I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  Clementine, posed on the rock not unlike the girl model from CSA—her body in three triangles—says in the same hornet dialect as Courtney, “Fry’s cousin from LA says he wishes the rocks you threw at him didn’t miss so he could’ve charged people to see the scar when you’re in the major leagues.” She tells all this to the purple-polished nails on one of her hands. Jesus. How blown away must Fry and Big Foot have been by The Ax and his bionic arm to admit defeat like this to a bunch of hornets.

  “Good to know,” Brian replies. “Next time he acts like a jerkoff I’ll aim to maim.”

  A wave of awe at Brian’s comment ripples from girl to girl. Barf. Barf. Barf. Something alarming’s occurring to me, more alarming than the fact that Jude’s joined this purple polish cult. It’s that this Brian is cool. His alien kin have not only prepared him to pass but to surpass. He’s probably supernaturally popular at that boarding school. A jock and popular! How could I not have noticed? I must’ve gotten thrown off by the endless geek rants about globular clusters orbiting galactic cores, rants that I see are being kept under wraps in present company. Doesn’t he know popular people are covered in flame retardant? Doesn’t he know popular people aren’t revolutionaries?

  I want to grab him by the wrist and head back into the woods, tell these guys, sorry but I found him first. But then I think, no, that’s not true: He found me. He tracked me like a Bengal tiger. I wish he’d choose that self and stick to it.

  Clementine, still talking to her nails, says, “Should we call you The Ax? Or maybe just Ax? Ooooo.” She squeals exactly like a warthog. “I like that.”

  “I’d prefer Brian,” he says. “It’s the off-season.”

  “Okay, Brian,” Courtney says like she invented his name. “You guys should totally come hang out at The Spot.” She looks at me. “Jude does.”

  I’m shocked to be acknowledged. My cabbagehead nods without my consent.

  She smiles at me in a way that could just as easily be a scowl. “Your sister says you’re some kind of prodigy.” She plucks on the bikini string. “Maybe I’ll let you draw me sometime.”

  Brian crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Ah, no. You’d be lucky if he lets you pose for him sometime.”

  I grow sixty thousand feet taller.

  But then Courtney slaps her own wrist, mewing at Brian. “Bad girl. Got it.”

  Okay, time to torch the neighborhood. And the worst part is, her lameness breaks out his half smile, which she’s mirroring back at him with one of her radiant own.

  (SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy in Plastic Bag Turning Blue)

  A few sandpipers skitter down the road toward Rascal’s stable. I do wish I were a horse.

  Several moments pass and then Lulu slides off the rock and stands beside Courtney. Clementine follows, slipping in next to Lulu. The hornets are swarming. Only Heather remains on the rock.

  “You surf?” Lulu asks Brian.

  “I’m not much into the beach,” he replies.

  “Not into the beach?” Lulu and Courtney cry at once, but this inconceivability is eclipsed by Clementine, who says, “Can I try on your hat?”

  “No, let me,” Courtney says.

  “I want to!” says Lulu.

  I roll my eyes and then hear someone laugh without a trace of hornet hum. I look over at Heather, who’s looking back at me sympathetically like she alone can see the cabbage on my neck. I’ve hardly noticed her over there. Or ever. Even though she’s the only one of the hornets who goes to the public middle school like we do. A mess of black curls, similar to mine, falls around her small face. No antennae. And she looks more like a frog than a lollipop, a chachi tree frog. She’s the one I’d draw, perched in an oak, hidden away. I check her nails: They’re light blue.

  Brian’s taken his hat off his head. “Hmm.”

  “You choose,” Courtney says, confident she’ll be chosen.

  “I couldn’t,” Brian says. He starts spinning the hat on his finger. “Unless . . .” With a quick flick of his wrist, he tosses the hat onto my head. And I’m soaring. I take back everything. He is a revolutionary.

  Until I realize they’re all laughing, including him, like this is the funniest thing ever.

