I’ll Give You the Sun(13)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“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.

I stand there for a long time letting the fog erase me piece by piece.

Then, I knock again. Hard. I’m not going away. I can’t. I need to make this sculpture.

“That’s right.” It’s Grandma in my head. “That’s my girl.”

But it isn’t Igor who opens the door this time, it’s the English guy from the church.

Holy effing hell.

Surprise sparks in his mismatched eyes as he recognizes me. I hear banging and clattering and breaking from within the studio, like some super-humans are having a furniture-throwing contest. “Not a good time,” he says. Then I hear Igor’s voice erupt in Spanish as he throws a car across the room, from the way it sounds. The English guy looks over his shoulder, then back to me, his wild face wild with worry now. All his cocky confidence, his cheerfulness, his flirtatiousness have vanished. “I’m very sorry,” he says politely, like an English butler in a movie, then closes the door in my face without another word.

• • •

A half hour later, Grandma and I are hidden in the brush above the beach waiting, if necessary, to save Noah’s life. On the way home from Drunken Igor’s, while already plotting my return visit, I received an emergency text from Heather, my informant: Noah at Devil’s Drop in 15.

I don’t take chances when it comes to Noah and the ocean.

The last time I stepped foot in the water was to drag him out of it. Two years ago, a couple weeks after Mom died, he jumped off this same Devil’s Drop, got caught in a rip, and almost drowned. When I finally got his body—twice my size, chest still as stone, eyes slung back—to shore, and to revive, I was so furious at him I almost rolled him back into the surf.

When twins are separated, their spirits steal away to find the other

The fog’s mostly burned off down here. Surrounded by water on three sides and forest everywhere else, Lost Cove is the end, the farthest point west you can go before falling off the world. I scan the bluff for our red house, one of many ramshackles up there, clinging to the edge of the continent. I used to love living on the cliffs—surfed and swam so much that even when I was out of the water, I could feel the ground rocking under my feet like a moored boat.

I check the ledge again. Still no Noah.

Grandma’s peering at me over her sunglasses. “Quite the pair, those two foreign fellas. The older one doesn’t have a button left on him.”

“You’re telling me,” I say, digging my fingers into the cold sand. How am I ever going to convince that hairy, drunken, furniture-throwing, scary-ass Igor to mentor me? And if I do, how will I steer clear of that unremarkable, plain-faced, dull-witted English guy who turned boycotting-me into a molten mess in a matter of minutes—and in a church!

A flock of gulls swoops down to the breakers, wings outspread, crying.

And for some reason, I keep wishing I’d told Drunken Igor that I wasn’t okay either.

Grandma releases her parasol into the air. I look up, see the pink disc whirling off into the steely sky. Beautiful. Like something Noah would’ve drawn when he used to draw. “You have to do something about him,” she says. “You know you do. He was supposed to be the next Chagall, not the next doorstop. You are your brother’s keeper, dear.”

This is one of her refrains. She’s like my conscience or something. That’s what the counselor at school said anyway about Grandma’s and Mom’s ghosts, which was pretty astute considering I hardly told her anything.

One time, she made me do this guided meditation where I had to imagine myself walking in the woods and tell her what I saw. I saw woods. But then, a house appeared, only there was no way to get in it. No doors or windows. Major heebie-jeebies. She told me the house was me. Guilt is a prison, she said. I stopped going to see her.

I don’t realize I’m checking my palms for creeping lesions, eruptions called cutaneous larva migrans, until Grandma gives me The Eye-Roll. It’s dizzying. I’m pretty sure I acquired this skill from her.

“Hookworm,” I say sheepishly.

“Do us all a favor, morbid one,” she chides. “Stay out of your father’s medical journals.”

Though she’s been dead for over three years, Grandma didn’t start visiting me like this until two years ago. Just days after Mom died, I hauled the old Singer out of the closet and the moment I flipped the switch and the familiar hummingbird heartbeat of her sewing machine filled my bedroom, there she was in the chair beside me, pins in her mouth like always, saying, “The zigzag stitch is all the rage. Makes such a glamorous hem. Wait until you see.”

We were partners in sewing. And partners in luck-hunting: four-leaf clovers, sand-dollar birds, red sea glass, clouds shaped like hearts, the first daffodils of spring, ladybugs, ladies in oversized hats. Best to bet on all the horses, dear, she’d say. Quick, make a wish, she’d say. I bet. I wished. I was her disciple. I still am.

“They’re here,” I tell her, and my heart begins pacing around inside my chest in anticipation for the jump.

Noah and Heather are standing on the ledge gazing out over the whitecaps. He’s in swimming trunks, she in a long blue coat. Heather’s a great informant because she’s never more than a shout away from my brother. She’s like his spirit animal, a gentle, odd, spritely being who I’m pretty sure has a storage space somewhere full of fairy dust. We’ve had this secret Keep Noah from Drowning Treaty for a while now. The only problem is she’s not lifeguard material herself. She never goes in the water.

A moment later, Noah’s flying through the air, arms outstretched like he’s on the cross. I feel a surge of adrenaline.