I’ll Give You the Sun(49)
Author: Jandy Nelson

He leans against the doorframe. Some guys are born to lean. He’s definitely one of them. James Dean was another. “Bravo,” he says.

“Be serious,” I say, but in truth, I feel electrified, jangly, awake. I’ve never felt this way at CSA.

“I’m quite serious.” He’s fiddling with the camera and his dark hair’s fallen into his face. I want to push it back.

I zip up my portfolio to busy my hands. “Have we met before, Oscar?” I ask at long last. “I’m pretty sure we have. You look so familiar.”

He lifts his eyes. “She says after she’s seen me naked.”

“Oh God . . . No, I didn’t mean . . . You know what I mean . . .” Heat’s radiating off of every inch of me.

“Whatever you say.” He’s amused. “But not a chance. Never forget a face, especially not one like yours—” I hear the click before I realize I’ve even been shot. It’s weird how he maneuvers the camera without even looking through the viewfinder. “Did you ever go back to the church after we met?”

I shake my head. “No, why?”

“I left something for you. A photo.” Did a flash of shyness cross his face? “With a note on the back.” Not breathing. “It’s gone. I went back to check. Someone else must’ve taken it. Probably for the best. Too Much Information, as you lot say.”

“What kind of Information?” It’s amazing one can speak and be stone-cold passed out at the same time.

He doesn’t answer, lifts the camera instead. “Can you tilt your head like you just did. Yes, that’s it.” He moves away from the wall, bends his knees, angles the camera. “Yes, perfect, God, so damn perfect.” What happened to me in church is happening again. When glaciers break up due to rising world temperatures, it’s called calving. I’m calving. “Your eyes are so ethereal, your whole face is. I stared at pictures of you for hours last night. You give me chills.”

And you give me global warming!

But there’s something else, something beyond chills and calving and global warming, something I felt from that first moment in church. This guy makes me feel like I’m actually here, unhidden, seen. And this is not just because of his camera. I do not know what this is because of.

Plus, he’s different than the boys I know. He’s exciting. If I made a sculpture of him, I’d want it to look like an explosion. Like kapow.

I take a long deep breath, remembering what happened the last time I liked a guy.

That done, WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION WAS IN THE NOTE AND WHAT PHOTO?

“So can I take pictures of you sometime?” he asks.

“You are taking pictures of me, Oscore!” I say it like Guillermo, packed with exasperation.

He laughs. “Not here. Not like this. At this abandoned building I just discovered by the beach. At sunset. I have an idea.” He peeks around the side of the camera. “And not with your clothes on. Only fair.” His eyes are bright as the devil’s. “Say yes.”

“No!” I cry. “Are you kidding? So creepy. Ax-murderer Avoidance Rule Number One: Don’t go to the abandoned building with the total stranger and take off your clothes under any circumstance. Jeez. Does that line usually work for you?”

“Yes,” he says. “It always works.”

I laugh, can’t help it. “You’re such bad news.”

“You have no idea.”

“I think I do. I think they should arrest you and lock you up as a community service.”

“Yes, they tried that once.” I feel my mouth drop. He really has been in jail. He reads my shock, says, “It’s true. You’ve definitely fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

Except I feel the opposite. I feel like Goldilocks. Everything is just right here as it is wrong at home.

“What did they arrest you for?” I ask.

“I’ll tell you if you say yes to my invitation.”

“To be ax-murdered?”

“To live a little dangerously.”

I practically choke on his words. “Ha! Wrong girl,” I say.

“Beg to differ.”

“You have no idea.” Our rapport is so easy. Why is it so easy?

Grandma answers, sing-songing in my head, “Because love is in the air, my blind little bat. Now get a strand of your hair into his pocket. Immediately.”

As long as a man has a lock of your hair on his person, you will be in his heart

(Thanks, but no thanks. I did this with Zephyr.)

I pretend she’s a normal dead person: silent.

There’s a tap-tapping of heels on the cement floor. Oscar glances out the door. “Sophia! In here.” Definitely not the plumber, unless the plumber wears stilettos. He turns to me. I can tell he wants to say something before we’re interrupted. “Look, bad news I may be, but I’m not a stranger. You said so yourself. ‘I’m so familiar to you,’” he mimics me with perfect beach girl inflection, then snaps the cover on his lens. “I’m certain I’ve never met you until that day in the church, but I’m also certain I was meant to meet you. Don’t think me a nutter, but it’s been prophesized.”

“Prophesized?” I say. Is this the Information? It must be. “By whom?”

“My mum. On her deathbed. Her very last words were about you.”

What someone says to you right before they die will come true?

• • •

Sophia—definitely not his little sister nor his great-aunt—and her comet of red hair streaks into the room. She has on a fuchsia fifties swing dress with a neckline that plunges to the equator. Green-and-gold sparkling sweeps wing her pale blue eyes.

She glitters like she walked out of a Klimt painting.

“Hello my darling,” she says to Oscar in a thick accent, I swear, identical to Count Dracula’s.

She kisses his left cheek, right cheek, then presses her lips to his in a long, lingering finale. Very long and lingering. My chest caves in.

Still lingering . . .

Friends do not greet each other like this. Under any circumstances.

“Hello there,” Oscar says warmly. Her magenta lipstick is smudged all over his lips. I have to put my hand in my sweatshirt pocket so I don’t reach over and wipe it off.

I take back all that Goldilocks garbage.

“Sophia, this is CJ, Garcia’s new disciple from The Institute.” So he does think I go there. He thinks I’m their age. And a good enough artist to get into The Institute.