Between the Stars and Sky (4 page)

THIS IS A FACT: Without coffee, I die. It hasn’t been proven, but I’m not sure I want to risk it. So, when someone knocks on the front door at seven in the morning on Saturday, I run into the walls four times on the way there and answer in a grumble of words that aren’t really words but sounds strung together with sleep.

“Modest, aren’t you,” a voice tells me.

“What?” I rub my eyes, groan.

“Nice boxers,” Sarah says, pointing down. I think I see a smile on her face, red and yellow paint flying across her brow, but my vision is blurred. “The smiley faces are cute. And apparently, it is a very happy morning.”

“Shit,” I mumble and move so the wall is blocking most of my body. She blinks into focus and the very sight of her causes me to blush. “What do you want?”

For barely a second she pauses, but I can feel it break our conversation in two; it’s as though Sarah is waiting for something, or wondering if I’m good enough for what happens next.

I wait for my heart to beat as fast as it was at Jameson’s, but I realize it already has been. Pounding. Racing. Since I saw her, since I dreamed of her, my heart hasn’t stopped trying to catch her.

But.

I can’t. How can you catch someone when you can’t even catch yourself?

“Get dressed,” she tells me, finally, in between the thumps of my heart. She smiles and I’ve known her forever and not enough. “We have someplace to be.”

“What?” My heart is on fire, burning so violently I might die or live or both. “Where?”

She grins, and her eyes flash. “You’ll see. Now put some pants on. You look a little cold.”

“Shit.”

*   *   *

The sun is less awake than I am; dark clouds sit still in the quiet abandon of sky, and I wonder if this is how the world looks when no one is watching. I want it to rain, to pour, so that I know the clouds are as alive as I feel with Sarah, but as the sun begins to touch the sky a dim orange, I know it won’t. I wonder if the clouds will cry.

My voice hits the wind and bounces back against me, warmer than the cool air colliding with the car. “Where are we going?”

“To the Point,” Sarah says, moving her hand just outside the open window like a wave against rushing air as we drive, and it strikes me that she is always moving forward. She is the tide, the current. “Haven’t you been there before?”

I nod. “The Firelight Fall a few years ago. I went but I didn’t jump. Wasn’t old enough.”

“I’ve jumped,” she tells me.

“Really?”

She smiles. “No, but I will.”

“Liar.”

“Sometimes,” she says, her voice a low, dark contrast to the steady rhythms of her body, “a lie is closer to the truth than anything else.”

“So tell me a lie.”

“I hate you.”

I have to think about breathing; her words take me back to a moment I refuse to remember completely. But I do, and I don’t. “You like me, you mean.”

“I don’t know you.”

A lie? “Do you want to?”

“No.”

Yes. “Why?”

“Because you have the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen, Jackson. And somewhere inside you is a story I want to read. I want to know.”

“That was a truth.”

She smiles. “Maybe.”

“What’s your story?” I ask, but the wind grabs my voice away and I have to yell the words again.

“I don’t have a story.” Sarah’s hair is wild; blonde attacks the air, her face, and I wonder if she might be dauntless. Fearless. “Yet.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I was waiting for you, Jackson.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” she says. “Be my story.”

I wait. And then, “Was that a lie?”

“Yes.”

“And that?”

She laughs. I ask, “Do you remember me?”

She does not smile, but her eyes do. “No.”

Beat jumps my heart.

*   *   *

There is a place where dreams go to live and fears go to die; if you survive the jump off the Point, you can survive anything. The Firelight Fall makes you stronger. You become invincible. You murder fear, destroying each facet of it before they take you completely over the edge.

That is the rumor, the lie.

Because here I am: Standing with my toes over the edge of the cliff, the wind in my face pushing me back, cold and hot, I am so afraid I might die that I think maybe I’m already dead. Maybe it’s because I’m here before the festival has started, but everything about this feels wrong, illegal, like I’m here too soon.

And then-

Sarah takes my hand, squeezes it.

She says, “We’re not going to jump today. We can’t, you know. People would know. We wouldn’t be allowed here after.”

I live again.

I breathe.

