I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  (PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: The Boy Who Watched the Boy Hypnotize the World)

  I share this blow-in theory with him while we’re sitting on a slate slide at the edge of the creek, water lulling slowly by us like we’re on a rock boat.

  “They’ve done a really good job in preparing you to pass as an earthling,” I say.

  He half smiles. I notice a dimple I hadn’t before, at the top of his cheek. “No doubt,” he says. “They’ve prepared me well. I even play baseball.” He throws a pebble into the water. I watch it drown. He raises an eyebrow at me. “You, on the other hand . . .”

  I pick up a stone and toss it in the same spot where his disappeared. “Yeah, no preparation whatsoever. They just threw me in. That’s why I’m so clueless.” I mean it as a joke, but it comes out serious. It comes out true. Because it is. I so totally missed class the day all the required information was passed out. Brian licks his bottom lip and doesn’t respond.

  The mood’s changed and I don’t know why.

  From underneath my hair, I study him. I know from doing portraits that you have to look at someone a really long time to see what they’re covering up, to see their inside face, and when you do see it and get it down, that’s the thing that makes people freak out about how much a drawing looks like them.

  Brian’s inside face is worried.

  “So, that picture . . .” he says hesitantly. He pauses, then licks his bottom lip again. Is he nervous? He seems to be, suddenly, though until this moment I didn’t think it possible. It makes me nervous thinking he’s nervous. He does it again, the tongue sweep across the bottom lip. Is that what he does when he’s nervous? I swallow. Now I’m waiting for him to do it again, willing it. Is he staring at my mouth too? I can’t help it. I sweep my tongue across my bottom lip.

  He turns away, throws a few pebbles rapid-fire with some kind of bionic wrist movement that causes the stones to skip effortlessly across the surface of the water. I watch the vein in his neck pulse. I watch him convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. I watch him existing and existing and existing. Is he going to finish his sentence? Ever? Several more centuries of silence pass where the air gets more and more jumpy and alive, like all the molecules he previously put to sleep are waking up. And then it occurs to me he means the naked pictures from yesterday. Is that what he means? The thought’s a bolt.

  “Of the English guy?” I squeak. Argh, I sound like a mite. I wish my voice would stop cracking and change already.

  He swallows and turns toward me. “No, I was wondering if you ever actually make the drawings you do in your head?”

  “Sometimes,” I answer.

  “Well, did you make it?” His eyes catch me off guard, capturing me completely in some kind of net. I want to say his name.

  “Make what?” I ask, stalling. My heart’s kicking around in my chest. I know what picture he means now.

  “The one”—he licks his bottom lip—“of me?”

  I feel possessed as I lunge for the pad and flip the pages until I find him, that final version. I place it in his hands, watch his eyes dart up and down, down and up. I’m spiking a fever trying to tell if he likes it or not. I can’t tell. Then I try to see the picture through his eyes and an uh-oh-kill-me-now feeling overtakes me. The Brian I made is him colliding at top speed into a wall of magic. It’s nothing like the drawings of people I do at school. I realize with horror it’s not a drawing of a friend. I’m getting dizzy. Every line and angle and color screams just how much I like him. I feel like I’m wrapped and trapped in plastic. And he’s still not saying a thing. Not one thing!

  I wish I were a horse.

  “You don’t have to like it or anything,” I say finally, trying to get the pad back. My mind’s bursting. “It’s not a big deal. I draw everyone.” I can’t stop talking. “I draw everything. Even dung beetles and potatoes and driftwood and mounds of dirt and redwood stumps and—”

  “Are you kidding?” he interrupts, not letting me take the pad away. It’s his turn to go red. “I totally like it.” He pauses. I watch him breathe. He’s breathing fast. “I look like the freaking aurora borealis.” I don’t know what this is, but I can tell from his voice it’s a very cool thing.

  A circuit flips in my chest. One I didn’t know I had.

  “I’m so happy I’m not a horse!” I realize I’ve said it aloud only when Brian says, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.” I try to calm down, try to stop smiling. Was the sky always this shade of magenta?

