Between the Stars and Sky Read online

  Holy.

  “Naked?”

  Shit.

  She punches my arm. “In the buff!”

  I am speechless.

  She wants to see me naked.

  Or.

  She wants to sketch me naked.

  Or.

  She wants to sketch a naked guy.

  Or.

  “Jackson? You look like you’re having a seizure.”

  “What? I kind of am,” I admit.

  “Because of the naked thing?”

  I nod. Why can’t I talk?

  “Not ready to go balls to the wind?”

  “Uh,” I say. “No. Not even close.”

  “Good,” she tells me. “Then it will be even more realistic. No one wants to sketch a guy who flings them around like Christmas lights.”

  “No?” Why can’t I think of more words?

  “No,” Sarah says, smiling. Devious.

  * * *

  My fingers press between my boxers and my waist, and find their way down, pulling the fabric away from my skin and down down down. Until the only thing between me and Sarah is air and night and the light of ten candles burning bright, soft.

  My heart is racing-

  beating-

  breathing for me.

  I can’t speak, can’t think. I wonder what she thinks, if she’s smiling because she likes me or loves me or if I’m not enough for her or anyone and maybe I’m broken the way I am.

  And holy fucking shit.

  I.

  Am.

  Naked.

  “There,” Sarah tells me as she pushes her hair behind her ears. A faint line of pencil lead runs from her cheek down to her lips. Her grin makes me anxious, makes me put my hands over myself. “Lay on the couch. Hands up, Jackson! Lay back. Put your arm over your stomach. Yes, like that.”

  I don’t speak.

  I can’t.

  “Perfect,” she says and I die.

  A cool breeze drifts in from the lake through the open window and I hope my balls aren’t shriveling away to nothing.

  Balls.

  A laugh builds in my chest.

  I feel like I’m five.

  Why is this so funny?

  I thought about balls and Sarah is here.

  I’m naked.

  Shit, I’m naked.

  In front of Sarah.

  “Stop laughing!” she yells at me. “Stop or I’ll sketch your balls so they look like two tiny peas next to a giant cucumber!”

  Giant cucumber?

  I’ll take it.

  * * *

  Slowly, my heart calms and she sketches. Her pencil moves across the canvas like water over sand, and her fingers shape the ashes like waves. Her eyes move up and down, from me to the sketch - me to me. And I wonder what I look like to her. If I am large or small, happy or sad. If I am who I think I am, or someone else entirely.

  I wonder who she wants me to be.

  And I wonder what she would look like if I were drawing her. My mind wanders, serious and slow. And this is not so funny any longer, but wonderful and scary and amazing.

  With every stroke, my heart begins to beat faster. Her pencil runs around the canvas, and my eyes run around her. Sarah’s fingers brush the fabric of my blackened face, and I can almost feel them on my skin. She moves them down and down and-

  the pencil stops moving, Sarah stops sketching. The ashes settle. And suddenly I wonder if she is about to destroy me, the art she created.

  No, I think. Don’t.

  Not me.

  Not this.

  But she doesn’t.

  She smiles.

  Steps closer.

  And she destroys me, she does. But she builds me up too, until I am taken away into a world where only she and I exist.

  * * *

  This is not a dream.

  This is real.

  Though somehow it feels like both.

  Here we are: two bodies intertwined like one, safely molding second after second to the shape of the other. An infinite glow of dreams in a very real reality.

  I am not thinking about myself-

  yet this is the most like myself I’ve felt.

  I am not afraid-

  yet my heart is pounding.

  “Is this okay?” I ask her, my voice no more than a whisper but a scream in the quiet hum of night around us.

  She nods. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” I repeat.

  “Ouch.”

  “You okay?” I panic.

  She giggles. “You bit my lip.”

  “Sorry.”

  And then it’s perfect, and not. My hips move in time to my heart, and not. And soon we create a beat all our own. A spark that began as a glow and ends in the flame of something wonderful is our only light. Our pounding hearts the only reminders we’re alive and together and this is real.

  Together.

  One.

  Us.

  * * *

  This is it: I know I love her.

  I think I knew, before. But now there is no question that I do. It’s just love. We are. She is. We built ourselves on the stories we remembered, and then again on the new ones we’ve created. And together we are one heart, one life, one love.

  In this moment-

  we are

  love.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE SMELL OF SMOKE touches the air, holds it.

  I say, “This is different than before.”

  “But always the same,” Miles says back. “Right? Nothing really changes much in Huntington.”

  “Except that it does.”

  I’m right, and not. The Firelight Festival is exactly how I remember it; bright lights against the dark of night, shining red and white and yellow and orange in the small little town square just beyond Jameson’s. The gazebo is covered in flames of paper and twinkling lights. All around, people walk, run. And I’m not sure where each booth ends or begins; every ride and stand is loud and filled with a hundred different people all talking and laughing. In Huntington, the world is emblazed with smiles, life, lights.