“I just wanted you to see this,” she tells me, her hand still in mine. “I wanted you to see the place where fear leaves you.”

I almost miss it; the sky breaking open. It happens in one fast breath of time. The world shifts and bends and breaks, reforms. The clouds beat red like hearts. The sun rises, slowly at first, then explodes across the sky.

I am at the edge of the world-

a brave new place I never knew before-

Sarah.

I turn, and there she is looking back. Her eyes are the sky, the clouds, the sun. I am dreaming I am not.

I whisper, “You are so beautiful.”

Her smile wraps around my heart. “You are beautiful, Jackson Grant. You just don’t know it yet.”

I laugh. “Guys are handsome, not beautiful.”

“Anyone can be beautiful,” she tells me. “Beauty can be sad, happy, broken, whole. It can be anyone and anything and whatever we think it should be. And you, Jackson, are a beautiful boy.”

“Boy?” I raise an eyebrow.

She smiles. “Boy.”

And in this moment I realize this: I want to be a man for her. I want to be beautiful. I want to be everything she wants me to be because she looks like everything to me.

She is giving me hope.

Everything.

“Jackson?”

I ask, “What?”

“Tell me a secret.”

I wait-

five seconds.

Ten breaths.

Twenty heartbeats until-

“I am afraid of myself.”

Her hand grips mine. “How come?”

“I don’t want to mess up. I don’t want to be the wrong person. I don’t want to pick the wrong path and fall and fall and fall until I’m nothing and can’t get back up.”

She waits-

two seconds.

Four breaths.

Ten heartbeats until-

“You have to jump, Jackson. It’s the only way you’ll ever know you’re alive.”

I ask, “Are you going to jump? At the Firelight Fall?”

She nods. Turns away. “I’ve been wanting to jump since I knew what it was. One week from yesterday until we do, I’ve been counting the days. I need to jump. You know?”

“I know.” And then I feel words swell in my throat, feel my voice drop even before it starts. A whisper no louder, no softer than the wind around us. “Are you afraid?”

“Of course,” Sarah tells me. “Are you?”

“I don’t want to be.”

“But you are?”

I shake my head up and down. “Yes.”

“Good. It will mean more.”

And

then

we

are

falling

back.

Sarah’s voice is breathless, like words stick in her throat and stay there. Filled with stops and starts that mimic the frantic beating of my heart. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Me?” I ask, I scream. “You’re the one who almost pulled me off a cliff!”

“You know what I meant.” But I don’t.

She is pretty reckless.

So pretty. So reckless.

I cannot tell the difference between.

“Nothing is wrong with me,” I tell her. I can’t breathe. My heart is beating so fast I wonder if it’s beating at all; I can’t feel it. Flat on my back, I can’t feel anything but Sarah’s hand in mine.

She doesn’t hesitate. “Everyone is a little broken, Jakson. There’s something wrong with everyone.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

My breathing has slowed, normal. I can feel the rock more firmly beneath me, and the wind licks my toes cold. But the only thing I can see is an infinite sky above shivering pink and orange and yellow and red. Deep red, the color of love, of blood, of heart; everything that gives life in this world, the sky is filled with their colors.

And I wonder-

if I am as broken as Sarah thinks I am.

“You think too much,” she whispers, and I can tell she is smiling.

“I do,” I admit, but I take this as a challenge and brush my fingers on the top her hand. “But I like to think. It helps me feel alive, part of something. Belonging instead of just being. Most people don’t think enough to know the difference.”

“Told you,” she simply says.

I laugh. “So, what’s wrong with you then?”

“I’m perfect,” she says. “And that’s the worst thing to be.”

“No one is perfect.”

I can hear her turn to face me, so I do the same and find myself falling into the bluest sea, the vastest sky; her eyes could hold the world.

I can’t help myself. I smile.

But she doesn’t.

“No one is perfect,” she breathes, her words against my lips so close, so far. “No one can ever be perfect, but sometimes people think they are and then they have to be. The worst kind of flaw is one decided for you instead of one you choose to have.”

“I’m sorry,” is all I can think to say. “I don’t think you’re perfect.”

She grins. “No? Why not?”

