I'd Give Anything(8)
That night, though, I got out my craft box and made boats out of heavy, shiny paper, shades of blue and purple. I made tiny white origami swans, folding and creasing as perfectly as I had ever done anything, and I made little white snowflakes with my smallest, sharpest scissors. Then the next night, I threaded them onto fishing line: swan, flake, swan, flake, swan, flake, with knots in between and a knot at the end, until I had eight strings full of paper birds and snow. And then, last night, I got a long piece of grosgrain ribbon and cut holes all along it and then looped each piece of fishing line through, one through each hole, so that when I stood up from my desk chair and held up the long ribbon by its ends, the eight strings dangled and danced and made a kind of swan/flake curtain, all white.
Maybe an hour before sunrise, I put the swans and boats and a roll of duct tape into a cardboard box and sneaked out my back door and drove to Gray’s house. When I got out of my car, I stood for a minute in the cold air, looking at the house and imagining Gray inside it, inside his room, inside his bed, and the thought of him—out of all the people in the world—tucked into his own personal space of sleep, that Gray-shaped alcove in the universe that was a secret from everyone but him, made me feel so protective, like I’d kill anyone who ever tried to hurt him.
Then, I went to the back of the house and found the big kitchen window that overlooks his backyard. I stood on the sill and taped the ribbon to the top of the window frame. When I jumped down and looked, even in the dark, the swans and snowflakes twirled and gleamed. I placed the boats, one by one, in the pond Gray’s dad had made in the backyard. They looked brave and quiet floating there. I didn’t see any, but I hoped there were fish flickering just under the surface, gazing up with their round eyes, wondering.
He will probably guess that I did it. Someday soon, I’ll probably tell him. I’m almost positive he’s going to love me back. But right now, sitting here at my window writing this, with the sky turning flamingo-colored over my yard, all that matters is that I gave him something beautiful.
Maybe he’s awake. Maybe he’s seeing it right now.
March 24, 1997
Today, I opened my locker, and there, riding atop the slick ocean of my AP Bio book, was one of the boats I’d made, a purple one, a little misshapen from getting wet in the pond and then drying out, but still looking basically like a boat. And inside were two cutout figures, like paper dolls, a boy one with crayoned dark brown hair and eyes and a girl one with light brown hair and eyes. They weren’t great works of art or anything, but it didn’t matter. They were us. They were holding hands.
April 21, 1997
We talk every night. The next morning, I remember sentences from the night before and play them over and over inside my head. I tell myself I will never forget them, and I haven’t yet, but if we are going to be together forever—which we are—I figure I should write them down for safekeeping. That way, when I get old, Gray and I can sit on a porch swing or something and read them and reach back and gather up the sound of our voices, soft in the dark. Gray’s voice is low and deep and dove-gray like his name and feathered around the edges. Catch that and hold on: the dark room, our voices the only thing in the entire universe.
Here are some things we said. We have never said any of these things to anyone else.
This:
Gray: “I thought I’d get used to missing my mom. But she died nine years ago and it turns out there are always new things I want her to be here for, so I miss her in new ways all the time. Like you. Just this week, I missed her in six different ways, just because of you.”
Gray: “You’re the only person I know who is never afraid of anything.”
Me: “But I am. I’m afraid of being ordinary.”
Gray: “Never gonna happen.”
Me: “It might.”
Gray: “Nope. No way.”
Me: “What if you help? What if every time I start to be ordinary, you pull me back. Do you think you can do that?”
Gray: “You won’t need me to. But if you do, it’ll be easy. I’ll just remind you that you’re Zinny Beale, love of my life.”
This:
Me: “For me, personally, I think the only right thing to do is put new things into the world. Things no one has ever thought of before. Like writing and art. I feel like there are all these unmade things inside my head, waiting for me to let them loose into the world. A whole galaxy of unmade things, so bright it hurts.”
This:
Gray: “I love my dad. But it’s like he doesn’t know me. I feel like he sees me in snapshots: on the football field, being a good student. But he doesn’t see the big-picture me. I know this sounds weird, but I think I see myself that way, too. Like I’m an outside person watching me do things. Except when I’m with you. Then, I’m on the inside.”
Chapter Four
Ginny
When my brother, Trevor, and I needed to escape our house, which was often, we would wait until our mother was in bed, sneak out the back door, and ride our bikes to the Quaker burial ground. I don’t exactly know why we’d chosen that spot; I don’t even remember deciding on it. It seemed to me that as soon as Trevor headed for it, that first time, in the serpentine way he liked to ride and that I liked to imitate, I knew where he was going. We had both been on field trips there to see the graves of the local abolitionist hero and of the signer of the Constitution, and to stand on the wide brown floorboards in the square, restrained space of the Friends Meeting House to hear about the Underground Railroad. So maybe it was the association with freedom that drew us, although I’m relieved to say that self-absorbed and aggrieved as we were, even we didn’t put our suffering on par with that of actual enslaved people.