by Jandy Nelson
I stare at him, beseeching the aliens or Clark Gable or whoever’s in charge of soul abductions to bring back my brother. Because in addition to joining dangerous gangs and having parties, this Noah also goes out with girls, keeps his hair buzzed and tidy, hangs at The Spot, watches sports with Dad. For all other sixteen-year-old boys: fine. For Noah, it signifies one thing: death of the spirit. A book with the wrong story in it. My brother, the revolutionary weirdo, has covered himself in flame retardant, to use his terminology. Dad’s thrilled, of course, thinks Noah and Heather are a couple—they’re not. I’m the only one who seems to know how dire the situation is.
“Um, Jude, do you know there’s a lemon wrapped around your teeth?”
“Of course I know,” I say, though it sounds like garble for obvious reasons. Ah, lightbulb! Taking advantage of the sudden language barrier, I look right at him and add, “What have you done with my brother? If you see him, tell him I miss him. Tell him I’m—”
“Hello? Can’t understand you with the voodoo lemon in your mouth.” He shakes his head in a dismissive Dad kind of way and I can tell he’s about to get on my case. My interests disturb him, which I guess makes us even. “You know, I borrowed your laptop the other day to do a paper when Heather was using mine. I saw your search history.” Uh-oh. “Jesus, Jude. How many diseases can you think you have in one night? And all those freaking obituaries you read—like from every county in California.” Now seems like a good time to imagine the meadow. He points to the bible outspread on my lap. “And maybe you could give that totally lame book a rest for a while, and, I don’t know, get out. Talk to someone besides our dead grandmother. Think about things besides dying. It’s so—”
I take out the lemon. “What? Embarrassing?” I remember saying this to him once—how embarrassing he was—and cringe at the former me. Is it possible our personalities have swapped bodies? In third grade, Mrs. Michaels, the art teacher, told us we were to do self-portraits. We were across the room from each other and without so much as sharing a glance, I drew him, and he me. Sometimes, now, it feels like that.
“I wasn’t going to say embarrassing,” he says, brushing a hand through his bushel of hair, only to find that it’s no longer there. He touches the back of his neck instead.
“Yes you were.”
“Okay I was, because, it is totally embarrassing. I go to pay for my lunch today and pull out these.” He reaches in his pocket and shows me the assortment of extremely protective beans and seeds I stowed there.
“I’m just looking out for you, Noah, even if you’re a card-carrying artichoke.”
“Totally freaking mental, Jude.”
“You know what I think is mental? Having a party on the second anniversary of your mother’s death.”
His face cracks for a second, then just as quickly seals up. “I know you’re in there!” I want to scream. It’s true; I do know it. This is how:
1) His weird obsession with jumping Devil’s Drop and the sublime way he looked in the sky today.
2) There are times when he’s slumped in a chair, lying on his bed, curled up on the couch, and I wave my hand across his face and he doesn’t even blink. It’s as if he’s gone blind. Where is he during those times? What’s he doing in there? Because I suspect he’s painting. I suspect that inside the impenetrable fortress of conventionality he’s become, there’s one crazy-ass museum.
And most significantly: 3) I’ve discovered (search-history snooping is a two-way street) that Noah, who hardly ever goes online, who’s probably the only teenager in America indifferent to virtual reality and all social media, posts a message on a site called LostConnections.com, always the same one and pretty much every week.
I check—he’s never gotten a response. I’m certain the message is for Brian, who I haven’t seen since Mom’s funeral, and who, as far as I know, hasn’t been back to Lost Cove since his mother moved away.
For the record, I knew what was going on between Brian and Noah even if no one else did. All that summer when Noah came home at night from hanging out with him, he’d draw pictures of NoahandBrian until his fingers were so raw and swollen he’d have to take trips from his room to the freezer, where he’d bury his hand in the ice tray. He didn’t know I was watching him from the hallway, how he’d collapse against the refrigerator, his forehead pressed against the cold door, his eyes closed, his dreams outside of his body.
