The Love That Split the World(8)
“Really? Because you sound like Stephen Hawking when he thinks something’s great.”
“That’s really mean, Nat,” Coco says flatly. “He can’t help that he sounds like that.”
“He doesn’t sound like that. His machine sounds like that. He could choose any voice he wants. It could sound like Morgan Freeman, if he wanted it to.”
“Could Matt get me on varsity if you guys got back together?” Jack says.
“Would you come home from college more often?” Coco says.
“That’s not how football tryouts work, Jack. More importantly, I’m not getting back together with Matt, and what the hell is making that sound?”
“The carburetor,” Jack says.
“He has no idea,” Coco says.
We park at the edge of the lot and make our way across the asphalt. There’s a slight breeze, but the humidity still has my hair and my dress clinging to every inch of me, and I’m hoping this night goes quickly so I can get back to the air conditioning.
I used to dream about this night.
We make our way down to the football field, whose bright white stadium lights beckon us like holy bug zappers. Parents have turned out in too-nice clothes, their formal wear too stifling for the heat, and have compensated for their inevitable body odor with too much cheeriness and zeal. I spot Rachel and the rest of the dance team just inside the chain link fence along the upper level, and they shriek and point and wave until I wave back and head over to them. Jack and Coco split off to find some of the freshmen from the football team and their popular girl friends and girlfriends to sit with.
“You guys look great,” I tell the Raiderettes. They’re performing tonight, so they’re dressed in full uniform and shimmering makeup, their hair slicked back in neat ponytails, their eyelashes impossibly long.
Rachel sticks out her bottom lip. “I wish you were dancing with us tonight. It’s still so weird to see you here out of uniform.”
“Yeah,” I stammer. “Pretty weird, but I needed the time to focus on school, and somehow you guys managed to plod on even without me in your back row. Anyway, good luck. Or break a leg. Or merde. Or just . . . whatever. Do some stuff, and do it well.”
I turn and make my way down the metal bleachers, and warm relief fills me when I spot Megan sitting at the edge of the girls’ soccer team. I go perch beside her. “Hi.”
“Hiiiiiiii,” she says, giving me a hug. “How are you?”
“Grandma’s in town.”
Her mouth drops open. “No way.”
I nod. I can trust Megan with Grandmother, because she’s the only one who really believes. More than anyone I’ve ever met, she believes in God and always has. And while God doesn’t talk to Megan quite how Grandmother talks to me, and our ideas of what God is aren’t identical, Megan didn’t bat an eye when I first told her my secret, because she believes in things that can’t be seen, and she loves me enough to think that if God were to appear on Earth, her best friend would obviously be the one It would appear to.
“Wow.” She gives me another quick squeeze. “Okay, you have to tell me everything.”
I nod again. The dance team is descending the bleachers in an even row, their poms behind their backs, elbows out to their sides, and chins held high. “I will,” I promise, “after Rachel shimmies us the meaning of life.”
And even as she does, there’s something magical hanging thick in the air tonight right alongside the humidity.
Maybe it’s the glow of the lights on the yellowing field or their glare on the bleachers. Maybe it’s the marching band in their white-feathered hats, all lined up to the left of the bright orange end zone, blaring out the fight song. They’re moving through the choreography like they’re all a little bit tipsy—not in a bad way. Like when Mom has a glass of red wine, how she walks with that sway. Normally she moves with perfectly upright posture, straight and aligned, as if she’s Miss October in the University of Kentucky Dance Team Calendar again, her pretty strawberry hair blown out around her by an off-camera fan.
But the wine makes her forget how to walk like that, or maybe she becomes just un-self-conscious enough to want to sway her hips. Either way, it’s nice, and the way the marching band’s playing the fight song, to no one but the home team, is kind of like that.
And all those feelings I forgot to feel today while I was at school, hugging people I’ve known forever and saying goodbye and promising to keep in touch, I’m feeling them now.
And then I think about Grandmother and how I may never see her again.
And I think about my front porch, and how many nights Megan and I sat out there when we were little, summer nights when we were sticky and dirty from playing, when Gus was just a puppy. All those evenings we played Ghosts in the Graveyard and tag with the neighborhood kids who went to St. Henry and St. Paul—and sometimes Matty, when his dad dropped him off after chores—until the sun dropped abruptly into the night.
And now I see fireflies in the grass down by the track that runs around the football field, and hovering around the hill sloping up the left side of the marching band—the very hill where I got my first kiss from Matt Kincaid, the quarterback himself, when we were in the eighth grade.
My eyelids are heavy, and the fight song is growing slower and slower, until suddenly, I must drift off, because there’s that abrupt falling sensation right through my middle, and then everything is gone.