  He’s laughing for real like yesterday. “Dude, you are the strangest person ever. Did you actually just say you’re so happy you’re not a horse?”

  “No,” I say, trying not to laugh and failing. “I said—”

  But before I can get another word out, a voice crashes into all this perfect. “Oh how romantic!” I freeze, knowing immediately whose hippo-head the sneering asshat words are coming out of. I swear the guy’s installed a tracking device on me—it’s the only explanation.

  With him is a great ape: Big Foot. At least no Zephyr.

  “Time for a dip, Bubble?” Fry says.

  This is my cue to hightail it to the other side of the world.

  WE NEED TO RUN, I tell Brian telepathically.

  Except when I glance at him, I see that his face has bricked up and I can tell running away is not part of his modus operandi. Which really sucks. I swallow.

  Then holler, “Fuck off, you toilet-licking sociopaths!” only it comes out as complete silence. So I heave a mountain range at them. They don’t budge.

  My whole being focuses into one wish: Please don’t let me be humiliated in front of Brian.

  Fry’s attention has shifted from me to Brian. He’s smirking. “Nice hat.”

  “Thanks,” Brian replies coolly, like he owns the air in the Northern Hemisphere. He’s no broken umbrella, this is clear. He doesn’t seem one bit afraid of these garbage-headed scum-suckers.

  Fry raises an eyebrow, which turns his gigantic greasy forehead into a relief map. Brian’s piqued his psychopathic interest. Great. I appraise Big Foot. He’s a slab of concrete in a Giants baseball cap. His hands are pushed deep into his sweatshirt pockets. They look like grenades through the fabric. I note the width of his right wrist, note that his fist is probably as large as my whole face. I’ve never actually been punched before, only shoved around. I imagine it, imagine all the paintings bursting out of my skull at impact.

  (SELF-PORTRAIT: Pow)

  “So did you homos pack a picnic?” Fry says to Brian. My muscles tighten.

  Brian slowly stands. “I’ll give you a chance to apologize,” he says to Fry, his voice icy and calm, his eyes the opposite. The rock-boat has given him a few extra feet, so he’s looking down on all of us. His meteorite bag hangs heavy on his side. I need to stand but have no legs.

  “Apologize for what?” Fry says. “For calling you homos homos?”

  Big Foot laughs. It shakes the ground. In Taipei.

  I can see Fry’s exhilarated—no one challenges him around here, especially not any of us younger losers he’s been calling homos and pussies and whatevers since we got ears.

  “You think that’s funny?” Brian says. “’Cuz I don’t.” He moves a step backward so he’s even higher on the rock now. He’s becoming someone else. Darth Vader, I think. The Realm of Calm’s been sucked back into his index finger and now he looks like he eats human livers. Sautéed with eyeballs and toe-tips.

  Hatred’s rising off him in waves.

  I want to run away with the circus but take a deep breath and stand, crossing my arms, which have grown skinnier in the past few moments, against my newly sunken chest. I do this as threateningly as I can, thinking of crocodiles, sharks, black piranhas for courage. Not working. Then I remember the honey badger—pound for pound the most powerful creature on earth! An unlikely furry little killer. I na
rrow my eyes, clamp my mouth shut.

  Then the worst thing happens. Fry and Big Foot start to laugh at me.

  “Ooooo, so scary, Bubble,” Fry coos. Big Foot crosses his arms in an imitation of me, which Fry finds so hilarious, he does it too.

  I hold my breath so I don’t collapse into a heap.

  “I really think it’s time you two apologized and were on your way,” I hear from behind me. “If not, I can’t be responsible for what happens next.”

  I spin around. Is he freaking crazy? Does he not realize he’s half Fry’s size and a third of Big Foot’s? And I’m me? Is he packing an Uzi?

