by Jeff Zentner
She gets the left ear again. “Okay. Now we’re good.”
Jesmyn frees me. I dry out my earholes with my sleeve. “Nasty, Georgia.”
Jesmyn and Georgia high-five and Jesmyn and I leave.
The air glitters like liquid silver and the stiff wind carries the immaculate, sharp spice of faraway snow and burning wood. My breath clouds up in the bloom of the orange streetlights. “You gonna tell me what this mysterious trek is for?”
Jesmyn’s expression is too enigmatic for any hints. “You’ll see.”
“I’m sad you’ll be gone all Christmas break.”
“Me too, but visiting my grandma is the best. We’ll hang out plenty when I’m back.”
We arrive at the park and Jesmyn leads me away from the streetlights into a dark, open meadow. The sleeping grass crackles dry under our feet. We stop in the middle.
“Here’s the surprise.” Jesmyn looks aloft.
I do the same. The clouds move low and fast, painted the ethereal orange-silver-pink of clouds that bring snow. They’re black in the far distance. Here and there, stars gleam through a small clearing before it closes again.
“What?” I ask.
“That’s the color of your voice,” Jesmyn murmurs. “Winter clouds at night.”
“You said—”
“I was joking. This is the color I hear you. It’s better to show you than to try to describe it.”
I am the color of the sky inside.
We gaze up, watching the sheer clouds drift past. A gust hums low in the bare limbs of the trees that encircle us. I glance over at Jesmyn. She has her holy-rite look of wonder. She catches me looking at her. I look back up.
Then I sense a slight tugging at my hand. I look down. Jesmyn has her pinky wrapped around mine. Her eyes are fixed skyward, but she has a faint smile. She slowly moves her fingers up mine, as if playing my hand like a keyboard, as if making the blue music—the right blue music—until our fingers are woven tightly together.
My heart moves as swiftly and weightlessly as the clouds, carried on the wind. For a moment, I have Jesmyn’s gift and my body sings a new hymn of colors I can’t name.
We hold hands for a long while and stare into the blushing sky like we’re reading from a page, letting the world whisper in our ears.
It’s that Friday at the end of September when a storm blows in on a warm, muggy morning and it rains all day, but the rain clouds part for a crisp, bracing late afternoon and you know summer has finally lost its grasp. That Friday.
It’s been one of those improbably perfect days when all the universe’s tumblers click into place. Every joke of yours kills. Everyone’s a little funnier than usual. Everyone’s a little more insightful and quick. One of those days when you feel like you’re going to be young and live forever. One of those days that feel perpetually like being at the top of the arc while you’re swinging on a swing set.
Mars is driving. We’ve spent all afternoon at Eli’s watching a movie and stuffing ourselves with pizza.
“You know what’s funny?” Blake says, apropos of nothing, a short distance from my house.
“Your dick?” Eli says.
We crack up.
“No, my dick is normal and definitely not weird,” Blake says, playing it totally straight. “It’s a healthy dick.”
“Oh, okay, sorry. Continue,” Eli says.
“What’s funny is how pretty much just adding mayonnaise to anything makes it a salad.”
“Dude, what? That is not correct,” Mars says over our hooting laughter. “This is like the time you tried to tell us that no one has ever witnessed a cat pooping.”
“No, listen, you add mayonnaise to chicken? Chicken salad. Add it to tuna? Tuna salad.” Blake sounds totally serious. He’s thought about this.
“What if you added it to Cheerios?” I ask. “Cheerio salad?”
“I think so,” Blake says.
“Mayonnaise and M&Ms,” Eli says.
“M&M salad,” Blake says. “I don’t make the rules, dude.”
“Y’all, for real, though, I’ve had Snickers salad before,” Mars says. “At a church picnic, I shit you not. It was called Snickers salad and it was basically Cool Whip, peanuts, and cut-up Snickers bars.”
“See, Mars? You actually agree,” Blake says.