He didn’t know the moment he left in the morning, I’d go through the secret sketchpads he hid under his bed. It was like he’d discovered a whole new color spectrum. It was like he’d found another galaxy of imagery. It was like he’d replaced me.
To be clear: More than anything, I wish I hadn’t gone into that closet with Brian. But their story wasn’t over that night.
I wish I hadn’t done a lot of things I did back then.
I wish going into that closet with Brian was the worst of it.
The right-handed twin tells the truth, the left-handed twin tells lies
(Noah and I are both left-handed.)
He’s looking down at his feet. Intently. I don’t know what he’s thinking and it makes my bones feel hollow. He lifts his head. “We’re not going to have the party on the anniversary. It’ll be the day before,” he says quietly, his dark eyes soft, just like Mom’s.
Even though the last thing I want is a bunch of Hideaway Hill surfers like Zephyr Ravens anywhere near me, I say, “Have it.” I say this instead of what I’d say to him if I still had the voodoo lemon in: I’m sorry. For everything.
“Come for once?” He gestures toward the wall. “Wear one of those?” Unlike me, my room is one big blast of girl, with all the dresses I make—floating and not—hanging all over the walls. It’s like having friends.
I shrug. “Don’t do social events. Don’t wear the dresses.”
“You used to.”
I don’t say, “And you used to make art and like boys and talk to horses and pull the moon through the window for my birthday present.”
If Mom came back, she wouldn’t be able to pick either of us out of a police lineup.
Or Dad, for that matter, who’s just materialized in the doorway. Benjamin Sweetwine: The Sequel has skin the color and texture of gray earthenware clay. His pants are always too big and belted awkwardly so he looks like a scarecrow, like if someone pulled the belt he’d turn into a pile of straw. This might be my fault. Grandma and I have largely taken over the kitchen, using the bible as cookbook:
To bring joy back to a grieving family, sprinkle three
tablespoons of crushed eggshells over every meal
Dad seems to always appear like this now too, without the foreshadowing of say, footsteps? My eyes migrate to his shoes, which are indeed on his feet, which are indeed on the ground and pointing in the right direction—good. Well, you start to wonder who’s the specter in the family. You start to wonder why your dead parent is more present and accounted for than the living one. Most of the time, I only know Dad’s home because I hear a toilet flush or the TV turn on. He never listens to jazz or swims anymore. He mostly just stares off with a faraway perplexed look on his face, like he’s trying to work through an impenetrable mathematical equation.
And he goes for walks.
The walking started a day after the funeral when all Mom’s friends and colleagues still filled the house. “Going for a walk,” he’d said to me, bowing out the back door, leaving me (Noah was nowhere to be found), and not returning home until after everyone had left. The next day was the same: “Going for a walk,” and so were the days and weeks and months and years that followed, with everyone always telling me they saw my dad up on Old Mine Road, which is fifteen miles from here, or at Bandit Beach, which is even farther. I imagine him getting hit by cars, washed away by rogue waves, attacked by mountain lions. I imagine him not coming back. I used to ambush him on his way out, asking if I could walk with him, to
which he’d reply, “Just need some time to think, honey.”
While he’s thinking, I wait for the phone to ring with the news that there’s been an accident.
That’s what they tell you: There’s been an accident.
Mom was on her way to see Dad when it happened. They’d been separated for about a month and he was staying at a hotel. She told Noah before she left that afternoon that she was going to ask Dad to come home so we could be a family again.
But she died instead.
To lighten the mood in my head, I ask, “Dad, isn’t there a disease where the flesh calcifies until the poor afflicted person is trapped within their own body like it’s a stone prison? I’m pretty sure I read about it in one of your journals.”
He and Noah share one of their “glances” at my expense. Oh Clark Gable, groan.
Dad says, “It’s called FOP and it’s extremely rare, Jude. Extremely, extremely rare.”
