Love Letters to the Dead(25)

I started bobbing, and the boy dressed as Lord Licorice bobbed down next to me. The top of his feathered hat kept bumping my aviator cap. And sometimes, when we’d look up at the same time, his dark eyes seemed like they were trying to make holes in me. I would let them burn until the holes got too deep, and then I’d put my head down again. When I finally got an apple and came up triumphantly, Lord Licorice was still bobbing, and I saw Sky standing there, right above me. I had the apple in my mouth when he said hi.

Normally I would have felt embarrassed or maybe guilty that I was bobbing for apples next to Lord Licorice, but I was feeling very brave dressed as you, and very cool. So I put down my pilot glasses as I took a bite out of the apple in my mouth.

I said, “Let’s go flying.” I guess at that point I might have been a little bit drunk, too.

Sky said, “The ceiling might get in our way.”

So I took his hand and pulled him out the front door. And then I started running. Sky stopped following near the edge of the yard, but I ran down the street with my arms out like wings, laughing. I didn’t care. I was happy. By the time I got to the end of the block and onto the next one, I was above the earth. I could see the treetops, I swear. I could see the streets crisscrossing. The houses were like toys, and pretty soon the whole earth had become a map.

When I finally landed, Sky was standing there, waiting for me at the edge of the yard, which just a moment ago was only a tiny square. I forgot to mention that Sky was dressed as a zombie rocker, which just meant he looked cool in his leather jacket, like he usually does, and had drawn some crisscrosses on his face with what looked like black marker.

“How was the flight?” he asked.

“You should have come,” I said, out of breath. “I almost made it around the world.”

“Who was that pirate boy in there?”

“He wasn’t a pirate, he was Lord Licorice. Didn’t you ever play Candy Land?”

“It looked like he thought you were the candy.” His voice sounded disapproving, in a way that I liked. It meant that he was protective of me, or maybe that he wanted me to himself.

I could feel myself blush, and I hoped he couldn’t see in the dark. I fidgeted with my aviator cap. “We were just bobbing for apples.” I put my aviator glasses on over my eyes. “Anyway, you’re the one who doesn’t want to be my boyfriend.”

“How do you know?”

I shrugged. “You’re not like that.”

“What if you’re wrong? What if I am?”

“You are?”

There was a moment of quiet. “Well, I am now.”

“So am I,” I said softly, and I fell into him so he’d catch me, a swoony kind of fall where you don’t hold your body up, and I laughed. He lifted the glasses back off my face, and we kissed, and I felt his cold hands slip under my shirt, onto my stomach. I felt his hands warmer on my back, and I felt his lips on my neck, and I felt like I’d landed in my body for the first time. Against his hands, it was something new to me. Sky made me feel clean, a first-snow kind of clean that covered everything. I remembered how it was being above the trees, which were making a good sound, a rustling sound, a leaves-turned-brown-and-ready-to-fall sound. “Listen,” I said.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear River Phoenix,

Maybe this is weird to say, but when I was younger, before I’d ever kissed, sometimes I’d imagine kissing you. Now that I kiss in real life, I’m happy to say that it’s a lot like I’d hoped it would be.

My boyfriend, Sky—my first boyfriend—he is perfect to me. It’s been two weeks since the Halloween party where we got together. And now, we’ve gotten to kissing everywhere. Kissing in the alleyway between classes, when no one is there, and the sun makes spots in the bright middle of my eyelids. Kissing in his truck that smells like thousand-year-old leather. Kissing when it’s dark and I crawl out of my window. (I’ve gotten good at it at both houses. At Aunt Amy’s my window pushes up, but at Dad’s I have to unhook my screen, the way that I used to see May do.) I love these middle-of-the-nights with Sky the best. Everything else is sleeping, and the whole world feels like our secret. It reminds me of the feeling I used to get when May and I would sneak into the yard to collect ingredients for fairy spells.

For the first time in forever, it feels like I have magical powers—the ones that May taught me about when we were little. With Sky, I can make the scary stuff disappear. We walk through the neighborhood after dark, and our shadows stand on top of each other, stretching across the whole street. We kiss, and I feel that if my shadow could stay inside of his, then he could eclipse everything that I don’t want to remember. I can get lost in the things about him that are beautiful.

Sky reminds me of you a bit, honestly. How he’s a boy, and strong, and the air makes way for him when he walks through it. But also how there is something fragile like moths inside of him, something fluttering. Something trying desperately to crowd toward a light. May was a real moon who everyone flocked to. But even if I am only Sky’s street lamp, I don’t mind. It’s enough to be what he moves toward. I love to feel the wings beat.

Last night we walked to the park, and we kissed with my back pressed up against the cold bars of the jungle gym. We stopped for breath, and his bottom lip fell a little crooked to the left, like it does. I whispered, “Can we go to your house?”