“I’m sorry,” I said. I reached my hand out to his chest. He didn’t pull back.
“It’s okay. It’s just, I know that you love your sister, but it scared me, seeing you act the way that she would.”
“What do you mean? How did she act?” And then I took a deep breath and asked, “How did you even know her?”
Sky paused a moment. “Do you really want to know?” He sounded nervous.
“Yes,” I said. Although honestly, I wasn’t sure.
“We had a couple of classes together freshman year. She was pretty much the life of any room she walked into. And she was the only girl in our grade who was always at all of the parties with upperclassmen. I never used to do that kind of stuff. Then when my dad left that year, I started going out, too. So we’d talk sometimes. She was usually drunk. She’d tell me about your family, and your parents getting divorced, and she talked about you, too. But she was always hooking up with these seniors. She got a reputation for being, um, wild, I guess. Maybe she needed the attention. I just thought that she’d get sick of all of that eventually…”
Sky trailed off. He was looking at me expectantly. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. I was trying to put it together, and the puzzle pieces fit, but the picture didn’t make sense. I was trying to see May, but it wasn’t the May who rushed off into high school like a new world was waiting to greet her. I guess it shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise. I’ve known for a long time how she snuck out at night and came home drunk, about Paul and all of that stuff, but part of me still wanted to believe that there was something beautiful on the other side of it. That she was happy.
“What are you thinking?” Sky asked.
“I don’t know. What happened after that?”
“Nothing really. By sophomore year, it’s like she was somewhere else entirely. She’d sit in the back of the class, and she’d do her work, and she’d hardly talk to anyone. She was seeing that older guy. I saw them at a party together once. She was so drunk, and he was all over her. It was clear that she was out of it. They disappeared into some bedroom together. The whole thing made me sick. A few days after she died, I spotted him hanging around the parking lot at school. Maybe he was looking for her. I guess he didn’t know yet. I was so pissed off. I beat the shit out of the guy. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. When I got questioned about it afterward, I didn’t want to say anything about who he was. I knew May had a family, of course, and I didn’t want to cause any trouble. Anyway, that’s why—I got kicked out of Sandia after that.”
He finished talking, and then there was this gulf of silence. I wished that all of the words that Sky had said could go back into his mouth and never come out. Because there was one thing about the whole thing that was sinking in, that came through in his voice when he talked about her, and soon it was all I could hear. “You liked her,” I said flatly.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said reluctantly. “I mean, maybe I had a little bit of a crush on her.”
Why did that hurt so much? I’d known it all along, anyway—when he looked at me, he’d only seen a shadow of May.
“So that’s why you talked to me that first day. That’s why you wanted to be with me. Because I was the next best thing.”
“No,” Sky said. “No, Laurel, it’s not like that. I mean, of course I thought about May at first. But then I didn’t. It’s you I was in love with. You’re actually … you’re so different from her.”
I shrugged. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter now.”
I started walking away, toward the parking lot. “Wait. Laurel!” Sky called, but I didn’t let myself look over my shoulder. And he didn’t follow me.
When I got home, I went into my room and I put on “Rehab” and turned up the volume. I tried to shout along, “No, no, no,” but I couldn’t stop thinking about the irony of it. Amy, you were saying I am who I am. Don’t tell me what to do. But now you’re dead. Nobody did anything about it. You wouldn’t go. You wouldn’t get better. Happy in love, tripping on the stage, and we loved you for being yourself, but we let you go.
I shut off the music and the room got quiet. I tried to shake Sky’s voice out of my head, but I couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what I did. I kept hearing him telling me that both of the things I was afraid of were true—May felt shattered, too, and I’ll never be as good or as beautiful as her.
After Dad went to bed tonight, I knew I couldn’t sleep. I snuck some Scotch out of his liquor cabinet. I’ve never been drunk before without Natalie and Hannah. This time I didn’t even mix it with cider or anything, I just swallowed up the burn of it.
When things started to spin, I lay down and put on Back to Black again and listened to you sing the whole thing from the beginning. When I got up and went to brush my teeth for bed, I stood in front of the mirror, looking at my face and not understanding it. It was just me, plain and blank, and I didn’t know what to see in it. I kept looking, looking for something else that I couldn’t find anymore. I stared until there were just shapes that didn’t figure into a person. But nothing reformed. I kept waiting for it to change, for May to be there, looking back at me. But I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t find her anywhere.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
I’m really sorry about the poster and about everything. But I need to talk to you. Since I got in the fight with Sky last week, everything has felt terrible. Then tonight, Hannah and Natalie and I went to this big party with Kasey. It was at the house of a football player who graduated last year, and he said that it was going to be a rager. When we walked in, Kasey started looking around for the booze, and that’s when we saw that Hannah’s brother, Jason, was there. Jason was not at all happy to see Hannah. In fact, he said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Hannah looked afraid. Kasey came over and put his arm around her. She’d kept him a secret from Jason so far, and she was trying to squirm away.
But Kasey said, “She’s with me. And if you can’t deal with that, we can take this outside.” He was trying to be super tough for Hannah, blowing up like a blowfish.
Hannah muttered, “Kasey … don’t…” but it seemed like her face had resolved into knowing that something bad would come.