A Symphony of Cicadas

Sixteen



“What do you want from me?!” I screamed to an invisible God from where I stood. “You’ve taken everything else from me. Why this? Why now? Why her?”

So that I would not affect John with the ridiculous feelings that threatened to devour me, and ultimately him, I had to get far away from the hospital. I knew I could have gone farther, that I could have traveled to the farthest corner of space where I’d gone before, but I was afraid of the voice that spoke to me within that emptiness, and of the churning tornado on the other side of the barrier. So I envisioned a different point that was still safe on earth, choosing to keep my feet grounded in the familiar rather than exploring the unknown.

Well, sort of.

I’d seen pictures of Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in Hawaii, in a National Geographic when I was young. The article read of tours to the domed observatories at the top of the mountain with a view of the surrounding islands and an uninterrupted night sky that boasted millions of stars. In the colder seasons, the bald peak of the mountain was covered in snow.

The fact that there was a mountain in Hawaii that had snow fascinated me. Though I had never been there in life, it seemed like the perfect escape for me. I needed to be able to process my thoughts without killing anyone, and to remain hidden for at least a little while. So this was where I now found myself – on the top of Mauna Kea in my escape from whatever was manifesting itself between my sister and John in a hospital in San Francisco.

It must have been autumn on top of the Hawaiian mountain, because, much to my dismay, no snow could be found. The air was cold, with a slight drizzle wetting the ground. But the whole top of the mountain remained bare. I clenched my hands in anger and willed time forward. In my determination, the motion was effortless. Day became night, night became day, and the stars moved across the sky in mere minutes. The air around me changed from cool to colder. The light rain changed into snow flurries. Soon, the ground was covered in white, the season having changed from autumn to winter on the Hawaiian peak of Mauna Kea.

My feet left no footprint in the frozen slush, but I still slipped through the ice, kicking at it with anger. I yelled out at the ocean far below, screaming with everything I had. A few explorers wandered around the observatory, passing right by me as I shrieked into their ears. But they heard nothing as I bellowed against a life I didn’t ask for and circumstances that were beyond my control.

“God damn it all to hell!” I blasted into the air. “Why? What the hell is the reason for all of this? As if being dead wasn’t enough? You give me all this power in exchange for life, but you’ve placed too many limitations on me! I can’t touch John. I can’t even get him to hear me. And I definitely can’t feel too strongly about anything around him or else I’ll kill him. What kind of joke is this? It’s not fair! I have shackles on me when I’m supposed to be free!” I cried out. I breathed hard against my anger, feeling the fury racing through me. Here I was, unbound from the laws of gravity without an earthly body, and the ability to travel anywhere and be anything. And yet, the rules of this world kept me in an inescapable prison. I was trapped, unable to just dive deep into my yearning so I could mourn all I had lost.

“And then Sara? Why Sara? Why her? Please God, anyone but her!” I pleaded. I couldn’t bear the thought of my sister wrapped in John’s arms, even though I knew that any girl who replaced me in John’s heart wouldn’t be worthy in my eyes. But Sara? This truth stung. Why did she have to visit him so much, attaching my memory to her presence to make him fall for her? Why did so much about her have to be so similar to me, and so familiar to John?

I screamed into the wind, haunted by the inequities of the situation, and the atmosphere shook around me as sound waves rippled through the air. A few adventurous birds that had traveled to the top of the mountain looked in my direction. But even they steered clear of me, afraid to come close to the crazy ghost causing such a racket. Storm clouds brewed in the sky, threatening to break open and envelop the earth and all the injustice it held. But they just churned as a covering to the heavens, becoming a fogged-up mirror to the storm within me. The torrential rains were restrained from spilling over, just as I was forced to bottle up the pain from my sorrow and devastation.

When I had no more words left, my emotions having drained me of anything else I could scream to an uncompassionate God, I sat on the icy ground and stared out at the horizon. The fog was just starting to creep in, covering the ocean and lopping off the bottom of the mountain so that I appeared to be standing on just a mere hill. The carpet of white went as far as I could see, and I had the sudden urge to just jump out at it and land upon the fluffy covering, curling up inside until I could sleep away the injustices of this in-between world. Only one thing stopped me as I stared out at the inviting cloud of white, and that was a memory of my father.

