The Sky Between You and Me

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The Sky Between You and Me Page 5

by Catherine Alene


  for a dog bed

  turns once

  twice

  three times a charm

  His mouth falls open into a yawn

  Run through with a whine

  As he flops back into his nap

  I look out my bedroom window

  Where the moon has swallowed the sun

  The stars poke through the dark

  Reminding me how late it is

  As I shove my legs into my pajamas

  I pull a sweatshirt over my head

  Wondering

  Hoping

  Dad’s still awake

  Maybe

  We can talk

  Watch TV

  Or

  Something

  Because I’ve missed him

  On these nights

  He’s been gone

  I’ve missed him

  A lot

  What If

  Our house breathes

  In creaks and groans at night

  Even my moccasin slippers

  Make the stairs complain

  As Blue and I walk down and

  Into the living room

  Where I find Dad

  Asleep

  On the couch

  He says it’s more comfortable than his bed

  When his back is tired

  After a day of driving

  Dad’s arms are crossed

  With his hands

  Pressing the book

  He must have been reading

  To his chest

  The woodstove is going

  But he still might get cold later

  So I grab the ivory-and-blue blanket off the rocking chair

  Drape it across him

  Dad snuffle snores

  As I click off the reading lamp

  Shining down on the couch

  I wonder if this is what Dad looked like

  When he and Mom first met

  The creases around his eyes and mouth

  Relaxed smooth

  High school sweethearts

  Like Cody and me

  We don’t ever talk

  About what we’ll be

  After college

  Cody plus me

  Without me

  I try not to think about it

  But sometimes I wonder

  Blue winds around the coffee table

  Goes to nose Dad’s arm

  Blue, I whisper. Let Daddy sleep.

  My fingertips find my collarbone

  A bite-my-nails kind of habit

  That never keeps the fluttering that fills my throat away

  When I think about

  Blue.

  He cocks his head at my whisper

  Follows me back up the stairs

  Mom used to say that to me

  When Dad would fall asleep in the living room

  “Let your daddy sleep. He works so hard. We have to let him rest whenever we can.”

  It always made me feel so grown-up

  Giving Dad the break he hardly ever let himself take

  But I don’t know why it came out now

  Just the way she used to say it

  He’s not Daddy

  He’s Dad now

  The stairs aren’t cooperating

  They’re creaking so loud I stop

  My fuzzy shadow freezes too

  Let Daddy sleep

  Repeat rewind over and over in my head

  What if I had woken him

  The night after she came home from the hospital

  I look at the pictures

  Running up and down the wall

  Alongside the stairs

  Pictures of her and me on her red roan mare

  Before I was even old enough to walk

  She and Dad and I standing in the ocean the summer I was six

  I hadn’t known where we were going for our vacation that year

  Until the day before we left

  I’d come down to breakfast

  Found a metal sand pail

  Full of starfish-shaped sand molds

  With a picture of the sea taped to the side

  What if, I whisper.

