Above Bone

Ryann drives us to St. Beth's the night after the full moon.  If her plan works, I’m driving us back even though I won’t be sixteen for another month.  I don’t like breaking laws, but she promises it’ll be okay.  Just don’t speed, Jer, and we won’t get caught.  I’ll try, but sometimes I can’t help it when I’m nervous.We step out of the car and she arches her head backwards to look at the sky.  Her neck curves like the white underbelly of a snake, and I trace the movement of her spit as she swallows.  It’s a very kissable neck.  She looks at me and smiles because the moon is still on our side.    The cemetery is actually St. Elizabeth’s, but only the nuns call it that.  Everyone else sticks with St. Beth’s, like our town is on nickname basis with the saint.  Everyone except for Ryann.  Let’s go to Beth’s, she will say, like the graveyard is actually a person’s house with a pool or something cool.  The moon is bright, but its light catches in the willows as we weave our way through darkness.  We don’t mind because we know every foot of the graveyard.  Gravel crunches beneath our feet, but we’re much lighter than the cars that carry the dead.  We go there every night when it’s warm.  It’s ours, Ryann will whisper as we lie between the graves and hide from the living.  Then she will roll on her side and kiss me, soft, like she’s afraid her lips might burn.  We stop at the pump so Ryann can drink from the well.  I take my place next to the rusty arm and start pushing, counting each stroke.  Ryann cups her hands beneath the spigot.  By thirteen, the first trickle falls.  By fifteen, a stream pours into her palms.Her hands scoop water into her mouth.  I keep pushing the lever until she takes a step backwards.  She swallows the last mouthful and then lets out this great breath that reminds me of a tiger.  The skin around her mouth gleams in the faint light.  If I kiss her now she will taste like iron.  She steps close to me and squeezes my arm.  It’s how she says thank you when her mouth is full of other thoughts.  Walking through the cemetery, the zippers on her backpack jingle like loose change.  She’s moving fast, but she pauses before a headstone.  It’s beautiful when your girlfriend takes time for your favorite grave.  It belongs to Francis “Fitz” Williams who was only fifteen when he died.  I know I should be sad because he died too soon, but I’m not.  I don’t think anyone can die too soon.  I don’t think anyone can die too anything.  At my sister’s funeral, everyone kept saying she died too young, my aunt mouthing the words as they lowered the coffin.  Yeah, she died young, but she sure as hell didn’t die too young.  That makes it sound like she didn’t die right, like it was somehow her fault.     I really love that whoever made the headstone included “Fitz” instead of just Francis.  It makes him seem real, like he actually lived and burped and turned around when peopled yelled Hey Fitz! at lunch.  The “Fitz” reminds me that he wasn’t always a grave, which is easy to forget if you spend enough time in a cemetery.I also like Fitz’s grave more than my sister’s because it doesn’t make me feel like complete shit.When my sister died last summer, Ryann and I started visiting her.  We never used to hang out in St. Beth’s, but now I can’t imagine life without the graveyard.  We wouldn’t do all that much when we came.  We’d write her letters and buried them in the dirt.  We’d scatter skittles on the ground because she used to love them.  Other times, we spent hours without saying a word.  Just the two of us, lying above bone, stuck in the place between thought and sleep.   The more time I spent at her grave, the shittier I felt.  Not because she was dead, but because of the rose.  It’s carved on the headstone right next to her name.  It’s very cliché.  I know because I counted and there are 57 other roses in St. Beth’s.  57 other roses exactly the same as my sister, which is so wrong because she was an individual.  At least, that’s what my mom called her after she dyed her hair purple in eleventh grade.  She didn’t care about things like other people did.  She said things that would make adults shake their heads, as if they were saying no, she’s not my child.  She was never mean, she just spoke the truth.  I guess the truth is hard to swallow from a girl with purple hair.When I told her about my first kiss with Ryann, she hugged me really tight and drove us to get ice cream.  She let me talk about it for the whole ride.  She took it all in, laughing at the points that she was supposed to.  Like when I told her I had completely missed Ryann’s face and kissed her ear at first.  At the shop, she ordered us two cherry cones because we were feeling fruity.  Two weeks after she died, my mom took me shopping for gravestones.  She wanted the whole family—the new whole family—to make the decision together and feel closure.  As though decorating her grave was like signing a contract accepting she was gone.  My mom picked out the rose and asked me if I liked it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it Jer?  I nodded my head while staring at the ground.  I didn’t want to see her cry again.  Not in the middle of a gravestone shop, at least.  Then people would know the truth, and they wouldn’t believe that we just liked looking at headstones because they were pretty.  I didn’t know how many other mothers and brothers had also chosen a rose.  If I had, I would have forced my mom to choose a guitar instead.  Something cool, something for an individual.  Anything but a rose, so people in fifty years won’t see her as another overused headstone.Ryann grabs my sleeve and pulls me towards the back of the cemetery where everything is old.  