Candy Colored Sky

by Ginger Scott

  I’m deep in these thoughts when my phone buzzes against my hip. I pull it from my pocket, expecting some picture from Jake or a text about how I’m missing out on all the fun—I always am—but instead it’s an unknown number and the word hi.

  My phone flat on my desk, I prepare another forkful of chocolate cake while I stare at the singular, tiny word and wonder who’s messing with me. I tip my head up as I take the bite and am drawn to the flashing glow coming from the window across the street. It takes me a few blinks to realize what she’s saying—S.O.S. I flash my desk lamp off and on twice just to let her know I see her, then feel my phone buzz on my desk again.

  ELEANOR: It’s me. I forgot to tell you I sent myself your contact info earlier.

  This is why she had my phone. My lip tugs up with the slight, dumbstruck smile. Eleanor Trombley wanted my number.

  ME: I was about to tell Jake to stop f’ing with me.

  She sends back a laughing emoji.

  I look from my phone screen back to my window and decide to clear room on my desk so I can swing my shutters open fully. It takes a few minutes for me to shuffle around my clutter, and I get another buzz on my phone while I finish putting my lamp back in place.

  ELEANOR: Redecorating?

  ME: Ha ha.

  I glance back up from my phone to the now clear view out my window. Eleanor lifts her hand and I do the same. It’s pretty late, not quite midnight. She slept all day so I doubt she’s tired. Her sister has no idea what she’s been doing in that room all day and night. My guess is virtually nothing. She’s been thinking, and thinking can be poison when you’re going through the kinds of things her family is.

  I pull my phone up to my desk so I can type while keeping an eye on her. I’m compelled to make sure she’s there and looking back, this strange feeling in my gut that losing sight of her might put her at risk.

  ME: Morgan still mad?

  Eleanor stares down at her lap; I’m guessing she’s reading my text. Her shoulders sag and I imagine the sound of her heavy sigh. The dots on my phone tell me she’s typing or thinking, so I watch and wait patiently. I practically jump when I feel the buzz under my hand, lifting it to read her response.

  ELEANOR: She’s always mad lately. Everyone is something. Dad is a zombie, my mom is manic, my aunt and uncle came over to cook and clean for whatever reason, and Morgan is the boss.

  ME: I’m sorry.

  I send my pointless apology for things I can’t control.

  ELEANOR: Don’t be.

  ME: I know, but I still am. Just cuz.

  ELEANOR: Thanks.

  I stare at our text string and wish I could fix it. Words. That’s all I have to give her. I can’t help find Addy. I can’t cook worth a damn, not that cooking helps; clearly it doesn’t based on her comments in our texts. I can’t find them a lawyer to demand more justice, or a psychic, or pay for a TV commercial pleading for whomever to bring Addy home. I don’t even know if someone has her sister to begin with.

  I don’t know if she’s alive.

  It’s the one thought that simmers in the background of everything since news broke that Addy is missing. I wake up and look out the window and wonder how Eleanor is, and if her sister is alive. When I saw her family at the school, I wondered if they’d found out . . . if Addy is alive. It’s in the background every time I look into Eleanor’s green eyes. I see her, and I see her sister, and I let the thought ring in my head. It must be ringing in hers, too. I bet it’s what keeps her up at night.

  My phone buzzes.

  ELEANOR: I made you a birthday present.

  Like a switch flipping, I mentally move away from the dark thoughts. First to flattery then to guilt for being flattered when I should feel empathy. My thumb hovers over the keyboard on my phone while I’m stuck on how to respond. I envision a crocheted scarf or hat; my mom got into that for a while after Dad died. I have a closet full of afghans from her two-month yarn binge. Before I can type anything, though, a link pops up on my phone in our text string.

  JONAH’S NEW FAVORITE PLAYLIST

  I know, even as I open the link, that I am about to be assaulted by some twangy-ass ear-candy. I chuckle the second the first chord plays.

  ELEANOR: You love it?