  “Cop-out,” Courtney says. She takes the hat off my head like I’m a hat rack and hands it back to Brian. “Now, choose.”

  Brian smiles fully at Courtney, showcasing the space between his teeth, then cocks his hat over her brow, like she knew he would. The look on her face is unmistakably mission accomplished.

  He leans back and regards her. “Suits you.”

  I want to kick him in the head.

  Instead, I let the wind at my back scoop me up and toss me over the cliff into the sea.

  “Gotta bounce,” I say, remembering that’s what I heard someone say to someone sometime somewhere, at school or maybe it was on TV, or in a movie, probably not even from this decade, but who cares, all I know is I have to get away before I evaporate or crumple or cry. I think for a hopeful moment that Brian might follow me across the street but he just says, “Later.”

  My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier.

  Because I imagined it. Last night, this is what happened: He adjusted a lever on the telescope, that’s it. I just happened to be standing in the way. Noah has an overactive imagination, written on every school report I’ve ever gotten. To which Mom would laugh and say, “A leopard can’t change its spots, now can it?”

  When I get inside the house, I go immediately to the front window that frames the street to watch them. The sky’s overflowing with orange clouds and each time one floats down, Brian bats it back up like a balloon. I watch him hypnotize the girls as he does the fruit in the trees, the clouds in the sky, as he did me. Only Heather seems immune. She’s lying on the rock, looking at the orange paradise above instead of in his direction.

  I tell myself: He didn’t find me, didn’t track me. He’s not a Bengal tiger. He’s just some new kid who saw someone around his age and mistakenly befriended him before the cool kids came along and saved him.

  Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?

  (SELF-PORTRAIT: Keep Out)

  I hear Mom’s footsteps only a moment before I feel the warm press of her hands on my shoulders. “Beautiful sky, huh?” I breathe in her perfume. She’s changed kinds. This one smells like the forest, like wood and earth, with her mixed in. I close my eyes. A sob’s rising in me as if it’s being pulled up by her hands. I keep it down by saying, “Only six months now until the application’s due.”

  She squeezes my shoulders. “So proud of you.” Her voice is calm and deep and safe. “Do you know how proud I am?” This I know. Nothing else. I nod and she wraps her arms around me. “You’re my inspiration,” she says, and we rise together into the air. She’s become my real eyes. It’s like I haven’t even drawn or painted anything until she sees it, like it’s all invisible until she gets that look on her face and says, “You’re remaking the world, Noah. Drawing by drawing.” I want to show her the ones of Brian so bad. But I can’t. As if he heard me thinking about him, he turns in my direction, all silhouette in the firelight, a perfect painting, so good it makes my fingers flit at my side. But I’m not going to draw him anymore. “It’s okay to be addicted to beauty,” Mom says, all dreamy. “Emerson said ‘Beauty is God’s handwriting.’” There’s something about her voice when she talks about being an artist that always makes me feel like the whole sky is in my chest. “I’m addicted to it too,” she whispers. “Most artists are.”

  “But you’re not an artist,” I whisper back.

  She doesn’t respond and her body has tensed up. I don’t know why.

  “Where the hell is Ralph? Wher
e the hell is Ralph?”

  This untenses her and she laughs. “I have a feeling Ralph is on his way,” she says. “The Second Coming is at hand.” She kisses the back of my head. “Everything’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” she says because she’s a people-mechanic and always knows when I’m malfunctioning. At least that’s why I think she says it, until she adds, “It’s going to be okay for all of us, I promise.”

  Before we even land back on the rug, she’s gone. I stay, staring out the window until darkness fills the room, until the five of them walk off in the direction of The Spot, Brian’s lucky hat on Courtney’s lucky head.

  Paces behind the rest, Heather glides along, still looking up. I watch her raise her arms swanlike and then lower them. A bird, I think. Of course. Not a frog at all. I was wrong.

  About everything.

