I'll Give You the Sun (7 page)

“Your eyes are two different colors,” I blurt out. Like a Siberian husky's!

“Brilliant. He speaks!” he says, smiling so that a riot breaks out in his face again. He lights the cigarette, inhales deeply, then makes the smoke come out his nose like a dragon. He points to his eyes, says, “Heterochromia iridium, would've had me burned at the stake with the witches, I'm afraid.” I want to say how supremely cool it is, but of course I don't. All I can think about now is that I've seen him naked, I've seen
him
. I pray my cheeks aren't as red as they are hot. He nods toward my pad. “Can I?”

I hesitate, worried to have him look at it. “Go on, then,” he says, motioning for me to get it. It's like singing the way he talks. I pick up the pad and hand it to him, wanting to explain the octopus-like position I had to be in on account of not having a stand, how I didn't hardly look down as I was drawing, how I suck. How my blood doesn't glow at all. I swallow it all, say nothing. “Well done,” he says with enthusiasm. “Very well done, you.” He seems like he means it. “Couldn't afford the summer class, then?” he asks.

“I'm not a student here.”

“You should be,” he says, which makes my hot cheeks even hotter. He puts his cigarette out on the building, causing a shower of red sparks. He's definitely not from here. This is fire season. Everything's waiting to go up.

“I'll see if I can smuggle you out a stand on my next break.” He stashes the bag by a rock. Then he holds up his hand, points his index finger at me. “You don't tell, I won't tell,” he says, like we're allies now. I nod, smiling. English people are so not asshats! I'm going to move there. William Blake was English. Frances freaking-the-most-awesome-painter Bacon too. I watch him walking away, which takes forever on account of his sloth pace, and want to say something more to him, but I don't know what. Before he turns the corner, I think of something. “Are you an artist?”

“I'm a mess is what I am,” he says, holding on to the building for support. “A bloody mess. You're the artist, mate.” Then he's gone.

I pick up the pad and look at the drawing I did of him, his broad shoulders, his narrow waist, long legs, the trail of hair on his navel going down, down, down. “I'm a bloody mess,” I say out loud with his bubbling accent, feeling giddy. “I'm a bloody artist, mate. A bloody mess.” I say it a few more times, louder and with more and more gusto, then realize I'm talking with an English accent to a bunch of trees and go back to my spot.

A couple times in the following session, he looks right at me and winks because we're conspirators now! And on the next break, he brings me a stand
and
a footstool so I can really see in. I set it up—it's perfect—then lean against the wall next to him while he sips from the bottle and smokes. I feel way cool, like I'm wearing sunglasses even though I'm not. We're buds, we're
mates,
except he doesn't say anything to me this time, nothing at all, and his eyes have turned cloudy and dim. And it's like he's melting into a puddle of himself.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“No,” he answers. “Not okay at all.” Then he throws the burning cigarette into a dry patch of grass before he gets up and stumbles away, not even turning around or saying good-bye. I stomp out the fire he's started until it's dead, feeling as gloomy as I felt giddy before.

With the new footstool, I can see all the way to everyone's feet even, so I witness what happens next in perfect detail. The teacher meets the model at the door and motions for him to go out into the hall. When the English guy comes back in, his head's down. He crosses the classroom to the dressing area, and when he emerges in clothes, he seems even more lost and out of it than he did on the last break. He never once looks up at the students or at me on his way out.

The teacher explains that he'd been under the influence and won't be modeling at CSA anymore, that CSA has zero tolerance, blah blah blah. He tells us to finish our drawings from memory. I wait a bit to see if the English guy's going to come back, at least for the bottle. When he doesn't, I hide the stand and stool in some bushes for next week and head back into the woods toward home.

• • •

A
few steps into the walk, I see the kid from the roof, leaning against a tree, the same grin, the same dark green hat spinning now on his hand. His hair's a bonfire of white light.

I blink because sometimes I see things.

Blinking still. Then to further confirm his existence, he speaks.

