I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  I’m nodding. I can’t believe it, but I’m nodding. To hell with my vanity, my spirit, my old age. “Okay,” I say, my voice hoarse and strange. “Just one.” It’s possible he’s put me in a trance. It happens. There are people who are mesmerists. It’s in the bible.

  He lands in a squat behind a pew in the front row, spins the lens a few times while looking through the camera. “Oh God,” he says. “Yes. Perfect. Fucking perfect.”

  I know he’s taking a hundred pictures, but I don’t care anymore. A hot series of shivers is running through me as he continues clicking and saying: Yes, thank you, this is totally bloody it, perfect, yes, yes, sodding hell, God, look at you. It’s like we’re kissing, way more than kissing. I can’t imagine what my face must look like.

  “You’re her,” he says finally, putting the cover over the lens. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  But he doesn’t answer, just walks down the aisle toward me, a lazy, lanky walk that makes me think of summer. He’s completely unwound now, went from high gear to no gear the moment he covered the lens. As he approaches, I see that he has one green eye and one brown eye, like he’s two people in one, two very intense people in one.

  “Well,” he says when he’s by my side. He pauses there as if he’s going to say something more, like, I’m hoping what he meant by “You’re her,” but instead he just adds, “I’ll leave you to it,” and points up at Clark Gable.

  Looking at him from such close range, it strikes me now with certainty that it’s not the first time I’ve laid eyes on this totally unbelievable guy.

  Okay, I effing noticed.

  I think he’s going to shake my hand or touch my shoulder or something, but he just continues down the aisle. I turn around and watch him stroll along like he should have a piece of hay in his mouth. He picks up a tripod I didn’t notice when I came in and swings it over his shoulder. As he goes out the door, he doesn’t turn around, but raises his free hand in the air and waves slightly like he knows I’m watching him.

  Which I am.

  • • •

  I leave the church a few minutes later feeling warmer, drier, and like I narrowly escaped something. Grandma Sweetwine’s nowhere in sight.

  I press down the street looking for the address of the sculpture studio.

  To be clear, when you’re me, guys like him are kryptonite, not that I’ve ever met a guy like him before, one who makes you feel like you’re being kissed, no, ravished, from across a room. He didn’t seem to notice I was roped off either. Well, I am and must remain that way. I can’t let my guard down. My mother was right after all. I don’t want to be that girl. I can’t be.

  What someone says to you right before they die will come true

  (I was on my way to a party and she said to me: “Do you really want

  to be that girl?” and pointed to my reflection in the mirror.

  It was the night before she died.)

  It wasn’t the first time she’d said it either. Do you really want to be that girl, Jude?

  Well, yeah, I did, because that girl got her attention. That girl got everyone’s attention.

  Especially the attention of the older guys on the hill, like Michael Ravens, aka Zephyr, who made me feel faint every time he spoke to me, every time he let me jump the line to catch a wave, every time he texted or messaged me at night, every time he casually touched me in conversation—above all, the time he looped his finger through the plastic ring of my bikini bottoms and pulled me to him so he could whisper in my ear: Come with me.

  I went.

  You can say no, he said.

  His breath was ragged, his giant hands all over me, his fingers in me, the sand burning into my back, my brand-new cherub tattoo burning into my belly. The sun burning up the sky. You can totally say no, Jude. That’s what he said, but it seemed like he meant the opposite. It seemed like he weighed as much as the ocean, like my bikini bottoms were already bunched in his hand, like I was being sucked into that wave you hope never finds you, the one that takes you under, takes your breath, your bearings, disorients you completely and never brings you back to the surface again. You can say no. The words rumbled between us. Why didn’t I? It seemed like my mouth was filling with sand. Then the whole world filled with it. I didn’t say a thing. Not aloud anyway.

  It’d all happened so quickly. We were a few coves down from everyone else, hidden from the beach traffic by rocks. Minutes before we’d been talking about the surf, talking about his friend who’d done my tattoo, talking about the party we went to the previous night, where I’d sat on his lap and drank the first beer of my life. I’d just turned fourteen. He was almost four years older than me.

