I’ll Give You the Sun(23)
Author: Jandy Nelson

I wish I were a horse.

“You don’t have to like it or anything,” I say finally, trying to get the pad back. My mind’s bursting. “It’s not a big deal. I draw everyone.” I can’t stop talking. “I draw everything. Even dung beetles and potatoes and driftwood and mounds of dirt and redwood stumps and—”

“Are you kidding?” he interrupts, not letting me take the pad away. It’s his turn to go red. “I totally like it.” He pauses. I watch him breathe. He’s breathing fast. “I look like the freaking aurora borealis.” I don’t know what this is, but I can tell from his voice it’s a very cool thing.

A circuit flips in my chest. One I didn’t know I had.

“I’m so happy I’m not a horse!” I realize I’ve said it aloud only when Brian says, “What?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.” I try to calm down, try to stop smiling. Was the sky always this shade of magenta?

He’s laughing for real like yesterday. “Dude, you are the strangest person ever. Did you actually just say you’re so happy you’re not a horse?”

“No,” I say, trying not to laugh and failing. “I said—”

But before I can get another word out, a voice crashes into all this perfect. “Oh how romantic!” I freeze, knowing immediately whose hippo-head the sneering asshat words are coming out of. I swear the guy’s installed a tracking device on me—it’s the only explanation.

With him is a great ape: Big Foot. At least no Zephyr.

“Time for a dip, Bubble?” Fry says.

This is my cue to hightail it to the other side of the world.

WE NEED TO RUN, I tell Brian telepathically.

Except when I glance at him, I see that his face has bricked up and I can tell running away is not part of his modus operandi. Which really sucks. I swallow.

Then holler, “Fuck off, you toilet-licking sociopaths!” only it comes out as complete silence. So I heave a mountain range at them. They don’t budge.

My whole being focuses into one wish: Please don’t let me be humiliated in front of Brian.

Fry’s attention has shifted from me to Brian. He’s smirking. “Nice hat.”

“Thanks,” Brian replies coolly, like he owns the air in the Northern Hemisphere. He’s no broken umbrella, this is clear. He doesn’t seem one bit afraid of these garbage-headed scum-suckers.

Fry raises an eyebrow, which turns his gigantic greasy forehead into a relief map. Brian’s piqued his psychopathic interest. Great. I appraise Big Foot. He’s a slab of concrete in a Giants baseball cap. His hands are pushed deep into his sweatshirt pockets. They look like grenades through the fabric. I note the width of his right wrist, note that his fist is probably as large as my whole face. I’ve never actually been punched before, only shoved around. I imagine it, imagine all the paintings bursting out of my skull at impact.

(SELF-PORTRAIT: Pow)

“So did you homos pack a picnic?” Fry says to Brian. My muscles tighten.

Brian slowly stands. “I’ll give you a chance to apologize,” he says to Fry, his voice icy and calm, his eyes the opposite. The rock-boat has given him a few extra feet, so he’s looking down on all of us. His meteorite bag hangs heavy on his side. I need to stand but have no legs.

“Apologize for what?” Fry says. “For calling you homos homos?”

Big Foot laughs. It shakes the ground. In Taipei.

I can see Fry’s exhilarated—no one challenges him around here, especially not any of us younger losers he’s been calling homos and pussies and whatevers since we got ears.

“You think that’s funny?” Brian says. “’Cuz I don’t.” He moves a step backward so he’s even higher on the rock now. He’s becoming someone else. Darth Vader, I think. The Realm of Calm’s been sucked back into his index finger and now he looks like he eats human livers. Sautéed with eyeballs and toe-tips.

Hatred’s rising off him in waves.

I want to run away with the circus but take a deep breath and stand, crossing my arms, which have grown skinnier in the past few moments, against my newly sunken chest. I do this as threateningly as I can, thinking of crocodiles, sharks, black piranhas for courage. Not working. Then I remember the honey badger—pound for pound the most powerful creature on earth! An unlikely furry little killer. I narrow my eyes, clamp my mouth shut.

Then the worst thing happens. Fry and Big Foot start to laugh at me.

“Ooooo, so scary, Bubble,” Fry coos. Big Foot crosses his arms in an imitation of me, which Fry finds so hilarious, he does it too.

I hold my breath so I don’t collapse into a heap.

“I really think it’s time you two apologized and were on your way,” I hear from behind me. “If not, I can’t be responsible for what happens next.”

I spin around. Is he freaking crazy? Does he not realize he’s half Fry’s size and a third of Big Foot’s? And I’m me? Is he packing an Uzi?

But above us, poised on the rock, he seems unconcerned. He’s tossing a stone from hand to hand, a stone like the one that’s still in my pocket. We all watch as it pops between his palms, his hands hardly moving, as if he’s making it jump with his mind. “I guess you’re not leaving?” he says to his hands, then looks up at Fry and Big Foot, somehow without breaking the rhythm of the skipping stone. It’s incredible. “I just want to know one thing then.” Brian smiles a slow careful smile, but the vein in his neck’s pulsing furiously and it seems likely that whatever’s about to come out of his mouth next is going to get us killed.

Fry glances at Big Foot and the two of them seem to come to a quick, silent understanding about what to do with our earthly remains.

I’m holding my breath again. All of us are waiting for Brian to speak, watching the dancing stone, mesmerized by it, as the air sizzles with coming violence. It’s the real kind too. The lying in a hospital bed with only a straw sticking out of your bandaged head kind. The sick pounding kind of violence that I have to mute the TV to get through, unless Dad’s around and then I have to endure it. I hope Mr. Grady gives the paintings I left in the art room to Mom. They can show my stuff at the memorial—my first and last art exhibit.

(PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Brian and Noah Buried Side by Side)

I make a fist but can’t remember if you’re supposed to keep your thumb inside or outside of it when you punch. Why did Dad teach me to wrestle? Who on earth wrestles? He should’ve taught me how to make a freaking fist. And what about my fingers? Will I still be able to draw after this is over? Picasso must’ve gotten in fights. Van Gogh and Gauguin fought each other. It’ll be okay. Sure it will. And black eyes are cool, colorful.