As a child, I once asked my father why we couldn’t just drive across the foggy covering of the valley that led to our home. I was around five years old, peering out from my passenger side window of our family’s car, trying to catch a glimpse of the vineyards that were concealed under the thick white cloud. We had just rounded the bend towards our home in Sonoma, and the fog looked more like a solid blanket than a fluffy cloud. He chuckled, a deep baritone sound that filled my soul with gingerbread and hot cocoa, a laugh I hadn’t heard in so long that just the memory of it warmed me on this morning atop a snowy mountain in Hawaii.

Back then, he’d taken the time to describe the way moisture and the different temperatures of the air created the fog, and how we were able to pass right through it. He explained that it wasn’t a blanket at all, though it did help to keep the ground warmer than it’d be without it. He always was one who believed the truth in science was more important than the magic of the imagination, even when explaining things to a five year old child. He figured that bypassing childhood “lies” would ensure my education wasn’t tampered with, giving me an edge compared to my classmates. To him, magical things were a waste of time.

As I sat looking out at the Hawaiian fog, I knew that I could curl up within it and sleep hidden within the confines of the misty padding. Escaping within the magic of the impossible seemed like the perfect game of pretend. But just as important, I needed my dad to be right - even in my death where the impossible was possible. And right now, I wished more than anything that he could be here next to me, telling me the science of air and temperature, and a better truth - that everything was going to be all right.

I hated that I was having such a strong reaction to the mere passing thought that was shared between John and Sara. It didn’t mean anything. So what if John smelled me in Sara’s hair? It wasn’t as if they were having an affair, or even entertaining the idea of one. At least, I didn’t think so.

But what if they were?

I shuddered at the thought, trying to pinpoint what it was that was bothering me so much. He was going to move on at some point or another. I knew this to be true. And if I claimed to care about him, I would want him to find someone else and not be alone for the rest of his life. Of course, the selfish part of me still had to get on board with that notion, because all I wanted him to do was dress in black and wait until he could be by my side once again. In my imaginary reality, it was all very dramatic and full of angst.

But the twinge of jealousy I was feeling was more than just the thought of him finding someone else. It pained me to think of John moving on. But it killed me all over again to think of him with my sister.

Sara had always been the beauty queen, the one who had all the friends and was the center of everyone’s attention. Being only a year apart, we’d been raised almost like twins. She was the older of us, claiming the spotlight right from the beginning as the oldest, and holding that spotlight tight when I was born. My mother used to boast that I was such a great baby right from the beginning, how she would prop me up in a chair with a bottle to entertain myself while she tended to my sister’s many needs. She bragged about how easy I was compared to my temperamental sister.

All I heard was how easy I was to forget.

We shared a room growing up, from our early years all the way through high school. My side of the room was always a pile of clothes I had worn throughout the week, some more than once, even in their wrinkled state. Sara’s side was clean to a fault, from the hospital corners on her tidy bed to the clothes that were color-coordinated in her closet. She saved her money to spend on the latest fashions, wearing the latest trends with the rest of the school while I opted for more of a t-shirt and jeans motif. I found that books and junk food were a much better investment, even if they were also the reason behind my pudgy appearance.

It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school when I began to feel the pains of Sara’s beauty and popularity. I’d already experienced what it felt like to stay home while she attended party after party. But I was glad to stay home. Parties full of people drinking, making out, or whatever else they were doing behind their parents’ backs freaked the hell out of me. The one time Sara had asked me to come with her, I was ready to leave within the first five minutes. I ended up sitting on a couch and pulling out one of my books I carried around, sandwiched between a guy who kept offering me a doobie despite my insistence that I didn’t smoke weed, and a couple who appeared to be trying to find something down each other’s throats with their tongues. On the way home, Sara lambasted me for embarrassing her in such a heinous manner, for having the audacity to nerd out at one of the coolest parties of the century. From then on, I was excused from any other social obligation with Sara, as far as she was concerned. And I couldn’t have been happier.

But in that same year of high school, I met him. And everything changed.

****

His name was Eric. He had the dreamiest blue eyes I had ever seen and was one of the few sophomores in our advanced English class reserved for freshmen. But he read from Ernest Hemingway as if he were right there in the twenties, attending a bash with Daisy on his arm. Once he even caught me staring at him as he stood in front of the class, taking his turn to read from the chapter of The Great Gatsby, and he caught me smiling like a dope from my seat in the third row. I had blushed something fierce when his eyes met mine, and smoldered in my seat when he didn’t look away. I almost died on the spot when, instead of glaring at me or calling me out in front of the class, he just gave me a private wink, smiling at me from the corner of his dimpled mouth before diving back into the messy triangle of romance that existed in a book I’d already read three times through.