  • • •

  The next morning, I do not go up on the roof at dawn because I’m not leaving my bedroom until Brian’s back at boarding school three thousand miles from here. It’s only seven weeks away. I’ll drink the plant water if I get thirsty. I’m lying on the bed staring at a print on the ceiling of Munch’s The Scream, an off-the-hook painting I wish I made of a guy blowing a gasket.

  Like I am.

  Jude and Mom are bickering on the other side of the wall. It’s getting loud. I think she hates Mom even more than she hates me now.

  Mom: You’ll have plenty of time to be twenty-five when you’re twenty-five, Jude.

  Jude: It’s just lipstick.

  Mom: Lipstick you’re not wearing, and while I’m on your bad side, that skirt is way too short.

  Jude: Do you like it? I made it.

  Mom: Well, you should’ve made more of it. Look in the mirror. Do you really want to be that girl?

  Jude: Who else am I going to be? For the record, that girl in the mirror is me!

  Mom: It’s really scaring me how wild you’re getting. I don’t recognize you.

  Jude: Well, I don’t recognize you either, Mother.

  Mom has been acting a little strange. I’ve noticed things too. Like how she sits lobotomized at red lights long after they turn green and doesn’t hit the gas until everyone starts honking at her. Or how she says she’s working in her office, but spying reveals that she’s really going through boxes of old photographs she got down from the attic.

  And there are horses galloping inside her now. I can hear them.

  Today, she and Jude are going to the city together for a mother-daughter day to see if it can make them get along. Not a good start. Dad used to try to get me to go to ball games when they did this, but he doesn’t bother anymore, not since I spent a whole football game facing the crowd instead of the field, sketching faces on napkins. Or maybe it was a baseball game?

  Baseball. The Ax. The Axhat.

  Jude rapid-fire knocks, doesn’t wait for me to say come in, just swings open the door. I guess Mom won, because she’s lipstick-free and wearing a colorful sundress that goes to her knees, one of Grandma’s designs. She looks like a peacock tail. Her hair is calm, a placid yellow lake around her.

  “You’re home for once.” She seems genuinely happy to see me. She leans against the doorframe. “If Brian and I were drowning, who’d you save first?”

  “You,” I tell her, glad she didn’t ask me this yesterday.

  “Dad and me?”

  “Please. You.”

  “Mom and me?”

  I pause, then say, “You.”

  “You paused.”

  “I didn’t pause.”

  “You so did, but it’s okay. I deserve it. Ask me.”

  “Mom or me?”

  “You, Noah. I’d always save you first.” Her eyes are clear blue skies. “Even though you almost beheaded me the other night.” She grins. “It’s okay. I admit it. I’ve been awful, huh?”

  “Totally rabid.”

  She makes an eye-bulging crazy face that cracks me up even in my mood. “You know,” she says, “those girls are okay but they’re so normal. It’s boring.” She does a goofy, fake ballerina leap across the room, lands on the bed, and shoulders up to me. I close my eyes. “Been a while,” she whispers.

  “So long.”

  We breathe and breathe and breathe together. She takes my hand and I think how otters sleep floating on their backs in water, holding hands exactly like this, so they don’t drift apart in the night.

  After a while, she picks up her fist. I do the same.

  “One two three,” we say at the same time.

  Rock/Rock

  Scissors/Scissors

  Rock/Rock

  Paper/Paper

  Scissors/Scissors

  “Yes!” she cries. “We still got it, yes we do!” She jumps to her feet. “We can watch the Animal Channel tonight. Or a movie? You can pick.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want to—”

  “Me too,” I reply, knowing what she was going to say. I want to be us again too.

  (PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Brother and Sister on a Seesaw, Blindfolded)

  She smiles, touches my arm. “Don’t be sad.” She says it so warmly, it makes the air change color. “It came right through the wall last night.” This was worse when we were younger. If one cried, the other cried even if we were on different sides of Lost Cove. I didn’t think it happened anymore.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  She nods. “See you tonight then if Mom and I don’t kill each other.” She gives a salute and is off.