“Well,” I say, “I haven’t kissed you yet.”

“Your point?”

“You could be the worst kisser.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“It might be.”

“Good,” she says, and I wonder what it will be like to kiss her. Wonder how her lips will feel against mine.

I wonder why I already know it will happen, why there is no doubt in my mind that I want it.

A kiss.

*   *   *

“One day I will kiss her,” I tell the world after Sarah has left. I don’t care if no one hears. I have to say it, scream it. I have to say the words aloud to make them stay.

Because words?

They stay sometimes.

They hurt.

They heal.

They stay.

SIX YEARS AGO

“Kiss me?” she asks.

I tell her, “No.”

“Why?”

“Because you keep asking me to!”

“Do it and I’ll stop!”

“I don’t want to kiss you! Gross!”

“I’m not gross. I’m a girl!”

“Same thing!”

“Fine!” Her lips fall down and her arms cross at her chest. One leg rises and her foot slams against the ground in an instant.

I want to smile.

Sarah looks like a storm about to rise from the lake.

I am afraid.

And not.

I say, “Do you want me to help with your castle?”

Suddenly, she is beaming, smiling so wide I can’t help but think she should be a princess. “Yes!”

Our hands move across the mounds of sand, shaping it into a different story than we’re living. One filled with dragons and beasts and royals and crowns and mad, wicked witches. One riddled with magic and monsters. And heroes who save the day.

I think we could be friends.

And then she is moving toward me and I am frozen, my hands in the sand I can’t move, and her lips are against mine so wet and warm and cold and sandy and salty.

My first kiss.

“I hate you!” I scream. Moving quickly, my hand reaches toward the castle and I rip off the top point made of sand. I bring my hand back and throw it at Sarah, making sure it lands in her hair. “Stupid!”

“You’re stupid!” she yells.

But I don’t care.

I run.

As fast as I can.

Away from her.

The girl who kissed me.

THE SUN BLOWS OUT slowly, and then all at once, as if the Point is the last place the light leaves. But before day becomes night, the sky bends white and red, and then purple just as stars begin to dot across it.

If not for the sky, I would have thought the world stopped spinning; Sarah and I have done nothing but talk by the light of the fire, and it’s been everything.

I don’t feel like myself.

I feel like who I want to be.

“I used to think the stars were people,” I tell her, as embers pop and spark the air. “I would give them stories, lives. Make them real.”

“Maybe they are.”

I can’t tell if she’s serious. “Yeah?”

“Sure,” she says. “Reality is what you make it; everyone has a different version of the real world. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So if you believe in star people, go for it.”

“I don’t,” I laugh.

“But you did,” she says. “And you will again.”

“You think so?”

I can feel her nod, her head so certain of the words she’s saying I don’t dare move or breathe too hard. “Life has a way of coming full circle, Jackson. When we’re young and when we’re old, we believe in magic, but when we’re between we don’t. Most people our age think reality is a set thing when it’s really them set in their own ways.”

“But we have things we have to do.”

“Sure, everyone has bills. But not everyone pays them the same way. And we all don’t have the same bills. We don’t have the same lives, Jackson. None of us.”

“How do you know so much?” I ask with a smile.

She shrugs against me. “I listen, I guess. People say the best things when you listen between the lines of their words. And I read a lot.”

I nod, afraid to say anything; Sarah will see right through what I want to say to what I don’t. And yet, she probably already knows. Probably knows my heart like the lake knows the edges of sand, like the sun knows the edges of the world.

“I want magic,” I whisper.

Her voice is a dream, a different kind of reckless laced with delirium. “
So have magic.
”

I squeeze her hand, once and then twice like a heartbeat, but I don’t say anything. I don’t need to, don’t want to. Nothing I could say would ever add up to this moment.

So I let myself go, let myself fall until I’m so far deep my heart is my lips, my words. I think of the summers past and gone and of the magic they held.

And I tell a story.

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl. Their story starts like many do, with a lost boy and a lonely girl, but that’s not the way it ends.

This girl had sunset hair and wishing eyes. Or, at least the boy thought so. When he looked into her eyes, he could see the world as he wanted it to be; she was so filled with hope, it made everything in life seem possible.