“What are you doing this weekend?” he asked me after class, and it took everything I had not to run to the bathroom and vomit from the caffeinated butterflies that attacked my insides.

“Nothing really,” I managed to squeak out, and he got my address so we could hang out.

The weekend came, and for the first time I had nothing to wear. All of a sudden, my crumpled t-shirts were too tomboyish for such an occasion, my jeans cut way too high unlike the low-waisted fashions my sister and all her friends wore.

“Let me borrow something!” I pleaded with my sister, who held her ground as she lay on her bed with a magazine.

“You’ll stretch out all my clothes,” she told me, snapping her gum with impatience. “Besides, what do you want to borrow them for? You’re just going to get them all dirty outside.”

“Eric is coming over and none of my clothes look good enough,” I said, praying that the mention of a boy would jump her into high gear. It worked. She leapt off her bed and started rummaging through her closet.

“Why didn’t you say so, Rachel? How exciting! Tell me everything about him!” As she searched her closet for the perfect outfit, I described how his eyes were the perfect shade of blue forget-me-nots, how he loved to read in his spare time, and that his hero was Ernest Hemingway. I made up most of this, of course, since I still knew nothing about him. But because that description illustrated the perfect guy for me, it only made sense that it defined him to a T.

“Sounds boring,” Sara said, wrinkling her nose. “How’s this?” She pulled out a light colored dress with pink flowers and an empire waist. I grimaced at the prettiness of it, the exact opposite of everything I ever wore. She caught my look and explained. “It will fit you up top and hide your belly, and you can wear jeans underneath to jazz it up and make it less girly.” I took it from her with caution and slipped it over my head. I pulled on a pair of jeans, and she bent down to cuff them so they landed between my ankles and knees. Afterwards, she showed me how to apply a little mascara and lip gloss, offering a natural look under a hint of femininity. Then she pulled my long auburn hair into a loose bun at the base of my neck. “If it looks like he’s getting bored, take your hair out of the bun and shake it out. He won’t be able to look anywhere else.” I blushed with embarrassment, though I was memorizing every single thing she told me.

The doorbell rang, and we both squealed with excitement.

“Oh my god! How do I look?” I asked her. I hated the way it sounded, like the dress had turned me into one of her ditsy friends. But in the moment, it mattered more than ever.

“You look great,” she told me. “Now don’t keep him waiting too long.”

I bounced down the stairs, shooting like a cannon towards the door once I reached the bottom step. But just before I got there, I stopped to catch my breath. After a few seconds, I opened it. There he was. He was looking over his shoulder when I opened the door, and then turned back towards me at the sound. The sight of his grin made me breathless all over again, and I couldn’t help but let a goofy smile fall from my lips and drown out any coolness I might have possessed. I was grateful when he didn’t notice.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked me, and I started to shrug. “Now come on,” he laughed. “I made the move to ask you out. Now it’s your turn. Plus, this is your turf. Next time we’ll hang at my place and I’ll decide what to do, I promise.” Just the mere mention that there would be a next time when the first time hadn’t yet happened made my heart soar into my throat.

“Well, we could look through my library for a book to read,” I said, forcing a laugh when I saw the awkward look on his face. “I’m totally kidding, of course,” I said quick, covering my tracks. He laughed with me.

“Funny,” he said. “What else you got?”

“Well… I know. We could take a hike up into the hills and then come back and watch a movie,” I said. His eyes lit up at the suggestion, and I grinned. “I just need to let my mom know I’m going.” I called into the house to my mom, who insisted on coming out to meet Eric right away.

“So you’re from Rachel’s class!” she exclaimed, as if she had thought I was the only one who even took English in high school. “That’s great! Have you lived in Sonoma long?”

“All my life, ma’am. I just went to a different school until this year,” he said.

“Oh? Did you all move or something?” she asked.

“Mom!” I exclaimed. “You don’t need to ask him his life story!”

“It’s all right,” Eric offered. “No, we didn’t move. There were just some mean kids there and it was getting too hard to stay. My parents finally caved and let me come to this school.”

“Ugh, kids can be so cruel,” my mom scoffed. “Well, are you happier here? Are the kids nicer to you?”

“Much nicer,” he said, looking straight at me. I blushed under his gaze, looking down at my shoes. The look wasn’t lost on my mom, who hid a smile behind her hand.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Eric,” she said. “I have to get going, though. I’m baking bread, and if you know anything about the rising process you know how finicky it can be.” I did know about rising bread, and I knew that it wasn’t that finicky, and in fact needed no attention at all. I gave her a grateful smile before she turned to leave.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he called after her.

