Ground, Sky, Ground

I was in the crosswalk, waving to Amanda. I’d emailed her out of the blue. We agreed to meet in the park despite the black ice forecast; somehow we arrived at the exact same time. She was on the other side of the street, holding a bulging tote bag—baguette peeking out, a giant poinsettia bouncing as she rocked side to side. 

The straps looked ready to pop, and I thought it must hurt, to carry so much. I wanted to tell her to switch shoulders, to even out the weight. But I didn’t. My hand hovered in the air, like underwear flapping on the line. 

“Long time, no see,” I said. 

“The Amandas, still at it,” she said, stepping off the curb. 

“God, don’t bring that up.” I punched the air.  

“Where’ve you been?” 

“Where have you been?” 

She didn’t answer. Just kicked one leg high above her head and bent her lips into a long, contorted O. Suddenly, I imagined we were twelve again, side by side in front of her bedroom mirror. Britney blared through the speakers, and we gyrated our hips in unison, Amanda’s jerking right, mine going left. She grabbed her rainbow sequined hairbrush and raised it to her mouth, like she was about to kiss it. 

I traced the circle of her lips with my eyes—that perfect, flirty O she practiced in front of all the boys at school. Without thinking, I leaned in, until I could taste the Bubblicious on her breath. Our cheeks touched, warm on warm. In the mirror, we were one body, sharing a mic. Her hand slipped to my waist, her fingers grazing the waistband of my jeans. I held my breath, willing time to stop. 

Then she shoved me—so hard, I fell to the ground.

The next week, she called me a dyke in front of the boys. 

By Friday, I was eating lunch in a bathroom stall. 

And now, here we were, a decade later, meeting in a crosswalk. She’d kicked her leg so high, I could see the soft crotch of her jeans. I pushed my lips into an O like hers, our middle school act revived. My way of saying the long freeze was over. 

But then I heard it, the N in front of her O, her mouth stretched into an endless tunnel. Through it came a glacial January gust, hollowing me from the inside out. I felt the ground shudder, a low thunder climbing my legs. 

A bus followed, slamming me to the pavement. 

My hip was the first to go—the blunt smash of a bat to a pillow. Shock rippled up my side. I saw my leg kick into the air. For a moment, I thought it had cleaved off, until I felt it dragging beneath me. A horn blared in sync with a crack, like a tree split by lightning. 

Then my head snapped sideways, and I was looking at the sky. Amanda turned too, the flowers flying from her bag like darts. I felt sorry I couldn’t reach to catch them. My chest folded, my ribs an accordion squeezing out a groan. I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl, organs pressed to my back, jolting with each revolution. My feet lifted, and I rocketed upward, a kite cut loose.

Something brushed my cheek. Amanda’s hand, I thought, until I saw the red petals clinging to my skin, light as breath. So many petals, weightless, blotting out the sun. And then Amanda’s voice, coming from the curb, the sky, the hollow of my ribs. 

“Took you long enough,” she said, hoisting her bag as if nothing had happened. The flowers, the baguette, were neatly tucked inside, as if someone had pressed rewind. Time had stopped. Sound too. 

“Any guesses why?” My words drifted above our heads in balloons—red, yellow, purplish blue. Amanda grabbed a string and pulled one down, popping it with her nail: inside, the word why, fluttering like a moth. She waved it off, flicking its wings.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked, feigning ignorance. There were so many reasons, and none at all. A storm, I said. A work emergency. I gave birth to a child. Easier to blame the weather, a baby, than to give truth shape. 

“Let’s just eat,” I said, nodding at her bag. 

“We could start over,” she said. 

“Go back to being the double A’s?” I asked. 

“Right.” She started to say more, then stopped. Her hand reached into her pocket. 

“It’s the note you gave me in middle school,” she said, handing me a folded triangle of paper. The creases were hard, the pencil almost worn away. I unfolded it slowly, smoothing it against my thigh. 

“I can’t make it out,” I said. And it was true. There was my sharp slant and those embarrassing, loopy l’s that looked like cartoon eyes. But the letters, while sharp, were feral, running off the page as soon as I tried to corral them into words. 

Amanda plucked the paper from my hand. 

“It says ‘I—’” Her voice receded, like a train hurtling down a track. Something flashed in her, a cross between disgust and pleasure. 

Then time lurched into motion again. There was the bus horn, clashing with sirens, with wails, with my mother’s soft cry the day I told her I liked girls.

I looked at Amanda. She was sprawled beside me now, her bag nowhere to be seen, her hair spilled loose on the asphalt.

Above us, a seagull wheeled and cried, impossibly far from home. 

“My bag—” she said.

“love—” I said, remembering the word I wrote next. 

Our words collided, braiding for an instant before unraveling into noise. For a moment, we were the Amandas, joined above space and time, transcendent, hips swaying, mics to our mouths, ready to fly. She rounded her lips into that perfect O. I shaped mine to match. The two of us stayed like that, mouths open, listening to the sirens all around.