The Liar's Guide to the Night Sky

by Brianna R. Shrum

  I say, “No. Aren’t you? Isn’t that kind of a dude thing?”

  He says, “My rib hurts like a bitch.”

  “Sucks,” I say.

  He’s quiet for a beat, then he says, “Wanna get high?”

  I’m so surprised by that that I actually spit out a laugh. “Are you serious?”

  “Weed survived the fall into the river, didn’t it?”

  “I mean, yeah—”

  “So it would be a crime to waste it.”

  My instinct is to say, It would be an actual crime to smoke it, but 1) it’s Colorado so it’s only illegal because we’re under 21, and 2) we’re dying on a mountain so like . . . how illegal is it? Really.

  “Not if it’s, like . . . against your religion or something?”

  I laugh. “Once again, not exactly how that works. Nothing in the Torah about smoking weed anyway.”

  I shut my eyes and pull myself away from everything else—away from the past or the future or any time other than this moment, any place other than right here.

  “You know what?” I say.

  “Hmm?” he hums into my back, and I get goose bumps.

  “My parents were right about you. Four days and you’ve got me fucking around and accepting illicit drugs.”

  Jonah doesn’t laugh so much as he cackles. “Did I hear the word accept?”

  “Get out your weed, degenerate.”

  He says, “Your wish, my command.” Then crawls out, still butt ass naked, from under the blanket. “FUCK, it’s cold,” he says.

  I grin, because he’s no longer in real danger, he’s just, well. Naked in a snowstorm.

  He grabs the baggie and rolls a joint and lights it on the fire.

  Then he practically dives back under the blanket with me and throws an arm around me, pulling me into him. I laugh and shriek when he doesn’t close the blanket right away, like we’re kids fooling around and the air conditioner’s just turned too high.

  I suck the smoke into my mouth, then breathe. It doesn’t hit at first, which I’m pretty sure is normal. It’s been normal for me, at least. I’m high off the feeling of Jonah pressing into me and doing this illegal thing and doing it in the dark.

  How the hell is doing something forbidden while alone in the dark still legitimately a thrill? After everything that’s happened, after everything that’s probably going to happen tomorrow, when we have to face a trip into the cold mountains without food?

  I pass it to Jonah, and it goes like that for ten minutes, neither of us saying much, until the slow high really starts to kick in.

  It’s warm, from him, from us, from the weed. And it’s quiet. I feel legitimately relaxed. For the first time since all of this happened.

  Thank you, cannabis.

  I stare at the fire and I’m totally mesmerized by the way it leaps, the way the little sparks jump from the flames onto the rocks without hitting either of us or igniting on the rock. But well. It’s cold. It’s Colorado. They’re rocks— Colorado’s most, as I heard, prevalent flora.

  I start laughing, and Jonah says, “You good?” and that just makes me laugh harder.

  Jonah peers at me, and I’m starting to look at his eyes the way I looked at the fire.

  He says, “You don’t smoke much, do you?”

  I roll my eyes and shove him. “Yes I do. I smoke plenty.”

  “When?” He says it like a challenge.

  “The fire! Just a few days ago! And the eleventh grade.”

  “That all?”

  “And the ninth. Once.”

  His face splits into a grin and he says, “Look at you, Little Miss Rebel.”

  I wrinkle my nose and take the joint back from him. Now that it’s really soaked into my system, I just want to keep it going. I want it to stay like this—smooth and relaxed and buzzing, kind of. Like we’re the only things that are real.

  “Jesus, Jonah, look at the fire.”

  “I know, man.”

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s like a painting. But you know. Hot. Burns shit up.”

  I sputter out a laugh. “It’s like a painting but hot and burns shit up.”

  He gestures at the fire, all defensive. “What! It is! It’s hot! It burns shit up!”

  He starts laughing, too, and it’s this soft, gentle thing that’s so at odds with Jonah Ramirez.

  Or it should be.

