I'll Give You the Sun (15 page)

Clementine reaches in first and chooses a guy named Dexter. Some tall kid I've never seen before with a cool haircut and clothes ten times too big for him. Everyone jeers and cheers and generally acts lame as they get up and walk into the closet with we-are-so-beyond-this looks on their faces. Courtney makes a display of setting the egg-timer. All I can think about is how much I hate her, how much I want her to get stampeded by a herd of pissed-off snapping turtles before she can get in that closet with Brian.

I stand with the help of the armrest, then bushwhack through an impossible thicket of Jude's blond hair to a bathroom, where I splash cold water on my face. Beer sucks. I lift my head. It's still me in the mirror. It's still me in me, right? I'm not sure. And I'm certainly not hot, I can see that. I look like a skinny pathetic coward too afraid to jump off his dad's shoulder into the water.
It's a sink-or-swim world, Noah.

The second I walk back into the room, I'm assaulted by, “You've been chosen, dude,” and “Heather picked you,” and “Your turn, Picasso.”

I swallow. Brian's still studying those spines of books, his back to me as Heather takes my hand and leads me toward the closet, her arm pulled tight as if forcing an unwilling dog on a leash.

What I notice right away about the walk-in closet is that there are tons of dark suits hanging everywhere, looking like rows of men at a funeral.

Heather switches off the light, then says softly, shyly, “Help me find you, okay?” I think about escaping into the hanging suits, joining the men in mourning until the egg-timer goes off, but then Heather bumps into me and laughs. Her hands quickly find my arms. Her touch is so light, like two leaves have fallen on me.

“We don't have to,” she whispers. Then, “Do you want to?”

I can feel her breath on my face. Her hair smells like sad flowers.

“Okay,” I say, but don't move a muscle.

Time passes. It feels like lots and lots of it, so much that when we walk out of this closet, it'll be time for us to go to college or die even. Except, because I'm counting in my head, I know that not even seven seconds of the seven minutes have passed. I'm calculating how many seconds are in seven minutes when I feel her small cool hands leave my arms and land on my cheeks, then feel her lips brush across mine, once, then again, the second time staying there. It's like being kissed by a feather, no, smoother, a petal. So soft. Too soft. We're petal people. I think about the earthquake kiss in the alcove and want to cry again. This time because I
am
sad. And scared. And because my skin has never fit this badly before.

(S
ELF-PORTRAIT:
Boy in a Blender
)

I realize my arms are lying limp at my sides. I should do something with them, shouldn't I? I rest a hand on her waist, which totally feels like the wrong place for it, so I move it to her back, which also feels entirely wrong, but before I can reposition it, her lips open, so I open my mine too—it's not disgusting. She doesn't taste like a rancid orange but like mint, like she had a mint right before. I'm wondering what I taste like as her tongue slips into my mouth. It shocks me how wet it is. And warm. And tongue-y. My tongue's going nowhere. I'm telling it to move and enter her mouth, but it won't listen to me. I figure it out: There's 420 seconds in seven minutes. Maybe twenty seconds have passed, which means we still have 400 seconds left of this. Oh fucking fuck.

And then it happens. Brian rises out of the darkness of my mind and takes my hand like he did in the movie theater and pulls me to him. I can smell his sweat, can hear his voice.
Noah,
he says in that bone-melting way and my hands are in Heather's hair, and I'm pressing my body against hers hard, drawing her closer to me, pushing my tongue deep inside her mouth . . .

We must not hear the ding of the timer, because all of a sudden the light switches on and the mourning men are all around us again, not to mention Courtney in the doorway tapping an invisible watch on her wrist. “C'mon, lovebirds. Time's up.” I blink a few hundred times at the invasion of light. At the invasion of the truth. Heather looks dizzy, dreamy. Heather looks one hundred percent like Heather. I've done a bad thing. To her, to me. To Brian, even if he doesn't care, it still feels that way. Maybe the girl downstairs turned me into a demon like her with that kiss.

“Wow,” Heather whispers. “I've never . . . No one's ever . . . Wow. That was incredible.”