“Please, call me Maureen,” she shouted back through the screen door, disappearing inside and leaving us alone.

“Your mom’s nice,” Eric said.

“Seems that you’ve charmed her,” I teased. He laughed.

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing if your mom likes me.”

We took off for the hills, climbing through the barbed-wire fence that did little to keep anything out. His stride was long, and I had to jog to keep up with him. I was glad that I had worn jeans under the dress, and tennis shoes instead of the sandals Sara had suggested. I raced alongside him and we made a game to get to the top first. I beat him by only an arm’s length, of which he grabbed me and pulled me back towards him. My mouth was open in laughter when he placed his lips against mine, resulting in an awkward first kiss. I almost bit him when I pulled back in surprise. He laughed.

“Should we try that again?” he asked. I was too embarrassed to speak, so I just nodded in wide-eyed silence, closing my eyes as he put his lips against mine once more. I could hear the echoes of the cars racing on the country road at the bottom of the hill, the call of the birds as they soared overhead, and the song of the cicadas within the gold of the weeds. I could feel every single wisp of my hair dancing against my cheeks, the wind moving them from the safety of the bun at the base of my neck. I could feel his hands on my hips, my arms around his neck, his tongue pushing though my lips, the strange softness that entered my mouth. Everything was happening all at once in this amazing first kiss with a boy I liked who also liked me back. He pulled away to smile down at me. I looked up at him and saw a glimpse of something sad and distant, the moment lasting for just a second before he relaxed back into his smile.

“Want to hang here for a while?” I asked him.

“Absolutely,” he said. We both sat down at the same time, and he offered me his chest to lean against as we both stared out at the same horizon. As we sat, we shared our hopes and likes. I was pleased to know that, in truth, reading was one of his passions, though he admitted to finding Hemingway a little too simple. I forgave him in an instant, apologizing in my mind to my literary hero. He told me about being an only child, how his dad had high hopes of him joining the military like he did, but how Eric’s hopes were to become an architect and live in New York. I told him about my dreams of one day writing the great American novel, skipped the parts about my beautiful sister, and admitted that this was the first time I had ever been willing to wear a dress in my teen years.

“It’s really pretty,” he said.

We walked back hand in hand, sometimes talking and sometimes just taking in the nature that surrounded us. When we reached the house, I prayed that my sister had already left for one of her many friends’ houses. But there she was, swaying back and forth on the swing that hung from the tree outside our house. I groaned and held Eric’s hand tighter.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s Sara,” I said. “She’s my older sister.” I tried to ignore the way he looked at her, seeing something in her that I thought he had seen in me. I told myself it was just because she was pretty, another version of me, and it didn’t mean anything.

Sara waved from the swing. “Hey guys!” she called out. She hopped off and then ran towards us. “I was just getting ready to go downtown with a few friends and wondered if you wanted to come along.” I fumed inside as she tried to sway Eric’s attention from me to her through her bubbly demeanor. She never asked me to go anywhere with her anymore, and I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at this uncharacteristic invitation.

“Sorry, Sara,” I smiled, glaring at her in a way only she could see. “We were just about to watch a movie. Maybe next time.” She smiled at me, and I couldn’t tell if she knew I was angry with her, or if, in her mind, she thought she was being charitable by asking us to join her.

“But wait, Rachel, it could be fun,” Eric said. I tried not to appear annoyed when he jumped into the conversation, and I felt his hand loosening a little in mine. “I mean, I don’t know a lot of people from our school, and this might be a good way for me to make some friends.”

“Oh, you don’t want to meet Sara’s friends,” I told him, keeping a sweet tone to my voice. I could feel Sara’s eyes drilling holes in the side of my head. “They’re all into superficial stuff, like celebrity gossip and fashion. Totally lame. You’ll be bored out of your mind.”

“At least my friends can drive,” Sara shot back. “Unlike yours, who depend on their mommies to drive them where they need to go.”

I held my ground, giving her a look that said ‘leave us alone, he’s my boyfriend.’ She sighed, reading it loud and clear, and then smiled at me. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed to me when he looked away. “Whatever, never mind. I don’t think there’s enough room in the car anyways. Forget I asked.” A black Mustang barreled down the road, and Sara jumped up to greet the driver. “It was nice meeting you, Eric!” she called over her shoulder. I felt Eric stiffen next to me, sizing up the driver of the car as they started to pull away. I realized that watching a movie with him wouldn’t be any fun under the circumstances, and that I’d had enough for one afternoon.