  But above us, poised on the rock, he seems unconcerned. He’s tossing a stone from hand to hand, a stone like the one that’s still in my pocket. We all watch as it pops between his palms, his hands hardly moving, as if he’s making it jump with his mind. “I guess you’re not leaving?” he says to his hands, then looks up at Fry and Big Foot, somehow without breaking the rhythm of the skipping stone. It’s incredible. “I just want to know one thing then.” Brian smiles a slow careful smile, but the vein in his neck’s pulsing furiously and it seems likely that whatever’s about to come out of his mouth next is going to get us killed.

  Fry glances at Big Foot and the two of them seem to come to a quick, silent understanding about what to do with our earthly remains.

  I’m holding my breath again. All of us are waiting for Brian to speak, watching the dancing stone, mesmerized by it, as the air sizzles with coming violence. It’s the real kind too. The lying in a hospital bed with only a straw sticking out of your bandaged head kind. The sick pounding kind of violence that I have to mute the TV to get through, unless Dad’s around and then I have to endure it. I hope Mr. Grady gives the paintings I left in the art room to Mom. They can show my stuff at the memorial—my first and last art exhibit.

  (PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Brian and Noah Buried Side by Side)

  I make a fist but can’t remember if you’re supposed to keep your thumb inside or outside of it when you punch. Why did Dad teach me to wrestle? Who on earth wrestles? He should’ve taught me how to make a freaking fist. And what about my fingers? Will I still be able to draw after this is over? Picasso must’ve gotten in fights. Van Gogh and Gauguin fought each other. It’ll be okay. Sure it will. And black eyes are cool, colorful.

  Then all of a sudden Brian snatches the dancing stone into one of his fists, stopping time.

  “What I want to know,” he says, drawling out each word. “Is who the hell let you out of your cages?”

  “Do you believe this guy?” Fry says to Big Foot, who grunts out an incomprehensible something in Big Footese. They lunge—

  I’m telling Grandma Sweetwine I will be joining her shortly when I catch the whipping movement of Brian’s arm a second before Fry cries out, his fingers flying to his ear, “What the hell?” Then Big Foot yelps and covers his head. I whirl around, see Brian’s hand in the bag. Now Fry’s ducking, and so is Big Foot, because meteorites are wailing at them, raining on them, hailing down on them, zooming past their skulls at the speed of sound, faster, at the speed of light, each time whooshing close enough to shave hairs, a millimeter away from ending their brain activity permanently. “Stop it!” Big Foot screams. Both of them are twisting and hopping and trying to shield their heads with their arms as more bits and pieces of fallen sky race through the air at warp speed. Brian’s a machine, a machine gun, two at a time, three, four, underhand, overhand, both hands. His arm’s a blur, he’s a blur—each rock—each star—just barely missing, barely sparing Fry and Big Foot until they’re both balled up on the ground, hands over their heads, saying, “Please, dude, stop.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that apology,” Brian says, whipping one so close to Fry’s head it makes me wince. Then another few for good measure. “Two apologies, actually. One to Noah. And one to me. Like you mean it.”

  “Sorry,” Fry says, completely stunned. Maybe one did bean him in the head. “Now stop.”

  “Not good enough.”

  An additional series of meteorites rocket at their skulls at a billion miles per hour.

  Fry cries out, “Sorry, Noah. Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “Brian.”

  “Sorry, Brian!”

  “Do you accept their apology, Noah?”

  I nod. God and his son have been demoted.

  “Now, get the hell out of here,” Brian says to them. “Next time I won’t miss your thick skulls on purpose.”

  And then they’re fleeing in a second rain of meteorites, their arms helmetting their heads, as they run away from us.

  “The pitcher?” I ask him as I grab my pad.

  He nods. I catch the half smile breaking through the wall of his face. He hops off the rock-slide and starts picking up the meteorites and loading them back into his bag. I grab the magnet rake, lying there like a sword. This guy’s so totally more magic-headed than anyone, even Picasso or Pollock or Mom. We jump the creek and then we’re tearing through the trees together in the opposite direction of home. He’s as fast as I am, fast like we could run down jumbo jets, comets.