She can barely walk. I look down to make sure I don't have a tent in my pants as she takes my hand and we emerge from the closet like two unsteady cubs from a hibernation den. Everyone starts whistling and saying lame things like, “Bedroom's down the hall.”

I scan the room for Brian, expecting him to be examining the spines of books still, but he's not. His face is like I've seen it only once before, all bricked up with fury, like he wants to hurl a meteorite at my head and he's not going to miss.

But?

Heather runs off to join the hornets. The whole room's been engulfed by Jude's hair. The whole universe has. I fall into a recliner. Nothing makes sense.
It's just a stupid game,
he said
. No big deal.
But then, he said it was
No big deal
when his mother's friend (boyfriend?) came on to him too and that seemed like it was a big deal to him. Maybe
No big deal
is code for: This is Supernaturally Screwed Up.
I'm sorry,
I tell him in my mind.
It was you,
I tell him.
I kissed you.

I drop my head in my hands, start involuntarily eavesdropping on a group of guys behind me, who must be having a contest to see how many times they can say how
gay
this or that is in one conversation, when someone touches my shoulder. It's Heather.

I nod at her, then try to hide in my hair and mind-control her to go away, like to the Amazon . . . I feel her stiffening beside me, probably not understanding why I've sent her six thousand miles away to the jungle after a kiss like that. I hate being like this to her, but I don't know what else to do. When I peek up through my hair moments later, she's gone. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath. I'm mid-exhale when I see Brian being escorted into the closet, not by Courtney, but
by my sister.

My sister.

• • •

H
ow is this happening? This can't be happening. I blink and blink, but it's still happening. I look over at Courtney, who has her hand in Brian's hat. She's opening the folded pieces of paper wondering what went wrong.
Jude
is what went wrong. I can't believe she'd go this far.

I have to do something.

“No!” I shout, jumping up from the chair. “No!”

Only I don't do that.

I run to the egg-timer, grab it off the table, and ring it and ring it and ring it.

Only I don't do that either.

I don't do anything.

I can't do anything.

I've been eviscerated.

(S
ELF-PORTRAIT:
Gutted Fish
)

Brian and Jude are going to kiss each other.

They're probably kissing each other right this second.

Somehow I manage to get up from the chair, out of that room, down the stairs, and out the door of the house. I stagger across the porch, feeling like I'm falling off my feet with every step. Blurs of people are blurring around the yard. I stumble through them, through the black back-stabbing air toward the road. In my daze, I realize I'm scanning the crowd for the crazy-in-love, making-out guys from the alcove, but they're nowhere. I bet I imagined them.

I bet they don't exist.

I look toward the woods, watch all the trees crash down.

(G
ROUP
P
ORTRAIT:
All the Glass Boys Shatter
)

From behind me, I hear someone with a slurring English accent say, “If it isn't the clandestine artist.” I turn to see the naked English guy, except he's dressed in a leather jacket and jeans and boots. He has the same mental smile on his same mental face. The same eyes that don't match. I remember how Jude gave up the sun and stars and oceans for my drawing of him. I'm going to steal it back from her. I'm going to take
everything
from her.

If she were drowning, I'd hold her head under.

“I know you, mate,” he says, teetering on his feet, pointing at me with a bottle of some kind of alcohol.

“No you don't,” I say. “No one does.”

His eyes clear for a second. “You're right about that.”

We stare at each other for a moment without saying anything. I remember how he looked naked and don't even care because I'm dead. I'm going to move underground with the moles and breathe dirt.

“What are you called anyway?” he asks.

What am I called? What a strange question. Bubble, I think. I'm called freaking Bubble.

“Picasso,” I say.

His eyebrows arch. “You taking the piss?”

What does that mean?

He slurs on, throwing words into the air all around us. “Well, that must keep the bar nice and low, no problem filling those shoes, like naming your kid Shakespeare. What were they thinking, your parents?” He takes a swig.

I pray to the forest of fallen trees that Brian looks out the window and sees me here with the naked English guy. Jude too.

“You're like from a movie,” I think and say at the same time.

He laughs and his face kaleidoscopes. “A crap movie, then. Been sleeping in the park for weeks now. Except for the night I slept behind bars, of course.”

Jail? He's an outlaw? He looks like one. “Why?” I ask.

