I’ll Give You the Sun(51)
Author: Jandy Nelson

To Guillermo Garcia,

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

Thank you for the interview—a tremendous honor.

Yours with admiration,Dianna Sweetwine

Mom. I close the book quickly, quickly, keeping it shut with my hands so it doesn’t fly open, so I don’t. My knuckles are white with the effort. She always signed with that Michelangelo quote. It was her favorite. I hug the book to my chest tight, so tight, wanting to jump inside it.

Then I secure it inside the waistband of my jeans and cover it with my sweatshirt.

“CJ,” Guillermo calls. I hear his retreating footsteps. When I’m certain he’s gone, I slip soundlessly out of the room, shutting the door behind me. I cross the mailroom swiftly, quietly, and enter the jail cell room, where I hide Mom’s book in my portfolio case, aware, oh, yes, I am, that I’m acting like a super-kook, buttons flying everywhere today. Though it’s not my first bout of larceny. I’ve stolen quite a few copies of Mom’s books from the school library too—every time they replace them, in fact. And the town library. And several bookstores. I do not know why I do it. I do not know why I stole the love note. I do not know why I do much of anything.

I find Guillermo in the studio, squatting, petting a blissed-out Frida Kahlo’s belly. His note to Dearest is burning up my pocket. I want to know more. What happened to them?

He nods at me. “Are you ready?” He rises. “Are you ready for your life to change?”

“And how,” I say.

The rest of the afternoon consists of my choosing a practice rock—I fall in love with an amber-colored alabaster one that looks like a fire’s burning inside it—and listening to Guillermo, who has become Moses, recite commandments about carving:

Thou shalt be bold and courageous.

Thou shalt take chances.

Thou shalt wear protective gear.

(BECAUSE THERE’S ASBESTOS IN THE DUST!)

Thou shalt have no preconceptions about what is inside the practice rock but shall wait for the rock to tell thee directly.

After this one, he touches my solar plexus with his outspread hand, adding, “What slumbers in the heart is what slumbers in the stone, understand?”

Then he bestows the final commandment onto me:

Thou shalt remake the world.

This is something I would very much like to do, though no clue how carving a rock will achieve it.

When I get home after hours and hours of practice carving—I’m spectacularly horrible at it—with my wrist muscles aching, thumbs bruised from hundreds of hammer mishaps, asbestosis disease already spreading through my lung tissue despite the face mask, I open my bag and find three big round oranges looking up at me. I’m stupid-struck with love for Oscar for a moment, then remember Sophia.

What duplicity! Seriously, what a major asshat, as Noah used to say when he was Noah.

I bet he told Sophia his mother prophesized about her too.

I bet his mother’s not even dead.

I take the oranges to the kitchen and make juice.

• • •

On returning to my bedroom after The Great Orange Massacre hoping to sew for a bit, I find Noah squatting over the bag I left on the floor, flipping through a sketchpad that had been tucked safely inside the bag only moments before. Instant payback from the universe for going through Guillermo’s papers?

“Noah? What’re you doing?”

He jumps up, exclaims, “Oh! Hey! Nothing!” Then proceeds to put his hands on his waist only to move them to his pockets, then back to his waist. “I was just . . . nothing. Sorry.” He laughs too loud, then claps his hands together.

“Why are you going through my stuff?”

“Wasn’t  . . .” He laughs again, well, more like whinnies. “I mean, I guess I was.” He looks at the window like he wants to jump out of it.

“But why?” I ask, giggling a little myself—he hasn’t acted like such a certifiable weirdo in forever.

He smiles at me as if he heard me thinking. It does something wonderful inside my chest. “Guess I just wanted to see what you were working on.”

“Really?” I ask, surprised.

“Yup,” he says, shifting back and forth on his feet. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” I hear the eagerness in my voice.

He gestures toward the pad. “I saw the sketches of Mom. Are you doing some kind of sculpture of her?”

“Yes,” I say, excited by his curiosity, not caring at all about the sketchpad spying—how often did I used to do the same to him? “But those studies in there aren’t even close to being finished. I just started them last night.”

“Clay?” he asks.

A sudden powerful how-dare-I-talk-to-him-about-my-artwork feeling is overtaking me, but it’s been so long since we’ve connected about anything, so I go on. “Not clay, stone,” I tell him. “Marble, granite, don’t know yet. I’m working with this totally cool sculptor now. He’s amazing, Noah.” I walk over and pick the pad up off the floor. Holding it in front of both of us, I point to the most completed sketch, a frontal view. “I was thinking of doing it realistic. Not at all bulbous-y like usual. I want it to be elegant, a little willowy, but wild somehow too, you know, like her. I want people to see the wind in her hair, in her clothes—oh, it’ll be a Floating Dress for sure, but only we’ll get that. I hope, well, you know how she used to stand on the deck every—” I stop because he’s taken a phone out of his pocket. It must’ve vibrated. “Hey dude,” he says, and then starts talking about some trail-run and mileage and other cross-country mumbo jumbo. He makes an apologetic face at me like it’s going to be a while and leaves the room.

I tiptoe to the door, wanting to hear him talk to his friend. Sometimes I stand outside his room when he and Heather are hanging out and listen to them gossip, laugh, be goofy. A few times on weekends, I’ve sat reading by the front door, thinking they might ask me to go with them on one of their zoo trips or after-running pancake extravaganzas, but they never do.

Halfway down the hallway, Noah abruptly stops talking mid-sentence and puts the phone back into his pocket. Wait. So he faked the call and was pretend-talking to no one just to get away from me? Just to stop me blathering on like that? My throat constricts.

We’re never going to be okay. We’re never going to be us again.

I walk over to the window, flip the shade so I can see the ocean.

I stare it down.

There are times when surfing where you’ll take on a wave only to realize the bottom’s dropped out of it and so suddenly without warning you’re free-falling down the entire face.