The Sky Above Us Read online

  Also by Natalie Lund

  We Speak in Storms

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Lund.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780525518044

  Edited by Liza Kaplan.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Dana Li

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Natalie Lund

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Janie

  Chapter Two: Cass

  Chapter Three: Izzy

  Transcript: Interview with Isabela Castillo

  Chapter Four: Izzy

  Chapter Five: Janie

  Chapter Six: Cass

  Remembered Souls Forum: Gulf Coast

  Chapter Seven: Israel

  Chapter Eight: Nate

  Chapter Nine: Shane

  Chapter Ten: Izzy

  Chapter Eleven: Janie

  Chapter Twelve: Nate

  Remembered Souls Forum: Gulf Coast

  Chapter Thirteen: Israel

  Chapter Fourteen: Shane

  Chapter Fifteen: Nate

  Email Thread

  Chapter Sixteen: Izzy

  Chapter Seventeen: Cass

  Chapter Eighteen: Janie

  Video

  Chapter Nineteen: Nate

  Chapter Twenty: Israel

  Chapter Twenty-One: Shane

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Shane

  Transcript: Interview with Victoria Castillo

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Izzy

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Izzy

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Cass

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Janie

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Cass

  Remembered Souls Forum: Gulf Coast

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Shane

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Nate

  Chapter Thirty: Israel

  Chapter Thirty-One: Shane

  Janie’s Notebook: The Eulogy I Wanted to Write

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Janie

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Izzy

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Cass

  Secure Message Thread

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Nate

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Israel

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Shane

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Nate

  Remembered Souls Forum: Gulf Coast

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Janie

  Chapter Forty: Izzy

  Chapter Forty-One: Cass

  Chapter Forty-Two: Izzy

  Secure Message Thread

  Chapter Forty-Three: Shane

  Chapter Forty-Four: Nate

  Chapter Forty-Five: Israel

  Chapter Forty-Six: Nate

  Cass’s College Application Essay Draft

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Cass

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Janie

  Aviation Accident Preliminary Report

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Israel

  Chapter Fifty: Cass

  Chapter Fifty-One: Nate

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Shane

  Voice Memos: Deleted

  Chapter Fifty-Three: Izzy

  Chapter Fifty-Four: Shane, Nate, Israel

  Epilogue: Janie

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  FOR THE WOLVES,

  WHO ALWAYS HEAR

  CHAPTER ONE

  JANIE

  The day of

  THE SUN BREAKS over the horizon, glistening off the Gulf. It’s the only time the Gulf manages to look beautiful, to shake off her muddy cloak and stand, broad and shining. The summer party ended hours ago, but nearly twenty of us are still here, sprawled across the beach like seals. Warmed by the new sun, scratching the sand out of our scalps. In the breeze, empty beer cans skitter toward the ocean and a few more of us wake.

  I woke near Cass and Izzy—though not with them. They try to pretend they like me for more than just my supply of weed, occasional free snacks at the movie theater where I work, and rides in my Honda hatchback, but we all know that’s not true.

  When I try to sit, the world spins and I taste stomach acid in my throat. I watch the sky instead, the sand cold and hard against my back. The tide is out, the waves a distant hiss. Beside me, Cass sits, brushes sand from her skin, and squeezes her bronze curls. She reminds me of the palms, tall and curveless but wild on top. Izzy is on her stomach with her arms stretched above her head and her legs straight out, sleeping. Awake, she’s so careful to stack herself like a model—chest up, shoulders back, hands on hips, ankles crossed—that it’s strange to see her free-falling, a skydiver.

  The newly risen sun disappears behind a cloud and the world turns gray and lavender, transforming our beach into something from a war—the dead and injured strewn as far as the eye can see. Izzy, the corpse. Cass, the mad. Me, the paralyzed. In the shadows, the ocean returns to her muddy brown. Adventure Pier, a mile to the southwest, has been cast in black—the Ferris wheel, roller coaster, and pirate ship now silhouettes.

  Somewhere above the beach, we hear the hum of a prop plane, distant at first but growing louder and louder. It’s too early for the planes that tow banners across the sky, and this plane sounds like it is flying far too low. I tilt my chin up and look to the seawall behind us as the plane clears it. There are gasps. There is scrambling. Izzy shouts Cass’s name. I watch the white underbelly of the plane, lift my hand as though I’ll be able to skim it with my fingers. And then it is over us, over the flat expanse of beach, the scuttling crabs, the sand-bedded mussels, the skipping gulls.

  I rub my eyes, forgetful of the sand, and then try to blink away the grit, the stinging.

  “Israel?” Izzy says to the plane. It has a red stripe and is bigger than the planes that spray for mosquitoes, though not by much. If her twin is inside that plane, Shane and Nate must be too. They’ve been an inseparable trio since freshman year.

