Free The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

understand that. It’s just so . . .” I’m waving my arm around, unable to find the words. But then I point my hand in the direction of Flying Man’s. “So like jumping from rock to rock in the river, but in this kind of thick fog, and you’re all alone, and every single step is . . .”
    “Is what?”
    I suddenly realize how ridiculous I must sound. I have no clue what I’m talking about, no clue. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.
    He shrugs. “Tons of musicians are afraid to face-plant.”
    I can hear the steady whoosh of the river as if the fog’s parted to let the sound through.
    It’s not just performance anxiety though. That’s what Marguerite thought too. It’s why she thought I quit— You must work on the nerves, Lennie, the nerves —but it’s more than that, way more. When I play, it’s like I’m all shoved and crammed and scared inside myself, like a jack-in-the-box, except one without a spring. And it’s been like that for over a year now.
    Joe bends down and starts flipping through the sheet music in his case; lots of it is handwritten. He says, “Let’s just try. Guitar and clarinet’s a cool duet, untapped.”
    He’s certainly not taking my big admission too seriously. It’s like finally going to confession only to find out the priest has earplugs in.
    I tell him, “Maybe sometime,” so he’ll drop it.
    “Wow.” He grins. “Encouraging.”
    And then it’s as if I’ve vanished. He’s bent over the strings, tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel like I should look away, but I can’t. In fact, I’m full-on gawking, wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive, just like he is—and for a split second, I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds.
    Later, as he plays and plays, as all the fog burns away, I think, he’s right. That’s exactly it—I am crazy sad, and somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly.

chapter 10
    ----
    Grief is a house
    where the chairs
    have forgotten how to hold us
    the mirrors how to reflect us
    the walls how to contain us
    Grief is a house that disappears
    each time someone knocks at the door
    or rings the bell
    a house that blows into the air
    at the slightest gust
    that buries itself deep in the ground
    while everyone is sleeping
    Grief is a house where no one can protect you
    where the younger sister
    will grow older than the older one
    where the doors
    no longer let you in
    or out
----
    (Found under a stone in Gram’s garden)
    As USUAL I can’t sleep and am sitting at Bailey’s desk, holding St. Anthony, in a state of dread about packing up her things. Today, when I got home from lasagna detail at the deli, there were cardboard boxes open by her desk. I’ve yet to crack a drawer. I can’t. Each time I touch the wooden knobs, I think about her never thumbing through her desk for a notebook, an address, a pen, and all the breath races out of my body with one thought: Bailey’s in that airless box —
    No. I shove the image into a closet in my mind, kick the door shut. I close my eyes, take one, two, three breaths, and when I open them, I find myself staring again at the picture of Explorer Mom. I touch the brittle paper, feel the wax of the crayon as I glide my finger across the fading figure. Does her human counterpart have any idea one of her daughters has died at nineteen years old? Did she feel a cold wind or a hot flash or was she just eating breakfast or tying her shoe like it was any other ordinary moment in her extraordinary itinerant life?
    Gram told us our mom was an explorer because she didn’t know how else to explain to us that Mom had what generations of Walkers call the “restless gene.” According to Gram, this restlessness has always plagued our family, mostly the women. Those afflicted keep moving, they go from town to town, continent to continent, love to love—this is why Gram explained Mom had no idea who either of our fathers