Between the Stars and Sky (2 page)

MY HEARTBEAT IS FEAR.

It is unknowing.

But for the first time in as long as I can remember, I am pressed hard with a sense of freedom. Relief that is hidden deep underneath, barely there.

Life is silly like this: It changes-

us
.

But we never know if life is for us or against us, changing as we do or running forward without us. Never know until we do, and then life changes again.

Life is our guide.

Our delusion.

Life is everything.

And it is nothing.

Night crawls ahead of me in dark shadows, unraveling like fragmented nightmares searching for day. I drive slowly; I want to savor this, have the journey last as long as possible. Want the end closer than it is, farther than it will be, easier than it must be. And because I know it’s not an easy path I’m about to follow, I want this peaceful, melancholy middle to last forever.

I want so many things.

I want to be someone. I want to have the victory of youth; to hold life in my hands and know that somewhere in that freedom, deep within that security of knowing, I am someone worth loving. Worth living outside of being alone.

But.

“Do you love me?” she asks.

“You know I do, Nat,” I tell her. I need her to know I do, that I love her like no one else, because she is the only thing keeping me standing. Keeping me whole. And now, more than anything, I need I want I have to be whole. A pause. “You don’t love me enough.”

“I do. I can.” I break.

“You can’t. Not like this.”

I have to. “How do you know?”

“Because you’ll never be enough. I’m sorry. You’re too different, too broken now, Jackson. You’re not the guy I fell for. And I know it’s not your fault, but I can’t be the one to fix you.”

My reflection looks back at me; when the light of the moon hits the windshield just right, I come alive in the glass through the droplets of rain hanging on. Only, I don’t feel alive. Like the person looking back at me, I feel barely there. I try to see what everyone else must see, but I am not me. My shoulders take up most of the glass and my hands cover the steering wheel. The night has turned my dark brown hair black, my green eyes a deeper shade of forest. I am larger than I am; already, my shoulders and arms stretch against my shirt, but in the glass they nearly break. I am darker than I should be; my skin looks like true night instead of a light, dusking sky. And even though I am a vast shadow of myself, I feel small.

Maybe Nat was right; I am not enough.

Still, I can’t think like that. I won’t let myself, not again. It’s amazing what a reflection shows and what it is capable of ignoring. I won’t let Dad be right about this: My thoughts consuming me like sun to dawn. And as a flash of light from a passing car rips me away, I breathe. Easier. Force my mind to forget, for a moment, why I left home, and focus on the freedom of this cool summer twilight.

I might not have been enough, but neither was Natalie. A girl who left when I needed her most. When my family was falling apart, she unraveled it further. Once, I close my eyes. Open. Quickly.

Blink away the past.

New.

I roll down the window and breathe the smell of rain and trees and dirt so deeply in I think I might die.

Or live.

*   *   *

The forest is so quiet it screams.

The air hits me cool, like a dream colliding with reality, and I realize this is the first time I’ve been outside in hours. The air smells different here, cleaner. Fresh and new and so, so dark. As though night has a scent, a desire. A life all its own. And maybe it does, because as I walk toward the house my heart is racing ahead of me wanting to get out of the dark.

But I don’t. Instead, I stop and close my eyes and let the dark eat me alive. Let my fear escape into the night and touch the stars.

In this moment, I am everything. I am nothing. It is a wonderful, horrible feeling to be both, to be so infinitely lost to the world you can’t see yourself. I want it to last forever. I want it to stop.

Silence.

Except for the crash of waves against sand in the distance. The silver of moonlight shining against the trees I swear I can hear breathing. A million shining leaves shake on a hundred branches, waiting to break and drop and fly.

And maybe that’s it.

Maybe I have to break before I drop-

before I fly.

The motion lights pop on.

I am blind. I am alone with my heart.

With fear.

I came to escape, to be alone.

I am so far away from everything and everyone and-

I’m free.

But when I am, when I have no one, there is no one and nothing to fear but fear itself. And when that fear is you, life is but a bitter night waiting for the sun to rise, for freedom to turn against you.

Suddenly, a bird screams in the distance. One bird alone in the chaos of night. Loud. Quiet. Quiet. Quieter. It becomes a faded memory somewhere beyond.

One bird, gone.

I am a bird.

This is it.

This is my summer to fly.

MORNING HAS CHANGED this place from dark to light, and yet there are shadows at the edges of the woods and in the clouds where the sun can’t reach. My eyes find life; hummingbirds spark around a feeder long dry, hovering and waiting. The world looks cool, and yet warm the way the sun breaks the trees in a thousand beams of golden light before running across the deck to my feet.

Imperfections are everywhere if we know where to look, and where not to. Perfect is there, too.

I will face them all-

alone.

My eyes find the journal resting closed on the table next to the couch, and my mind finds a memory of Mom writing in it. I won’t look inside. I can’t. I know she would want me to, want me to read the moments where her pen found paper, found poetry, and remember her.

But I can’t. Not yet.

I open the sliding door too quickly and my coffee jumps from my mug and burns my thumb. “Shit.”

I don’t swear because of my mom.

But she isn’t here.

So

I

Fucking

Swear

again.