“Drunk and disorderly. Disturbing the peace. Whoever heard of getting arrested for being disorderly?” I struggle to decipher his sloshed words. “Are you orderly, Picasso? Is anyone?” I shake my head and he nods. “That's what I said. There's no peace to disturb. I kept telling the cop: No. Peace. To. Disturb. Man.” Putting two cigarettes in his mouth, he lights one, the other, then sucks on them both. I've never seen someone smoke two at once. Gray plumes of smoke come out his nose and mouth at the same time. He hands me one of the cigarettes, which I take because what else am I going to do? “Got myself chucked from that posh art school you don't go to.” He puts a hand on my shoulder to steady himself. “Doesn't matter, would've gotten chucked anyway when they found out I wasn't really eighteen.” I feel how wobbly he is and plant my feet into the ground. Then I remember the cigarette in my hand and bring it to my lips, only to suck in and immediately cough it out. He doesn't notice. He might be as drunk as one of those guys who talks to lampposts and I'm the lamppost. I want to take the bottle from him and pour it out.

“I gotta go,” I say, because I've started imagining Brian and Jude touching each other in the dark. All over. Can't stop imagining it.

“Right,” he says, not looking at me. “Right.”

“Maybe you should go home,” I say, then remember about the park, about jail.

He nods, despair stuck to every part of his face.

I start walking off, ditching the cigarette first thing. After a few steps, I hear, “Picasso,” and turn.

He points the bottle at me. “I modeled a couple times for this barking maniac of a sculptor called Guillermo Garcia. He has loads of students. I'm sure he wouldn't even notice if you showed some afternoon. You could actually be
in
a room with a model, like that other Picasso bloke.”

“Where?” I ask, and when he tells me, I repeat the address a few times in my head so I'll remember. Not that I'll go, because I'll be in prison myself for the murder of my twin sister.

Jude planned this. I'm sure of it. I know it was her idea. She's been pissed at me for so long about Mom. About the hornets. And she must've found the note she wrote to Mom buried in the garbage. This is her revenge. She probably had a piece of paper with Brian's name on it right in her hand.

Without any of the hornets realizing it, she triggered a nest attack on me.

I walk down the hill toward home, getting carpet-bombed with images of Brian and Jude, him all tangled up in her hair, in her light, in her normal. That's what he wants. That's why he erected the fence between us. Then electrified it for double protection against me, stupid weirdo me. I think how full-on I kissed Heather. Oh God. Is Brian kissing Jude like that? Is she him? A horrible flailing monster of a noise comes out of me and then the whole disgusting night wants to come out of me too. I run to the side of the road and throw up each grain of beer and that disgusting drag of a cigarette, every last lying, revolting kiss, until I'm just a bag of clattering bones.

When I get home, I see that there are lights on in the living room, so I climb through my window, always open a crack, in case Brian decided to break and enter one night, like I'd imagine before falling asleep, all summer long. I cringe at myself. At what I wanted.

(L
ANDSCAPE:
The Collapsed World
)

I turn on the lamp in my bedroom and beeline for Dad's camera, but it's not where I always leave it under my bed. I tear the room apart with my eyes, exhaling only when I spot it on my desk, sitting there like a live grenade. Who moved it? Who freaking moved it? Did I leave it there? Maybe I did. I don't know. I lunge for it and call up the photos. The first one that comes up is from last year when Grandma died. A big round laughing sand lady with her arms open to the sky like she's about to lift off. It's freaking amazing. I put my finger on the delete button and press hard, press murderously. I call the rest up, each one more awesome and strange and cool than the next, and wipe them out, one by one, until every trace of my sister's talent is gone from the world and only mine is left.

Then, after I sneak by the living room—Mom and Dad have fallen asleep in front of some war movie—I go into Jude's room, take the portrait of the naked English guy off the wall, rip it to shreds and spread it like confetti all over the floor. Next, I return to my room and start on the drawings of Brian—it takes forever to tear them all to pieces, there are so many. When I'm done, I stuff his remains into three large black plastic bags and stow them under the bed. Tomorrow I'm going to throw him, every last bit of him, over Devil's Drop.