  I mean, how can I not? I don’t think I will ever be transformed into a country music fan, but do I love that Eleanor compiled what looks like two dozen or more songs into a playlist just to share some little bit of herself with me? Yeah, I do love that.

  ME: Already got me thinking about whiskey and pickups.

  What it really has me thinking about is her, and how happy she was sitting next to me in my mom’s car, singing her heart out, voice of an angel. I switch my phone’s mode over to my earbuds and pop one in my ear so I can listen a little clearer and turn the volume up a bit.

  ELEANOR: That first song is about a guy working on a Bronco.

  My brow pinches because I didn’t hear any of that at all, not that I was paying close attention. I restart from the beginning and put my other earbud in so I can really concentrate, and from the very first lines, I get it. I mean, the guy in this song is clearly a little older than me, and he sounds as if he actually knows what he’s doing, but the sentiment and meaning in these lyrics strikes an open wound I didn’t realize I had. He’s working on a Bronco that he wants to give to his son. I’m not sure if she realized how much these words would resonate, but the impact is profound. I play the entire song through and start again from the beginning, searching for the lyrics so I can read along with the music this time.

  ELEANOR: You like it at least?

  I pause the song halfway through, realizing I left her hanging.

  ME: I do, Eleanor. I like it very much. More than I thought.

  ELEANOR: Good. Happy birthday, Jonah.

  Her light goes out, but I stay here, by my window, in case she’s still looking out. I don’t want her to feel alone.

  I resume the sound on my phone, and for the first time, maybe ever, I experience a deep, satisfying ache that stretches inside my ribs and pushes down inside my body, pinning me to my chair with a force stronger than gravity. It’s painful, but it also feels as though it’s supposed to be. I don’t realize until the song finishes that my cheeks are wet. Tears are streaming down them, and I start to wipe them away with the edge of my sleeve. I stop halfway, though, deciding that I want to feel the cold air dry them on its own, so I know all of this is real. I miss my dad. I miss him like hell, even the parts I never got to know. And I hate that he’s not here to show me how to do any of this—the Bronco, college . . . life.

  Ten

  I’ve always liked Sundays. I get the memes that complain about the day being too close to Monday, but I’ve always looked at it differently, I guess. I see it as one more day. We could have been screwed with six-day weeks and only one day of rest. Yeah, yeah. I know that the whole earth calendar, moon-sun cycle doesn’t work out mathematically any other way, but for the sake of my argument, I choose to be thankful for a year divided by sevens.

  I choose to love Sundays.

  Today begins like most Sundays for me—breakfast with Grandpa Hank, a battle of will to stomach his eggs, and a dose of daily news. Typically, he and I divide up the Sunday paper and trade sections as we read. He insists on the actual news print, which normally I criticize because it’s wasteful and the ink feels gross. But on Sundays? On Sundays, he is right.

  Today’s Tribune comes with a heavy story inside, though, and it takes us a while to uncover it buried in the local section. It’s Addy’s story—a plea for help to find a missing Oak Forest grade-schooler who seems to have vanished into thin air. Morgan wrote it, and I wait while my grandfather reads through it first before daring to myself. When he spins it around to face me and pushes it forward, I know he’s signaling that I would want to.

  Most of what Morgan writes are things we know. Her words are powerful—the way she describes the empty hole left in their hearts, how their nerves are forever raw bec
ause of all that is unknown. She gives details about Addy, mostly descriptive, but there are some new things I didn’t know—things that a sister would. Addy sings her words, and it’s more than just a nervous behavior, but rather part of a mild Tourette syndrome. Stress makes it harder to understand her, and by now she is no doubt in serious distress. Ten days off her medication, her tics are likely more prominent as well, mostly her right arm jabbing out at the elbow when she walks and a scrunch-like blinking habit that accompanies every turn of her head.

  “Did you know Addy had Tourette’s?” Grandpa asks when he sees I’m more than halfway through the story.

  “I didn’t even realize she was nine until the news broke last weekend,” I admit. How little we know about the people who share our space is eye-opening in times like this. The thought strikes me that I should probably make a point of mentally noting important details about all of our immediate neighbors, and maybe I should share some of our details with them. It’s a miracle people are ever found after they go missing.