  Then we stopped talking and he kissed me. Our first kiss.

  I kissed him back. His lips tasted salty. He smelled like coconut suntan lotion. In between kisses, he started saying my name like it was this scalding thing in his mouth. Then he slipped the cups of my yellow bikini top to the sides and swallowed hard as he looked at me. I moved the fabric back in place, not because I didn’t want him to stare at me like that, but because I did and it embarrassed me. It was the first time any guy had ever seen me without a bra or anything and my cheeks flamed. He smiled. His pupils were big and black, his eyes so dark as he lowered me onto my back in the sand and slowly pushed the fabric of my top again to the sides. This time I let him. I let him look at me. I let my cheeks flame. I could hear his breathing in my own body. He started to kiss my breasts. I wasn’t sure I liked it. Then his mouth was on mine so hard I could barely breathe. That’s when his eyes got unseeing and his hands and hands and hands were everywhere at once. That’s when he started telling me I could say no and that’s when I didn’t. Then his whole body was pressing me into the hot sand, burying me in it. I kept thinking, it’s okay, I can handle this. I can. It’s okay, okay, okay. But it wasn’t and I couldn’t.

  I didn’t know you could get buried in your own silence.

  And then it was over.

  And then everything was.

  There’s more, but I’m not going to get into it now. Just know: I cut off three feet of blond hair and swore away boys forever because after this happened with Zephyr, my mother died. Right after. It was me. I brought the bad luck to us.

  This boycott isn’t whimsy. To me, boys don’t smell like soap or shampoo or cut grass or sweat from soccer practice or suntan lotion or the ocean from hours spent in the green curl of a wave anymore, they smell like death.

  I exhale, shove all that out the door of my mind with a swift kick, take a deep breath of the wet pulsing air, and start looking for Guillermo Garcia’s studio. It’s Mom I need to think about, and making this sculpture. I’m going to wish with my hands. I’m going to wish hard.

  A few moments later I’m standing in front of a big brick warehouse: 225 Day Street.

  The fog’s barely lifted and the volume of the world’s down way low—just me in the hush.

  There’s no bell by the door, or there was a bell, but it’s been dismantled, or chewed up by a wild animal, only a bunch of ravaged wires sticking out. How very neighborly. Sandy wasn’t kidding. I cross the fingers of my left hand for luck and knock on the door with my right.

  Nothing.

  I look around for Grandma—I wish she’d print out her daily schedule and give it to me—and try again.

  Then I knock a third time, but more tentatively, because maybe this isn’t a good idea. Sandy said this sculptor wasn’t human, um, what does that mean anyway? And what my mother said about the walls? That doesn’t sound, well, safe, now does it? Actually, what the hell am I thinking stopping in like this? Before Sandy’s even talked to him to see if he’s of sound mind. And in this fog, which is totally creepy and cold and foreboding. I cast around, jump down the step, ready to leap into the mist and disappear, when I hear the door creak open.

  Horror movie
creak.

  There’s a large man who’s been sleeping for several centuries framed in the doorway. Igor, I think; if he/it had a name, it would be Igor. Hair crawls all over his head, culminating in a black wiry beard uncoiling in every direction at once.

  An abundance of facial hair indicates a man

  of an ungovernable nature

  (No question.)

  His palms are practically blue with thick calluses, like he’s spent his life walking on his hands. This can’t be the same guy in the photograph. This can’t be Guillermo Garcia: The Rock Star of the Sculpture World.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” I have to get out of here. Whoever this is, no offense, but he eats puppies.

  He brushes hair out of his eyes and color jumps from them—a light green that is near fluorescent like in the picture. It is him. Everything’s telling me to turn and run, but I can’t seem to look away, and I guess, like the English guy, no one ever taught Igor it’s not polite to stare, because we’re in a deadlock—our gazes have glued themselves together—until he trips on absolutely nothing and almost falls, grabbing on to the door to keep himself up. Is he drunk? I inhale deeply, and yes, smell faintly the sweet acrid smell of alcohol.

