Love Letters to the Dead(30)

Last year May really wanted to go to Fallfest again, so just the two of us went together. It was the second fall after Mom and Dad had split up. We walked around and ate fry bread, and when the dancing time of night came, we went over to the stage. I stood on the side and watched as May danced with everything in her body, twirling alone in the middle of the floor. It reminded me of when we were kids and how if there was a fight, she’d dance around the living room, using all of the power she had in her to make things better.

But after the first song was over, she said, “Let’s get out of here.”

We were about to leave, and that’s when he walked up. He was wearing a heavy flannel shirt, and he had a cigarette in his mouth and dark hair that hung over his forehead. He looked old to me. May told me later that he was twenty-four.

“I’m Paul,” he said. “You looked amazing out there.” He held out his hand to May, and I saw the dirt under his nails.

May’s cheeks flushed, and the sadness that had been coming off of her was replaced by a smolder. “Thanks,” she said with a slow smile.

Paul flicked his cigarette out and asked her for the next dance. May let him take her hand, and I stood there, watching the two of them together. As he spun her across the dirt stage, May giggled.

When it was over, he asked for her number. She said, “You’ll have to give me yours. I don’t have a cell yet, and you can’t call me at either of my parents’.” So he gave it to her, and he kissed her hand and made her promise not to lose it.

After that night, May started coming into my room when she got home from sneaking out and telling me things about Paul, who she had started seeing in secret. I remember once she lay down on my bed and whispered excitedly, “You wouldn’t believe the stuff he says to me, Laurel.”

“What does he say?”

She grinned and said, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Do you kiss him?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?”

“Like being above the earth.” She smiled like the secrets she had were enough to live off of. “He got me this.” She pulled a thin gold chain out from underneath her shirt. It had a charm that said May in cursive writing. A heart dangled beneath the Y. I thought that it was funny that Paul with his rugged boots and his calloused hands had picked out a necklace like that.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about her kissing Paul. I always imagined that May would have a boyfriend who looked like River Phoenix, but Paul didn’t look anything like that. It scared me a little bit to think of them together, but I’d been there when they met, and the secret of him tied May and me together. She was opening the door to her new world, just a crack, and I wanted to be in it with her. So when she started to take me with her soon after that, to the movie nights where she’d meet him, it didn’t matter if deep down there was something wrong. I would have followed her anywhere.

This year I went to Fallfest with Sky and my friends. I kept seeing May dancing alone in the middle of the floor, and then giggling with Paul, and for a while I couldn’t shake the anxious sinking feeling I had. But then, when the country swing music was over, the band that covers you came on, last in the night. When they started playing “Light My Fire,” it made me feel like the world wasn’t tired. Like it was just starting to spin, faster and faster. Like there was a new beginning. We all danced like we were trying to get our feet to float off the earth. Tristan bounced up and down and shouted with the lyrics, and Kristen shook her long hair. Natalie and Hannah held hands and spun until they fell down on top of each other laughing. When I turned to Sky and kissed him in the middle of the music, I felt like I was holding a match. And I could strike it. Strike it on the trees holding on to their shining brown leaves. Strike it on a star.

After Fallfest, Sky drove me home. As we were sitting in his truck outside, I remembered Dad telling me he wanted to meet Sky. I thought maybe I could get it out of the way, so I asked Sky if he wanted to come in. “Sure,” he said, and followed me up to the front door. My heart started beating fast. It would be the first time that he’d been in my house. It would be the first time that anyone had been in our house in a while, except for me and Dad and once in a while Aunt Amy.

I opened the front door, and we stood there, in the half-dark living room. I realized it was pretty late. Almost ten o’clock. Maybe Dad was already asleep. “Well, this is it,” I said, and flipped on a light. “My house.” Sky standing there made me notice everything again. The dried wildflowers in the ceramic vase. Mom’s painting of the sunset over the mesa that Dad had never taken down. The family picture on the out-of-tune piano. I wondered how it all looked through Sky’s eyes. I wondered if he noticed May in the photo. Even though we’ve been together for a month now, I still don’t know where he went to school before West Mesa, or what happened there, or how he knew my sister. I guess I’m scared to ask.

Just then, Dad came out of his room in his red bathrobe. “Hi, Daddy,” I said. “This is Sky.”

Sky shook his hand and said, “Hello, sir.”

Dad looked at Sky suspiciously and nodded. “How was Fallfest?” he asked.

“It was good,” I said. “We danced.”

Dad smiled a small smile. “That’s nice,” he said.

It seemed too much suddenly, standing there in the quiet house. So I said, “Dad, we’re going to go on a walk.”