“How was class?” he says like it's not the strangest thing in the world that he's here, not the strangest thing that I take drawing outside rather than inside a classroom, not the strangest thing that we don't know each other, and yet, he's smiling at me like we do, and mostly, not the strangest thing that he followed me, because there's no other explanation for him standing here in front of me. As if he heard me thinking, he says, “Yeah, dude, I followed you, wanted to check out the woods, but I've been busy with my own stuff.” He points to an open suitcase full of rocks. He collects rocks? And carries them around in a suitcase? “My meteorite bag's still packed,” he says, and I nod like this explains something. Aren't meteors in the sky, not on the ground? I look at him more closely. He's a bit older than me, taller and bigger anyway. I realize I have no idea what color I'd use for his eyes. None at all. Today is definitely the day of the supremely excellent-eyed people. His are such a light brown, practically yellow, or copper maybe, and all splintered with green. But you can only see flashes of the color because he squints, which is cool on a face. Maybe not a Bengal tiger after all . . .

“Stare much?” he says.

I drop my gaze, embarrassed, a total whale dick dork, my neck prickling and hot. I start shuffling some pine needles into a pyramid with the toe of my shoe.

He says, “Well, you're probably just used to it from staring at that drunk guy for so long today.” I look up. Was he spying on me the whole time? He's eyeing my pad curiously. “He was naked?” He breathes in as he says it and it makes my stomach drop to the ground floor. I try to keep my face calm. I think about him watching me watch the movers, about him following me down here. He glances at my pad again. Does he want me to show him the naked drawings of the English guy? I think he does. And I want to. Bad. A heat storm, way more intense than the one before, is whipping through me. I'm pretty sure I've been hijacked and am no longer at the brain controls. It's his weird squinting copper-colored eyes. They're hypnotizing me. Then he smiles but only with half his mouth, and I notice he has a space between his front teeth, also supremely cool on a face. He says with a laugh in his voice, “Look, dude, I have no idea how to get home. I tried and ended up back here. I've been waiting for you to lead the way.” He puts on his hat.

I point in the direction we need to go and make my hijacked body start walking. He latches the suitcase full of rocks (hello?), picks it up by the handle, and follows. I try not to look at him as we walk. I want to be rid of him. I think. I keep my eyes on the trees. Trees are safe.

And quiet.

And don't want me to show them the naked pictures in my pad!

It's a long way, mostly uphill, and more daylight's seeping out of the woods every minute. Next to me, even with the suitcase of rocks, which must be heavy, because he keeps switching it from arm to arm, the guy bounces along under his hat, like his legs have springs in them.

After a while, the trees settle me back into my skin.

Or maybe he has.

Because it's actually not awful or anything walking with him.

He might even have some kind of Realm of Calm thing going on around him—maybe he emits it from a finger—because yeah, I feel relaxed now, I mean supernaturally relaxed, like I'm left-out butter. This is highly weird.

He keeps stopping to pick up rocks, examining them, and then either tossing them back or stuffing them in his sweatshirt pocket, which is starting to sag with the weight. I stand by when he does this, wanting to ask what he's searching for. Wanting to ask why he followed me. Wanting to ask about the telescope and if he can see the stars during the daytime. Wanting to ask where he's from and what his name is and if he surfs and how old he is and what school he's going to next fall. A few times I try to form a question so it sounds casual and normal, but each time the words get caught somewhere in my throat and never make it out. Finally, I give up and take out my invisible brushes and just start painting in my head. That's when it occurs to me that maybe the rocks are weighing him down so he doesn't rise into the air . . .

We walk and walk through the gray ashy dusk and the forest starts to fall asleep: The trees lie down side by side by side, the creek halts, the plants sink back into the earth, the animals switch places with their shadows, and then, so do we.

When we break out of the woods onto our road, he spins around. “Holy hella shit! That's the longest I've gone without talking. Like in my life! It was like holding my breath! I was having a contest with myself. Are you always like this?”

“Like what?” I say, my voice hoarse.