  My heart hammers in my chest, up my neck, behind my eyes. Last night I watched Nate and his braced knee limp from group to group, Solo cup in hand, his hair pulled back into its bun, occasionally giving that half smile that has made me melt since seventh grade. No one at school knew we were friends—not just friends. Something more. He was the one who invited me to the party, but he barely acknowledged me, and something finally snapped. I marched up to him to ask why—right in front of every
one. He pulled me away from the fire and told me he was scared that he couldn’t escape it. Escape what? I asked. This double life you’ve built? I told him I couldn’t pretend anymore, that I was finally done.

  I started drinking—something I usually avoid because of my dad—to numb my pain. And once I felt loose, I dragged my heart around after Izzy and Cass—the closest to friends I had at that party—laughing when they laughed, dancing when they danced, though my limbs were jerky, my bounce off-beat. I had to keep a smile pasted on my face because the smile was the trapdoor holding back the feral thing inside me that wanted to growl and kick sand over Nate, to bury him. He’d drifted off early, his sweatshirt cinched around his face, his arms folded in so he appeared even smaller than usual.

  Now, in this dim light, all I want to see is Nate’s small limping form, his bunhead, his half smile.

  The plane begins to climb, slower than it should and at an impossible incline over the waves, which run their morning laps obliviously. Around me, everyone is awake. On their elbows, their knees, their feet, looking out at the Gulf. I manage to stand despite the rocking sensation inside my stomach.

  The last time Nate and I were on this same beach, we were alone, our lips swollen from kissing, the moon illuminating the neat surgery scar along his knee—my dad’s work. I told him I was applying to an ivy-walled northeastern college to study literature and screenwriting, and he said, “I want to be up there,” and pointed at Orion’s Belt. I laughed, didn’t I? Even though he had been checking out a lot after the knee surgery, his face emptying when we were in the middle of conversations.

  The plane is as high as the distant roller coaster now, higher.

  It stalls, hovering, and we stop breathing; even the gulls hush, a collective holding. Then there’s a sound coming from my throat: a high whine turning shriek. It’s echoed across the beach. We all seem to sense what comes next: the plunge. In the purple-gray light, our awe becomes ghastly. Like disgust. Cass grabs my hand and Izzy’s. I imagine we must look so small to the boys in the plane—if it’s really them—a chain of sand dandelions.

  “Israel!” Izzy shrieks. Nate? my heart asks.

  I wonder: Does what goes up have to come down? Can you climb higher? Can you free yourself? Can you shrink to tiny specks and disappear from our sight? Can you—would you really—leave us behind?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CASS

  The day of

  THE PLANE HITS the waves nose-first with a sound like a transformer blowing. The water rises in a curtain and folds over it. And as fast as it appeared, the plane—as a plane—is gone. Severed wings bob where it disappeared.

  Izzy runs for the water. “Israel!” she screams, clawing at the waves. She’s half doggy-paddling, half climbing as though it’s a hill. Again, she howls his name.

  Why would her twin brother be in the plane? I last remember him sprawled next to the charred ring of the firepit near Shane. Where’s Shane?

  He asked how I was at the beginning of the party. I lied when I said, “Okay.” He replied with the same “okay” when I returned the question. I guess that probably wasn’t true either—though I believed it. He did look okay for the first time in a while. He’d shaved his hair back to fuzz as he always did for the summer. He shotgunned beers with Nate and Israel. He did a keg stand. He poured people drinks and threw cans into the bonfire. Generic high school happiness. It was all a step—a baby step—from calling me a bitch in a packed cafeteria.

  “Shane?” I yell, scanning all of the dawn-lit faces around me. No one answers. He’s at home, I tell myself. Or he snuck off with another girl and is finally moving on without me.

  Everyone’s heads swivel from Izzy, still screaming, to where the body of the plane disappeared amid the waves, about two football fields from where we stand. I can hear the whispers: What makes her think he’s in there? They probably went home. I saw them right here before I passed out.

  “What are you waiting for?” I yell at the swivel-heads. “Why isn’t someone calling the police?”

  Janie bends and starts to rake sand with her fingers. She’s making a sound over and over like guh, guh, guh. Jesus, this girl. I toss her my phone and take off after Izzy.

  I can’t think about the way the plane tilted to one side, fell, and spun. Or the smack of water. Or the screams. But Izzy? I can think of Izzy.

  I make it to her easily and bear-hug her to my chest. The water is still bathwater warm from yesterday’s heat. She slaps at me, rakes her fingernails across my forearms. She’s strong, but I am too.