“Bruh, I just said it existed. I sure as hell did not say I thought it met the criteria for a real-ass salad.”
“That’s amazing,” Eli says. “Because it’s healthy for you. Just calling something salad makes it healthy.”
“You know what else is crazy?” I say. “That Jell-O gets to be salad when it’s pretty much the most opposite thing on Earth from leaves.”
“There are some arbitrary-ass rules to salad,” Mars says.
Still holding our sides with laughter, we pull up to my house just as the sun dips below the horizon, surrounding us in an embrace of dwindling light as day tips into night. Out of nowhere, I’m taken up in an unnamable ecstasy. The kind that comes from no specific wellspring and overflows before you even knew it was building in you. Everything is so beautiful, so good, you feel like you don’t even need to breathe air anymore.
“I love you guys,” I say, not knowing quite why. I try to pass off my abrupt turn into sentimentality as just another joke. Sometimes the best place to hide the truth is in plain sight.
A quick pause as they consider how to demolish me.
“Awwwwww, we love you too, Blade,” Eli says, turning, reaching back, and grabbing me in a headlock from the front passenger seat.
“Group hug!” Blake shouts, and throws his arms around Eli and me as I try to squirm out of Eli’s headlock. Just as I do, Mars turns from the driver’s seat and gets me in a headlock, accidentally honking the horn with his butt. For the next few seconds, we romp like Mars’s car is a cardboard box full of puppies. Hugging, grappling, and laughing. Hearing each other’s heartbeats. Smelling each other’s sweat and breath.
I open the door and escape, smoothing my mussed hair and catching my breath from tussling and merriment. Blake leans out the open door with a rubber band and shoots me squarely in the nuts.
I form a shield with both hands over my crotch to protect it from further indignity. “Okay, dudes. Later.”
Blake and Eli blow kisses. We love you, Blade, they call. I blow kisses back with one hand still covering my junk.
They grin and wave. I wave back.
Mars speeds off.
I start toward my house, but for some reason I stop, turn, and watch them drive away.
I’ve never done that before. I don’t know why I do it.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
I watch them until they disappear, fading as the day fades, into the darkness.
This book would not have been possible without my amazing agents Charlie Olsen, Lyndsey Blessing, and Philippa Milnes-Smith, or my brilliant editors Emily Easton and Tara Walker. My undying gratitude to you all.
Thanks to Phoebe Yeh, Samantha Gentry, and everyone at Crown Books for Young Readers. Thanks to Barbara Marcus, Judith Haut, John Adamo, Dominique Cimina, Alison Impey, and Casey Ward at Random House Children’s Books.
My eternal gratitude to Kerry Kletter. Your book stays at my elbow when I write to remind me how it ought to be done. I don’t know how I ever wrote without your friendship, brilliance, wisdom, and critical eye.
And speaking of critical eyes, I would have been sunk without yours, Adriana Mather. You know how to tell a story. It’s the only thing you do better than mug making and pig raising. And I often asked myself “What would Adriana do?” when writing the character of Georgia.
Nic Stone. My Working On Excellence partner and Crown sister. I can’t wait for the world to experience your brilliance soon. I am proud to know you.
Natalie Lloyd, you inspire me with the magic of your worlds and words, and you make me laugh every day.
Becky Albertalli, David Arnold, and Adam Silvera: it will never get old to me that I am friend
s with three of the most powerful voices ever to write for young people. Each one of you has been such a tremendous support to me. I can’t thank you enough.
Amanda Nelson, you are an inspiration with your ferocious wit and intelligence.
Dr. Daniel Crosby and Amy Saville, anything I got right about Dr. Mendez was your doing. Anything I got wrong was my doing. I am in your debt.
Brooks Benjamin and Jackie Benjamin, thank you for your general radness and being two of my favorite people.
Thank you for your general hilariousness, Elizabeth Clifford.
