The World Was On Fire
what foolish people do
i.
"You know something about the stars?" She asks with her chin pointed up, her eyes squinted at the sky. He is struck by how young she looks, her gawky face and the baby fat that lingers over her cheeks.
He shrugs his shoulders and put his hands deeper into his pockets. He tries to forget about his dad and her mom, about Carla who is long gone. About how just once he wants to be something more. Something different. She keeps filling up the silence and he wants that. Wants to forget how it feels to be inside his own skin.
"What?" He says finally. Her face is still upturned and she is still so young, full of a weird sort of foolishness that makes him both jealous and resentful.
Her throat bared to the world as she speaks, her eyes never wavering from the sky. "How far away they are...you know, light years and light years away." She pauses and grins and he doesn't think he's ever seen her smile without her bowing her face, or hiding it behind her sleeve. Never seen her not embarrassed by her own joy. Without wondering who is watching or who is judging. It makes him want to run. To get away from her fear and his and the way it all feels like it's too much.
"Yeah, Grace, I am aware of things." He grunts, his fingers itch in his pockets and he feels angry for no reason at all."I know you're smarter than me and all, but I remember a little."
This is the point that would usually have her bounce between a blush and stammer and indignation. He can just see her narrowed eyes and that blush on her round cheeks. She'd rush over words like jerk and no need to be mean.
But she doesn't.
She grins instead, teeth wet and glimmering in the night. He shakes off the thought of feral things.
"I mean, so far away that when those stars were born, when they shattered into existence, all hot and burning and terrible, we weren't here. Not you or me. Not anything. Some of those stars, they lit up the whole sky, swallowed up the blackness around them, and not even Earth was there. So far away that when all that light started creeping towards us, there was just more darkness. And yet...here we are, standing under it. Seeing it. That star, it probably already imploded. Collapsed in on itself, you know. It's dead and gone and if we could go to were it is, get there you know, in our lifetime, it be blackness again. Not even a shred of what was there. Only us knowing we saw it once."
There is a long silence.
She breaks it again. "It reminds me of you." Her face is turned toward him now, her eyes dark like the night around her, her lips thinned and her fingers are tucking her hair behind her ear. She doesn't look ashamed like she usually would, like she's said too much.
"How?" His voice bare and airy, like he'll break under the wrong answer.
Her face dips now and he's suddenly afraid that whatever is making her talk is ending. Instead her voice is steady and warm. But she doesn't look up.
"Sometimes you do things so above what I think of you. Of what I think I know you as. And when I reach out, when I try to seek it from you, it's like it was never there at all." She shakes her head, and she lifts her face from the ground, and when she stares at him, it opens the pit of his stomach wide.
She looks at him as if she can see everything.
As if she knows.
"But I saw it, it was there. That person, even in the emptiness, I remember what I saw."
Inside the house he can hear Jessie screaming at Zoe. Can almost imagine the parents sigh. He turns toward the back door to see if they're there. But only the shadows play on porch.
When he turns back toward her she's already moving to the house.
She gets smaller and distant, and he stays where he is.
He looks up.
Above him, the stars keep shining.
ii.
Three days later and he's half done in with too much beer and that sore feeling that he's messed up again, though no one really excepts better of him.
He's stumbling toward his bed with his jeans half off when he hears the door to his room creak.
He's expect his dad. Maybe Lilly with her stern mouth and her trying to be cool step mom voice.
It's Grace instead. Her little girl pony tail and ratty robe.
"What are you doing here?" He slurs.
He stumbles over his pants and falls like a domino to the floor.
She doesn't say anything as she helps him to the bed and removes his shoes and pulls at his jeans.
His face feels warm and he knows it's not from the beer.
"Grace..." It comes out watery and almost a plea.
"Mom and Rick are out. They went to look at place someone wants Rick to fix up." She stands back from him now.
He's struck by a sudden sick feeling. He's sure that's not the beer either.
"I just want to make sure you, you know, didn't die up here or something." Her fingers aren't visible from the cuffs of the robe and he leans toward her. His head resting on her stomach.
She is still under him.
"E..." She starts but it trails off into a sort of lonely silence.
"Tell me something, Grace." It's muffled by the robe. But he knows she can hear him. She always can.
"What do you want to hear?" Her fingers push at his face, combing through his hair.
The truth, he thinks.
But he says,"Anything." She is looking down at him, her brow creased and her teeth worrying her lip,"Anything good, Grace."
"This isn't all there is." She says. Her eyes bright and yet so lonely.
Yes it is, he thinks. This is it. This is everything. She keeps stroking his hair.
When he wakes in the morning, she's gone and everything is exactly the same.
iii.
He miss her play a week later.
He doesn't apologize. Although he wants to. He practices the words over and over again. He tries to imagine the look in her eye. The angry way she'll sneer at him.
He imagines it so he'll be strong enough to face it.
