Page 133 of Goodbye Days

Jesmyn’s face brightens when she sees me. “Hey!”

“Hey! What’re you doing here?”

“Surprise. Go put on your shoes and coat. We’re walking to Percy Warner Park.”

“Huh?”

She makes a scooting motion. “Don’t ask questions. Hurry.”

I comply.

Georgia insists on hugging Jesmyn before we go. “Have fun, kids. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Okay,” I say, “we’ll try not to wake up before eleven a.m. or shower while we’re at Percy Warner.”

“Oh, all right,” Georgia says. “We gonna do this, Carver? Right in front of Jesmyn? Huh?” She sticks her pinky in her mouth. “Do I need to hand you your ass?”

“Dude, don’t!” I try to make it out the door and down the front steps, but Jesmyn, giggling, grabs me in a bear hug, pinning my arms to my sides right as I’m trying to clamp my hands over my ears. If I’m being honest, her being wrapped around me is so pleasurable that I don’t try very hard to get away.

Georgia lunges forward and nails me in the left ear despite my frantically shaking my head and squalling. Then the right ear. “Had enough?”

“Yes, you gross idiot.”

She gets the left ear again. “Okay. Now we’re good.”

Jesmyn frees me. I dry out my earholes with my sleeve. “Nasty, Georgia.”

Jesmyn and Georgia high-five and Jesmyn and I leave.

The air glitters like liquid silver and the stiff wind carries the immaculate, sharp spice of faraway snow and burning wood. My breath clouds up in the bloom of the orange streetlights. “You gonna tell me what this mysterious trek is for?”

Jesmyn’s expression is too enigmatic for any hints. “You’ll see.”

“I’m sad you’ll be gone all Christmas break.”

“Me too, but visiting my grandma is the best. We’ll hang out plenty when I’m back.”

We arrive at the park and Jesmyn leads me away from the streetlights into a dark, open meadow. The sleeping grass crackles dry under our feet. We stop in the middle.

“Here’s the surprise.” Jesmyn looks aloft.

I do the same. The clouds move low and fast, painted the ethereal orange-silver-pink of clouds that bring snow. They’re black in the far distance. Here and there, stars gleam through a small clearing before it closes again.

“What?” I ask.

“That’s the color of your voice,” Jesmyn murmurs. “Winter clouds at night.”

“You said—”

“I was joking. This is the color I hear you. It’s better to show you than to try to describe it.”

I am the color of the sky inside.

We gaze up, watching the sheer clouds drift past. A gust hums low in the bare limbs of the trees that encircle us. I glance over at Jesmyn. She has her holy-rite look of wonder. She catches me looking at her. I look back up.

Then I sense a slight tugging at my hand. I look down. Jesmyn has her pinky wrapped around mine. Her eyes are fixed skyward, but she has a faint smile. She slowly moves her fingers up mine, as if playing my hand like a keyboard, as if making the blue music—the right blue music—until our fingers are woven tightly together.

My heart moves as swiftly and weightlessly as the clouds, carried on the wind. For a moment, I have Jesmyn’s gift and my body sings a new hymn of colors I can’t name.