  Something happened to him, Sandy had said. No one knows what the deal is.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, my voice barely audible. It’s like he’s fallen out of time.

  “No,” he answers firmly. “I am not.” A Hispanic accent breaks through the words.

  I’m surprised by his answer, find myself thinking: Oh me neither, I’m not okay at all, haven’t been in forever, and I feel like saying it aloud for some reason to this crazy man. Maybe I’ve fallen out of time right along with him.

  He looks me over as if inventorying my whole being. Sandy and Mom were right. This is not a normal dude. His gaze lands back in my eyes—it’s like an electro-shock, a jolt straight to my core.

  “Go away,” he says forcefully, his voice as big as the whole block. “Whoever you are, whatever you want, do not come back here.” Then he turns unsteadily, grabs the doorknob for balance, and shuts the door.

  I stand there for a long time letting the fog erase me piece by piece.

  Then, I knock again. Hard. I’m not going away. I can’t. I need to make this sculpture.

  “That’s right.” It’s Grandma in my head. “That’s my girl.”

  But it isn’t Igor who opens the door this time, it’s the English guy from the church.

  Holy effing hell.

  Surprise sparks in his mismatched eyes as he recognizes me. I hear banging and clattering and breaking from within the studio, like some super-humans are having a furniture-throwing contest. “Not a good time,” he says. Then I hear Igor’s voice erupt in Spanish as he throws a car across the room, from the way it sounds. The English guy looks over his shoulder, then back to me, his wild face wild with worry now. All his cocky confidence, his cheerfulness, his flirtatiousness have vanished. “I’m very sorry,” he says politely, like an English butler in a movie, then closes the door in my face without another word.

  • • •

  A half hour later, Grandma and I are hidden in the brush above the beach waiting, if necessary, to save Noah’s life. On the way home from Drunken Igor’s, while already plotting my return visit, I received an emergency text from Heather, my informant: Noah at Devil’s Drop in 15.

  I don’t take chances when it comes to Noah and the ocean.

  The last time I stepped foot in the water was to drag him out of it. Two years ago, a couple weeks after Mom died, he jumped off this same Devil’s Drop, got caught in a rip, and almost drowned. When I finally got his body—twice my size, chest still as stone, eyes slung back—to shore, and to revive, I was so furious at him I almost rolled him back into the surf.

  When twins are separated, their spirits steal away

  to find the other

  The fog’s mostly burned off down here. Surrounded by water on three sides and forest everywhere else, Lost Cove is the end, the farthest point west you can go before falling off the world. I scan the bluff for our red house, one of many ramshackles up there, clinging to the edge of the continent. I used to love living on the cliffs—surfed and swam so much that even when I was out of the water, I could feel the ground rocking under my feet like a moored boat.

  I check the ledge again. Still no Noah.

  Grandma’s peering at me over her sunglasses. “Quite the pair, those two foreign fellas. The older one doesn’t have a button left on him.”

  “You’re telling me,” I say, digging my fingers into the cold sand. How am I ever going to convince that hairy, drunken, furniture-throwing, scary-ass Igor to mentor me? And if I do, how will I steer clear of that unremarkable, plain-faced, dull-witted English guy who turned boycotting-me into a molten mess in a matter of minutes—and in a church!

  A flock of gulls swoops down to the breakers, wings outspread, crying.

  And for some reason, I keep wishing I’d told Drunken Igor that I wasn’t okay either.

  Grandma releases her parasol into the air. I look up, see the pink disc whirling off into the steely sky. Beautiful. Like something Noah would’ve drawn when he used to draw. “You have to do something about him,” she says. “You know you do. He was supposed to be the next Chagall, not the next doorstop. You are your brother’s keeper, dear.”

  This is one of her refrains. She’s like my conscience or something. That’s what the counselor at school said anyway about Grandma’s and Mom’s ghosts, which was pretty astute considering I hardly told her anything.

