When he was gone, I put on In Utero and lay down and listened to “Heart-Shaped Box”—it must have been a thousand times—and felt sick. I thought about dialing Sky’s number again, just to hear it ring. I’ve called over and over since New Year’s, and when the voice mail picks up—not even Sky’s own voice, but the generic woman’s that comes with the phone—I hang up. I haven’t left a message. I don’t know what to say.
Earlier tonight when I was trying to fall asleep, I kept thinking of the tree going in the trash, and it just wasn’t right. I couldn’t stand it being there like that. So I snuck out, and I carried the limbs, two by two or three by three, all the way through the dark neighborhood where I would walk with Sky and back behind the golf course to the ditch, and I tossed them into the water so they might get to go to the river and then, who knows, maybe to the ocean. They could become driftwood on a beach in California.
I am back in bed now, but I still can’t sleep. My hands have splinters. They smell like something stolen from the forest. I keep thinking about the day that May’s wings broke.
We were fairies, and when we were together, the magic worked and I believed in it. Every time the shadows in our room seemed to come alive, I could wake May up, and we would sneak out into the yard with new lists of ingredients for a spell. They changed with the season. Six red berries. Seven yellow leaves. A drop of honey from the honeysuckle. A hard-searched-out feather. A melted icicle. We cast spells to keep the shadow people at bay, spells to preserve the fairy gene, spells to defeat the evil witches. When I found an injured bird one day, we cast a spell to help her heal, and sure enough, when I went back to her box the next day, she was gone. She’d flown away.
But there was this part of the fairy world that I could never share with May; I couldn’t fly. I knew the rules. Only the oldest child had wings. But I kept thinking maybe there could be some exception. It was all I wanted. When Aunt Amy would take us to church, that’s what I’d pray for. When May pulled an eyelash off my cheek, I’d squint my eyes shut and wish for wings with all my might.
But when they didn’t come, I thought that if only I could see May fly, that would be the next best thing. If I saw her soaring into the sky, I would for sure be part of the magic. I would look at her naked back when we’d lie on the bed after a bath and Mom rubbed cold lotion on us. I would see her shoulder blades jutting out and imagine how she could unzip her smooth skin to reveal these transparent, magnificent, shimmering wings.
I would beg and beg to see. Just the tip of a wing. Just for a minute. But she always said she couldn’t show me. I kept begging, and one day, I must have been about seven by then, I begged so hard that I started to cry. So finally she told me that she would fly to the top of the elm tree in our yard, and after she flew up there, I could come out and see her.
“But you can’t look until I tell you. Until I’ve landed. Do you promise?”
I promised. I meant to keep the promise, too. I really meant to. But as I stood by the back door, waiting for her to call me, something so strong pulled at me. I thought maybe if I saw by accident, it wouldn’t count. So I cracked the screen door and peeped out. And I let my eyes flash toward the tree, just for a second, just in time to see her falling from high up. She was screaming, “You broke them! You broke them!”
I ran over and started sobbing. “But I didn’t even see. I didn’t even see. I didn’t look!”
“You broke them.” May was crying, too.
“I can fix them! Can’t I fix them? Isn’t there a way?”
May looked into my face. I was crying harder than she was. She wiped the tears from my cheeks. She said, “Maybe I can find a way to sew them. They might be crooked, but maybe they could work again.” And she gave me a list of things to find for sewing and said to go get started. She was going to take out the wings and have a look.
It was at that moment that I understood what the wings were. They would never work again. Because they were made up, and the magic spell that May had cast to make me believe, it was broken. But neither of us could admit it. Neither of us could stop pretending for the other. She had crutches after that for a month. As she’d hobble through our house, I kept telling her that I was sorry. But she’d tell me it was okay—her wings were working again, and by night she’d be soaring.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Amy Winehouse,
Your parents got divorced when you were nine. Your dad had been seeing another woman for almost your whole life. He said later that it didn’t even seem like the divorce affected you that much when you were a kid, but that somewhere deeper maybe it really did. You sang a song about it called “What Is It About Men.” The song talks about your destructive side that comes from a past that’s “shoved under” your bed. “History repeats itself,” you sang. I wonder if that’s true. If there’s a hurt that’s buried in us, maybe it keeps finding its way through.
You said this thing once: “Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns, and I am engulfed in shame.” I feel like that. I keep thinking about May, how she tried everything and how she was bright and beautiful. But then it keeps coming in, what happened to her that night. I keep seeing her falling. I keep feeling like I did that day when I was seven. She could fly, and I broke it.
I have a new favorite song of yours that I’ve been listening to over and over—“He Can Only Hold Her” for so long. The man in the song tries to love the girl, but she’s not really there, not all the way. She’s running from something inside of her that he can’t see. I think that there’s something like that inside of me.
On the first day back at school today, I wore my new sweater that Mom sent me for Christmas. I cut the neck off and pinned a patch to it, like May’s first-day sweater, and I snuck into May’s room, and for the first time I put on some of the lipstick she left on her dresser—Cover Girl Everlasting. I kept imagining what it would be like when I saw Sky. We’d kiss by his locker. He’d say I looked beautiful. I’d say I was sorry. That I didn’t mean to scare him on New Year’s. I’d had too much to drink. He’d say he was sorry for what he said about May. He’d say he meant to call. And we’d be able to forget about all of it. He loved me. He’d said so, after all.