“Wait!” I called out. I saw Sara motion to the driver to stop before poking her head out the window.

“What’s up?” she yelled back over the sound of the roaring exhaust. I turned to Eric and smiled.

“Do you want to go?” I asked him, and he didn’t even try to hide his enthusiasm at this suggestion.

“Sure,” he said. “Do you?”

“Not really. But you go ahead. I’m actually getting kind of tired, you know, from all that hiking. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go and have fun,” I said. I blinked a few times to ensure I didn’t start crying, and I knew my smile must have looked funny, as wide as I was grinning. He didn’t even notice. He hugged me hard, pulling me in so that my face was mashed up against the zipper of his sweatshirt.

“Thank you, Rachel! I promise, we’ll watch that movie together next time,” he swore, and then jogged off to the waiting car. Sara gave me a helpless look, but I just looked away from her. “Bye!” Eric called out, and they all waved as they sped away. I waved back until they couldn’t see me anymore, the tears already rolling down my cheeks before they were even out of view. Then I ran in the house, past my bewildered mother, and into my room where I flung myself on my bed.

He never did call me back, and at school, his blue eyes looked everywhere but in my direction – much to my relief. It made it easier for me to avoid him and never talk to him again.

However, Sara was a different story. I spent weeks treating her with icy contempt despite her best attempts to sweeten me up and get me to like her again. She didn’t even protest when she found the dress I had borrowed at the edge of my side of the room, a huge tear in the side as if it had been shredded at the seam on purpose. She just placed it in the garbage on her side of the room as if it were nothing.

“He’s gay,” Sara told me later when I broke the silence and confronted her.

“That’s not funny,” I told her.

“No, it’s true!” She described how they had gone to the party and he had met up with someone from his old school. They had disappeared, but her friend, Tyler, caught a glimpse of them kissing in a bathroom. “That’s why his dad made him switch schools, because Eric had come out among the kids and even had a boyfriend. His dad was trying to get him to leave all that behind, hoping he would straighten out at a new school, if you know what I mean.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked her.

“He told me when Tyler and I confronted him. He swore us to secrecy, and so far you’re the first person I’ve told.”

“But he kissed you, too!” I blurted out. The rumors about Eric’s sexual orientation may not have spread around the school, but the story of Sara and Eric making out on a couch while his hand covered her breast had made the rounds. Sara blushed, smiling with both embarrassment and pride.

“I guess I was just an experiment, to see if he really was gay. Turns out even I can’t get a guy to bat for our team.” That meant the kiss we shared on the top of the hill behind our house, the very first kiss I had ever received, was only a lie – part of his experimentation.

“I can’t believe you even let him kiss you, knowing that I had a huge crush on him,” I said. It no longer mattered as much, seeing that he wasn’t interested in either one of us. But it still stung that Sara had betrayed me, knowing how much Eric had meant to me.

“I know,” Sara said. “That was pretty shitty. I’m really, really sorry.” I was never one to hold a grudge, and her sincerity helped me to fold into forgiveness. “Tell you what, let’s make a pact,” she said, holding out her pinky. “I promise to never, ever go after a boy you like, are dating, or even have dated in the past. Anyone you have kissed or you claim as off limits, is off limits. Can you promise the same?” I promised her, linking my pinky in hers even though I was sure I would never be faced with a similar problem.

But the promise remained true for the rest of our lives, or rather, my life. Sara grew out of her flirtatious teen years. I grew out of my mousy, bookworm state of fourteen and began to care about my appearance and making friends. Soon I was discovering the ups and downs of dating, and Sara became my ally as we both backed each other up when, without fail, a heart would get broken.

But I was always a little cautious around her, especially when bringing a new guy into the house for the first time to meet my family – to meet Sara. The ultimate test always rested in their initial reaction upon meeting my sister. The ones who couldn’t help but admire her even while standing next to me were almost always gone before the month was over. But the few that took more notice of me than my sister were the ones I allowed myself to fall for until the relationship had run its course. Just two men passed the test, resulting in the only long-term relationships I ever submitted myself to – the one with Joey’s dad, Tony, and the one with John.

****

And yet, here in the present, Sara was moving in on the love of my life, causing him to fall for her through her kindness and the smell of her hair.