The Sky Above Us

by Natalie Lund

  “I’m not sure what to say. That’s . . .”

  “Crazy. I know. Do you see why I had to ask you along?”

  Maybe it is an insult, but I smile. “Cass would have tried to talk you out of this.”

  “Exactly,” she says, and then smiles back.

  All along, I’d hoped Cass and Izzy might help me get into Nate’s circles, but I never imagined we’d become actual friends, that it would be like tender blooms in the wake of a fire.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  IZZY

  One week after

  THE TACO PLACE is located in a strip mall and has four booths and a few small tables. A long-faced sandy-haired man who I recognize from Israel’s searches sits in one. He’s dressed in khaki shorts and a green polo and liberally seasons a bowl of tortilla chips with salt. It’s hard for me to imagine that this plain-looking, salt-loving man was so important to my brother.

  “That’s him,” I tell Janie.

  The man hears me and looks up. “Wow,” he says. “I can see the resemblance.”

  This baffles me. No one ever thinks we’re twins. Israel was blocky and always had chest hair sprouting out of his collar, unkempt curls, and bushy eyebrows. I tame my hair with serums and a straightener and get my eyebrows threaded into perfect knocked-over parentheses. But maybe there’s some similarity that I can’t see.

  “Considering you’re his son, you look nothing like him,” I say. I mean it as a joke, but the guy just looks uncomfortable. “I’m Izzy. This is my friend Janie.”

  I catch Janie blushing out of the corner of my eye.

  “Nice to meet you,” he says. “If I could express—” He pauses, unsure, but I wave my hand like he needn’t bother finishing that sentence, and scoot into the booth. Janie perches on the edge as though she might spring up and dash out at any moment.

  “So you met my brother?” I ask, cutting to the chase. “After all those emails.”

  “He followed me. Here, actually.”

  My brother followed this man? That sounds like something I’d do. “He told you about the memories, then?” I ask.

  “He did,” Peter says cautiously, like he’s trying to hold something back.

  “Did you believe him?” I prompt.

  The man looks at the bowl of salsa as though it might save him from answering, but it doesn’t and he’s forced to shake his head. “He told me he remembered getting medicine for me, but I was away at camp when my dad died. I figure he must have read about the accident somewhere. Like in a newspaper.”

  I must look like I’m about to jump down his throat because Janie taps my knee with her own, and I think she means be patient.

  “I wish I could express how large a hole my father created,” Peter continues.

  I get this. Sometimes I forget the hole that Israel left behind until I hear his name. Or remember his smile, and everything inside me scatters, sharp. Janie dabs under her eyes with a napkin, and I swipe at my own tears.

  “Israel was interested in my father the same way I was. And strange as it is, I was so desperate for stories of him, for talking about him, that I was willing to sit here and listen to a kid who had become obsessed with him,” Peter says.

  And that’s why I’m here too—across the table from this bland-looking man. I’m desperate to hear about my brother’s final days.

  “What did he say to you?” I ask.

  “He told me he found me through some online group.”

  I lean forward, feeling goose bumps spring onto my arms. “A group?”

  “Yeah. I guess it was for people like him who think they remember past lives.”

  “What was it called?”

  “Oh gosh. I don’t know. Something with souls in the name maybe.”

  In my mind, I scroll through everything I saw on Israel’s iPad. Was there anything about souls? Not that I can remember, though there was that one discussion app that I’d mostly ignored. Was it in there? I have to search the iPad again.

  “I have to go,” I say abruptly.

  Peter looks stunned, his hand frozen mid-chip-dip, salsa dribbling over the lip of the bowl, his mouth hanging open. Janie’s mouth is open too. I know I’m being rude, but I don’t care. If my brother found Peter through this group, it must have the answers I’m looking for.

  “Thanks for your time,” I say, as though it’s an interview. I nudge Janie out of the seat. “Hurry,” I say, like the group might self-destruct if I don’t get there in time.

  Outside, I tug impatiently on the door handle, and Janie fumbles with her keys. Each time she hits the unlock button, I pull on the handle at the same moment, and it doesn’t unlock correctly. “Jesus,” I say, and slam my hand against the window.

  Janie pales. “I’m sorry,” she says, even though it’s my fault. She presses the unlock button again, and this time I wait before trying the handle and swinging open the door. Then I throw myself into the seat.

  “What’s the rush?” she asks as she starts the car.

  “I have to find those people Israel was talking to.” I pull my phone out and start searching, but souls and groups for remembering past lives doesn’t give me much to go on. There are books and websites, but no groups that I can find. Why should I trust Peter anyway? It’s not like he believed my brother.

  “Look, I know Peter said the medicine part of Israel’s dream was wrong, but you believe all this, right? I mean, you saw the dolphins. They found us, Janie. They did.”

  She looks at me and pauses like she always does. This time, though, it’s not awkward. I get the sense it’s because she cares about saying something right. “It’s okay to believe Israel even if there’s a detail that’s not true,” she finally says.

