—
It hurts here and here, I was thinking. And I don’t know why it hurts. But it does.
—
Aren’t you scared? they asked. She might take things from you. She might have a gun. Or a knife. Her feet are big. Her hair is strange. There was one at our school once, you remember? She was adopted or something, that’s all I remember.
—
My mom said I shouldn’t eat with the new one. You shouldn’t either.
—
Celeste arrived long after the doctors told my mother there was nothing they could do, and at night my father sat behind the bathroom door gulping back sobs. She arrived long after we buried my mother, my father and me at the graveside, our gloved hands locked together, Lisabeth and Casey behind me, standing between their own parents, safe from cancer and dead parents and holes opened in the ground. Celeste arrived in the late winter…and smiled at me.
—
Your mom would be mad if she knew, Lisabeth and Casey said.
Celeste pulled me through town making me name the trees we passed—white birch, barberry, sugar maple, catalpa…
—
How do you do that? she asked again and again. How do you know?
—
Black walnut, beech, oak, pine, I said, because I loved the feeling of her hand in mine, loved the surprising softness. I didn’t tell her I had never touched a black person before and how surprised I was the first time I touched her hair. But the second time I reached for it, Celeste’s hand shot up, caught mine just inches from her head.
—
Stop! she said once when I was reaching for her hair. I’m not a dog to be petted!
—
The following autumn, we buried Celeste’s pet rabbit Joe in her backyard, sprinkling crushed leaves over his tiny grave. We had been friends for close to a year and somewhere in that time had grown to the same height, wore our jeans rolled at the ankle, and tied our shirts in matching knots at our waists. Celeste wore her hair out, an amazing black halo floating over her head. I had learned to keep my hands out of it, but at school, she was constantly slapping the other kids’ hands away. Some mornings, when she thought no one was looking, I saw her face dip into a sadness I had only seen on my father. Those days, I wanted to grab her hand and hold on tight. But we were eleven. What did we know about anything?
—
Spring came again. I like you, Treetop, Celeste said to me one morning. But I don’t like it here.
—
But you love the leaves. And egg creams!
—
My mom said we’d give it a year. It’s been more than a year, Celeste said. She wouldn’t look at me. And then, finally, she did. New York is only four and a half hours away.
—
I know.
—
But we both knew—the distance between New Hampshire and New York was forever away. A whole lifetime.
—
Celeste laced her fingers inside of mine. The way our fingers go, she said, brown, white, brown, white…It’s like the same God or Mother Nature or Universe that decided to make the leaves here all crazy colored said this—she held up our hands—this is right, too.
Some afternoons, Lisabeth and Casey meet me at the pharmacy on Main Street and the three of us sit at the window where we can watch people moving through town. Before she moved back, Celeste and I made a promise that we’d meet in New York City and celebrate our eighteenth birthdays together. In a week, I’ll be twelve. It’ll be here before you know it, Celeste said.
—
Why are you squinting? Lisabeth asks me. You act like you’re not even here.
—
And she’s right. I am already leaving. I am halfway gone.
Flying Lessons
SOMAN CHAINANI
Nani wears a fur coat to the beach.
It’s my second clue she doesn’t plan to go swimming.
The first came earlier this morning when she rang up the Chanel boutique on Passeig de Gràcia and asked them to send a selection of swim trunks for a young boy of twelve “with practically no hips and a small bottom” to room 213 at the Palacio Barcelona.
Half-asleep, I slid up in bed, swaddled in a voluminous white robe monogrammed with the hotel’s initials, and peered up at my grandmother. Posed imperiously at the window, she was already done up in a matador-red chiffon dress, her dyed caramel hair teased into a beehive, her brown eyes drenched in blue mascara and her lips coated the color of blood.
I could hear the Chanel clerk through the handset, trying to get a word in, but Nani was prattling away: “Something stylish and sophisticated, of course. Whatever los chicos are wearing in Ibiza,” she breezed, unaware of how ludicrous Spanglish sounded in an Indian accent. “Though nothing in black. Only Italians wear black to swim—”
“Aren’t you getting a bathing suit too?” I started, but Nani waved me off, gypsy bangles jangling on her wrist.