  I don’t know how this can be but it can: A painting is both exactly the same and entirely different every single time you look at it. That’s the way it is between Jude and me now.

  • • •

  A little while later, I remember that it’s Thursday, which means life drawing at CSA, which means I’m ending my house arrest. Anyway, why should I stay locked up just because Brian’s a popular axhat jock covered in flame retardant who likes toilet-licking hornet girls like Courtney Barrett?

  My stand and footstool are where I left them last week. I set them up, telling myself that nothing matters but getting into CSA and I can hang out with Jude for the rest of the summer. And Rascal. And go to the museum with Mom. I don’t need Brian.

  The teacher begins class—a different girl model today—lecturing about positive and negative space, about drawing the space around a form to reveal a form. I’ve never done this before and get lost in the exercise, concentrating on finding the model by drawing what is not her.

  But during the second part of class, I sit down with my back against the wall and begin drawing Brian in this outside-in way, even though I said I’d never draw him again. I can’t help it. He’s in me and needs to get out. I do sketch after sketch.

  I’m concentrating so hard that I don’t sense anyone approaching until my light gets blocked. I spring back in surprise and an embarrassing garbled sound flies out of my mouth as my brain catches up to the fact that it’s him, that Brian’s standing in front of me. He has no meteorite bag, no magnet rake, which means he came all the way down here to find me. Again. I attempt to keep the joy behind my face, not on it.

  “Waited this morning,” he says, and then licks his bottom lip so nervously, so perfectly, it causes pain deep in my chest. He glances at my pad. I flip it over before he can see himself, then get up, motioning for him to go back into the woods so no one inside hears us. I stow the stool and stand, hoping my knees don’t give out, or alternatively, that I don’t start dancing a jig.

  He’s waiting by the same tree as last time.

  “So the English guy,” he says as we start walking. “He there today?”

  If there’s one thing I know how to read in a voice, thanks to Jude, it’s jealousy. I take a supremely happy breath. “He got booted last week.”

  “The drinking?”

  “Ye
ah.”

  The woods are quiet except for our crunching footsteps and a crooning mockingbird somewhere in the trees.

  “Noah?”

  I suck in air. How can someone just saying your name make you feel like this? “Yeah?” There’s a lot of emotion running around his face, but I don’t know what kind it is. I focus on my sneakers instead.

  Minute after silent minute ticks by.

  “It’s like this,” he says eventually. He’s stopped walking and is picking bark off an oak tree’s trunk. “There are all these planets that get ejected from the planetary systems that they first belonged in and they just wander on their own through deep space, going their lonely way across the universe without a sun, you know, forever . . .”

  His eyes are begging me to understand something. I think about what he just said. He’s talked about this before, these lonely, drifting, sunless planets. So, what? Is he saying he doesn’t want to be an outsider like me? Well, fine. I turn to go.

  “No.” He grabs my sleeve. He grabbed my sleeve.

  The Earth pauses on its axis.

  “Oh, fuck it.” He licks his lip, looks at me desperately. “Just . . .” he says. “Just . . .”

  He’s stammering?

  “Just what?” I ask.

  “Just don’t worry, okay?” The words fly out of his mouth and loop around my heart and fling it right out of my chest. I know what he’s saying.

  “Worry about what?” I say to mess with him.

  He half smiles. “About getting hit in the head by an asteroid. It’s extremely unlikely.”

  “Cool,” I say. “I won’t.

  And so, I stop worrying.

  I don’t worry when a few seconds later he says with a full-on grin, “I totally saw what you were drawing back there, dude.”

  I don’t worry that I blow off Jude that night and every single night that follows. I don’t worry when she comes home and finds Brian and the hornets on the deck, all of the hornets posing for me like some photo they saw in a magazine. I don’t worry that night when she says, “So Mom wasn’t enough? You have to steal all my friends too?”