  I notice she avoids mentioning what she thinks happened, but I don’t push. I slouch against the passenger door, feeling depleted all of a sudden. “I was jealous of him when we were little,” I say. “That he had this thing he could remember from before.”

  “He was probably jealous of you, too, because you could feel when he was in pain.”

  I kick my feet up onto the dash. “Thanks,” I say. “For letting me believe.”

  “Thank you,” she says back.

  “For what?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. She turns her head to the side window, and I can’t tell if she’s crying or watching the strip malls stream by.

  * * *

  • • •

  As soon as Janie drops me off, I retrieve Israel’s iPad from its hiding place and climb onto the roof. I scroll through his apps, finding the one I’d only glanced at before: a discussion app where people can join different topics. The trending posts on the main screen are mostly current events, so I’d assumed he was just reading the news there.

  I click the login button and the password autocompletes. The view shifts.

  Remembered Souls Forum, Gulf Coast, Closed Group, it says along the top.

  This has to be it—the group he mentioned to Peter.

  The first thread is entitled Who I Was Before and has over five hundred replies. I click on the most recent.

  Perci6453: I remember those French weaklings were fleeing from the fight. They were supposed to be our allies. I kept riding Fabek among them, trying to rally their troops, but I got hit by grapeshot. Fabek was hit too, and he rolled onto me. 17 hands high—he was a monster of a horse—and he was on my legs. I tried desperately to free myself, but he was too heavy and bleeding everywhere. I wished I could feed him one last apple, feel his peach-fuzzed lips nudging my hand for more, but his breathing was fast and shallow. Since Charleston, he’d grown thin. We all had. If we weren’t cavalry, he’d have been food long before.

  I began to sweat and feel nauseous. At first, I thought it was just the heat from Fabek’s body and his blood soaking me. But then I found the hole in my stomach. Holes. They smelled like excrement.
And I knew that my being was leaking out from them.

  I woke once, feeling like I was being rocked to sleep by my mother. I could smell the ocean, but when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t the ship I saw, but our manor in Warsaw. I could feel the cold stones beneath my feet, the dusty furs we draped on our furniture, our crest stitched into a faded tapestry. That’s the last I remember.

  WasAthena: Ok—so you were a Polish cavalryman in the Revolutionary War? Do you remember where you were when you got hit?

  Perci6453: Savannah.

  WasAthena: Oh yeah, I definitely think you’re Casimir Pulaski then. This bio says he was hit by grapeshot and then they brought him on board a ship where he died.

  My heart races.

  There are people like Israel—a whole group of them. For the first time in days, I feel something like relief. At least he wasn’t alone.

  I read another:

  TurtleDove45: I was at the Alamo, but I didn’t die there.

  NecklessNick: I thought everyone died at the Alamo.

  TurtleDove45: No, I died of pneumonia years later. Isn’t it nuts that I survived one of the most famous sieges and my lungs were what did me in?

  I slipped in and out of delirium those last days on my deathbed, waking sometimes to the shouts, “Viva Santa Anna, viva la República.” Those are the cries that woke me the last morning of the siege. The sentries had not sounded the alarm and his men were right outside. I crouched in the corner with Susanna and Angelina. We were sure they would kill us like they’d already killed most of the men.

  They didn’t.

  After I lived through the siege, I remarried. I eventually saw my grandchildren. And those damn words were still the last I heard.

  The Israel I knew would have scoffed at these posts. He would have said Perci6453 and TurtleDove45 picked famous figures from American history because they wanted to seem important. But what about the Israel I didn’t know? This Remembered Souls group member—what did that Israel think?

  If he found Peter through the group, he must have posted somewhere in this thread. I scroll back, reading post after post of people sharing stories of their deaths and other users replying with questions and guesses, like it’s all a big trivia game. I finally locate his post, written in May, a few weeks before school let out.

  IsC: I died in a car accident. There was a crash, and my car caught fire. I got trapped inside. I kept thinking of my wife, Lara, and son, Peter, who was sick and needed the medicine I was supposed to be picking up. Can anyone help me find who I was?

  If it weren’t for the fact that I recognize his description of the dream, I’d doubt Israel was the author. He never asked for help in his life.

  After a little back-and-forth about the details, a user replied to the post with a link to a death announcement for Randolph Ryerson, Peter’s father.

  The date the man died gives me vertigo. I dig my heels into the shingles so I don’t slide off the roof, and read the death announcement again and again. Each time I reread it, I’m convinced I’ll find a different date, that everyone is right and grief is pulling me apart, but those numbers are as clear as the three dolphins I saw. As clear as the date on my birth certificate.

  That man died in a car and became my brother. My brother crashed into the ocean and became a dolphin.

  Does that mean I’m someone too? That we all are? Even Luna, who I can hear whimpering on the other side of the window?

  I open the app’s inbox. My brother direct-messaged someone named OtherPlanes: I think I need your help. Please. I can’t keep dying every night in my sleep.

  Again, my brother, asking for help. He was hurting, and he never once turned to me.

  He was hurting, and, despite my twinsense, I didn’t know. How could I not know?

  I failed him.