  But somehow, it makes absolute sense to me. I feel like I know him. Better than I do, probably. But it’s like I know him better than anyone. Better than I know anyone, better than anyone knows him. It’s like we’re suspended out here. In our own little world outside of everything, and nothing can touch it. We’ll just exist like this forever.

  “It’s like you’re my friend,” I say.

  Jonah says, “I am your friend.”

  “No,” I say. “Not like the way people say it when they’re just trying to be nice to you but then they’re bullshitting you, you know? You move out of state and they don’t give a fuck but they probably never really gave a fuck, and . . .” I stare at the smoke spiraling up into the black. I shake my head and blink. This is not what I was trying to say; it’s not what I want to talk about with him. “Like in a different way.”

  His fingers start trailing up my back and down, bumping over my spine, scratching my skin. “Like a friend you fuck?”

  I laugh and the dark swallows it. “Sure,” I say.

  Jonah’s quiet. He’s mostly quiet, I guess.

  That’s not exactly what I’m trying to communicate either, but I don’t know how to phrase it or even if I should. Like if I say it too clearly, he’ll think I’m confessing love to him. Like I want something more than exactly this, than exactly what we have right here, right now, and I shut my mouth.

  I take another hit, and open my mouth again to say, “A friend you fuck. Like a boyfriend. I don’t know, I don’t think you’re like a boyfriend either.”

  “Not like a boyfriend,” he says.

  “No?” I turn over to look up at him and he pulls me closer; I didn’t know we could be closer, but I guess we can.

  “I don’t know,” he says, dragging and blowing the smoke over my head. He’s looking into the depth of the cave, shadows and light playing all over his face. His jaw has stubble on it that I felt, I guess, but I never really noticed it until now. “It’s like . . . it’s like people think friendship and sex are these two things that only go together in romance, you know? Like it’s shallow.”

  “I guess.”

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “Who else would you tell?”

  The dark feels vast and empty and suffocating and close all at once.

  “No one,” he says.

  “It’s the end of the world, Jonah.”

  He blinks, and his eyelashes are so long, and I feel a little like I’m floating. A little like I’m not tethered to anything here at all, because Jonah is floating along with me.

  Then he speaks and his muscles curl and tighten around me in such a different way than they curled or tightened just a few minutes ago, and I am grounded again.

  He says, not looking at me, “It’s like . . . people talk about this magical thing. This thing they’re always running for, falling in love with someone.”

  “Yeah. Love is a pretty normal pursuit—not a concept I myself have heard of, but the humans do occasionally speak of it.”

  He grins and pulls back to shove me just a little, then pins me against him. I sigh into his chest.

  “I’ve had best friends and I’ve had people I’ve fucked and I’ve fucked my best friends and I just don’t think . . .” He waits. I wonder if he will ever finish the sentence. I find myself often wondering if Jonah will ever speak again. He finally says, “I don’t think there’s anything more for me. I don’t want there to be. Like romance or whatever everyone, fucking everyone seems to want, I don’t even want it. I can’t tell anyone this shit because I’ve tried to talk about it. To a couple
friends. To this girl I was seeing freshman year. To Jaxon, even. And they just always look either offended or like, Don’t worry, man, you’ll find them. And that’s not what I’m trying to say; I’m not trying to say I’ve never been in love. I’ll never find love. I’m trying to say I’ve found it before in people, in relationships I care so goddamn much about, and it never looked like wanting to slip my arms around someone and whisper in their ear while we make breakfast.”

  I am actually nervous to talk. Nervous to react. Nervous to do so much as make it clear that I’m awake, because I just want to keep listening.

  “This probably doesn’t even make sense,” he says.

  “It doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “It’s called aromantic. I guess. I don’t know, it sounds even stupider to say it, like I need all these labels to define who I am when all I’m trying to do is exist. There’s some ways I love people. There’s some ways I don’t. And it just . . . god, just because I don’t want to gently forehead kiss someone and whisper that they’re my world doesn’t mean there aren’t people I wouldn’t fucking die for.”

