Chapter 19: Skylar

Skylar,

Being pregnant sucks. I thought the nausea would go away, but after three months it’s only gotten worse. I try to keep my eyes on the prize, tell myself that soon I’ll have a BABY and all the puking, mood swings, and exhaustion will have been worth it. Because eventually I’ll have an amazing family of my own.

Mitch is adorable. He can’t stop talking about baby names, and how he’s going to teach it baby sign language, and how he’s going to order a pair of baby skis. Great, right? I probably shouldn’t admit this, even to you, but his excitement annoys me. Sometimes I look at him and wonder who he is. Do I even know the guy that I’m having a baby with?

I suppose it’s natural to have this sort of anxiety?

Ski season must be underway in Colorado by now. I get mixed up sometimes, being south of the equator. Here in Santiago, Mitch is taking his summer classes and I’m back to running adventure tours with Magda. I don’t go zip-lining or climbing like I did last summer, but I do whatever I can, whenever I’m feeling up to it.

Win some tournaments for me!

Love always,

Jo Beth.

It was morning when I read Jo Beth’s email. I had a full day ahead: class, ski practice, and my literary club meeting that evening. But now I had bigger things to think about. In a way, this email was worse than the paranoid, Mitch and Magda want to hurt me sort of email that Jo Beth had been sending lately. Jo Beth’s departure into subtlety made her sound bad, like Daisy Buchanan bad, like next she’d start insisting that the best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool. And I was too far away to help.

I typed out a quick reply:

Jo Beth,

Have you seen a doctor about the nausea? Maybe there’s a remedy.

Please don’t push yourself with the adventure tours, and don’t worry so much about Mitch. You don’t have to stay with him, you know. You can come home any time. We could live together in your condo like the old days, and I’d help you with the baby.

Think about it.

Love you…

Sky

“You want Jo Beth to move back home?” Gavin stood over my shoulder, reading my email. I slapped my laptop shut.

“It’s rude to spy on people.”

“Sorry.” He yawned and headed for the kitchen, where he started to brew a pot of coffee. I got up and stood in the doorway.

“How’d you sleep?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. I closed my eyes, tried to relax, let my mind drift a little…”

“Ha ha. Very funny.” This wasn’t the first time Gavin had made this joke, and I had never found it very clever.

“Okay, okay,” he said, smiling. Gavin ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up slightly. “Fine. Your old bed is really comfortable…”

“That’s good.”

“… and I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I appreciate your letting me sleep here, but that bed would have been even better with you in it.”

I wasn’t sure whether to smile or to scowl. Gavin was always around; he’d come over nearly every evening and we’d watch TV or he’d read while I studied or wrote. Lots of times he would cook me dinner, but usually he left by nine because he had to be up at four. He kept a baker’s hours, after all.

Today was his day off, so last night was different. We watched Twilight and agreed that Kristen Stewart was way too twitchy. Yet the romantic movie must have affected us both, because when it ended, Gavin used the remote to click it off and immediately lunged forward, pinning me down on the couch and pressing into me. We made out for a while, removing clothing that had always remained intact during our previous make out sessions.

I was panting when I pushed him away. “It’s late,” I said. “You should probably go.”

Gavin smiled in his subtle, gentle way. His voice was subtle and gentle too. “Or, I could stay.”

Part of me wanted to say yes. But I couldn’t lose my virginity to Gavin; I’d only be proving him right when he realized how inexperienced and ignorant I was. I had to sleep with someone else first, before I slept with him.

“No, you should go.”

“But it’s snowing.” Gavin pointed towards the window. I looked in the direction of his finger and saw that he was right. Big, powdery flakes were falling, like the earth had some serious dandruff.

“Wow! That’s going to make great powder. I can’t wait for skiing tomorrow!”

Gavin placed his fingers underneath my chin and lightly pushed my face toward him, so I was looking him in the eye. “Please, Sky? Let me stay.”

He was shirtless, as was I. I couldn’t imagine going out in the cold but I could imagine us crawling into bed, clinging to each other, creating our own brand of heat. I let him kiss me and then his hands were doing crazy nice things and I was about to say yes, please stay, when he stuck his tongue in my ear. Had Edward-the-vampire ever stuck his tongue in Bella’s ear? I thought not. In fact, I doubted that in all the cheesy romance novels with covers that featured a shirtless man with a killer six-pack, that ever once had the hero shoved his tongue into his lady-love’s ear.

I mean, in what world is that sexy?

I wriggled away, grabbed my shirt, covered myself, and stood. “Gavin, I have a busy day tomorrow, so I think I’ll go to bed. If you don’t want to drive home in the snow, you can sleep in my old bedroom.”

His disheartened sigh was straight out of The Old Man and the Sea, but to be fair, Gavin had been shot down by me a million times already. “Sure.”

Now, this morning, as I stood in my kitchen, watching him make coffee, seeing him comfortable in nothing but boxer shorts and a t-shirt, I realized that unlike Jo Beth with Mitch, I could be confident that with Gavin there would never be any surprises.

Yet, life without surprises was like a story without suspense.

“I have to get going,” I said, completely evading his comment about last night, sure that he wouldn’t press things. “Can you let yourself out?”