But he was afraid.

Since she stepped into his life, his world had changed completely and turned into a place of endless wonder. But deep down, he knew nothing was ever endless. Even love came to an end.

And yet he could not help but fall for her. Their story, you see, starts before this. They met on a beach. And, like most love stories, the day was mixed with night and filled with the smell of rain.

It was cold.

It was warm.

He saw her then, her back on the sand and her arms and legs stretched like a child making angels in the snow. He walked to wear she lay, trying to make noise in the sand so she would hear him; he didn’t want to scare her. But as he got closer, he saw that she was smiling. The way her eyes were shut tight and her lips set in an unwavering grin made him think she knew he was there.

“What’s your name?” she asked without looking.

He didn’t know what to say.

His name?

Did he have a name?

“Grant,” he said, finally. “Jackson Grant.”

“So, you’re a spy.”

“No.”

“Then why did you introduce yourself like one.”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“You didn’t know your own name?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You made me forget.”

Her eyes blinked open, and for a moment the boy saw a hint of surprise within them. A hint of something real and deep and almost dark.

At first, she didn’t say anything. Just watched him like he was the sun setting and fading in the distance, like he would be gone in a few minutes.

But he stayed, and so did she.

And then, “I’m Sarah Blake.”

“Jackson.”

She grinned. “I know.”

That summer, they fell in love. Not the kind of love they told stories about, but the kind of love that left its mark forever just the same. It was a forever kind of love in the quietest sense, one that grew only from friendship into something more.

Summers came and went. And as one summer ended, so did they.

He said “Until-”

She said “I see you again.”

They did not say goodbye.

They did not say many things.

But over the years following that magical summer, the boy thought of the girl almost daily. He dreamed of her, breathed her in whenever the summer air hit across the springtime. And when Fourth of July blew in, he saw her in the fireworks and the stars that bloomed across the sky.

The girl, however, simply wondered why. Years had passed and the boy did not return. Did not even call.

He did not love her, she thought.

But he did.

He loved her so much it became a fear. And when love is a fear, when loving someone so much transitions into the fear that they may not love you in return, what is there to do but refuse to fall deeper?

Now, the boy is not afraid to fall in love, but he is afraid she does not remember. What could be worse than a love that has forgotten you?

But when he said this, when he told her, she smiled.

She evaded his fear.

“Close your eyes,” he told her one day as they were watching the stars fall at the end of summer.

She did but asked, “Why?”

Even with her eyes closed she could hear the smile in his voice, the way his words tilted up like his lips. “So I can make a wish.”

“You can’t make a wish on eyes,” she laughed.

“You can,” he said, “if the eyes are like yours.”

“Like mine?”

“Your eyes are like stars. Like lights in the darkest sky falling down and down and down until you can’t help but make a wish and hope they will stay in the sky forever. The brightest kind of dark blue, the darkest kind of hope; one that is so filled with life and love that if the light goes out the sky will fall.”

“My eyes are all that?”

“Open them.”

And he said, “Your eyes are stars.”

“What did you wish for?” she asked.

In one beat, they touched.

In two, their lips came close.

In three, they kissed.

“This,” he breathed. “Always this.”

“Stop,” she says, her voice breaking the story with one word. And even though I want to continue, want to give her the happy ending I’ve written in my mind, I don’t yet. “Look there. Above the moon to the right. The second star. Do you see it?”

I nod. “Yes. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s our star.”

“Ours,” I agree. I pull her hand to my chest. “Feel my heart beating? Now we have a star and our hearts are up there too, as alive as in our chests. If you ever lose me, I’ll be there. Don’t worry.”

“Nerd.” She grins. “People don’t talk like that, Jackson. Like words are more than letters strung together; like they are music and freedom and life. Like words can change the world, break and rebuild in one sentence.”

“I talk like that.”

“I know. I like it.”

“You do?”

“It’s a little corny, but I like it.” She smiles. “I like that your words take time to settle around me instead of being so instantaneous. They last longer, mean more.”

“You make it sound like words are alive.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Is that why you stopped my story? Because of the way I talk?”

