The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson Read Free Book Online

even seem to notice), but I want it like this. It makes me feel like Bailey’s still here or like she might come back.
    On the way to town, Sarah tells me about her latest scheme to bag a babe who can talk to her about her favorite existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre. The problem is her insane attraction to lumphead surfers who (not to be prejudicial) are not customarily the most well-versed in French literature and philosophy, and therefore must constantly be exempted from Sarah’s Must-Know-Who-Sartre-Is-or-at-Least-Have-Read-Some-of-D. H.-Lawrence-or-at-the-Minimum-One-of-the-Brontës-Preferably-Emily criteria of going out with her.
    “There’s an afternoon symposium this summer at State in French Feminism,” she tells me. “I’m going to go. Want to come?”
    I laugh. “That sounds like the perfect place to meet guys.”
    “You’ll see,” she says. “The coolest guys aren’t afraid to be feminists, Lennie.”
    I look over at her. She’s trying to blow smoke rings, but blowing smoke blobs instead.
    I’m dreading telling her about Toby, but I have to, don’t I? Except I’m too chicken, so I go with less damning news.
    “I hung out with Joe Fontaine the other day at lunch.”
    “You didn’t!”
    “I did.”
    “No way.”
    “Yes way.”
    “Nah-uh.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Not possible.
    “So possible.”
    We have an incredibly high tolerance for yes-no.
    “You duck! You flying yellow duck! And you took this long to tell me?!” When Sarah gets excited, random animals pop into her speech like she has an Old MacDonald Had a Farm kind of Tourette syndrome. “Well, what’s he like?”
    “He’s okay,” I say distractedly, looking out the window I can’t figure out whose idea it could’ve been that we play together. Mr. James, maybe? But why? And argh, how freaking mortifying.
    “Earth to Lennie. Did you just say Joe Fontaine is okay? The guy’s holy horses unfreakingbelievable ! And I heard he has two older brothers: holy horses to the third power, don’t you think?”
    “Holy horses, Batgirl,” I say, which makes Sarah giggle, a sound that doesn’t seem quite right coming out of her Batgoth face. She takes a last drag off her cigarette and drops it into a can of soda. I add, “He likes Rachel. What does that say about him?”
    “That he has one of those Y chromosomes,” Sarah says, shoving a piece of gum into her orally fixated mouth. “But really, I don’t see it. I heard all he cares about is music and she plays like a screeching cat. Maybe it’s those stupid Throat Singers she’s always going on about and he thinks she’s in the musical know or something.” Great minds ... Then suddenly Sarah’s jumping in her seat like she’s on a pogo stick. “Oh Lennie, do it! Challenge her for first chair. Today! C’mon. It’ll be so exciting—probably never happened in the history of honor band, a chair challenged on the last day of school!”
    I shake my head. “Not going to happen.”
    “But why?”
    I don’t answer her, don’t know how to.
    An afternoon from last summer pops into my head. I’d just quit my lessons with Marguerite and was hanging out with Bailey and Toby at Flying Man’s. He was telling us that Thoroughbred racing horses have these companion ponies that always stay by their sides, and I remember thinking, That’s me. I’m a companion pony, and companion ponies don’t solo. They don’t play first chair or audition for All-State or compete nationally or seriously consider a certain performing arts conservatory in New York City like Marguerite had begun insisting.
    They just don’t.
    Sarah sighs as she swerves into a parking spot. “Oh well, guess I’ll have to entertain myself another way on the last day of school.”
    “Guess so.”
    We jump out of Ennui, head into Cecilia’s, and order up an obscene amount of pastries that Cecilia gives us for free with that same sorrowful look that follows me everywhere I go now. I think she would give me every last pastry