But all morning he was nowhere. And all day, nothing made sense. At lunch, Hannah started flirting with one of the soccer boys, and a few of them, including Evan Friedman, came over to our table. I felt him looking at me and heard his friend whisper something and snicker. I just tried to avoid eye contact. Hannah was bragging about Neung, how he’s a gangster and stole Christmas presents for his nephew and a gold necklace for her. (She hasn’t been back to his house since that night they hooked up, but I guess she sees him at work, and she told me if it’s slow sometimes they still make out a little in the back.) Everyone was impressed by this, except Natalie, who said that’s not the Christmas spirit, and if it were her and she had no money for gifts, she would have made her nephew something instead. What Hannah didn’t tell everyone was that on New Year’s Eve, she and Natalie had kissed out in the open, like the promise of a world where Natalie was the only one.
I didn’t say anything about Sky. When they asked where he was, I just shrugged. When they asked if I was okay, I just smiled. In spite of everything, I was still hoping that he’d come up and wrap his arms around me. I was trying to concentrate on specific things, like the thread unraveling on the seam of my new sweater, to remember that I was still there.
Finally, in eighth period, I went to chorus with Hannah. Last semester we had PE, which is over now. “Thank god we’re done with that,” Hannah said. She was excited for chorus since she loves singing, and she said what’s great is that in a chorus full of other voices, you can sing without feeling self-conscious.
As we walked into the room, I saw him. Sky. I didn’t expect it. The electives are shared between all of the grades, but I thought he’d take shop or art. Maybe those classes had filled up. He was all the way across the room, talking to a couple o
f other juniors. I kept waiting for our eyes to catch. But all class, he didn’t look at me, not even once. Mr. Janoff and Mrs. Buster, who co-teach, grouped us into altos and sopranos and so on, and when we started to learn our first song, “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, that’s when it got really bad. I felt like something was stuck in the back of my throat. I couldn’t sing, or even breathe right. I was gasping and looking across the room at Sky, not looking at me. Like I didn’t exist. I wondered if I wasn’t really there. I kept telling myself to get on the magic carpet and fly above everything. I could feel the hot breath of a shadow on me as I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the voices, tried to pick out each voice from the whole chorus of them, blended together. I could hear Hannah near me, singing in her sweet soprano. I could hear the boy from Bio who sells fake acid. And I thought I could hear Sky. The lyrics to the song said not to close your eyes. But when I opened mine and looked at him, he was staring down at his sheet music, not even moving his lips. The song said that there was a whole new world to share. Sky looked blurry across the room. A fading photograph.
When the bell rang, Hannah grabbed my arm, asking, “What’s wrong?” I pulled away. “I don’t feel well,” I said, and I rushed out. I walked down the hall like a ghost who could walk through anything. Anyone. I forgot to move when I saw a crowd of boys walking in my line. One of them said, “Watch where you’re going!”
Sky’s driftwood heart is still on my dresser. I run my fingers over it to make sure my hands are real. To know that his must have been, because he carved it.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
Have you seen the trees in the winter, when the branches are bare and covered with birds who have landed there? It was like that today. They kept perfectly still, shawling the tree in feathers. I was shaking. The wind was blowing hard, but the branches with their blackbirds didn’t move at all.
But I’m not starting at the beginning. This was Sky and me breaking up. His voice kept getting carried off by the wind. I was looking at the birds in their trees, thinking of how fast their hearts beat and wondering if their fast-beating hearts keep them warm. I might sneak out right now just to get to cry out loud.
When I came home from school today, our second day back from break, there was a letter taped to the gate with my name on it. It was a strange thing to find, but I knew it would be from Sky. I sat down on the bench outside and tore it open. I think part of me was still hopeful, in spite of myself. And it started out like a love letter, too, the old-fashioned kind. All about how I am different from other girls. And so special, et cetera. And even about how he loves me. He said he decided to leave a letter like this because he hasn’t been sure what to say to me in person. He said that all he’s wanted is to know me, but on New Year’s he realized that neither of us is ready. He said that I have to take care of myself, and he can’t take care of me. He said, You’ll be much happier, without me.
When I read that, it was like I landed with a slam in the world that I had been trying not to live in—the world where he was really leaving. It’s a lot like something you said in your suicide note. You said that your daughter’s life would be so much happier without you. I can tell you that you are wrong. It’s a terrible excuse from someone who can’t bear to be around. It’s a bad way to make yourself feel better when you know you are leaving someone who doesn’t want you to go. Someone who needs you.
After I read the letter, I lost all sense. I had to see his face. So I got up from the bench and started to walk to his house. I brought my phone and kept trying to call him. When no one answered, I walked the whole two and a half miles, crying all the way.