  One time, she made me do this guided meditation where I had to imagine myself walking in the woods and tell her what I saw. I saw woods. But then, a house appeared, only there was no way to get in it. No doors or windows. Major heebie-jeebies. She told me the house was me. Guilt is a prison, she said. I stopped going to see her.

  I don’t realize I’m checking my palms for creeping lesions, eruptions called cutaneous larva migrans, until Grandma gives me The Eye-Roll. It’s dizzying. I’m pretty sure I acquired this skill from her.

  “Hookworm,” I say sheepishly.

  “Do us all a favor, morbid one,” she chides. “Stay out of your father’s medical journals.”

  Though she’s been dead for over three years, Grandma didn’t start visiting me like this until two years ago. Just days after Mom died, I hauled the old Singer out of the closet and the moment I flipped the switch and the familiar hummingbird heartbeat of her sewing machine filled my bedroom, there she was in the chair beside me, pins in her mouth like always, saying, “The zigzag stitch is all the rage. Makes such a glamorous hem. Wait until you see.”

  We were partners in sewing. And partners in luck-hunting: four-leaf clovers, sand-dollar birds, red sea glass, clouds shaped like hearts, the first daffodils of spring, ladybugs, ladies in oversized hats. Best to bet on all the horses, dear, she’d say. Quick, make a wish, she’d say. I bet. I wished. I was her disciple. I still am.

  “They’re here,” I tell her, and my heart begins pacing around inside my chest in anticipation for the jump.

  Noah and Heather are standing on the ledge gazing out over the whitecaps. He’s in swimming trunks, she in a long blue coat. Heather’s a great informant because she’s never more than a shout away from my brother. She’s like his spirit animal, a gentle, odd, spritely being who I’m pretty sure has a storage space somewhere full of fairy dust. We’ve had this secret Keep Noah from Drowning Treaty for a while now. The only problem is she’s not lifeguard material herself. She never goes in the water.

  A moment later, Noah’s flying through the air, arms outstretched like he’s on the cross. I feel a surge of adrenaline.

  And then what always happens: He slows down. I can’t explain it, but it takes my brother forever to hit the surface of the water. I blink a few times at him s
uspended there midair as if on a tight rope. I’ve come to think either he has a way with gravity or I’m seriously missing more than a few buttons. I did read once that anxiety can significantly alter space-time perception.

  Usually Noah faces the horizon not the shore when he jumps, so I’ve never before had a full frontal, tip-to-toe view of my brother dropping through space. His neck’s arched, his chest’s thrust forward, and I can tell, even from this distance, that his face is blown open, like it used to be, and now his arms are reaching upward like he’s trying to hold up the whole sorry sky with his fingertips.

  “Look at that,” Grandma says, her voice tinged with wonder. “There he is. Our boy has returned. He’s in the sky.”

  “He’s like one of his drawings,” I whisper.

  Is this why he keeps jumping, then? To become for the briefest moment who he used to be? Because the worst thing that could ever happen to Noah has happened. He’s become normal. He has the proper amount of buttons.

  Except for this. This fixation with jumping Devil’s Drop.

  At last, Noah hits the water without a splash as if he’s gathered no momentum on his way down, as if he’s been placed gently on the surface by a kindly giant. And then he’s under. I tell him: Come in, but our twin-telepathy is long gone. When Mom died, he hung up on me. And now, because of all that’s happened, we avoid each other—worse, repel each other.

  I see his arms flail once. Is he struggling? The water must be freezing. He’s not wearing the trunks I sewed protective herbs into either. Okay, he’s swimming hard now, through the chaos of currents that surround the cliffs . . . and then, he’s out of danger. I exhale loudly, not realizing until I do that I’d been holding my breath.

  I watch him scramble up the beach, then the bluff, with his head down, shoulders hunched, thinking about Clark Gable knows what. No traces of what I just saw in his face, in his very being, remain. His soul has crawled back into its trench.