  She’s not going back

  Dad had told me

  And I’d known what that meant

  Mom should have been better

  Because the breast cancer was gone

  That’s what the doctors had told us anyway

  But it was her heart

  Sick from the drugs

  That were supposed to keep her well

  Keep her here

  That last night

  I hadn’t woken Daddy up

  Not with him being so tired

  Let Daddy sleep

  Mom would have been proud

  But I should have known

  I should have woken him up

  because

  maybe

  if I had

  he could have helped

  stopped the inevitable

  and we would have had

  one more night

  with her

  Monarch Wings

  I was there when she died

  I’d crept across the hall

  Barefoot

  Into her bedroom

  Where I’d stood

  Next to Dad

  Crumpled in sleep

  In the rocking chair by her bed

  I’d listened to her breath rattling in her lungs

  Like leaves

  Browned and brittle

  Chased down the sidewalk by a jagged breeze

  I’d caught a tear with my pinky

  As it fell from my eye

  And laid it on her cheek

  I’d set one hand on Dad’s arm

  And placed the other on her wrist

  Where a Monarch’s wings fluttered beneath my fingertips

  I’d pulled the quilt back and slid into bed beside her

  Careful not to disturb her sleep

  I wrapped my arms around her

  Counting the spaces between her breaths

  Each one longer then the next

  When the sunlight pried Dad’s eyes open

  That’s what he saw

  Me curled on my side

  Pressed into Mom

  Breathing for us both

  Incrementally

  There’s nothing drastic

  About what I’m

  Going to

  Do

  Minus five

  Will simply mean

  Smaller

  Leaner

  Lighter

  Faster in a sport

  Where every tenth of a second

  Counts

  So now

  As long as I’m awake

  Not that I ever really went to sleep

  Even after Dad got home

  What with my mind being so busy

  Thinking about

  My lunch

  Standing at the kitchen counter

  I pack my lunch

  As the sun creeps over the horizon

  Leaking slivers and swirls

  Of yellow and orange

  Across the sky

  Carrots first

  Into a Ziploc bag

  Red pepper

  Celery

  Snow peas

  Each into another

  Some crackers

  Just for show

  Because the veggies

  They’re all I’ll eat

  I drop them all

  I
nto my lunch sack

  Tabulating the calories

  Adding

  Up the numbers

  That will equal

  That number

  On the scale

  Minus

  Five

  World Geography

  It’s the three of us

  Cody

  Asia

  And me

  At a table built for four

  In the classroom papered with maps

  Where we should be working on our geography presentation

  About the country

  Of our

  Choice

  “I think we should consider asking her,” Asia’s saying.

  But I hear

  Only the sound of my heart

  Thrumming

  Of my dog

  Crying

  “Oh, do you?” Cody quips in a faux professor brogue.

  “I do,” Asia says.

  Not that I care

  That they want to ask

  Her

  Not that I care

  That she and Asia are now closer than close

  Study partners

  In Spanish

  Where I take it they talk

  About more than their assignments

  “We need to elect a new secretary since Jaycee moved and she’s the best choice.”

  Why? She hasn’t even practiced with us yet.

  Not even trying to dull the edge

  My voice gets

  When I’m as annoyed

  As this

  “That doesn’t matter. I mean, I obviously wouldn’t ask her to run—”

  Asia pauses here

  double-check

  checking to make sure I heard the way her voice dipped

  at the

  obviously

  best friend alliance signified

  “But we need someone with her fund-raising experience.”

  “Wasn’t Kierra the president of the rodeo team at her last school?”

  How does he even know this?

  Cody, who can hardly remember Asia is our club’s president and Micah’s our vice

  “Yes, and she helped put together a mammoth auction that pulled in all the money they needed for their entire rodeo.”

  “That’d be nice,” Cody says.

  “We could do it too. One or two big fund-raisers instead of a bunch of little ones,” Asia says. “I felt like I was a first-grader selling candy bars last year.”

  “That was the most expensive fund-raiser ever,” Cody sighed.

  I’d almost forgotten

  How Cody had eaten an entire case of chocolate bars

  Before he had even realized it

  One here

  Another there

  Promising to pay himself back

  Until suddenly

  They were gone

  My throat goes tight

  Thinking about

  Streaks of

  butter

  oil

  fat

  Along the edges of the chocolate wrappers

  “We’re still doing the car washes though, aren’t we?”

  Cody wraps his arm around my shoulders

  Grins at me big

  As he pulls me close

  “They’re my favorite.”

  No

  No

  No

  Stomps through my mind

  My stomach clenches at the thought

  Of putting

  On a bikini

  Even just the top

  With a pair of shorts

  Like Asia and I did last year

  Dancing around on the sidewalk

  Waving cardboard and Sharpie signs

  Pulling rigs off the road and into the high school parking lot

  For the rest of the team to scrub

  Because whose truck doesn’t need

  A wash and a shine?

  “Stop being such a guy,” Asia says. “I’m serious. We need to talk her into running. I’m not selling candy bars again.”

  Asia pauses

  Raises her eyebrows at me and Cody

  “Unless one of you two wants to run.”

  Which isn’t fair

  She knows neither of us will

  Because we’re selfish like that

  Refusing to focus on anything

  But our events

  “No, Kierra would be perfect,” Cody says.

  Perfect.

