I’ll Give You the Sun(26)
Author: Jandy Nelson

While he’s crouched over a bag at the foot of the telescope, I listen to the crashing sea, imagining all the fish swimming through the endless freezing darkness.

“I could never be a fish,” I say.

“Me neither,” he replies, his words obstructed by the end of the flashlight, which he’s holding in his mouth so he can use both hands to rifle through the bag.

“Maybe an eel, though,” I say, still amazed how I say aloud so many things I’d normally just say to myself. “It’d be cool to have electric body parts, you know? Like your hair.”

I hear his muffled laugh through the flashlight and it shoots me dead with happiness. I’m thinking the reason I’ve been so quiet all these years is only because Brian wasn’t around yet for me to tell everything to. He takes a book out of the bag, then standing, flips through it until he finds what he’s looking for. He passes the open book to me, then steps real close so he can shine the flashlight—back in his hand now—on the page. “Here,” he says. “The Twins.”

I feel his hair on my cheek, on my neck.

I have the same feeling I get right before I start crying.

“That star,” he says, pointing, “is Castor, that one Pollux. They’re the heads of the Twins.” He takes a pen out of his pocket and starts drawing—it’s a glow-in-the-dark pen. Cool. He makes light-lines between stars until two stick figures appear.

I can smell his shampoo, his sweat. I breathe in deeply, silently.

“They’re both dudes,” he says. “Castor was mortal. Pollux, immortal.”

Do guys normally stand so close to other guys? I wish I’d paid more attention to these kinds of things before. I notice my fingers are trembling and I can’t be one hundred percent sure they won’t reach across the air and touch his bare wrist or neck, so I slip them in the hand jails to be safe. I close my fingers around the rock he gave me.

“When Castor died,” he says, “Pollux missed him too much, so he made a deal to share his immortality with him and that’s how they both ended up in the sky.”

“I’d do that,” I say. “Totally.”

“Yeah? Must be a twin thing,” he says, misunderstanding. “Though you’d never know it from that Death by Window Maneuver.” I feel my face flush because I’d meant him, duh, I’d share my immortality with him. I meant you, I want to holler.

Brian’s bent over the telescope adjusting something. “The Twins are thought to be responsible for shipwrecks, said to appear to sailors as St. Elmo’s Fire. Know what that is?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just plows on in his Einstein mode. “It’s an electrical weather phenomenon where a luminous plasma’s created because charged particles separate and create electric fields that in turn create this corona discharge—”

“Whoa,” I say.

He laughs, but continues on just as incomprehensibly. I get the gist: The Twins cause things to burst into flames. He turns around, shines the flashlight in my face. “It’s crazy that it happens,” he says. “But it does, all the time too.”

He’s like a bag of selves. This Einstein one. The fearless meteor-hurling god. The crazy laughing guy. The Ax! There’s more too, I know it. Hidden ones. Truer ones. Because why is his inside face so worried?

I grab the flashlight out of his hand and shine it on him. The wind’s billowing his shirt against his chest. I want to flatten the ripples with my hand, want to so bad my mouth goes dry.

It’s not just me that’s staring this time.

“The smell of jasmine makes people tell their secrets,” I say to him, my voice low.

“Is that jasmine?” he asks, swirling the air with his hand.

I nod. The flashlight’s bright on his face. It’s an inquisition.

“Why do you think I have secrets?” He crosses his arms.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Tell me one of yours, then?”

I pull out a fairly harmless one, though juicy enough to get him to reveal something good. “I spy on people.”

“Who?”

“Well, basically, everyone. Usually I’m drawing, but sometimes not. I hide in trees, bushes, on my roof with the binoculars, wherever.”

“Ever get caught?”

“Yeah, twice. Both times by you.”

He laughs a little. “So . . . ever spy on me?” The question makes my breath catch in my throat. The truth is, after an in-depth investigation, I’ve determined his room spy-proof.

“No. Your go.”

“Okay.” He motions toward the ocean. “I can’t swim.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Hate the water. Don’t even like hearing it. Baths freak me out. Sharks freak me out. Living here freaks me out. You go.”

“I hate sports.”

“But you’re fast.”

I shrug. “Go.”

“Okay.” He licks his lip, then exhales slowly. “I’m claustrophobic.” He frowns. “I can’t be an astronaut now. It blows.”

“You weren’t always?”

“No.” He looks away and for a split second I see his inside face again. “Your turn.”

I flick off the flashlight.

My turn. My turn. My turn. I want to put my hands on your chest. I want to be in a thimble with you.

“I keyed my father’s car once,” I say.

“I stole a telescope from school.”

It’s easier with the flashlight off. The words falling in the dark, like apples from trees.

“Rascal, the horse across the street, talks to me.”

I can tell he’s smiling, then not. “My dad left.”

I pause. “I wish my dad would.”

“No, you don’t,” he says, his voice serious. “It sucks. My mom spends all her time on this website LostConnections writing him notes he’s never even going to see. Totally pathetic.” There’s a silence. “Oh, still my go? I do math problems in my head, like all the time. Even on the pitcher’s mound.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“Like I mind-paint.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“I’m scared I suck,” I say.

He laughs. “Me too.”

“I mean suck bad.”

“Me too,” he insists.

We’re quiet for a second. The ocean rumbles beneath us.

I close my eyes, take a breath. “I’ve never kissed anyone.”