  Mom would have loved this.

  Red words twist on the ground in disorder; my foot hits a stack of cards advertising the Huntington Firelight Festival. Beautiful little sketches of happy people walk across the yellowed paper, and against the golden lights of the festival around me they look like a dream.

  Red words. Golden lights.

  The town is burning.

  “I’m going to find Sean,” Miles says. He punches me in the arm, lightly. “See you at midnight?”

  I nod. “You ready?”

  He smiles, laughs. “Not at all. But I’m not going to let that stop me.”

  I grin as he leaves me, knowing it will be hours until I see him again. And by then, I’ll have Sarah by my side. By then, we’ll be jumping, falling, finding the start of something completely new.

  My breath leaves me.

  In the distance, she stands. Sarah. The dress she is wearing covers her in light strips of red and gold, orange and yellow, and she is on fire in it. Glittering in the festival light like she is the center we depend on, twirl around.

  Her lips curve up, and I remember yesterday.

  She blushes, and I think of our future.

  I begin to walk toward her as her fingers wave and pull me closer, closer. Until I am there and she is near and we are almost together again.

  She asks, “Are you ready?”

  To jump, she doesn’t.

  “I am,” I tell her.

  I’m afraid, I don’t.

  “I’m not as nervous as I thought I’d be,” she says, a finger wrapping around a shimmering piece of gold fabric. “I just want it to be now, you know? I want it to be done, but I want to remember it forever.”

  She is different-

  since yesterday.

  Since.

  And I think I am too.

  I stand closer to her, taking her hands and putting them against my chest. “Sarah, I’ll be there with you. My h
ands will hold yours and we’ll be together even after we jump. You jump and so do I. There’s nothing to fear if we’re together.”

  “I know.” Her hands press against me and she moves in for a kiss. Eyes closed, her lips find mine.

  I will protect her.

  I will.

  We pull apart. “I’ll keep you safe.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I know.”

  And that’s exactly why I will.

  “After the fireworks is when we jump,” she tells me. “I’ll meet you at the Point, okay? We’ll jump together.”

  “Together,” I agree. I feel this moment heavy in the air: The night the world changed forever. Maybe Jameson is here somewhere, smiling at those of us who are remembering his story. And maybe not. Maybe he’s already on the cliff waiting. Waiting for us. Waiting to jump. Waiting forever.

  Then, without warning, Sarah says, “I love you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  ONE. I.

  Two. Love.

  Three. You.

  Little words so big they hold the weight of feelings effortlessly. They are all I think about. Words so unbearably heavy they set me free.

  “I love you,” she says again.

  “I love you,” I tell her back.

  Her smile is mine, mine is hers. And between us is the tiny place where we are all our own, where hopes and dreams lay endlessly, infinitely in the air.

  “I have to go,” she says. “The festival already started and I have a line at my booth. I’ll see you soon!”

  She starts to push away but I pull her close. “Tell me my fortune first.”

  “No way!” she laughs.

  “Please. For fun.”

  She pauses, her lips resting on the edges of words. I can see her struggle, thinking. Finally, “Give me your hand.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I do.

  Her fingers glide over my palms, warm the bottom of my fingers hot. Her nails, colored gold to match her dress tonight, flicker in the fairy lights around us.

  When she speaks, it is quiet. Her words rise on the wind and take fire with them, slow and warm. “You have changed, Jackson Grant. Once a boy, now not.” A beat, breath. “Your life will be a long one, filled with happiness and heartbreak. You’ve lost so much, haven’t you? You’ve gained so much too.” Her eyes are wet, but they refuse to meet mine. Still, her voice is steady and low, like drifting waves in the middle of a calm night. “And yet you’ll always remember one girl. A summer girl who changed your world forever. With her, you let go. With her, you never forgot what it was like to feel loss, but you opened your heart enough to let love in.” And then her eyes are on mine, all blue and fire. Blonde hair flying in the wind. Lips as red as love. “But for as long as you live, Jackson Grant, your truest fortune will always be this: You gave that summer girl a gift she never thought would come. You let her love, Jackson. You let her feel as though the world started and ended with her, and that her heart beat only when you were around. You were her world, her life. And for once, for that summer with you, she was the happiest girl in the world.”

  When our lips meet, the world is silent.

  Still.

  Except for us.

  This.

  And as the night grows dark and darker, this moment surrounds me with light.

  * * *

  The dark sky flashes with colors.

  “Like your story,” Sarah says. “The fireworks.”

  I smile. “I see you there too, Sarah. In the fireworks, in the sky. Which one is your favorite?”

  “The purple ones. That burst into stardust.”

  “I like the ones that crackle as they fall.”

  “The blue ones!”

  “The ones that look like stars.”

  I am so content in this moment, so happy, that I wonder if this is what freedom feels like. If this, us, is what life is really all about.