The ground isn’t artificially flat like the newer sections.  It’s rough and filled with character, roots slithering along the dirt like fossilized snakes.  There are more trees because old dead people liked nature more than new dead people.We stop in front of the Virgin’s grave.  We call it that because Colligi Virgo Rosas are the only words on the whole tombstone.  Ryann told me that it’s Latin for something nice about being young.  Still, I wouldn’t want virgin in any language plastered over my bones for eternity.  Unless it was a sarcastic kind of virgin, like a clearly he wasn’t a virgin kind of virgin.  I’d be okay with that because then I’d be a grave with a sense of humor.   Ryann grabs my hand.  It feels warm and nervous, like holding a guinea pig.  I turn towards her, but she keeps staring at the grave in a way that looks beyond loneliness.  Like she doesn’t even know anyone else exists.We used to think it was strange that the Virgin was buried without a name.Then we found out she was a witch, and it kind of made sense.Ryann heard the sound a few weeks ago.  We were walking around the old graves when she suddenly placed a finger against my lips.  I remember because it smelled like fresh polish.  Shh, she whispered, and I shushed.  Ryann doesn’t ask for much, so when she does it’s more like getting a present than a burden.  I didn’t hear anything, but she started walking towards this one grave.  She sank to her knees and placed her head against the dirt, her little butt sticking up in the air as though mocking God.Do you hear it? she whispered.  I placed my ear against earth and heard the flames for the first time.  My head sprang from the ground, but Ryann stayed put, as though she was cold and wanted to feel the heat.  It sounds like fucking fire, she said in a voice that sounded like ice.  I put my head back against the dirt.  Blades of grass tickled the hollow of my ear, but I couldn’t hear anything.  I stayed there for a few minutes and was about to pull away when I heard the noise again.  It crackled like flame, as though someone was popping bags of potato chips just a few feet beneath the earth.  We stayed there all night, listening to the flames, afraid it would disappear as soon as we left because good things never last around us. We got ice cream the next day, and Ryann talked the whole time. She’s gotta be a witch, Jer.  Why else would it sound like fire?  She must have been burned alive or something.  It’s a sign and you can’t tell anyone about it.  This is my chance.  She’s still got magic in her bones.  Hi, we’ll have two cones, both cherry.  In the graveyard, the backpack falls from Ryann’s shoulders like ice calving from a glacier.  She gets down on her knees and listens for the fire.  After a few seconds, she whispers something, but it’s lost in the darkness between us.We unpack the bag.  Ryann lights a match and jabs it into the belly of a lantern.  The light expands as far as it can, painting her cheeks and forehead yellow.  I grab the toad jar, its inhabitant pushing against the glass walls like a magician suddenly trapped within her own devise.  Ryann hands me the rope, and I place it on the ground for later.  A knife gleams in the dim light.After everything is in order, we find our way to silence.  She looks at me with those eyes that know me better than any others.  She extends a hand.    “Ready?” she asks, soft as thought. “Yeah,” I reply, even though I’m not.   She leans in so close that I can see the ridges in her teeth.  “Kiss me.”Our lips touch, and hers are strong and rougher than mine.  They were the same the first time we kissed.  I hold on to the feeling because they might be different tomorrow. Ryann gets back to her feet and sheds her clothes.  Her torso glows like a distant star against the darkness.  She stands naked with her arms extended and her head tilted back so that her hair hangs down like burning wheat.And then she does this thing that I know I’ll remember forever.  She smiles. This big, toothy grin directed at the moon.“It’s going to work, Jer.”  She’s still facing the moon.  “I can feel it.” She lies down and I tie her hands behind her head like she tells me to do.  I struggle opening the jar.  Ryann screwed it on when she caught the toad this morning.  I’d ask her to help, but her hands are tied.  I keep twisting until it finally pops off.  I grab the toad tight within my hand and pee drips into my palm.  I don’t look at it too long because that will make things harder.  My knife slices the toad’s belly and organs ooze out like a jelly donut.  It smells swampy and hot, and the legs twitch between my hands.  Each time a webbed foot brushes against my palm I feel guiltier on the inside.  “Ready?” Ryann asks, and I nod in response.  Anything to stop thinking about the dying thing in my hand.   I turn the toad over and open the wound onto her chest.  When it’s empty, I throw the carcass as far away as I can.  My hands fall to Ryann’s body, and I smear blood and guts on her pecs.  Her chest feels hard, the sinewed muscles tense from excitement.  My fingers swirl the blood into circles radiating around her tiny nipples, lingering on her boy body for one last time.  I drag the thick liquid down to her crotch, the spot she hates so much.  Blood covers the hatred. “I bet I look fantastic,” she says with a smirk.  She sounds nervous, but it’s still amazing when your girlfriend can makes jokes while she’s covered in toad.  “Is everything set?”I nod, glancing at the ingredients that stand in a row.She closes her eyes, and her face turns into prayer.  Not that she’s praying.  She hasn’t believed in God for years.  There’s just something about her that’s divine.  