“Dude!” he cries. “Do you know those are the first words you've said?” I didn't. “Man. You're like the Buddha or something. My mom's a Buddhist. She goes to these silent retreats. She should just hang out with you instead. Oh, oh, not counting, of course, ‘I'm a bloody artist, a bloody mess, mate.'” He says this last part with a heavy English accent, then cracks up.

He heard me! Talking to the trees! So much blood's rushing and gushing to my head it might blow straight off my neck. All the silence of our walk is gurgling madly out of him now and I can tell he's someone who laughs a lot, the way it's taking him over so easily and lighting him all up, and even though he's laughing at me, it's making me feel okay, accepted, and making me feel a little bubble-headed as laughter starts to fizz up in me too. I mean, it was supremely funny, me yammering away in an English accent all alone like that, and then he says it again, his accent super-thick, “I'm a bloody artist,” and then I say, “A bloody mess, mate,” and something gives way and I'm laughing outright, and he says it again, and I do, and then we're both really laughing, then the doubled-over kind, and it's ages before we calm down, because each time one of us does, the other says, “I'm a bloody mess, mate,” and the whole thing starts all over again.

When we finally get it back together, I realize I have no idea what just happened to me. Nothing like that has ever happened before. I feel like I just flew or something.

He points to my pad. “So I guess you just talk in there, is that it?”

“Pretty much,” I say. We're under a streetlamp and I'm trying not to stare but it's hard. I wish the world would stick like a clock so I could look at him for as long as I want. There's something going on in his face right now, something very bright trying to get out—a dam keeping back a wall of light. His soul might be a sun. I've never met anyone who had the sun for a soul.

I want to say more so he doesn't leave. I feel
so
good, the freaking green leafy kind of good. “I paint in my head,” I tell him. “I was the whole time.” I've never told anyone I do this, not even Jude, and I have no idea why I'm telling him. I've never let anyone into the invisible museum before.

“What were you painting?”

“You.”

The surprise opens his eyes wide. I shouldn't have said it. I didn't mean to, it just popped out. The air feels all crackly now and his smile's vanished. Just yards away, my house is a lighthouse. Before I even realize, I'm darting across the street, a queasy feeling in my stomach like I ruined everything—that last brushstroke that
always
destroys the painting. He'll probably try to throw me off Devil's Drop tomorrow with Fry. He'll probably take those rocks and—

As I reach the front step, I hear, “How'd I come out?” Curiosity in his voice, not a smidge of asshat.

I turn around. He's moved out of the light. I can only see a shadowy shape in the road. This is how he came out: He floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.

I can't tell him, though—how could I?—so I turn back around, jump the steps, open the door, and go inside without looking back.

• • •

T
he next morning, Jude calls my name from the hallway, meaning she's a moment away from barging into my room. I flip the page of my sketchpad, not wanting her to see what I've been working on: the third version of the copper-eyed, rock-collecting, star-gazing, out-of-control-laughing new kid floating in the sky with his green hat and suitcase full of stars. I finally got the color so perfect, the squint just right, that looking at his eyes in the picture gives me the same hijacked feeling the real ones did. I got so excited when I nailed it I had to walk around my chair about fifty times before I could calm down.

I pick up a pastel and pretend to work on a portrait of the naked English guy that I finished last night. I did it cubist so his face looks even more like it's in a smashed mirror. Jude teeters in wearing high heels and a tiny blue dress. Mom and she can't stop fighting about what she wants to wear now, which is not much. Her hair's snaky and swinging. When it's wet like this, it usually takes the fluff and fairy tale off her, making her seem more ordinary, more like the rest of us, but not today. She has makeup all over her face. They fight about this too. And about her breaking curfew, talking back, slamming doors, texting boys not from school, surfing with the older surftards, jumping off Dead Man's Dive—the highest, scariest jump on the hill—wanting to sleep at one of the hornet's houses practically every night, spending her allowance on some lipstick called Boiling Point
,
sneaking out her bedroom window. Basically, everything. No one asks me, but I think she's become BeelzeJude and wants every guy in Lost Cove to kiss her now because Mom forgot to look at her sketchbook that first day at the museum.