  “It feels like we’re fighting,” I say on a nervous laugh.

  “Sorry,” he says, but he kind of spits it. Then I feel his breathing deepen and even, his arms tighten, then relax. “Sorry,” he says again, but this time it doesn’t feel like he’s yelling at me. “It’s just like so many people have said I’m broken or something. That I’m not capable of love. And that’s stupid. Like fuck you, I’ve loved more people than any of you assholes, and I’ve done it better.”

  I laugh. “I don’t think you’re incapable of love.”

  “Nah? You don’t think I’m a robot?”

  “The thought has not crossed my mind. I can give you one of those Recaptcha tests when we get off the mountain if you really wanna prove it, though.”

  “I ace the shit out of them.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  He sighs in my ear, exaggerated and playful, and tickle my ribs. I kick at him and his huge hands span my back.

  “How about you, hmm?”

  “How about me?”

  “Love and all that shit. Give me your deepest and darkest, kid; we’ve only got all night.”

  I shut my eyes and feel the warmth of his skin, the heat on my shoulders from the fire and the bite of the wind whispering down into the blanket to touch my neck. I experience every single thing I can—his fingertips and every hair on his legs tickling over mine. Every pulse in his veins.

  I say, “I’ve never been in love either. I don’t think for the same reason.”

  “Have you ever said it to anyone?”

  I shake my head. “Never. Not unless I mean it; I don’t want to say it unless I do. How about you?”

  “Oh god, yeah.”

  “What?” I say.

  He shrugs. “I’ve said it so many times, it’s lost all its meaning. I just figured people said it when they felt what I was feeling and then I got a little older, realized I was wrong, and whoops. Whatever. Like nineteen people are fucking welcome for my lies.”

  “Nineteen!”

  “I’m kinda slutty, Jacob.”

  “I noticed.”

  He laughs and actually sticks his tongue out when he does. Like this smug skater cackle. And says, “Yeah you did.”

  “Oh my god,” I say, and I can’t believe the situation is this intensely serious and neither of us can stop laughing.

  “Nineteen,” I mutter. “How have you even had the time; you’re nineteen.”

  He says, “One: I’m almost twenty. And two: it’s easier to rack it up to nineteen when you don’t date one person at a time, my friend.”

  If I had a mouthful of water, and god I wish I had a mouthful of water, I would have spit it out. “You just . . . cheat?”

  “Swearing you to secrecy,” he says.

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  “Say a helicopter buzzes down and rescues us tomorrow and you go back to all your Massachusetts friends or all your Colorado friends or whoever, you have to keep this to yourself.”

  “That you’re a cheater?”

  “No,” he says. Sharp and clear. “That I think monogamy is for dumbfucks.”

  My eyebrows jump up. “So. Cheating.”

  “It’s not cheating if everyone agrees to it.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but then I shut it again. I guess that’s true. Nothing’s cheating if you’re playing by the rules. That just . . . seems . . . well. It seems against The Rules, somehow.

  “See,” he says, blowing out smoke. “You don’t get it; no one gets it.”

  “You don’t want to grow old with somebody? Even if it’s not romantic? Like . . . what, you don’t believe in soulmates?”

  His big hand is firm on my shoulder when he turns me over to face him. My chest brushes his and I should be self-conscious about it but I’m not. He says, “Who actually believes in soulmates?”

  I shrug. “I do.”

  “You think there’s one person on this whole huge planet meant for you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What if you never meet them?”

  “I don’t think that’s the way it works.”

  “What if they die of, like, scarlet fever?”

  “Is my soulmate Beth from Little Women?”

  “What if you do meet them but they’re married to someone else?”

  “Well—” I start.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what you’d do,” he says. “You’d think, I wish they were like my good friend Jonah and thought that monogamy was for dumbfucks.”