  I repeat

  Because as much as I hate the idea

  Of Kierra

  In the position

  I’m not going to run

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Asia presses the eraser end of her pencil against her forehead

  As she leans closer to the textbook

  Spread open between us

  “Japan,” she says. “We should definitely do Japan.”

  The topic of Kierra

  Open-shut-closed

  For them

  Not for me

  How can I let it rest when—

  “We should,” Cody agrees.

  He slaps his hand against the table

  “Sushi! Think of the extra credit we’d get if we bring in sushi!”

  Asia rolls her eyes

  Attempts to pull me into the joke Cody wasn’t trying to make

  But really

  “How could we make sushi?” Asia asks. “Where are we getting raw fish?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just saying, if we did, we’d probably get an A.”

  “That’s all you then, Cody. See if you can round up some raw fish.”

  Asia glances at the clock

  Twelve minutes

  Until

  Lunch

  Her cue to say

  “I’m so hungry.”

  Because she says it every day at this time

  Leaner

  Lighter

  Faster

  I think about my goal

  Minus five

  Me too.

  Wondering when I became

  This good

  At telling

  Lies

  Picture Perfect

  I doubt she needed an invitation

  But she got one

  From Asia

  A quick wave and a smile

  Tossed across the cafeteria

  Was all it took

  To bring her

  Over

  To stand between us

  Balancing a stack of library books in one arm

  Her lunch tray in the other

  Featuring today’s cafeteria special

  A BLT and fries

  Deep fat fryer fries

  Sweating shadows of grease

  Through their paper tray

  How can she eat them

  And still be so thin?

  “Didn’t you elect officers last spring?” Kierra asks.

  “Yes, but Jaycee moved, so we’re short a secretary.”

  “Nobody will vote for me,” Kierra says.

  “They will,” Asia says. “Trust me.”

  Thumbs to my hip bones

  I can feel them

  Through my jeans

  But they should be

  Will be

  Sharper

  Soon

  “Just think about it, okay?” Asia says.

  “I will.”

  Kierra picks up the conversation

  Spins it from Asia to me

  “How’s Blue?”

  I hate that she asked

 
Would have raged if she hadn’t

  I wish she would go

  Good.

  “I’m so glad.”

  “Hey, Kierra,” Cody says.

  As he and Micah materialize

  Emerging from the lunchroom crowd to

  Sliding into their spots at the table

  Across from Asia and me

  Back from chasing down drinks

  Because it seemed like such a waste

  For all of us to stand in line at the vending machines

  “Sorry, but they were out of Sprite,” Micah says.

  As he slides a Sierra Mist across the table to Asia

  Nods a greeting to Kierra

  Cody hands me

  A Diet Coke

  “I don’t know why you drink that. All the chemicals are so much worse for you than the sugar in this,” Cody says as he pops open his Coke.

  There’s something about the chemical taste that I like

  It feels cleaner

  Lighter

  Than the corn syrup sweetness

  That would leave my throat thick

  If I drank a regular Coke

  Kierra is still standing

  I don’t know why

  “Grab a seat,” Cody suggests.

  Kierra smiles at him

  Looks at me

  “Thanks, but Morgan is waiting for me.”

  “Let me know what you decide,” Asia says.

  “Okay, I will.”

  Plan confirmed

  Kierra slips away

  I turn the Diet Coke can

  Slick and cold

  In my hand

  Read the panel on the side

  Nutrition Facts

  Zero

  Zero

  Zero

  Attention Diverted

  I want to say something

  Snide

  But Asia’s distracted

  Unpacking the almond butter and honey sandwich

  She brings every day

  Eyeing the Oreos

  Micah is pulling out of his lunch sack

  Too busy to notice me

  Watching her

  “That’s sweet that she does that, isn’t it?” Cody says.

  Watching Kierra sitting across from her cousin now

  A freshman who struggles

  With everything

  Especially math

  After coming off his quad

  Hitting his head

  Last year

  Their calculators are out

  She’s sorting through his binder for him

  As he thumbs through his textbook

  “So sweet,” Micah says in a little girl voice.

  Cody punches his shoulder, “Well, it is.”

  Micah punches him back

  Barely nicking his ribs

  Asia leans across the table and swipes Micah’s Oreos

  “Want one?” she offers.

  No thanks.

  There’s an empty space on the table

 

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