  “You get to the end?” My grandpa peers at me over the rims of his reading glasses, his mouth a hard line that leads me to believe there’s more to be revealed. I shake my head and he glances down at the paper in front of me. “Let me know when you do.”

  I swallow and prepare myself for something heavy. It’s pretty clear that the next few paragraphs were written with some help from investigators, details about leads and things for people to be on the lookout for. It isn’t until the very last paragraph that I understand why Grandpa wanted me to finish completely. The last person who saw Addy anywhere at all was Eleanor.

  I fold the paper and toss it on the pile of sections we’ve already read, then lean forward to rest my elbows on the table and shove my fingers into my morning-crazed hair.

  “Damn.” It’s the only appropriate response.

  “Uh huh,” Grandpa mutters in agreement. “You know that’s all that poor girl is thinking about—all of the things she doesn’t remember, things she should have done differently, or stuff she maybe should have said.”

  My head feels heavier in my palms and I shift a little to press them into my squeezed shut eyes. It’s probably selfish to correlate all of this to my own experience, but I do it anyway. I do it because for me, it has never been the things I wish I did or said, but more the one thing I wish I hadn’t before my dad was gone forever. I was in a mood, and dad was leaving for work in a rush. He was always in such a hurry to get back to that job that didn’t appreciate him. I don’t even fully remember what he was promising me to look at when he got home that night. It might have been a paper, or maybe it was a college program I was considering. All I know is in that minute I didn’t believe he gave a shit about me and my future at all, and for once in my life, I said my inner thoughts out loud, just loud enough. He died about two hours later.

  In a rare bout of spontaneity, I hurry from the breakfast table, pulling my phone from the pocket of my well-worn navy blue sweatpants as I rush up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I throw my gray hoodie over my Harvard Math Dept. tee shirt and shove a beanie on my head to tame my hair. Before I chicken out, I punch a quick text to Eleanor with my thumbs while I work to stuff my socked feet into my gym shoes without untying them. The heels get bent under my feet but the shoes are on enough to hobble down the stairs as I press send.

  ME: Hey. Are you awake? If so, do you wanna get out of here?

  It was a gamble when the idea sparked in my mind. After the way Morgan tore her sister away last night, Eleanor might be on family lockdown, despite the fact she’s already eighteen. She might also really be sleeping all the time, and asleep right now. But I went with my gut, and my gut said she was lying in her bed staring at nothing and torturing herself with all of those words her sister wrote in the paper—especially the last dozen or so.

  A blast of cold hits my face the moment I swing open our front door. I puff out a short smokestack of fog from my mouth and clap my hands together a few times to bring blood to the surface. The act is also a bit of a bolster for my confidence as I shuffle down our driveway, shoving my toes in with every step until the heels of my shoes right themselves. By all accounts, I’m wearing nowhere near enough for this morning’s chilly forty-one degrees, according to my phone app that’s about as reliable as the Cubs pitching rotation last year, or so Grandpa Hank always says. It may very well be colder. It doesn’t matter, though, because I’m doing this, and there is no backing out now that Eleanor is rushing down her driveway to meet me in the middle of the street. She’s wearing an equally hurried outfit.

  “Thank you for rescuing me.” That’s how she greets me, eyes wide and relieved. I hope she’s as enthusiastic when I tell her I don’t have a working vehicle to take us anywhere.

  “Metra ride?” I hold up my all-day pass and the rider card my Grandpa uses that I’m sure is good for at least a dozen more trips.

  “Yes, please!” Eleanor takes one of the cards from my hand and pockets it, practically skipping through the middle of the street in the direction of the closest station. “We better hurry if we want to catch it on the hour.”

  I shrug and pick up my pace to match her, and we both even out into a decent-paced jog. While a mile-long run isn’t much for Eleanor, it has me panting pretty hard by the halfway point. On the bright side, I’m not cold anymore. We pick up our pace when we see the train pulling up at the Oak Forest station, and we get through the gates and board the train in what feels like the nick of time. On instinct, I take a seat with my back to the window and Eleanor does the same, plopping down in the space next to me.