  I blink. And then bark out a laugh. I laugh so hard that I literally snort and then Jonah laughs, very obviously at me and my snort laugh, and I’m just laughing harder, shaking in his arms.

  He whispers, “What?” against my forehead, and I say, “Jesus, I don’t know.”

  “Do you actually believe in soulmates?”

  He’s not looking at me now, not really. My head is nestled into his chest and we’re breathing the same air in this blanket, and I can just look right into the dark when I say it, which makes it easier to contemplate all the mysteries of the universe. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe there’s one person who’s like, meant for you. But if there is, I think you have to have a chance to meet them. Otherwise it’s not fair.”

  Jonah says, “Kids get cancer and apartment buildings catch on fire.”

  I say, “What?”

  He says, “Shit’s not fair.”

  I pull back to breathe, and Jonah sits up. The blanket is still around his shoulders, but we’re not cocooned. I glance up at him, then up at the cave ceiling. Then outside, where the sky is dyed black and painted with stars.

  I say, “Come here,” and he doesn’t question it; he just scoots behind me with that blanket, and we turtle our way to the very mouth of the cave.

  It’s colder here, just a few feet further from the fire. But we can really, really see the stars.

  “You ever seen a sky like that?” he says.

  “No.”

  “I did once.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When I was a kid. Before my dad got locked up.”

  I lay my head on his chest again because, well. We’re naked. The cool makes it that much clearer very quickly.

  “He took me out to watch a meteor shower. I remember being bummed out that it wasn’t like the movies. Wasn’t shooting across the sky fast, a million little comets. We went home early, but we saw a few of them. And my dad wasn’t pissed I was a butt about it or anything. He made me hot chocolate. And wings. With extreme hot sauce.”

  He draws me in closer to him.

  “How extreme?”

  “Couldn’t taste a thing for weeks.”

  “Bullshit,” I laugh.

  His eyes are sparkling. “Cross my heart and hope to . . . well. Anyway, he also told me about Reximus.”

  “Oh god,” I say. “No.”

  “Optimus’s massive pet dinosau
r.”

  “They didn’t have dinosaurs in ancient Greece.”

  “Sure they did.”

  I groan.

  He says, “Otherwise how do you explain that big-ass tail?”

  “Where?”

  “There,” he says, pointing somewhere completely indiscernible in the sky. “Right underneath Kyle.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Kyle, the Well-Endo—”

  “No,” I say. “No, no, no. I don’t want to know.”

  He cackles into my neck and we fall into silence, looking at the spill of glitter across the sky.

  I say, “Maybe there’s a hundred soulmates out there for you.”

  He’s quiet for a moment, processing. “For me, specifically?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yes. The rest of us just get the one.”

  “See,” he says, “I told you: non-monogamy is the shit.”

  “How’s that gone for you?”

  “Oh,” he says, laughing, “really fucking badly. If people have been cool with it, they usually just think they’re cool with it, and then one day they’re not because they didn’t actually think through everything when they agreed. People almost always think what I mean is I want to cheat, or I’m giving them an ultimatum. All I ever mean is: hey, would you be into this idea? I’m into it and you’re cool, but what if we each thought other people were also cool? I’ve never dropped someone because of it.” He pauses, looking thoughtful, then says, “There’s been a couple. There’s been a couple people I’ve been with who really got it. So I know it’s possible.” He shrugs. “I can feel you judging me.”

  “I’m not judging you.” I’m being honest when I say it.

  “Whatever,” he says. “We’re dying; so I only have to feel this super judge ray for like twelve hours.”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Thirty-six. Unless that moose comes back.”

  “That effing moose.”

  He laughs, “A moose. I mean, what the shit, how embarrassing.”

  “We get off this mountain,” I say, “we’re telling everyone it was a bear.”

  “Oh god, yeah.”

  “A gentleman’s agreement.”

  I stick out my hand and he takes it and shakes.

  His fingers curl around my wrist and I stare at him.

  I’m sitting here with him under a blanket with my tits out and he’s staring at my face.