I knocked on the door. I wasn’t seeing straight, until his mother answered, in her frayed satin bathrobe, a bun coming undone in whispers. Her face shocked me, and I stopped sobbing. It was so soft, the way she looked, and so kind. Her eyes said she understood everything. But before I could get a word out, Sky came. He said, “Mom, go inside. I’ll be back in a little bit.” He shut the door and stepped onto his porch, now decorated with sparkling plastic snowflakes.
I had had so much in my head, but suddenly, there was nothing to say. Sky’s body was tense, and his eyes didn’t want to look at me. Finally he said, “Come on, I’ll drive you home.” So I followed him, and on the way to the car, he said, “You understand, right? You can’t come here anymore.”
That’s when I started crying again. I cried the whole way back in his truck that smelled like thousand-year-old leather. His truck where we first touched. Your voice was playing low on the stereo. Aqua seafoam shame …
When we got to the golf course near my house, I said, “Stop.”
He glanced over at me like he didn’t want to, but I said it again. “Sky, stop!” Then I said, more quietly, “I just want to go on one more walk. You can’t just never talk to me again.”
So he parked. And we got out. I remembered the golf course with the geese and the time we fell down laughing there. The geese were gone and the leaves were gone, and there were just the blackbirds now, shawling their trees. The tears wouldn’t stop. I wanted to find him.
“You said you love me,” I said.
“I know.” I could see Sky’s face start to freeze over.
“Then why would you leave me?” I shouted.
“I don’t know. I can’t watch you like this. Sometimes it’s like you disappear. It’s not just that you cry so much. It’s that you cry and I don’t know what you’re crying about. And you won’t tell me. I can’t fix it.”
I was sinking. All I could do was cry harder. The thing is, Sky was right. I wondered if I could have told him, if he would have stayed. But I knew it was too late. The damp was under my clothes. The moon in its almost circle shape was under the clouds. When I looked up at Sky, I couldn’t see his face. Just a shadow.
There was something shattered in me, and now he saw it. No one could fix it. I had tried to be brave like May, to be bright and free and a bolt of stars, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t. He’d seen it. He had opened the door to the underneath part of it where I was just her little sister, who couldn’t save her or anything. Bad and wrong and it was all my fault.
All at once, the blackbirds flew off the trees. Like there was a thing that told them when to go. To some secret place in the sky, before they would have to come back down and find new trees. I think I went with them, but I wasn’t sure if I would ever land again.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt, Judy, Elizabeth, Amelia, River, Janis, Jim, Amy, Allan, E.E., and John,
I hope one of you hears me. Because the world seems like a tunnel of silence. I have found that sometimes, moments get stuck in your body. They are there, lodged under your skin like hard seed-stones of wonder or sadness or fear, everything else growing up around them. And if you turn a certain way, if you fall, one of them could get free. It might dissolve in your blood, or it might spring up a whole tree. Sometimes, once one of them gets out, they all start to go.
I feel like I am drowning in memories. Everything is too bright. Mom making tea for May and me. Walking home from the pool in a thunderstorm, with the mulberries stained red on our feet. Galloping our imaginary horses through the snowfall. Dad riding away on his motorcycle, with the elm trees raining seeds over him. Mom folding clean shirts into a suitcase. May walking toward the movie theater, her long hair swinging behind her. May’s hand pressed against window glass. They don’t stop.
What I remembered first from that night is the sound of river water. The sound kept moving, steadily, like it would never stop. I saw the bluebell-shaped flowers, popping up between the cracks in the pavement. Two of them trampled, one still cupping the moonlight. The river getting louder, drowning everything with its roar.
We were driving down the old highway, May and me. The night was filling with stars. We had the sunroof open and the music loud and she was singing “Everywhere I Go,” in a voice that was sweet and slow. “Tell me all that I sho
uld know…” She knew every up and down and lilt and curl. May started singing so hard, I thought her voice would explode into millions of pieces. I kept my eyes glued upward, watching the stars start to eat the sky alive. I made a wish for her to be happy.
She pushed on the gas, and the car sped like a blast down old Highway 5, into the dark. The speed took all of the sound with it, until there was only the music left. We were alone on the road. She pulled over at our place, where the old train tracks cross over the river. In the springtime you can hear the rushing water. By the end of the summer, it dries up and moves so slowly, you can hardly hear a thing. In the winter, it nearly freezes over. But this was spring. Flowers, everything’s-possible spring.
We first discovered our spot when we’d go on river walks with Mom and Dad as kids. And then May and I started coming here together again, on weekend afternoons when we were supposed to be at the library, or after movie nights like this one. We’d park by the tracks and crawl out on our hands and knees over the wood planks. We would sit there and feel like we were floating. We would play Poohsticks like we did when we were little, searching out the perfect fallen branches and dropping them over the edge of the tracks and into the river, then leaning over the other side to see whose would appear first. We’d say whoever’s stick won would be the first to get to the ocean. We would collect piles of them and play forever. Imagining what great adventures they would have riding the river all the way to the sea. And then we would crawl back to land.
But something different happened that night. We were sitting in the middle of the bridge. I said something I never should have said. May stood up and started to cross back to land on the metal edge of the track, like a tightrope.