to go dance or what?” and she pulled her away from Kasey and onto the dance floor.

I watched them, Hannah dancing with Natalie and Kristen now, and Janey doing more conservative moves on the edge of the circle. I remembered how actually wonderful Janey is. I felt a pang, watching her bobbing her blond head and remembering how there was a time when there was no secret I couldn’t tell her.

I needed some air, so I went out to the balcony. I was standing there, looking at the tangled fingers of the tree branches reaching for the winter-clear sky, when Tristan came out and lit a cigarette with his giant kitchen lighter.

“Laurel. What are you doing alone out here? Wait, let me guess. You are ‘thinking about things,’” he teased.

“Shut up.” I smiled.

With Tristan around, the sad I felt changed from sad like watching a balloon drift out of sight to sad in an it’s-good-to-know-your-soul-works way.

“How are you doing, Buttercup?” he asked.

“All right.” I shrugged. “I guess.” And then I asked him, because for some reason it’s easy to talk to him, “When you first thought you were falling in love with Kristen, did you ever get scared? Because I get that way with Sky, and I think that I might have sort of screwed stuff up.”

Tristan looked at me, and he said something I’ll always remember. “Let me tell you something, Buttercup,” he said. “There are two most important things in the world—being in danger, and being saved.”

I thought for a moment of May. I asked him, “Do you think we go into danger on purpose, so we can get saved?”

“Yes, sometimes. But sometimes the wolf comes down out of the mountains, and you didn’t ask for it. You were just trying to take a nap in the foothills.”

Then I asked him, “But if those are the two most important things, what about being in love?”

“Why do you think that’s the most profound thing for a person? It’s both at once. When we are in love, we are both completely in danger and completely saved.”

When he said that, it made sudden sense. “Thank you,” I said.

He stomped out his cigarette and ruffled my hair before he went back inside.

I took out my phone and dialed Sky’s number. His voice was soft with the edges of sleep creeping around it.

“Sky?” I asked.

“Yeah? Where are you?”

“I’m at this party. Could you come and take me home? I really want to see you.”

He agreed, so I said bye to my friends and blew a kiss to Janey, who was sitting on Landon’s lap by then. I waited outside until Sky’s truck pulled up. When I got in, I put my hands against the heater. He took them in his and rubbed them to warm them up. I leaned over and kissed the part of his shoulder that pushed against the threads of his sweatshirt.

When we pulled up outside my house, I asked, “Do you think I’m too messed up?”

“For what?” Sky replied.

“For you.”

“No.”

He said it so plainly that a flood of relief rushed into me. All I wanted was to lose myself in his body. I crawled onto him across the seat and felt his hands on me. I don’t mean we had sex, but we got closer than we have yet. As the neighborhood Christmas lights on their timers started to shut off, one by one the houses went quiet. The windows in the truck turned foggy, with patterns like icy feathers cracking across them. I let him keep me warm, and I promised myself I would be brave this time.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear Judy Garland,

Today is the second day of break, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Luckily I got permission from Aunt Amy to stay with Dad the whole vacation. I know how much she’ll be all about Christ’s birth and salvation and stuff this time of year, and I’m not really up for it at the moment. It’s depressing at Dad’s, but the ghosts in the house are ours, and I just want to be with them. Even though Aunt Amy and Dad are not exactly best friends, Aunt Amy will still come over on Christmas, because I don’t want her to be alone. I got her a super fancy advent calendar that you can use every year, all with Jesus-type pictures in it. Dad was harder, but I got him a basket of joke things to remind him of how he used to like that kind of stuff—whoopee cushions and plastic spiders and chewing gum that turns your mouth blue.

I watched Meet Me in St. Louis twice already this morning. I cried both times when you sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” with your voice full of longing. I wonder if when you had to sing the song for the movie you were remembering how Christmas was when you were little, singing “Jingle Bells” on the stage in your daddy’s theater. He died when you were only thirteen, just after you signed with MGM. He was so proud of you, driving you to the studio every morning, walking you into its one-room schoolhouse. While he was dying in the hospital, you were on the radio, singing to him. You never got to say goodbye. This will be my first Christmas without May.

After the credits rolled for the second time, I figured that at some point I should get out of my pajamas. Since Dad’s been too depressed, I think, to do anything Christmassy so far, I decided to try to cheer him up. I pulled the Christmas box out of the attic, and then I pulled Dad’s ladder out of the shed, and I was going to put the lights up outside the house so they could be glowing for Dad when he came home from work.

I was topsy-turvy on the ladder, trying to carry the bundle of lights up to the rooftop, when Mark, the neighbor boy, walked up.

I’ve known him and his twin brother, Carl, since I was born, because our parents would trade us for babysitting. When they were younger, their mom dressed them in different colors of plaid and kept their sandy hair swept across their foreheads. They smelled of chlorine from their pool, where we would all swim every summer, even after we got old enough not to need babysitting anymore. While they called “Marco Polo” or tried to dunk May under, I would tread water and try not to notice Mark in his swimsuit. I knew they were twins and supposed to look the same, but to me, Mark looked like nobody I’d ever seen. He was my first crush. But he and Carl were both in love with May. I was too young for him. Kid, they called me.

Carl and Mark went away to college this year, and I hadn’t seen them since May’s memorial. I remember them both dressed in suits, standing around our house with their parents. I kept staring, because for the first time I couldn’t tell them apart.

But now, I knew it was Mark. He called up, “Hey! Do you need some help?”

I climbed off the ladder. I could see his house down the street, where his parents were out with Carl, putting the final touches on their usual winner-of-the-block decorations, complete with a blow-up Santa Claus. Next to them, our old man neighbor, Mr. Lopez, was fiddling with his glow-in-the-dark manger scene, behind the bars of his wrought iron fence. “Jesus in jail,” May used to joke.