Her eyelids are so smooth, little flaps of wrinkleless skin as timeless as the sky.  She starts the spell with a whisper, the words memorized since she was eleven.  I wait in silence for my cue.“With knife still wet from sister toad,cut into flesh and catch what flows.”I take the knife and gently slice along the side of her stomach.  Her blood appears at the tip of my blade like ink to a pen.  She keeps talking, but I hear pain in her voice.  She wants this, I tell myself to stop the tears from falling.  I pick up a vial from the ground and place the opening alongside her wound.  Blood runs down her side and into the glass.  I hold it there until the flow turns into a trickle.  The vial is a third full.“Then comes the rain that falls from sky,and changes seeds to maples high.” I open a bottle of rain water and pour it into the vial.  Clear tentacles creep into the base layer of blood.  “At last, above our sister’s bone, To potion, add her magic loam, Then mind and body will atone.”  My hand rips a hole in the grass so that I can reach the dirt.  It’s damp between my fingers, and I fill the rest of the vial with it.  The spell is cast, and Ryann stops speaking.  I place my palm over the opening of the tube and violently shake it.  Her blood feels warm each time it sloshes against my hand.When the potion is mixed, I show it to Ryann.  “I’m ready,” she says.  I know she's never been anything else.  “Make sure I swallow all of it.  Otherwise, it’s for nothing.”Neither of us move.  It’s one of those moments when everything around you feels important and every breath feels heavy.  I look into her face and want to tell her that she doesn’t have to do this.  That I don’t care either way.  That a pronoun switch and an extra n is good enough. I stay silent because the words feel traitorous even inside my mind.  Nothing will change unless she does.  The boys will keep pulling down her pants in the locker room, slapping her ass like they own it.  The teachers will keep ignoring the jeers that sail across the classroom when their backs are turned.  Her father will continue beating her when she accidentally crosses her legs at dinner, his fists slamming into all the places that hide her bruises from everyone but me.   I lean over her body and cradle the back of her head.  The potion feels impossibly heavy in my hand.  Her eyes beam against the darkness, greedy to find out what it’s like to see the world through the right body.  But her breath quickens as I bring the vial towards her mouth, and I know that she’s just as scared me.  Scared that it won’t work.  Scared that if it does she won’t be enough of the same.I tilt the shaft so the dark liquid can drip into her mouth.  She swallows the first half in silence.  I watch her throat strain as it carries the potion into her stomach.  After it goes down, she gasps for air.  Sweat breaks over her face, and I lean in to kiss away the tears that leak from one of her eyes.  “Not as much this time,” she whispers, and I bring the vial back to her lips.  Her neck bulges with muscle, and she emits a little moan.  I whisper to remind her that she’s not alone. She’s writhing on the ground, and I’m forced to straddle her torso to keep her calm.  “We can stop,” I tell her.She shakes her head.  “No Jer, we can’t.”She opens her mouth once more and I pour the remainder of the sludge.  She tries to swallow, but it stops moving halfway down her throat.  Her head jerks, and I know the vomit is coming. “I’m sorry,” I whisper as my hands close over her mouth.  She wants this.  But it doesn’t stop the tears this time.  She fights to break free, but I hold her steady.  The vomit feels hot and guilty against my palms.  Sickness must be pooling in her mouth because she starts screaming beneath my hands. Her eyes roll backwards, and for a second her hair looks purple.  This is what she told me to do, but everything in my body wants to let her breathe.  I have to make her swallow, but what if she changes her mind and can’t tell me?  I suddenly want my sister more than any time since her death.   She always knew what to do.  She could calm me down when I wanted to punch the entire town at once, and could drag me from my bed on days that it felt like there was no point ever getting up again.  But my sister is here—she just can’t help anymore.  There are only two living people in St. Beth’s, and one of them is choking beneath my hands.   “Ryann, it’s okay,” I cry, my tears falling onto her face because I can’t brush them away with my hands.  “You’re so close,” I whisper to both of us.  Then I feel the bite.  My hand burns in pain and I fall backwards.  She rolls onto her side and hurls her dreams onto the grass.  For a few minutes, I stay perfectly still.  She shakes on the grass and throws up again.  She keeps puking till she’s hollow on the inside.  She curls into an impossibly small ball, head turned into her stomach.  When she finds her voice between the tears, she howls into her body. I want to go wrap myself around her so that we can become one.  To multiply our pain into something that matters.  I think about those satellites that can detect a person’s heat all the way from space.  If they made one that measures pain, we’d be a brilliant burst of red.   She’s not ready for me, though.  She’s been shot and needs time to figure out what’s missing.  I walk over to my sister’s grave and curl into a ball to see if it helps.   I’ll spend the night here because I don’t think I can drive back.   I don’t think I can do much of anything.  Even sleep seems impossibly long.  My sister’s rose watches over me, and for once I’m glad it’s cliché.  I’m glad it’s normal and pretty.  I put my ear against the earth and am comforted by silence.