  “I love you more than the stars,” I tell her, and I mean it. There’s more meaning in those words than anything I’ve felt before, and I know I’ve said the right thing. I can feel her body sink into mine as though I am the home she has always wanted, and I know this is the way love is supposed to feel.

  Again, she says, “I love you.”

  One by one, I touch the stars. I push them until they become dots of dreams, characters in the pieces of our little love story. Fireworks mark the paragraphs, the words. And as I whisper in Sarah’s ear how much I love her, I move my hand across the sky.

  This sky.

  This infinite sky-

  is ours.

  * * *

  My hand is cold.

  Sarah is gone.

  And I am walking alone.

  Smiling, I am filled with fire. The aftermath of the Firelight Festival litters the ground beneath my feet. People rush around me, going the opposite direction. Most of them are moving toward the center of town. But not me.

  I am walking toward the Point.

  Sarah will meet me there, to jump. And I am so excited, so nervous I could scream. Others look the same as me, groups of teenagers walking slowly between the groups of people like pieces of a puzzle not yet found. A tide of us moving against the current.

  One hour left.

  Only one until we jump.

  A breeze ripples my hair, and I shove my hands in my pockets. Cold. Turning, I look at the place I am beginning to love again. Huntington is filled with secrets and mysteries, yes, but I have found a place for all of them in my heart this summer.

  “Go home, Jackson Grant!” A voice calls. Mrs. Porter, with her arm around the current mayor’s neck, stumbles past me. Both of them look slightly drunk, and I’m glad they don’t stop so Mrs. Porter can feel any part of my body.

  Still, I smile.

  This is my town, my place, my summer.

  I came here alone, and I will not leave the same.

  I wanted to fly-

  and soon I will.

  Except. On the hill just beyond the gazebo, I can see the shadow of a girl on fire. She is standing. Waiting. Arms folded over her chest.

  Another shadow appears.

  A boy.

  She walks toward him. Her arms unravel, reach for him. Reach and reach and reach. Until two shadows become one. And they fall and they fall-

  and I fall.

  Chapter Seventeen

  EIGHT MONTHS AGO.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  This is the sound of life. But the sound of me is all sweat and tears as they drip down and die against the floor like bombs. Shivers as they eat away at my skin and leave my bones on the floor dead and gone and alone.

  I whisper, “She’s going to be okay.”

  She’s not.

  She’s already dead.

  They’ve told me but I won’t believe it so I say anything else, anything but the truth because I don’t want to believe it.

  I won’t believe it.

  Because this is not right.

  This is not her dying.

  It is me.

  “Jackson?”Dad puts a hand on my shoulder as someone in white pulls a plug from the wall, but it doesn’t stop me from noticing how he says my name like a question. Like I’m not real or this isn’t or he’s afraid I’ll explode and shatter into a million tiny pieces if he says the wrong words.

  And I might.

  I want to.

  If it will save her.

  And then-

  Beep.

  Beat.

  Beep.

  Beat.

  Beat.

  Beat.

  “Mom?”

  Dad says, “She’s gone.”

  “No,” I start. No no no no no I can still hear her heart beating and I can still see her chest rising and falling up and down and up and down and she is there I can see her.

  She can’t be gone.

  “No,” I gasp.

  Mom.

  She is not dead.

  I am.

  * * *
/>
  Later, I still don’t remember.

  And the sound of death?

  Tears.

  Heartbeats going-

  beat.

  Beat.

  Beat.

  Because no one hears the dead.

  Only the sound of heartbeats-

  mocking-

  living-

  alone.

  138

  Chapter Eighteen

  I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

  I am angry.

  I am sad.

  A bottle of whiskey sits in my lap. I don’t drink it. I haven’t even opened the bottle. But the want is there. The need is there, too. I wouldn’t even blame myself if I got so drunk I forgot my name.

  No one knows this secret: When Mom died, I did too. And I did so at the bottom of a bottle. Every single day I died again and again until I didn’t feel anything but the cold numbness that comes from not being alive.

  I am close.

  So, so close to drinking again. I can feel the desire deep inside me when I think of Sarah with that fucking shadow, that man. When I see her on the hill every time I close my eyes. The damn fireworks blink and fade and every happy memory I have with her bleeds to sweet whiskey and back.

  But this is wrong.

  She is wrong.

  And I suddenly know even an empty bottle can’t help me forget my life, my past, my present; I’ve tried it. Not this time. Not now. And just thinking about the smell of whiskey makes my stomach hurt, burn.

  I’m holding the bottle because I can.

  Because I am stronger than this.

  Than everything.

  Without thinking, I throw the bottle into the lake and watch it sink and drown. I will never face that part of me again, never. I won’t. I can’t. Because somewhere my mother is watching. Even in my memories, she is there. And somewhere beyond the place I am now, is a different girl waiting to meet the man I’ve started to become.

  I will not be him again.

  I will be stronger.

  I will be someone to love.

  I will be someone my mother would be proud of.

  I am the stars.

  I am their stories.