I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  I think how much Noah deserves my spot. Isn’t that what Mom’s ghost is telling me by breaking everything I make?

  I know it is.

  I take a breath and then I say it. “Let them have my spot. Really, they deserve it. I don’t.” I lift my head, look in his stunned eyes. “I don’t belong here, Sandy.”

  “I see,” he says. “Well, you might feel that way, but the CSA faculty think differently. I think differently.” He picks up his glasses, begins cleaning them with his clay-splattered shirt, making them dirtier. “There was something so unique in those women you made out of sand, the ones that were part of your admission portfolio.”

  Huh?

  He closes his eyes for a moment like he’s listening to distant music. “They were so joyful, so whimsical. So much motion, so much emotion.”

  What’s he talking about?

  “Sandy, I submitted dress patterns and sample dresses I made. I talked about the sand sculptures in my essay.”

  “Yes, I remember the essay. And I remember the dresses. Lovely. Too bad we don’t have a fashion focus. But the reason you’re sitting in that chair is because of the photographs of those wonderful sculptures.”

  There are no photographs of those sculptures.

  Okay then, feeling a little light-headed here in this episode of The Twilight Zone.

  Because no one ever even saw them. I made sure of it, always sneaking far down the beach to an isolated cove, the tide taking them away . . . except Noah did tell me once, no, twice actually, that he followed me and watched me build. But did he take pictures? And send them to CSA? Nothing could seem less likely.

  When he found out I got in and he didn’t, he destroyed everything he’d ever made. Not even a doodle remains. He hasn’t picked up a pencil, pastel, stick of charcoal, or paintbrush since.

  I glance up at Sandy, who’s rapping his knuckles on the desk. Wait, did he just say my sand sculptures were wonderful? I think he did. When he sees I’m listening again, he stops knuckle-rapping and continues. “I know we inundate you with lots of theory your first two years here, but let’s you and me get back to basics. One simple question, CJ. Isn’t there anything you want to make anymore? You’ve been through so much for someone so young. Isn’t there something you want to say? Something you need to say?” He’s gotten very serious and intense. “Because that’s what all this is about. Nothing else. We wish with our hands, that’s what we do as artists.”

  His words are loosening something inside. I don’t like it.

  “Think about it,” he says more gently. “I’m going to ask again. Is there something you need in the world that only your two hands can create?”

  I feel a searing pain in my chest.

  “Is there, CJ?” he insists.

  There is. But it’s off limits. Imagining that meadow now.

  “No,” I say.

  He grimaces. “I don’t believe you.”

  “There’s nothing,” I say, holding my hands together as tight as I can in my lap. “Nada. Zip.”

  He shakes his head, disappointed. “Okay then.”

  I gaze up at David . . .

  “CJ, where are you?”

  “Here, I’m here. Sorry.” I turn my attention back to him.

  He’s clearly upset. Why? Why does he care so much? Like he said, there are young artists all around the country dying for my spot. “We need to talk to your father,” he says. “You’d be giving up an opportunity of a lifetime. Is this really what you want?”

  My eyes drift back to David. It’s like he’s made of light. What I want? I want only one thing—

  Then it’s as if David’s jumped off the wall and swooped me into his massive stone arms and is whispering into my ear.

  He reminds me that Michelangelo made him over five hundred years ago.

  “Do you really want to transfer out?”

  “No!” The vehemence in my voice surprises us both. “I need to work in stone.” I point to David. An idea’s exploding inside me. “There is something I need to make,” I tell him. I feel wild, like I’m gulping for air. “Badly.” I’ve wanted to make it since I got here, but I couldn’t bear it if Mom broke it. Just couldn’t bear it.

  “This pleases me to no end,” Sandy says, clasping his hands together.

  “But it can’t be built in clay. No kiln,” I say. “It has to be stone.”

  “Much more resilient,” he says, smiling. He gets it. Well, part of it.

