I’ll Give You the Sun(34)
Author: Jandy Nelson

I drop my head in my hands, start involuntarily eavesdropping on a group of guys behind me, who must be having a contest to see how many times they can say how gay this or that is in one conversation, when someone touches my shoulder. It’s Heather.

I nod at her, then try to hide in my hair and mind-control her to go away, like to the Amazon . . . I feel her stiffening beside me, probably not understanding why I’ve sent her six thousand miles away to the jungle after a kiss like that. I hate being like this to her, but I don’t know what else to do. When I peek up through my hair moments later, she’s gone. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. I’m mid-exhale when I see Brian being escorted into the closet, not by Courtney, but by my sister.

My sister.

• • •

How is this happening? This can’t be happening. I blink and blink, but it’s still happening. I look over at Courtney, who has her hand in Brian’s hat. She’s opening the folded pieces of paper wondering what went wrong. Jude is what went wrong. I can’t believe she’d go this far.

I have to do something.

“No!” I shout, jumping up from the chair. “No!”

Only I don’t do that.

I run to the egg-timer, grab it off the table, and ring it and ring it and ring it.

Only I don’t do that either.

I don’t do anything.

I can’t do anything.

I’ve been eviscerated.

(SELF-PORTRAIT: Gutted Fish)

Brian and Jude are going to kiss each other.

They’re probably kissing each other right this second.

Somehow I manage to get up from the chair, out of that room, down the stairs, and out the door of the house. I stagger across the porch, feeling like I’m falling off my feet with every step. Blurs of people are blurring around the yard. I stumble through them, through the black back-stabbing air toward the road. In my daze, I realize I’m scanning the crowd for the crazy-in-love, making-out guys from the alcove, but they’re nowhere. I bet I imagined them.

I bet they don’t exist.

I look toward the woods, watch all the trees crash down.

(GROUP PORTRAIT: All the Glass Boys Shatter)

From behind me, I hear someone with a slurring English accent say, “If it isn’t the clandestine artist.” I turn to see the naked English guy, except he’s dressed in a leather jacket and jeans and boots. He has the same mental smile on his same mental face. The same eyes that don’t match. I remember how Jude gave up the sun and stars and oceans for my drawing of him. I’m going to steal it back from her. I’m going to take everything from her.

If she were drowning, I’d hold her head under.

“I know you, mate,” he says, teetering on his feet, pointing at me with a bottle of some kind of alcohol.

“No you don’t,” I say. “No one does.”

His eyes clear for a second. “You’re right about that.”

We stare at each other for a moment without saying anything. I remember how he looked naked and don’t even care because I’m dead. I’m going to move underground with the moles and breathe dirt.

“What are you called anyway?” he asks.

What am I called? What a strange question. Bubble, I think. I’m called freaking Bubble.

“Picasso,” I say.

His eyebrows arch. “You taking the piss?”

What does that mean?

He slurs on, throwing words into the air all around us. “Well, that must keep the bar nice and low, no problem filling those shoes, like naming your kid Shakespeare. What were they thinking, your parents?” He takes a swig.

I pray to the forest of fallen trees that Brian looks out the window and sees me here with the naked English guy. Jude too.

“You’re like from a movie,” I think and say at the same time.

He laughs and his face kaleidoscopes. “A crap movie, then. Been sleeping in the park for weeks now. Except for the night I slept behind bars, of course.”

Jail? He’s an outlaw? He looks like one. “Why?” I ask.

“Drunk and disorderly. Disturbing the peace. Whoever heard of getting arrested for being disorderly?” I struggle to decipher his sloshed words. “Are you orderly, Picasso? Is anyone?” I shake my head and he nods. “That’s what I said. There’s no peace to disturb. I kept telling the cop: No. Peace. To. Disturb. Man.” Putting two cigarettes in his mouth, he lights one, the other, then sucks on them both. I’ve never seen someone smoke two at once. Gray plumes of smoke come out his nose and mouth at the same time. He hands me one of the cigarettes, which I take because what else am I going to do? “Got myself chucked from that posh art school you don’t go to.” He puts a hand on my shoulder to steady himself. “Doesn’t matter, would’ve gotten chucked anyway when they found out I wasn’t really eighteen.” I feel how wobbly he is and plant my feet into the ground. Then I remember the cigarette in my hand and bring it to my lips, only to suck in and immediately cough it out. He doesn’t notice. He might be as drunk as one of those guys who talks to lampposts and I’m the lamppost. I want to take the bottle from him and pour it out.

“I gotta go,” I say, because I’ve started imagining Brian and Jude touching each other in the dark. All over. Can’t stop imagining it.

“Right,” he says, not looking at me. “Right.”

“Maybe you should go home,” I say, then remember about the park, about jail.

He nods, despair stuck to every part of his face.

I start walking off, ditching the cigarette first thing. After a few steps, I hear, “Picasso,” and turn.

He points the bottle at me. “I modeled a couple times for this barking maniac of a sculptor called Guillermo Garcia. He has loads of students. I’m sure he wouldn’t even notice if you showed some afternoon. You could actually be in a room with a model, like that other Picasso bloke.”

“Where?” I ask, and when he tells me, I repeat the address a few times in my head so I’ll remember. Not that I’ll go, because I’ll be in prison myself for the murder of my twin sister.

Jude planned this. I’m sure of it. I know it was her idea. She’s been pissed at me for so long about Mom. About the hornets. And she must’ve found the note she wrote to Mom buried in the garbage. This is her revenge. She probably had a piece of paper with Brian’s name on it right in her hand.

Without any of the hornets realizing it, she triggered a nest attack on me.