But it feels like cheating, like burns around the edges of what I should be saying. Even though it’s just me at this edge, there is a horrible comfort in knowing my mom will follow me even in my words.

I don’t want to remember, but I don’t want to forget.

I set my mug carefully down on the arm of an Adirondack chair near the place where the deck meets stairs, and I sit. There is no wind, but the air is laced with a coolness only found when summer is just beginning, when the lake is breathing too cold in the direction of the house. Looking out, I can see beyond the crisscrossed prison of trees to the lake, its blue and white and green surface choppy and unruly; it moves without the wind.

I want to be the lake.

My fingers drum on the armrest, the sun warm against my skin. I pull my shirt over my head, run a hand through my thick hair as wild as the lake.

Close my eyes-

to the memories.

This place has held my secrets since I was three; the house holds our family, though I’m positive I’m the only one who really appreciates it for the escape that it is. The sanctuary. The place between heaven and hell and reality and dreams. Outside of everything.

And yet-

everything
is here.

Everyone.

Every dream starts here, every reality ends here. It is a place that holds things like the stars hold wishes. I cannot escape from a place like that, and I don’t want to

I just want to begin.

My eyes burst open and I begin to cry as the light punches them hard and fast, but I don’t blink; this is a beginning, and I refuse to let that go.

So, I look.

I try again.

The forest is entwined with dark and light, green and brown. Trees tower above while some are not even living but stretched out on the floor dead. In front of me, the path from the stairs to the beach is wrapped in golden sand, outlined by birch logs. The sand looks warm, but because of the shadows I know it will be cold if I step on it. A rabbit jumps from one side of the path to the other, but I hear a bird chirping loudly instead.

Everything is something else.

I came here to find myself, and yet this place doesn’t even know what it should be.

“Fuck!” A noise. I scream. I die.

A bird threw itself against the glass door in a wild mess of loose feathers. It stays on the deck for a second, stunned. Twitching. Its stick-legs bend up toward the sky, before they right themselves and its wings take over.

My heart hurts.

Cold and hot and cold fight for claim over my skin, and I can feel sweat beginning to crawl from my brow.

But I cannot stop laughing.

It bubbles up my throat and out and I cannot control the way it consumes me even worse than my thoughts. I fall against the back of the chair, my face close to a rogue feather stuck to the wood, and I die again. My stomach is a punching bag against this. Lungs deflated. My throat burns, raw, and
I swore again I swore again I swore again and the bird heard me and it almost died but I am alive I am alive I am so alive.

I cannot see through the tears running wet down my face. Everything hurts and I am almost dead and tired and on the floor and I love it.

I don’t stop all morning.

Smiling.

*   *   *

Huntington is part of its own forever; it moves through time with seasons, but never truly changes beyond what it always will be. It is a sleepy, quiet place filled with friendly people and idealistic steps. Festivals and celebrations; Huntington is filled with many thing. But for now, for me, it is a safe haven; the wall of mountains in the distance keeps my shattered world away. This is a place outside of a place where I can be a person outside of myself.

I love this new chance, this beginning, but hate that I have no idea who I want to be now that I have a choice. And because love and hate are nearly the same thing, I’m not sure which I feel more about this sweet little town outside of time.

Walking through it, I am lost in a different way than before. My mom used to love this time of year, when the air is more warm than cool but still crisp. She would walk down the main street of Huntington with nothing to do but look in the shop windows and smile at the people, as though she were the sky and everyone merely stars woven tightly around her.

She and Dad fell in love at the Firelight Festival.

The entire street is filled with bright orange flyers that say the festival is one week away. One week before everything changes again. In the distance, I see Gypsum, the quiet mechanic, hanging strands of golden bulbs around the trees in the front yard of her shop at the edge of mainstreet where the streets come together in the town square. Trailing from the gazebo, lights try and twinkle on buildings and streetlights, red and yellow and white, but fail in the sunshine. The eyes of Huntington’s people twinkle instead.

I smile when I see this: Jameson’s Hardware and Coffee Shop. A tiny, cozy little place that looks as though it is trapped in a different, easier corner of the world. The windows are cracked at the edges, and the paint is always chipping so if you look closely enough, the tan walls are a hundred brilliant colors mixed together.

No one knows who Jameson was or is. Some say he was the founder of Huntington and the first person to build a life here. Some say he was really a woman. Some refuse to say his name at all and claim even thinking about it will give you five years bad luck. Some even say he didn’t exist at all, that he’s just a dream an adult came up with to be more like a child, to gossip.

I like to say he’s still alive, living in the caves beneath the Point. Alone but not. Waiting for the perfect cup of coffee to find its way down past the bluffs to his hands.

Because coffee really
is
that important and Jameson’s always has the best.

But even so, Jameson will forever be a part of Huntington, and a secret part of the infamous Firelight Festival; the Firelight Fall is something no one ever talks about but everyone knows. The truth of it is a secret known only between teenagers above the age of sixteen. A lie between adults. A game, a dare played during the last night of the Firelight Festival at midnight. As the cool winds of autumn begin to pull summer down, we fall with them and meet Jameson at the bottom of the Point, the place where he met his love and died with her.