But he's to much of a coward to see it through. He doesn't like disappointing people. But it is what he is good at.
It takes him another week and some weird rumors about her English teacher to get him to say anything to her.
"Are you like, gay?"
At first he is sure she is going to ignore him. But she sighs and shakes her head, but she still doesn't look at him.
"No."
"Then what's with the whole..."
"It's a Gay/Straight Alliance." She keeps her hands busy doing other things. Cleaning the kitchen counter, sweeping across the drawers. Doing anything but looking at him. "So you know, you need straight people to Aline with."
"I'm sorry." He stops himself from reaching out to touch her hand.
"It's fine," She opens the junk drawer and pokes through it, her eyes never coming up. "I get why people think that. It's not like that big of deal to wonder."
"Not about that."
Her fingers pause over a bunch of crumpled up plastic bags. "Look, I don't-"
"I know, I know you don't want to hear it. I mean, I know I say sorry, like a hundred times a day. And I never really stop saying it, because I do nothing but-"
"Stop, okay, just stop-, I think you like being a screw up." Her back is so straight and she seems so rigid, so unlike what he sees her as. "It's just an excuse to you."
"That's-"
"It is. You never have to fix anything because when you mess up, you feel sorry for yourself, because poor you, everyone just expects you to be that way. So why try. Why when you always fail. It's built into you. You never have to keep yourself from making bad choices because you're a screw up anyway, right?" She isn't looking at him still. But he can almost see her face behind his closed eyes.
"It's a little more complicated-"
"No. It isn't. You're so much more than that. So much more than an excuse. You're just a coward because if you really try and fail-" She shakes her head again. "It doesn't matter. You're sorry, I get it. You're forgiven. It's done."
He feels worse now then the night he walked back out the doors of the play. "I don't believe you." He moves to stand beside her. Let's himself trail a finger on her shoulder and down her arm to her hand. "You hate me."
"No, Eli, I don't. That's the problem." She finally looks at him and he wishes she hadn't. Her eyes are clear and fragile and he wishes he was braver.
"You should." He says.
"I know, but I don't." She doesn't look away.
"I did go, you know, I just left. I lost my job and my mom was there and-"
She nods. "And you couldn't deal with it."
"I wish-"
She laughs but it sounds hollow. "It's fine. Really."
"No it isn't."
She looks up again, and he feels like the dead stars she talked about. "No I guess it isn't. But what are you going to do?"
Something, he thinks, he could do something.
iv.
He holds her close as she cries about that teacher.
He doesn't ask her why. Tries to forget how weird it seems to him someone like her getting mixed up in something like that.
But he gets needing someone to just not judge. To have someone look at you like you still matter even when it's all messed up.
"Thanks." It's a damp sound, and he brushes his fingers on her cheek. It's hollower now. She doesn't look childish at all.
He bites his lip to keep him from asking when she grew up.
"Really," she whispers, "thanks, I know it's stupid-"
"It isn't. You're not." His thumb rests on her jaw. She isn't childish at all. Not with her watery eyes and her red nose.
"Yes I am. I am stupid, foolish, a silly little girl." The tears roll down her cheeks. He catches them in his hands.
"You made a mistake."
She shakes her head.
"Yes, a mistake, Grace. But nothing that can't-"
"I can't fix this." She sniffs and pulls her face away. "He lost his job."
"Maybe it's better this way."
She stands up and looks furious. "No, I ruined everything."
"I mean, maybe he is meant for more than teaching. You just helped him move on faster. You didn't ruin-"
"I did." She's sobbing again. It's a silent sound. Dry and heavy, he pulls her to him. Let's her crash against his chest and runs his fingers through her hair.
"This isn't all there is." He says. She cries harder. But he gets it now.
This moment isn't all there is. There's so much more.
There's a whole sky full of stars. And even if he doesn't understand why this teacher, why her. Why anything.
He knows she told him something kind and terrible that night.
She told him the truth.
He keeps holding her while she cries.
And he keeps telling her the only thing he knows is true.
This isn't all there is.
v.
He finds her under the tree in the backyard.
Her knees are pressed into her chest and she's got her eyes closed.
The night sky is clear and wide and everything in the house is so dark and quite.
"Do you want to know something about the universe?" He says.
He isn't looking at the sky though. He isn't thinking of the stars or Carla or her mom. He isn't thinking of his Dad or the new baby or that job he just got at the record store.
He's thinking about her.
"What?" Her eyes are on him and he grins.
"Do you know that any element in your body that is heavier than iron was created in a huge explosion that, for one single moment outshone everything in the whole universe. That those elements were the things that caused the star to explode, that were created when it burst and that existed even before it did anything at all?"
He ran his thumb over her lips.
"Did you know that your made up of whole universe. You're the stars and the inky blackness that surronds them."
He leans in to kiss her.
"You're the only thing in the whole world."
She grins against his mouth.
This is all there is.