  “Let me fucking go,” she gasps. “He’s in there.” She gulps in salt water and then heaves. I feel her deflate, hacking and gagging, but it only makes her angrier, like the cat I found in the alley behind our condo. I’d wrapped my arms in towels and tried to bathe him with flea shampoo. Each time I thought his small drenched body was giving up, he thrashed and clawed. Finally he got me, right across the cheek, and I let go. And, if anyone is alley-cat tough, it’s Izzy.

  “Izzy, stop, please. How do you know it’s him?”

  “I felt him.”

  “You felt him?”

  “And I fucking heard them talking about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Flying.” The word wails out of her.

  Shane. His name flares inside me like a blinding light. A migraine. I close my eyes, try to extinguish it. But I can’t hold back the image of him—lanky, long-armed. I can’t think of him, who I’ve loved since seventh grade, and restrain Izzy at the same time.

  “Izzy,” I say, to remind myself what I’m doing. “Izzy, you have to calm down. You don’t know for sure.”

  When Theo Pratt stole my stuffed skunk in kindergarten, Izzy dragged him by the hair across the playground pebbles. Later I waved to her as she sat outside the principal’s office, and that was it. We were best friends. Only Israel was closer to her—by default of sharing her birth. No. Israel is. No past tense yet.

  Marcus, our best swimmer, is already out and treading water near where the body of the plane sank. His head a dot on the waves. Tien, a surfer, makes it out there next. She dives, kicking up her legs. I hold my breath, but she reappears a moment later with nothing. She kicks her legs into the air again. Returns to the surface alone. Over and over.

  I keep imagining Shane’s sandy hair breaching the waves. Tien would flip him onto his back, hold him under those long arms, and kick him in. As soon as she dragged him onto the sand, I’d press my mouth against his and breathe for him. Please let me do it, Shane. Shane. Shane.

  Something sharp—an elbow?—catches me in the stomach and I double over, gasping. Izzy slip-scrambles away from me. The water is to her chin before she stops, her long black hair fanned and floating, and screams, “Israaaaaaaaael!” It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. Behind me, everyone is sound-struck. Immobile. Like we’re living in a terrible dream.

  Last night, before I fell asleep, I caught Shane looking at me from across the fire. The flames lit his nose, but cast his eyes in the shadow of his brow bone. His face had an expression I couldn’t put my finger on. Not anger. Not hurt. Something else. Determination?

  Izzy’s wailing brings me back to the beach, back to the moment. I am still breathless, but I want to give her hope, want to assure her that they weren’t in there, that they couldn’t be that stupid. But it feels like there’s an avalanche inside me, like the ground is breaking away. Shelf after shelf plummeting.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IZZY

  The day of

  “ISABELA, SWEETIE?”

  I don’t know the woman leaning over me. She has a hawk nose that is far too close to my face.

  “Isabela?” she says again.

  What the fuck was Israel doing? Flying? When I overheard the boys talking about it, I was sure it was bullshit, but when I woke to the plane roaring overhead, I felt my t
winsense, like something was scalding me along my right side where I’ve always felt his pain.

  I’m sitting on some sort of flat stretcher thing. Sitting is wrong, though. I’m supposed to be standing. No, swimming. I push the foil blanket off. But it’s back on my shoulders again. Was it the hawk woman? Or did I just think I’d pushed it off? Where is Cass? She’ll explain what’s happening. She’ll get me away from this hawk woman.

  “Izzy, do you need anything?” It’s not Cass, it’s Janie, who was following us around the party all night. There’s something wrong with her face, like it’s a mask. Her pupils are huge, ringed in green. She’s on the ground, and I’m on something higher. A medical room, with its mouth open to the beach. An ambulance?

  “Israel,” I say. “I need Israel.” Her mouth becomes a line. “My brother,” I add. Sometimes it’s like she’s on another planet. “Get Is-ray-el.” I say it slowly, drawing out the syllables. She covers her ears. Am I shouting? Hawk woman reappears next to me.

  “Your parents are almost here.”

  “I don’t want my parents. I want Israel.”

  “I know,” hawk woman says, in that way that adults talk to kids, like, Yes, I know that the world isn’t fair.

  “Israel is not gone.” I say this to the hawk woman, to Janie, to whomever is listening. If Israel were dead, I’d feel it, like I feel his pain with my twinsense. Simple as that. There’d be something cut. Severed. You can’t just lose a person you’ve always had and not be told by the universe.

  Behind Janie, there are police and coast guard boats in the water. I can see divers falling backward off one deck. They won’t find him.

  “Where’s Cass?”

  Janie points, and Cass is in her own foil wrap, looking like someone tried to drown her. She’s talking to a man—a cop?—and gesturing at the sky, drawing a rainbow from seawall to sea.

  “Cass!” I shout, and wave.

  She looks at me, crying, and shakes her head. Everyone is so sad. They don’t know that he’s still here. That it has to be some kind of sick fucking trick.