Emily Henry and Brittany Cavallaro, I could not ask for more talented, funny, cool, supportive friends.
Matt Bauer, Matt Page, Rykarda Parasol, Corinne Hannan, Katie Clifford, Wesley Warren, Jonathan Payne, Dylan Haney, Sean Maloney, Ashlee Elfman, Olivia Scibelli, Chris and Elizabeth Fox, Maura Lee Albert-Adams, Shane Adams, Melissa Stringer, and Becky Durham, you guys are amazing and brilliant friends.
Eric Smith and Nena Boling-Smith, you two are absolutely wonderful and such amazing champions of books.
Chloe Sackur, thank you for taking a chance on a book about the son of a snake-handling preacher. I didn’t get to thank you there, so I thank you here.
Stephanie Appell and the Parnassus crew. People and stores like you are the reason independent bookstores are so vital to the literary landscape. No algorithm or computer could ever do what you do. Thank you.
Thanks to my Nashville writing buddies: Jason Miller, Daniel Carillo, Ed Tarkington, Ashley Blake, Katie Ormsbee, Kristin Tubb, Rae Ann Parker, Alisha Klapheke, Courtney Stevens, and Corabel Shofner.
Thanks to my older (in publishing) writer sisters and brothers who have been so supportive: Nicola Yoon, Rainbow Rowell, Jennifer Niven, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Sabaa Tahir, John Corey Whaley, David Levithan, and Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
Thanks to my ninth-grade writing teacher Clenece Hills for teaching me to fear the passive voice.
Thanks again, Amy Tarkington and Rachel Willis.
Thanks always to the staff and campers of Tennessee Teen Rock Camp and Southern Girls Rock Camp.
Thanks to all of my Sweet Sixteener buddies, especially Nicole Castroman, Peter Brown Hoffmeister, Paula Garner, Marisa Reichardt, Riley Redgate, Amber Smith, Laura Shovan, Amy Allgeyer, Jeff Garvin, Kurt Dinan, Bridget Hodder, Julie Buxbaum, Kathleen MacMillan, Victoria Coe, Laurie Flynn, Kathleen Glasgow, Melissa Gorzelanczyk, Shannon Parker, Sonya Mukherjee, Darcy Woods, Jenn Bishop, Jessica Cluess, Sarah Glenn Marsh, Catherine Lo, Kali Wallace, Lygia Day Peñaflor, Lois Sepahban, Karen Fortunati, Randi Pink, Natalie Blitt, Kim Savage, Sarah Ahiers, Roshani Chokshi, Kathleen Burkinshaw, Meg Leder, Janet McNally, Andrew Brumbach, Lee Gjertsen Malone, Julie Eshbaugh, Parker Peevyhouse, Natalie Blitt, and Ki-Wing Merlin.
Gratitude to the amazing bloggers, booksellers, and librarians, especially Hikari Loftus, Owlcrate, Dahlia Adler, Mimi Albert, Caitlin Luce Baker, Sarah Sawyers-Lovett, Eric Smith, Randy Ribay, Will Walton, Kari Meutsch, Shoshana Smith, Ryan Labay, Sara Grochowski, Danielle Borsch, Demi Marshall, Joshua Flores, and Stefani Sloma.
Mom and Dad, Grandma Z, Brooke, Adam, Steve. I love you all.
My beautiful love and best friend, Sara. Writing while I listen to you practice is heaven to me. It is no exaggeration to say that I could not have written this or any other book without your love and support and the happiness you give me.
My precious boy, Tennessee. You are the treasure of my life. Nothing brings me more joy than watching you grow up and calling myself your father. Thank you for being my son.
JEFF ZENTNER is the acclaimed author of The Serpent King. In addition to writing, he is a singer-songwriter and guitarist who has recorded with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, and Debbie Harry. Goodbye Days is his love letter to the city of Nashville and the talented people who populate it. He lives in Nashville with his wife and son. You can follow him on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitter at @jeffzentner.
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