  “Exactly,” I say. She will not be able to break this so easily! And more importantly, she’s not going to want to. I’m going to dazzle her. I’m going to communicate with her. This is the way. “I’m so sorry, Jude,” she’ll whisper in my ear. “I had no idea you had it in you.”

  And then just maybe she’ll forgive me.

  I don’t realize Sandy’s been talking, oblivious of the music swelling, of the mother-daughter reconciliation that’s occurring in my head. I try to focus.

  “The problem is, with Ivan in Italy for the year, there’s no one in the department to help you. If you wanted to work in clay and cast in bronze I could—”

  “No, it’s got to be stone, the harder the better, granite even.” This is genius.

  He laughs, back to his mellow goat-grazing-in-a-field self. “Maybe, hmm, maybe . . . if you’re okay with mentoring with someone outside of school?”

  “Sure.” You kidding? Bonus.

  Sandy’s stroking his beard, thinking.

  And thinking.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Well, there is someone.” Sandy raises his eyebrows. “A master carver. One of the last ones standing perhaps. But no, I don’t think it’s possible.” He pushes the idea away with his hand. “He doesn’t teach anymore. Doesn’t exhibit. Something happened to him. No one knows what the deal is, and even before all this, he wasn’t the most . . . hmm, how shall I put it?” He looks up at the ceiling, finds the word there: “Human.” He laughs, starts digging around in a pile of magazines on his desk. “An extraordinary sculptor and a helluva speaker. I heard him when I was in grad school, amazing, he—”

  “If not human, what?” I interrupt, intrigued.

  “Actually . . .” He smiles at me. “I think your mother said it best.”

  “My mother?” I don’t even need to have The Sweetwine Gift to know this is a sign.

  “Yes, your mother wrote about him in Art Tomorrow. Funny. I was just looking at the interview the other day.” He flips through a few issues of the magazine Mom used to write for, but doesn’t find it. “Oh well,” he says, giving up. He leans back in his chair. “Let me think . . . what were her words? Oh yes, yes, she said, ‘He was the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down.’”

  A man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down? “What’s his name?” I ask, feeling a little breathless.

  He presses his lips together for a long moment, studying me, then seems to make a decision. “I’ll give him a call first. If it’s a go, you can pay him a visit after winter break.” He writes a name and address on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

  Smiling, he says, “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  • • •

  Grandma Sweetwine and I are lost in oblivion, unable to see anything in the fog as we make our way through the ground cloud to Day Street in the inland flats of Lost Cove where Guillermo Garcia’s studio is. That’s the name of the sculptor that was on the piece of paper Sandy gave me. I don’t want to wait to see if it’s a go, I just want to go.

  Before leaving school I consorted with The Oracle: Google. Internet searches are better than tea leaves or a tarot deck. You put in your question: Am I a bad person? Is this headache a symptom of an inoperable brain tumor? Why won’t my mother’s ghost speak to me? What should I do about Noah? Then you sort through the results and determine the divina
tion.

  When I put in the question: Should I ask Guillermo Garcia to be my mentor? up popped a link for the cover of Interview Magazine. I clicked on it. The photograph was of a dark, imposing man with radioactive green eyes wielding a baseball bat at Rodin’s lovely romantic sculpture The Kiss. The caption read: Guillermo Garcia: The Rock Star of the Sculpture World. On the cover of Interview! I stopped there because of the cardiac symptoms.

  “You look like a hoodlum in that getup,” Grandma Sweetwine says, sweeping along beside me a good foot above the ground, twirling a magenta sun parasol, without a care for the dismal weather. She’s dressed to the nines like always, in a color-splashed Floating Dress that makes her look like a billowy sunset, and enormous tortoiseshell movie-star sunglasses. She’s barefoot. Not much need for shoes if you hover. She got lucky on the foot-front.

  Some visitors from the beyond return with their feet on backward

  (Beyond disturbing. Thankfully, hers are on right.)

  She continues. “You look like that fella, you know, whosamacallit, Reese’s Pieces.”