  As the train chugs forward I snicker, the last ten minutes catching up with me all of a sudden.

  “What’s funny?” For some reason, seeing the dent between her brows when she asks me that question makes me laugh even harder. I hold out a finger while I catch my breath, both from running and from laughter.

  “Morgan is probably going to kill me,” I finally manage to say.

  Eleanor sits back in her seat and unwraps the thick yellow scarf from her neck while she seems to stare out the opposite side of the train in thought.

  “Hmm, no. You’ll be fine. Me? Oh, I’m dead.” She swivels her head until our eyes meet and holds a serious expression in place for about two full seconds before we both spit out in laughter.

  We’re near the front of the train, so the conductor checks our passes first and we spend the first stop getting comfortable. I take my hat off for a few minutes to cool down from my run, but when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window—what looks like feathers jetting off in various directions from my head—I promptly pull it back on, leaving just the few curls at my forehead out to let my skin breathe.

  “You see today’s paper?” Her question comes out of the blue, but I have a feeling she’s been sitting on it for a few miles.

  She glances my way and I nod when our eyes meet, offering a short lopsided and sympathetic smile.

  “Morgan is doing so much. A few of the local news stations are coming over tonight for interviews and to get updates on the case. She has all of Addy’s pictures pulled out and ready to show. She even has one of her in the outfit she was wearing when I—”

  She doesn’t finish the thought and I don’t make her. It’s the outfit Eleanor saw her in. I didn’t pull her out of her house to rehash the things that are torturing her, though. I took her away to let her mind rest and to give her an escape from that feeling I sense is gnawing at her day and night. She feels responsible. I get it because there are days when I feel responsible, too, as if I said something just cruel enough to literally break my father’s heart.

  “Are you serious about playing poker with my grandpa? You know he’s a bit of a shark, right?”

  Eleanor shifts to face me, and her bent knee ends up resting on the edge of my thigh. I will myself not to look at it but it is literally the only thing I can think about.

  “You know it’s card sharp, right?”

  I don�
��t answer right away because, well, Eleanor’s leg and my leg are having a moment. When she snaps her fingers a few inches from my face I feel as though I maybe slipped into a catatonic state for a second or two. I didn’t. Her effect on me is just that powerful.

  “Card sharp?” I managed to hear enough to play along. “That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Oh sure, because little card sharks swimming around the ocean makes all the sense in the world.” Her mocking tone stuns me for a second. She may be able to handle herself at my grandpa’s card table after all.

  She shifts back so she’s sitting straight again, and I mourn the loss of her knee but only for a beat as she replaces it with the feel of her arm against mine and her head leaned in as she shows me the screen of her phone. She pulls her gloves from her right hand with her teeth so she can work her phone screen, and I watch in wonder as she types CARD SHARP in to the search engine and totally proves she’s right. Technically, both are right. But her term was first.

  “You and I would be really good at trivia,” I predict.

  She clicks her screen off and tucks her phone away, smirking at me from the side.

  “Maybe if we end up at the same college we’ll do one of those trivia nights at the bar and win a free round or whatever,” she says.

  I let the visual of that sink in and can’t deny wishing for it to come true.

  “Maybe,” I mumble.

  The train makes several stops through the suburbs as it inches closer to downtown. Neither of us are dressed for that kind of an afternoon, though, so before we get too far into things, I suggest we get off at the Singerville stop because of the nice downtown and the bus line that goes to the state’s biggest shopping mall.

  Eleanor agrees, and we spill out of the train and back into the cold Chicago winter. The sun is out today, a rarity, and it is probably the only thing keeping the temperature tolerable. It helps when we walk quickly, so we seem to speed walk everywhere we go. Our first stop is for hot cocoa at a bakery in the downtown. The hot drink warms us enough to make it to the bus line, and once we get inside the closest department store, we’re treated to a flash of warm air the moment we pull the glass doors apart.