“No,” she whispers. “I stopped it because I wanted to feel the magic it held for one more second before the ending came. And now, I don’t want an ending. I don’t want this to stop. I just want to be here in your arms with our star and our hearts in the sky forever. Like magic.”

“Magic,” I say. Then, “Why do you destroy your pictures?”

“Because nothing that beautiful lasts forever. Nothing can last forever, Jackson, but that’s not the point. Not the whole point. I destroy them because sometimes the most beautiful things in the world are broken and bent and bruised a little at the edges.”

“The most beautiful are the most broken.” My minds drifts back to Natalie, and I wonder if, maybe, I was never broken. Just bent. And maybe it didn’t even matter.

Maybe I don’t need to be fixed.

“I quit,” she tells me. “My job at Jameson’s. I quit the only thing I ever loved, the only thing that gave me any freedom.”

“Why? Is there anything I can do? Miles wouldn’t just fire you. Why did you quit?”

She sighs, low and sorrowful. “My dad. Made me. He didn’t even know I had a job until last week. He stormed in and said, ‘Fuck this, Sarah Blake! No daughter of mine will work in a place as low as Huntington! You’re better than these people!’ And he dragged me off and called Miles and that’s that. Nothing more.”

Her eyes are so wet I’m afraid they’ll storm, and yet underneath there is this: A sense of resolution so fearsome, so absolute it’s as though Sarah has accepted her father’s delusions of her, of her helplessness against freedom from him.

“Miles will still let you work.”

“It’s not worth it, Jackson. My father will just follow me there and back; he’s done it before.”

“Why? I don’t understand why he won’t let you have a job.”

“It’s not the job part. It’s the freedom part. My entire life I’ve been beneath his finger. My mom doesn’t even live with us anymore, did you know that? She bought a place somewhere in California two years ago and I haven’t talked to her since. And I know, I know I should run away or do something or fight back but I can’t. Not when I’m almost ready to leave this place. Not when college is just around the corner. Then I’ll finally be free.”

I ask, “Is that why you’re afraid of us? Because you’re so close to leaving this town, me? Because this might end?”

She shakes her head, slow. “I’m not afraid. I just... I don’t want to lose you. Not again.”

My heart stops-

starts.

And I can feel myself being pulled under by the unstoppable current of her words, of the fact that she remembers me. Us. All of us.

“I’m not going anywhere you’re not,” I tell her, and I’m not sure if the words are entirely true but in this moment I want them to be. Because Sarah remembers, truly and vividly remembers the summers we’ve had, the memories we’ve shared.

She asks, “Why did you leave before?”

“I didn’t know,” I say. “I didn’t know anything. One day I was here, the next my Dad made us pack up our things and go home. We never came back.”

“Not since you were thirteen. I remember.”

I smile, sad. “I think... I think it was because of my Mom. Because of her...” I swallow and choke down the words I want to say but they’re so hard and raw in my throat I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say them.

“Jackson?” Her hands are on mine, warm.

And suddenly I know I can do this. I know I can be strong enough to tell Sarah this much. “I think it was because of my Mom’s cancer. I didn’t know about it until the end, but they did. They had to. And I think it was easier to get treatments from the city.”

“But they didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

I almost say things I don’t mean, things I’m so used to saying they’ve lost all meaning. Everything about cancer, about my feelings toward it, about death and my mother and my father are so obvious they almost mean nothing if you’re not living them.

But I don’t.

Instead, I say, “Me too. I wish I had known. I mean, it wouldn’t have changed anything. But I would have known. I would have known, Sarah. Why didn’t they tell me?”

I don’t realize I’m crying until she brushes a droplet from my eye and says, “They wanted to keep you safe. They cared about you enough to think they were doing the best thing for you, Jackson. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t wrong, but it was out of love. And that’s more than most of us can say we have.”

Our eyes close and our lips meet and the world flips itself over in a hurricane of hearts beating faster faster faster faster. And in an instant, as blinding and forever as my lips entwined with hers, I realize this: For months I have been alone without my mother. Long and lonely months I’ve surrounded myself with people and still lost myself alone.