  “Eminem?” I ask, with a smile. The fog’s so thick, I have to walk with my arms out straight so I don’t collide into any mailboxes or telephone poles or trees.

  “Yes!” She taps the sidewalk with the parasol. “I knew it was some kind of candy. Him.” The parasol’s pointing at me now. “All those dresses you make locked away in your bedroom. It’s a travesty.” She sighs one of her record-length sighs. “What about the suitors, Jude?”

  “I don’t have any suitors, Grandma.”

  “My point exactly, dear,” she says, then cackles with delight at her own wit.

  A woman passes us with two kids in fog harnesses, also known as leashes, not unusual in Lost Cove during a white-out.

  I look down at my invisibility uniform. Grandma still doesn’t get it. I tell her, “Being with boys is more dangerous for me than killing a cricket or having a bird fly into the house.” Other serious portents of death. “You know this.”

  “Nonsense. What I know is you have an enviable love-line on your palm, just like your brother, but even fate needs a goose in the rear sometimes. Best stop dressing like a life-size rutabaga. And grow the hair back already, for Pete’s sake.”

  “You’re very superficial, Grandma.”

  She harrumphs at me.

  I harrumph back, then turn the tables. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think your feet are starting to point the wrong way. You know what they say. Nothing ruins an ensemble like ass-backward feet.”

  She gasps, looking down. “How to give an old, dead woman a heart attack!”

  By the time we get to Day Street, I’m damp through and shivering. I notice a small church at the end of the block, a perfect place to dry off, warm up, and strategize about how I’m going to convince this Guillermo Garcia to mentor me.

  “I’ll wait outside,” Grandma tells me. “But please, take your time. Don’t worry about me, all alone out here in the cold, wet fog.” She wiggles her bare toes on both feet. “Shoeless, penniless, dead.”

  “Subtle,” I say, heading down the path to the church.

  “Regards to Clark Gable,” she calls after me as I pull the ring to open the door. Clark Gable is her pet name for God. A blast of warmth and light embraces me the moment I step in. Mom was a church-hopper, always dragging Noah and me with her, except never when a service was going on. She said she just liked to sit in holy spaces. Me too now.

  If you’re in need of divine help, open a jar in a place of worship

  and close it upon leaving

  (Mom told us she sometimes used to hide out from her foster “situations” in nearby churches. I suspect she needed more than

  a jar of help, though it was impossible to get her to talk

  much about that time in her life.)

  This one is a beautiful boat-like room of dark wood and bright stained-glass panels of, it looks like, yup, Noah building the ark, Noah greeting the animals as they board, Noah, Noah, Noah. I sigh.

  In every set of twins, there is one angel, one devil

  I take a seat in the second row. While rubbing my arms furiously to warm up, I think about what I’m going to say to Guillermo Garcia. What does a Broken Me-Blob say to The Rock Star of the Sculpture World? A man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down? How am I going to convey to him that it’s absolutely dire that he mentor me? That making this sculpture will—

  A loud clatter blasts me out of my thoughts, my seat, and skin all at once.

  “Oh bloody hell, you scared me!” The deep, whispery English-accented voice is coming out of a bent-over guy on the altar picking up the candlestick he just knocked off. “Oh Christ! I can’t believe I just said bloody hell in church. And Christ, I just said Christ! Jesus!” He stands up, rests the candlestick on the table, then smiles the most crooked smile I’ve ever seen, like Picasso made it. “Guess I’m damned.” There’s a scar zigzagging across his left cheek and one running from the base of his nose into his lip. “Well, doesn’t matter,” he continues in a stage whisper. “Always thought heaven would be crap anyway. All those preposterous puffy clouds. All that mind-numbing white. All those self-righteous, morally unambiguous goody two-shoes.” The smile and accompanying crookedness hijack his whole face. It’s an impatient, devil-may-care, chip-toothed smile on an off-kilter, asymmetrical face. He’s totally wild-looking, hot, in a let’s-break-the-law kind of way, not that I notice.