“Oh, I don’t think I have it or anything.” Not literally, anyway. I don’t share that I think the three of us all might have it metaphorically. Our real selves buried so deep in these imposter ones. Dad’s medical journals can be just as illuminating as Grandma’s bible.
“Where the hell is Ralph? Where the hell is Ralph?” And a moment of family bonding ensues! We all roll the eyes in unison with dramatic Grandma Sweetwine flair. But then Dad’s forehead creases. “Honey, is there a reason why there’s a very large onion in your pocket?”
I look down at my illness deflector yawning open my sweatshirt pocket. I’d forgotten about it. Did the English guy see it too? Oh dear.
Dad says, “Jude, you really—” But what I’m certain is to be another artichoke lecture about my bible-thumping tendencies or my long-distance relationship with Grandma (he doesn’t know about Mom) is cut short because he’s been shot with a stun gun.
“Dad?” His face has gone pale—well, paler. “Dad?” I repeat, following his distraught gaze to the computer screen. Is it Family of Mourners? It was my favorite of the Guillermo Garcia works I saw, very upsetting, though. Three massive grief-stricken rock-giants who reminded me of us, the way Dad, Noah, and I must’ve looked standing over Mom’s grave as if we might topple in after her. It must remind Dad too.
I look at Noah and find him in the same condition, also staring intently at the screen. The padlock is gone. A red glow of emotion has taken over his face and neck, even his hands. This is promising. He’s actually reacting to art.
“I know,” I say to both of them. “Incredible work, right?”
Neither of them responds. I’m not sure if either of them even heard me.
Then Dad says brusquely, “Going for a walk,” and Noah says equally brusquely, “My friends,” and they’re gone.
And I’m the only bat in this belfry?
The thing is: I know I’ve slipped. I see my buttons popping off and flying in all directions on a daily basis. What worries me about Dad and Noah is that they seem to think they’re okay.
I go to the window, open it, and in come the eerie moans and caws of the loons, the thunder of the winter waves, stellar waves, I see. For a moment I’m back on my board, busting through the break zone, cold briny air in my lungs—except then, I’m dragging Noah in to shore and it’s again that day two years ago when he almost drowned and the weight of him is pulling us both under with each stroke—no.
No.
I close the window, yank down the shade.
If one twin is cut, the other will bleed
Later that night when I get on the computer to learn more about Guillermo Garcia, I find that the bookmarks I saved have been deleted.
The Family of Mourners screensaver has been changed to a single purple tulip.
When I question Noah about it, he says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t believe him.
• • •
Noah’s party’s raging all around me. Dad’s off at his parasite conference for the week. Christmas was a bust. And I just made an early New Year’s resolution, no, it’s a New Year’s revolution, and this is it: to return to Guillermo Garcia’s studio tonight and ask him to mentor me. So far since winter break began, I’ve chickened out. Because what if he says no? What if he says yes? What if he bludgeons me with a chisel? What if the English guy is there? What if he isn’t? What if he bludgeons me with a chisel? What if my mother breaks stone as easily as clay? What if this rash on my arm is leprosy?
Etc.
I put all such questions into The Oracle a moment ago and the results were conclusive. No time like the present, it was decided, egged on by the fact that people from Noah’s party—Zephyr included—kept knocking on my door, which was locked with a dresser in front of it. So out the window I went, sweeping the twelve sand-dollar birds I keep on the sill into my sweatshirt pocket. They’re not as lucky as four-leaf clovers or even red sea glass, but they’ll have to do.
I follow the yellow reflectors in the middle of the road down the hill, listening for cars and serial killers. It’s another white-out. It’s way spooky. And this is a really bad idea. But I’m committed to it now, so I start to run through the cold wet nothingness and pray to Clark Gable that Guillermo Garcia is just a regular sort of maniac and not a girl-murdering one and try not to wonder if the English guy will be there. Try not to think about his different-colored eyes and the intensity that crackled off him and how familiar he looked and how he called me a fallen angel and said, “You’re her,” and before too long all that not-thinking has gotten me to the studio door and light is pouring out from beneath it.