  “You know we’re dead, right?” I shout, thinking of the coming payback.

  “Don’t count on it,” Brian shouts back.

  Yeah, I think, we’re invincible.

  We’re sprinting at the speed of light when the ground gives way and we rise into the air as if racing up stairs.

  • • •

  I give up on the sketch, close my eyes, lean back in my desk chair. In my mind, I can draw Brian with lightning.

  “What?” I hear. “You meditating now? Swami Sweetwine has a certain ring.”

  I keep my eyes shut. “Go away, Jude.”

  “Where’ve you been all week?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Each morning since he hurled those meteorites at Fry and Big Foot, five mornings so far to be exact, I’ve waited on the roof, totally deranged, my head a few feet above my neck, for his garage to open so we can plunge into the woods again and become imaginary—that’s the only way I can describe it.

  (PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Two Boys Jump and Stay Up)

  “So is Brian nice?” I open my eyes. She knows his name now. He’s no longer such a freak? She’s leaning against the doorframe in lime-green pajama bottoms and a fuchsia tank top, looking like one of those color-swirled lollipops you get on the boardwalk. If you squint your eyes, lots of girls look like those lollipops.

  Jude holds out her hand in front of her, examines five shiny purple nails. “Everyone’s talking about him like he’s this baseball god, like he’s headed for the major leagues. Fry’s cousin—he’s here for the summer—his little brother goes to the same school back east. They call him The Ax or something.”

  I burst out laughing. The Ax. Brian is called The Ax! I flip the page and start drawing it.

  Is this why there’s been no retaliation? Why Fry passed me the other day while I was having a discussion with Rascal the horse and before I could even think of peeling away to Oregon, he pointed at me and said, “Dude.” And that was it.

  “So is he?” she repeats. Her hair’s particularly bloodthirsty tonight, snaking all around the room, swarming the furniture, vining up the legs of chairs, stretching over the walls. I’m next.

  “Is he what?”

  “Nice, Bubble, is Brian, your new best friend, nice?”

  “He’s fine,” I say, ignoring the Bubble, whatever. “Like anyone.”

  “But you don’t like anyone.” I hear the jealousy now. “What animal is he, then?” She’s twirling a string of hair around her index finger so tightly the tip’s ballooning red and bulbous like it might burst.

  “A hamster,” I say.

  She laughs. “Yeah, right. The Ax is a hams
ter.”

  I have to get her off Brian. Forget shutters, if I could put the Great Wall of China around him and me, I would. “So who’s M.?” I ask, remembering the asshat Ouija board.

  “He’s no one.”

  Fine. I turn back around to The Ax drawing—

  I hear, “How would you rather die? Drinking gasoline and then lighting a match in your mouth or getting buried alive?”

  “The explosion,” I say, trying to hide my smile because after all these months of ignoring me, she’s sucking up. “Duh. Obviously.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just warming you up. It’s been a while. How about—”

  There’s a tapping at the window.

  “Is that him? At the window?” I hate the excitement in her voice.

  Is it, though? At night? I did casually mention to him which room was mine—right on the street with easy access—a few dozen times because, well, I have my reasons. I get up from my desk and walk over to the window and flip the shade. It is him. Real and everything. Sometimes I wonder if I’m making the whole thing up and if someone were looking down from above they’d see me alone all day, talking and laughing by myself in the middle of a forest.

  He’s framed in the light from the room, looking like he stuck his toe in a socket. He’s not wearing his hat, and his hair’s amped out all over his head. His eyes are all sparked up too. I open the window.

  “I totally want to meet him,” I hear Jude say from behind me.

  I do not want that. Do not. I want her to fall in a hole.

  I bend down and stick my head and shoulders out, spreading myself as much as I can across the windowsill so Jude can’t see out or Brian in. The air is cool, feathery on my face.

  “Hey,” I say, like he always knocks at my window at night and I’m not gunning inside at top speed.

  “You gotta come up,” he says. “Got to. It’s clear finally. And no moon. It’s an intergalactic gorge fest up there.”