I’ll Give You the Sun(28)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“Good to know,” Brian replies. “Next time he acts like a jerkoff I’ll aim to maim.”

A wave of awe at Brian’s comment ripples from girl to girl. Barf. Barf. Barf. Something alarming’s occurring to me, more alarming than the fact that Jude’s joined this purple polish cult. It’s that this Brian is cool. His alien kin have not only prepared him to pass but to surpass. He’s probably supernaturally popular at that boarding school. A jock and popular! How could I not have noticed? I must’ve gotten thrown off by the endless geek rants about globular clusters orbiting galactic cores, rants that I see are being kept under wraps in present company. Doesn’t he know popular people are covered in flame retardant? Doesn’t he know popular people aren’t revolutionaries?

I want to grab him by the wrist and head back into the woods, tell these guys, sorry but I found him first. But then I think, no, that’s not true: He found me. He tracked me like a Bengal tiger. I wish he’d choose that self and stick to it.

Clementine, still talking to her nails, says, “Should we call you The Ax? Or maybe just Ax? Ooooo.” She squeals exactly like a warthog. “I like that.”

“I’d prefer Brian,” he says. “It’s the off-season.”

“Okay, Brian,” Courtney says like she invented his name. “You guys should totally come hang out at The Spot.” She looks at me. “Jude does.”

I’m shocked to be acknowledged. My cabbagehead nods without my consent.

She smiles at me in a way that could just as easily be a scowl. “Your sister says you’re some kind of prodigy.” She plucks on the bikini string. “Maybe I’ll let you draw me sometime.”

Brian crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Ah, no. You’d be lucky if he lets you pose for him sometime.”

I grow sixty thousand feet taller.

But then Courtney slaps her own wrist, mewing at Brian. “Bad girl. Got it.”

Okay, time to torch the neighborhood. And the worst part is, her lameness breaks out his half smile, which she’s mirroring back at him with one of her radiant own.

(SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy in Plastic Bag Turning Blue)

A few sandpipers skitter down the road toward Rascal’s stable. I do wish I were a horse.

Several moments pass and then Lulu slides off the rock and stands beside Courtney. Clementine follows, slipping in next to Lulu. The hornets are swarming. Only Heather remains on the rock.

“You surf?” Lulu asks Brian.

“I’m not much into the beach,” he replies.

“Not into the beach?” Lulu and Courtney cry at once, but this inconceivability is eclipsed by Clementine, who says, “Can I try on your hat?”

“No, let me,” Courtney says.

“I want to!” says Lulu.

I roll my eyes and then hear someone laugh without a trace of hornet hum. I look over at Heather, who’s looking back at me sympathetically like she alone can see the cabbage on my neck. I’ve hardly noticed her over there. Or ever. Even though she’s the only one of the hornets who goes to the public middle school like we do. A mess of black curls, similar to mine, falls around her small face. No antennae. And she looks more like a frog than a lollipop, a chachi tree frog. She’s the one I’d draw, perched in an oak, hidden away. I check her nails: They’re light blue.

Brian’s taken his hat off his head. “Hmm.”

“You choose,” Courtney says, confident she’ll be chosen.

“I couldn’t,” Brian says. He starts spinning the hat on his finger. “Unless . . .” With a quick flick of his wrist, he tosses the hat onto my head. And I’m soaring. I take back everything. He is a revolutionary.

Until I realize they’re all laughing, including him, like this is the funniest thing ever.

“Cop-out,” Courtney says. She takes the hat off my head like I’m a hat rack and hands it back to Brian. “Now, choose.”

Brian smiles fully at Courtney, showcasing the space between his teeth, then cocks his hat over her brow, like she knew he would. The look on her face is unmistakably mission accomplished.

He leans back and regards her. “Suits you.”

I want to kick him in the head.

Instead, I let the wind at my back scoop me up and toss me over the cliff into the sea.

“Gotta bounce,” I say, remembering that’s what I heard someone say to someone sometime somewhere, at school or maybe it was on TV, or in a movie, probably not even from this decade, but who cares, all I know is I have to get away before I evaporate or crumple or cry. I think for a hopeful moment that Brian might follow me across the street but he just says, “Later.”

My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier.

Because I imagined it. Last night, this is what happened: He adjusted a lever on the telescope, that’s it. I just happened to be standing in the way. Noah has an overactive imagination, written on every school report I’ve ever gotten. To which Mom would laugh and say, “A leopard can’t change its spots, now can it?”

When I get inside the house, I go immediately to the front window that frames the street to watch them. The sky’s overflowing with orange clouds and each time one floats down, Brian bats it back up like a balloon. I watch him hypnotize the girls as he does the fruit in the trees, the clouds in the sky, as he did me. Only Heather seems immune. She’s lying on the rock, looking at the orange paradise above instead of in his direction.

I tell myself: He didn’t find me, didn’t track me. He’s not a Bengal tiger. He’s just some new kid who saw someone around his age and mistakenly befriended him before the cool kids came along and saved him.

Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?

(SELF-PORTRAIT: Keep Out)

I hear Mom’s footsteps only a moment before I feel the warm press of her hands on my shoulders. “Beautiful sky, huh?” I breathe in her perfume. She’s changed kinds. This one smells like the forest, like wood and earth, with her mixed in. I close my eyes. A sob’s rising in me as if it’s being pulled up by her hands. I keep it down by saying, “Only six months now until the application’s due.”

She squeezes my shoulders. “So proud of you.” Her voice is calm and deep and safe. “Do you know how proud I am?” This I know. Nothing else. I nod and she wraps her arms around me. “You’re my inspiration,” she says, and we rise together into the air. She’s become my real eyes. It’s like I haven’t even drawn or painted anything until she sees it, like it’s all invisible until she gets that look on her face and says, “You’re remaking the world, Noah. Drawing by drawing.” I want to show her the ones of Brian so bad. But I can’t. As if he heard me thinking about him, he turns in my direction, all silhouette in the firelight, a perfect painting, so good it makes my fingers flit at my side. But I’m not going to draw him anymore. “It’s okay to be addicted to beauty,” Mom says, all dreamy. “Emerson said ‘Beauty is God’s handwriting.’” There’s something about her voice when she talks about being an artist that always makes me feel like the whole sky is in my chest. “I’m addicted to it too,” she whispers. “Most artists are.”