The Sky Blues

Sky's small town turns absolutely claustrophobic when his secret promposal plans get leaked to the entire school in this witty, hopeful debut novel for fans of What if it's Us? and To All the Boys I've Loved Before.

Autorentext

Robbie Couch is the New York Times bestselling author of If I See You Again Tomorrow, in addition to Just the Good Parts, Blaine for the Win, and Another First Chance. Originally from small-town Michigan, Robbie now calls Los Angeles home.

Leseprobe

1. Thirty Days
   
   THIRTY DAYS
   I’m standing in the shower next to Ali Rashid. The Ali Rashid. Sure, we’re both completely naked and there are plenty of other body parts my eyes could wander toward. But I can’t look away from his eyebrows, of all things. His big, bushy, glorious effing eyebrows. I’ve never even noticed another person’s before Ali’s, I don’t think. But his are different, I guess. I’ve stared at them so many times—mostly across crowded classrooms or dreamily through Instagram filters—I bet I could sketch them from memory, follicle by follicle. That’s a super weird, gay thing to admit, I know.

   But hi, I’m a gay weirdo, apparently.

   “Can I kiss you, Sky?” he asks.

   The hazel of his eyes disappears behind long, curly eyelashes. They’re as beautiful as the brows; so jet black and thick, they could, like, sign a modeling contract all on their own, I swear. I can’t wait to tell our gaybies (gay + babies) about this moment someday—their dads’ first kiss. They’ll probably be grossed out, but that’s okay.

   “Sky, let’s go!” Bree’s mom yells right outside the bathroom door. My whole body jolts awake from my daydream. Er, my… shower-dream? Yeah. That’s more like it. Let’s call it that. My Ali shower-dream. I have them from time to time.

   Rattled, I reach out to grab the shower curtain to regain my balance—and the whole thing rips beneath my weight. My flailing body goes spilling out onto the bath mat like some white, scaly-ass fish caught in Lake Michigan. It seriously sounds like a bomb went off—a wet, soapy, incredibly embarrassing bomb. I yelp, more out of shock than pain.

   “Oh my God!” Bree’s mom gasps on the other side of the bathroom door, as the dangling nozzle sprays water literally everywhere. Bree’s pit bulls, Thelma and Louise, start barking a few drywalls away.

   “Are you okay, Sky?”

   “No,” I groan. “I mean, yeah—”

   But it’s too late.

   The door cracks open and I see the bright red rims of Mrs. Brandstone’s glasses for a microsecond before I screech in protest, lying there totally exposed on the slippery floor. She squeals too, and slams the door shut.

   I’m mortified. I am completely, totally, full-stop mortified.

   This has to be a top-five most embarrassing moment, really. Way worse than when my best friend, Marshall, let out a massive fart in seventh-grade gym and ran away, leaving everyone thinking it was me.

   “Don’t worry, I didn’t see anything,” Bree’s mom lies through the door. “And even if I did, I’ve seen it all anyway, honey. But hustle, please! Bree is waiting outside. You two are going to be late.”

   And just like clockwork, Bree—my other best friend—starts honking her horn out in the driveway, as if the apocalypse will ensue if we’re thirty seconds late to first hour. She’s going to kill me.

   “Tell her I’m coming!” I stand and turn the shower off before fixing the rod and curtain. Half the bathroom floor is covered in a puddle.

   What an absolute mess. This bathroom and my life.

   My guess is, Ali’s probably shower-dreaming about someone else this exact moment over at his house on Ashtyn Drive. It’s the third house from the corner; the one with the seafoam-green shutters, and the cat, Franklin, moseying around in the front window.

   Yes, okay. I’m in love with Ali Rashid.

   I’m not proud of it. I’m anything but proud of it. I’m annoyed of it. I’m sick of it. I wish I could snap my fingers and forget Ali Rashid even exists. But he does, and I’m hopelessly, helplessly, eternally infatuated with him, his seductive eyebrows, XXX-rated eyelashes, and the way his skin crinkles a bit when he laughs at one of my jokes. Especially when he snorts a little, too, because then I know it’s genuine.

   Crushing this hard is confusing, though.

   In my seventeen years on this planet, Ali’s the only boy that’s ever made me feel this way. Actually, the only person, period. Falling this hard isn’t all euphoric and heavenly, like in the four hundred million rom-coms I’ve watched way too many times to count.

   Like when Lara Jean finally confesses her love to Peter on the lacrosse field in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and everyone gets their happiest possible ending. Or like in Booksmart, when Hope shows up on the doorstep to give Amy her phone number right before Amy bounces to Botswana for the summer. (What convenient timing.)

   Okay, sure, some days it does feel like that. Some days I feel like Simon Spier on the Ferris wheel. I have my moments when I swear cupid flies in and slaughters me with his big gay arrow, and my eyes turn into heart emojis and I can’t catch my breath for a solid five seconds.

   But the problem is, Ali is straight. Well, he’s probably straight.… Maybe straight? I don’t know! We’re friends-ish, but not in That Way. At least not yet. I don’t think?

   Anyway.

   Bree—who is now literally holding down the car horn outside so the noise is nonstop and off-the-rails annoying—believes I have a shot with him. She and the rest of the Brandstone family are the only ones who know of my Ali Rashid obsession, and I’m going to keep it that way. Well, for another thirty days, at least.

   Thirty effing days.

   I turn to face the cloudy bathroom mirror and swipe my hand across its slippery surface. My sopping wet sandy hair, plastered across my forehead, probably needs to be trimmed soon, and I’m pretty sure I’m getting a pimple on my nose. At least I still like my eyes—probably my favorite thing about my face (although they pale in comparison to Ali’s). Mine are the color of toffee, my mom once told me as a kid. For some reason, I never forgot that.

   The mist on the mirror fades away, revealing more of my chest, and I immediately remember why I implemented my number one rule since moving in with the Brandstones: Never, ever, ever look at my reflection right after I get out of a shower. Because the hot water always makes Mars—my burn scar—look infinitely worse than he typically does.

   Mars has been lurking on the left side of my chest, right over my heart, ever since the accident. He looks pretty damn bad as is, honestly, but ten minutes under some hot water? He’s a million times more fire-engine red than usual. Which makes me look like one of those characters you see about halfway through an apocalyptic zombie movie—you know, the guy who just got bitten and is on his way to becoming a cannibalistic beast? That’s me!

   My mom doesn’t have big mirrors in her tiny, suffocating house, so it was easier to avoid seeing Mars when I lived there. That was one perverse advantage me and my older brother, Gus, had growing up with hardly any money, clothes, or space: fewer opportunities to accidentally catch a glimpse of Mars in a reflection. That’s not the case here at…