I'll Give You the Sun (5 page)

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, Grandma. 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.

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.