  Any marked peculiarity in the face indicates a similar

  peculiarity of disposition

  (Hmm.)

  And where did he come from? England, it seems, but did he just teleport here mid-monologue?

  “Sorry,” he whispers, taking me in. I realize I’m still frozen with my hand plastered to my chest and my mouth open in surprise. I quickly rearrange myself. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “Didn’t think anyone else was here. No one’s ever here.” He comes to this church often? To repent probably. He looks like he has sins, big juicy ones. He gestures at a door behind the altar. “I was just skulking about, taking photos.” He pauses, tilts his head, studies me with curiosity. I notice a blue tattoo poking out of his collar. “You know, you really ought to put a lid on it. Such a chatterbox, a guy can’t get a word in.”

  I feel a smile maneuvering its way around my face that I resist as per the tenets of the boycott. He’s charming, not that I notice that either. Charming is bad luck. I also don’t notice that his sinful self seems smart, nor how tall he is, nor the way his tangly brown hair falls over one eye, nor the black leather motorcycle jacket, perfectly worn in and ridiculously cool. He’s carrying a beat-up messenger bag on one shoulder that’s full of books—college books? Maybe, definitely a senior if still in high school. And he has a camera around his neck that is now pointing at me.

  “No,” I shriek loud enough to blow the roof as I duck behind the pew in front of me. I must look like a cold wet ferret. I don’t want this guy having a picture of me looking like a cold wet ferret. And vanity aside:

  Every picture taken of you reduces your spirit

  and shortens your life

  “Hmm, yes,” he whispers. “You’re one of those, afraid the camera will steal your soul or some such.” I eye him. Is he versed in some such? “In any case, please keep your voice down. We are in church, after all.” He grins in his chaotic way, then turns the camera up at the wooden ceiling, clicks. There’s something else I’m not noticing: He seems familiar to me somehow, like we’ve met before, but I’ve no idea where or when.

  I slip off my hat and start combing my fingers through the stubborn mat of neglected hair . . . like I’m not a girl with boy blinders! What am I thinking? I remind myself he’s decaying like every other living thing. I remind myself I’m a bible-thumping Broken Me-Blob with hypochondriachal tendencies whose only friend is possibly a figment of her imagination. Sorry, Gra
ndma. I remind myself he’s probably worse luck than all the world’s black cats and broken mirrors combined. I remind myself some girls deserve to be alone.

  Before I can get my skullcap back on, he says in a regular speaking voice, quite a deep, velvety one, not that I notice, “Change your mind? Please do. I’m going to have to insist on it.” He’s aiming the camera at me again.

  I shake my head to indicate I am in no way changing my mind. I put my hat back on, pull it down low, practically over my eyes, but then I bring my index finger to my lips in a shhh, which might appear to be flirting to the casual viewer, but luckily there are no casual viewers present. I can’t seem to help it. And it’s not like I’ll ever see him again.

  “Right, forgot where we were for a minute,” he says, smiling and bringing his voice down to a whisper again. He regards me for a long, unnerving moment. It’s like being held in a spotlight. Actually, I’m not sure it’s legal to be looked at like this. My chest starts humming. “Too bad about the photo,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look like an angel sitting there.” He presses his lips together as if considering this. “But in disguise, like you just fell down and then borrowed some bloke’s clothes.”

  What do I say to that? Especially now that the humming in my chest has turned into jackhammering.

  “In any case, can’t blame you for wanting out of the angelic order.” He’s grinning again and I’m spinning. “Probably quite a bit more interesting to be among us screwed-up mortals, like I said before.” He sure has the gift of gab. I used to too, once, though you’d never know it. He must think my jaw’s wired shut.

  Oh boy. He’s looking at me again in that way of his, like he’s trying to see beneath the skin.

  “Let me,” he says, his hand circling the lens. It’s more command than question. “Just one.” There’s something in his voice, in his gaze, in his whole being, something hungry and insistent, and it’s untethering me.