He nodded. “Sure. See you later?”

“Maybe.”

Later at ski practice I raced down the mountain, flying around and over the moguls that I’d come to love, while in my mind anticipating the competition coming up this weekend. Our coach, Billy, thought I had a good chance of winning in several categories.

When I got to the bottom of the run he was there, stopwatch in hand. “Excellent, Skylar! That was your best time yet.”

I removed my goggles and steadied my breathing. After finishing a run, it always took me a moment to return to earth. “Really? When I snagged an edge at the beginning of the course I worried that I’d slowed myself down.”

“Nope.” Billy showed me my time on his stopwatch. He was right. Not bad.

Then Billy and I competed for the broadest grin. “Have you thought about the Olympic trials?” he asked.

I stared at him, confused. “I’m not my sister.”

“But you’re an amazing skier in your own right. I think you have a fair shot at the team.” Billy patted me on my shoulder, which had the effect of brushing snow off my parka. “Think about it,” he said. “If you decide you’re interested, we can talk more.”

I did think about it. I thought about the Olympics all day, making Gavin, Jo Beth, and every other concern of mine melt like snow underneath a strong winter sun. But I could feel the puddles in my brain, dripping down and icing over, and nothing functioned right because there was too much going on. And to top things off, I had Literary Club that evening.

Literary Club met twice a month. Every two weeks we read a classic novel and then we’d each try to write something with a similar tone. This week’s pick was Catcher in the Rye. Since I was determined to finish my novel, my writing exercises always became a chapter in the continuing story of Mary, the governess and secret serial killer who had a nasty habit of murdering the lord of each manor right after she fell in love with him. Thanks to the influence of Literary Club, each increment was written in a different style. One week, Mary sounded like George Elliot, the next week, she resembled Kurt Vonnegut. My heroine wasn’t just a sociopath; she was also entirely schizophrenic.

And that evening, when it was my turn to read my chapter, I was as scattered as Salinger’s Franny Glass in the midst of her existential meltdown. I suppose that was appropriate as I read my Catcher in the Rye knock-off, clearing my throat, trying to keep both my voice and hands from shaking.

“Yesterday at breakfast, Mrs. Hampstead served oatmeal, and it was the lumpiest, most tasteless glop I’d ever eaten. Ten times worse than what I was served as a child at the orphanage. It reminded me of Sunday mornings, knowing I would be made to sit in a hard-wooden pew for hours, underdressed in my thin coat, shivering beneath the drafty air and the reverend’s watchful eye. I could barely stomach the glop, and then you came down. You sat, smiling and amiable as hell. You lapped up the oatmeal and praised Mrs. Hampstead on her cooking, and all the while you refused to meet my sad gaze. Could you sense the danger? Did you understand that I am the black widow?

It took you only a moment to finish breakfast, and then you disappeared behind those insincere walls and we were once more separated.

You drive me mad. I am so depressed I might literally go crazy. I hate goddam Chamberlin and every insincere molecule that comprises it. But most of all, I hate this urge to kill whatever or whoever it is that I love.

Because sure as sin, you’re next.

I lowered my pages and waited for people to respond. There was a collective pause, and then Anna, the most outspoken member of our group, chimed in. “It’s like J.D Salinger hijacked a Brontë novel.”

I half smiled. “Is that good or bad? Because I was just trying to fit with the style.”

Anna shrugged. “It’s interesting. At least she has passion. But I’d be worried about maintaining a consistent voice.”

I knew that would be the criticism, but how could I maintain a consistent voice when I hadn’t even found my own voice yet? I constantly found myself thinking with leftover nuggets from classic authors and I understood that any cleverness I had was borrowed, just like my skiing notoriety was simply a castaway from Jo Beth.

“Do you have suggestions for how I can be consistent?” I asked.

“Get rid of all the adjectives and adverbs,” said Kent, another member of our group. Deleting all the modifiers was always his answer for everything.

“Okay, but is Mary compelling, or do you just find her crazy?” I asked.

Anna’s subtle little eye roll was not lost on me. “I mean, it’s a romance novel. Aren’t the heroines, by definition, crazy?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Is the search for true love ever marked by sanity, or will it always end in either a loss of self, or a loss of life?”

There was uncomfortable laughter, like I’d inadvertently insulted someone’s religion, politics, or both. Then Anna took out her piece and just started reading. It was some literary mumbo jumbo about cats and the apocalypse and everyone loved it, yet they went ahead and dissected all its intricacies, because Anna wants to get it published by this fiction journal that nobody, except for the authors and the authors’ mothers, will ever read.

After the meeting was over and I was in the safety of my car, I nearly banged my head against the steering wheel. What did I think would happen, that the group would love my piece, that they would get it, that they would get me? It didn’t matter, not really, but if I can’t even fit into the literary crowd here in Black Diamond, what chance did I have at Cornell? I put the key in the ignition and headed home. No; I headed to my sister’s home. The place still belonged to Jo Beth, and most nights I could feel that the walls, floors, and furniture missed her. I missed her too.

When I walked through her door, glanced at my phone, and saw that Gavin had texted, wanting to come over, I texted back.

Not tonight.

If I couldn’t be with Jo Beth, it was better to be alone.