18
The graveyard thing made us different with each other.
You know how there’s an invisible threshold you cross when you like someone where you go from just friends to something else? I don’t know what the something else is, and even though technically Sam and I are still just friends—if that, if we’re speaking on a technicality—the proxemics would imply there’s been a shift.
The standard interpersonal distance for talking and interacting with friends is one and a half to four feet, but Sam and I now don’t tend to be farther than one foot apart from one another whenever we can help it.
That sounds so sterile, I know, but actually it isn’t. It’s sort of romantic, because when someone’s standing that close to you, it reduces your vision field around you, which means you have to rely on your other senses, like smell and touch.
When we get home, Oliver isn’t there yet, which means Vi must have taken him shopping, or maybe he’s found a cute boy. I hope he finds a cute boy, because then we both have, and Oliver can fall in love with him, and I can run away with Sam, and Dad’s funeral won’t be just a depression spiral waiting to happen.
I’m not even fully sure how it happens, it just sort of does—I guess we were walking down by the lake or something, but Sam and I end up in the SS Avoidance .
It’s just sitting there, floating by the dock, and I’ve never even been on the boat with anyone but Oliver because it was a rule we had when we were teenagers—that we wouldn’t because it was just ours, but Oliver’s not here, and he’s broken that rule himself a couple of times.
So me and Sam, we don’t row out into the water; we just lie there next to each other, staring at the sky from the floor of the boat, which is tied to the dock so it can’t go anywhere. I hope that isn’t a metaphor for me and Sam.
I also wonder why he hasn’t kissed me.
Our proximity is appropriate for a nonawkward kiss, and he’s wanted to before, I could tell—but now he has me lying down in a boat and he’s just looking at the clouds?
“Do you believe in heaven?” Sam asks the sky.
I glance over at him. “Yeah.”
He looks at me, surprised. “Really?”
I nod. “Really.”
He props himself up on his elbows. “So you believe in God?”
“Yeah.” I copy his posture. “Don’t you?”
He looks at me dubiously. “No.”
I frown a little. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” He scratches his head, thinking. “I just—some things don’t add up, you know? Like, he’s supposed to be this big God of love or fucking whatever and then he sends everyone to hell if they don’t believe in him?”
And his eyes look sad, and I know we’re talking about his mom now.
“I think your mom’s in heaven,” I tell him.
He flicks his eyes, amused and maybe a little caught. “She was a Buddhist.” He gives me a weak shrug. “She doesn’t fit the bill.”
I squint at him because it’s all I can do to keep myself from touching him. If I look at him properly, I’ll have to touch him, I’ll just have to; he’s too beautiful not to. “I think in the Bible, the point is that Jesus paid the bill.”
“What about all that repenting shit? And you’ve got to whatever through Jesus to get into heaven.”
I snort a laugh.
“What?” He frowns playfully.
“You’ve never been this vague or ineloquent about any topic ever.”
He sniffs a laugh.
“Here’s what I think.” And I sit up to tell him. “People read the Bible wrong. It’s a diary of normal people, like us, from thousands of years ago, trying to make sense of the God they’d heard of from their ancestors. They didn’t write it for us to read it now. And I think people read it without the true social or historical context, and they bring their own instead.”
Sam watches me, listening.
“That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.”
I glance at Sam, and there’s a hint of a little smile on his face.
“And I don’t think they’re not letting your mom into heaven because she didn’t believe in the God that modern Christianity claims to represent. I think he’s good.” I shrug. “And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.”
Sam purses his mouth and nods once. “Your God sounds pretty cool, I guess.”