  The thought feels like a chisel in my throat.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CASS

  Eight days after

  I DREAM THAT I’m flying a plane solo. I look out the front and side windows, trying to find our island, but I don’t see any land and I can’t tell what is sky or ocean. It’s all one terrifying, empty blue. The instruments mean nothing to me, and I don’t know what direction to head. Down, I think, is the only option. I’ve seen enough movies to know I push the handlebar-looking thing in front of me back as far as it goes. I feel the plane tip forward and gain momentum as it dives, my stomach in my throat.

  I jerk awake with tears running down my cheeks.

  When I emerge from my room, the air smells soothingly of syrup. My mom is in the kitchen, a spatula hovering above a hissing pan. Her fleece robe is knotted over baggy pajama pants.

  “Hi, sweetie pie. Do you want some pancakes?”

  I nod. “I’ll make coffee.”

  I scoop the beans into the grinder while she flips two pancakes onto plates and adds a pat of butter to each. “Have you worked on your college essay at all yet?” she asks.

  “No, Mom. Of course I haven’t.” I press down hard to grind the beans. How can I think about college again like everything is normal? What happened to it being okay to take time and space to grieve?

  “Maybe writing about him, about this, would be a good idea,” she says when I release the grinder.

  “I don’t want to get accepted to college because someone feels bad for me.”

  “I’m not saying that, Cass. I just wonder if maybe it will help you make meaning out of this.”

  “Meaning?” Heat rises in my cheeks. “There’s meaning behind Shane crashing into the ocean?”

  She nudges the plate of pancakes toward me. “I’m not saying out of his death. I mean out of his life. Out of yours.”

  I glare in response.

  “I know it’s hard, but it really could help. Just think about it, okay? And while you’re at it, one more idea to chew on: What about getting a summer job? Saving up for college?”

  “I just wanna coach volleyball camp again at the end of July. I promise I’ll save more this time.”

  She sighs. “It’s not just about the money, Cass. I think you’ll feel better to have some structure to your day. Something that lasts longer than a few weeks, you know?”

  “God, Mom, what is it with you today?” I know I’m shouting, but it feels good. “Stop giving me advice. I don’t want to feel better.”

  I want her to shout back at me, for us to drown the kitchen in noise, but I only get a look of concern. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

  “You always told me I should protect my heart above everything else, but I protected my heart above Shane’s and look how that turned out.” I’m crying again, remembering the day he picked me up from the tournament, how he curled inward, enfolded, like one of those slow-motion videos of a cocoon opening in reverse. Later, in the cafeteria when he called me a bitch, I realized the Shane who’d been cocooned away was the one I loved. The one who traced the veins up my wrist and cooked me imaginary food. The one who chased my laughter and kissed me like I was a queen.

  I turn on the faucet to fill the carafe, but my mom turns it back off. She spins me toward her and puts her hands on my cheeks so that I can’t help but look in her eyes.

  “You didn’t cause this, Cass. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I knew we’d eventually break up, and I didn’t want to be the first hurt, so I hurt him instead,” I say, only now realizing how true it is. I regarded the incident with Kendall as a minor tick on the ruler of my life, when, in actuality, it was a self-sabotaging cliff jump.

  I drop my gaze, but she taps the bottom of my chin with her finger, lifting it again. Tears sting the corners of my eyes, but she won’t let me look away. “When you have a hard practice, you hurt afterward, right? You feel weak and sore, but, eventually, your muscles grow stronger,” she says. “Hearts do too.”

 
Even if she’s right, there’s no way Shane’s heart could have rebounded and grown stronger when mine still hasn’t. I take a shuddering breath. “Fine, I’ll try to get a job as long as you leave me alone.”

  She smiles and mimes zipping up her lips and tossing away a key.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Adventure Pier movie theater seems like the most natural place for me to find a job. Izzy and I have spent so many weekend and summer days in the theater’s air-conditioned caverns when it was too hot for the beach. I can imagine myself in the same burgundy polo and gold-plated name tag as Janie and filling popcorn buckets beside her. A few weeks ago, just the idea would have made me uncomfortable.

  She’s at the ticket sales counter when I arrive. I stand in her line and smile when she waves me forward.

  “Hey,” I say. “Are you guys hiring?”

  She widens her eyes at my question, then shakes her head. “All the college kids are back, but maybe in the fall.”

  “Oh okay.” I try to mask my disappointment. “My mom wants me to find a job, but I’ll try somewhere else.”

  “Wait—I was going to text you. I scheduled and put down a deposit for our first lesson. It’s at five.”

  My stomach rockets to my feet with terror. It can’t be time to fly yet, right? There’s got to be things to learn about the physics of flight and the laws or something first. “What should I tell my mom?” I ask.

  She shrugs casually like escaping parents isn’t something she has to deal with. “I guess you could tell her you’re training for a job here.”

  I can hear the line behind me grumbling. The ticket seller next to Janie, a big guy I’ve seen at school, is watching us without really looking. I don’t blame him. We are an unlikely pair—the bitch who broke her beloved’s heart and the awkward girl who was a stranger to the boys who died. He can’t tell that we are the widows.