Drunken Igor must be inside. An image of him with his greasy hair and wiry black beard and blue calloused fingers fills my head. A very itchy image. He probably has lice. I mean, if I were a louse I’d choose him to colonize. All that hair. No offense, but ick.
I take a few steps back, see a bank of windows on the side of the building, all lit up—the studio space must be back there. An idea begins to take shape. A great idea. Because maybe there’s a way to spy inside his studio undetected . . . yes, like from that fire escape in back, I think, spotting it. I want to see the giants. I want to see Drunken Igor too, and from behind glass seems perfect. Brilliant, really. Before I know it, I’m over the fence, and hustling down a pitch-dark alley, one in which girls get bludgeoned with chisels.
It is very unlucky to fall on your face
(This is an honest-to-goodness entry. The wisdom of
Grandma’s bible knows no bounds.)
I reach the fire escape—alive—and start climbing, mouse-quiet, toward the light blaring from the landing.
What am I doing?
Well, I’m doing it. At the top of the stairs, I squat down and scoot like a crab under the windows. Once I’ve cleared them, I stand back up, hugging the wall as I peer into a huge brightly lit space—
And there they are. Giants. Giant giants. But different from the ones in the photographs. These are all couples. Across the room, enormous rock-beings are embracing as if on a dance floor, as if they’ve all frozen mid-move. No, not embracing, actually. Not yet. It’s like each “man” and “woman” were hurling themselves at each other passionately, desperately, and then time stopped before they could make it into each other’s arms.
Adrenaline courses through me. No wonder Interview had him taking a baseball bat to Rodin’s The Kiss. It’s so polite and, well, boring, in comparison—
My train of thought’s interrupted because bounding into the large space as if his skin can’t contain the uproar of blood within is Drunken Igor, but utterly transformed. He’s shaved, washed his hair, and put on a smock, which is spattered with clay, as is the water bottle he’s holding to his lips. There was no mention in his bio that he worked in clay. He guzzles from the bottle like he’s been wandering the desert with Moses, drains it, then tosses it into a trash can.
Someone’s plugged him in.
Ladies and gentlemen: The Rock Star of the Sculpture World.
He moves toward a clay work-in-progress in the center of the room and when he’s within a few feet of it, he begins circling it slowly, like predator on prey, speaking in a deep rumble of a voice I can hear through the window. I look at the door, assuming someone’s about to follow him in, someone immersed in this conversation with him, like the English guy, I think with a flutter, but no one joins him. I can’t make out a word of what he’s saying. It sounds like Spanish.
Maybe he has ghosts too. Good. Something in common then.
All at once, he seizes on the sculpture and the suddenness of the action makes my breath catch. He’s a downed power line, the way he moves. Except now the power’s been cut and he’s pressing his forehead into the belly of the sculpture. No offense (again), but what a freak. He has his large open hands on each side of the work, and he’s just staying like that, unmoving, as if he’s praying or listening for a pulse or totally out of his gourd. Then I see his hands begin to move slowly up and down and across the surface of the piece, dragging clay off, bit by bit, throwing fistfuls onto the floor, but as he does this, he never once lifts his head to look at what he’s doing. He’s sculpting blind. Oh wow.
I wish Noah could see this. And Mom.
Eventually, he steps back in a stumbling kind of way as if pulling himself out of a trance, takes a cigarette pack out of a pocket in his smock, lights up, and, leaning against a nearby table, he smokes and stares at the sculpture, tilting his head from left to right. I’m recalling his bonkers biography. How he came from a long line of gravestone cutters in Colombia and began carving at the age of five. How no one had ever seen angels as magnificent as his, and people who lived near the cemeteries where his statues watched over the dead swore they heard them singing at night, swore that their heavenly voices carried into their homes, their sleep, their dreams. How it was rumored that the boy carver was enchanted or possibly possessed.