The Firelight Fall is an end and a beginning.

“Is that little Jackson Grant?” a voice questions as an arm grabs mine. The strong smell of nail polish hits my nose and I choke. “How old are you now? Eighteen? You must be. You certainly aren’t little anymore. Look at those arms! My goodness, if I weren’t married I tell you I’d have you against the gazebo before you knew what was happening.”

I try to smile, but fail. I would have run the other way if I knew this would happen. “Morning, Mrs. Porter. Can I have my arm back?”

“Of course,” she says, but doesn’t let go. I can feel the pink of her nail etching itself into my skin; she’s stronger than I remember. Or maybe I was just too young to notice. She smiles, her lips the same abusive red shade as her shirt, as the pieces of gloss stuck to her teeth. “I haven’t seen you in years! Since before your mother - well, anyway. I hope you’re doing okay. You look well. And. Oh. My. Lord. Have you heard about the Blakes? What happened with Samantha, my goodness. I don’t think that family will ever be the same. And they were such a prominent part of this town.”

She pauses, waits. For me? Am I supposed to say something?

“I hadn’t heard,” I tell her. Simple. I don’t want to know anything from Mrs. Porter; nothing from her is ever as true as it sounds. I haven’t seen the Blake family in such a long time, I’m not sure what they look like anymore. Not sure I want to know anything bad about the family of the girl who changed my life so long ago.

“Well, it
is
a secret.” Mrs. Porter’s face flushes a fake red that nearly matches her lips, and her voice falls to a low, dark whisper. “I won’t tell you. Divorce is such an ugly thing, isn’t it? Oh my, I’ve said too much! Just be watching that family, you hear me?”

“I hear ya.” I don’t.

Mrs. Porter has her secrets about the Blakes.

I have mine.

“Now, where are you off to this morning, Jackson?”

“Headed to Jameson’s.”

“Where?” She blinks and gold glitter jumps from her lashes.

I grin. She’s one of those, so I say the name again just to push a button. “Jameson’s. Just need some coffee and they have the best.”

Her fingers squeeze me. “Did you just work out?”

“Uh, no.” “Your arm is so hard. Do you play football?”

Is this happening? I say, “Thanks, and no. I really have to get going.”

But she isn’t listening. “Did I ever tell you about the time I slept with Mayor Rowell under the gazebo during a Firelight Festival?” She moans and squeezes my arm. I die. “He had the best arms. All hard and big and strong and-”

“Oh, Miles!” I wave to no one over her shoulder, pulling my arm free. “Sorry, Mrs. Porter, but Miles is waiting for me. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Until next time.” She waggles her fingers at me.

I smile. I run and I don’t look back. And even though I feel a little sick, a little like I need a shower, it’s nice to know some people never change. It’s nice to know that no one knows what I do, why I’m here when I haven’t been in years. Not since I was thirteen.

A gentle bell dings when I open the door to Jameson’s, and I lift my head and take in the memories, the stories. Dark, rich coffee smells hit my nose first, followed by the tang of metal and dirt and age. Voices whisper and rise from tables in the center of the place, laughter hits the empty paint cans and coffee mugs sitting on shelves around the room, lining the way down two hallways; one to a room filled with tools and paint and lumber, the other filled with kitchen overstock and cleaning supplies.

“Look who it is,” a voice calls. “Jackson Grant, home for the summer.”

I turn to see Miles walking out from behind the bar at the very end of the room. Even in this noise, his voice is quiet enough to be heard, loud enough to be noticed.

“Hey, Miles,” I say, grinning. I throw one arm around him and the smell of bacon and coffee and sweat hit me at once. For some reason, a memory takes hold of me, sticks in my throat, and I feel like I am home; I haven’t seen Miles in so long but he still feels like my best friend. It’s amazing how home is rarely a place but a person. “Long time.”

“How’ve you been?” he asks, gripping my shoulder even after we pull away. “Apparently at the gym five days a week. Can’t call you Little Jackson anymore, huh?”

I groan, smiling. “I just survived a brutal Mrs. Porter attack. I thought she was going to throw me down right there in the middle of mainstreet.”

Miles nearly falls over laughing. “Oh, man. She almost got Sean the other day! Refuses to believe she can’t turn him.”

“Mrs. Porter for you,” I say. “I’m pretty sure she flirts with anything with arms and legs. How are you and Sean, anyway?”

His teeth flash white against his dark skin, and before he speaks I am almost jealous of his happiness because I remember my own, before. “Better than okay. We moved in together a few months ago and haven’t looked back.”

I lift one eyebrow, one side of my lips. “That’s new. I don’t remember you being a relationship kind of guy. The opposite, in fact.”

“People change,” he tells me with a shrug. “Or maybe I’ve been the same all along and I just needed Sean to see it. Maybe there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are complete without love, and those who need love to see they are complete. We actually left Huntington a few summers ago on a road trip.” He pauses, blinks. “Right after you left. It was incredible and scary and I realized I need him, Jackson. To be me, I need him in my life. And I don’t care what anyone thinks, I’ve never felt stronger than I do with him. Love is strength, I think.”