I’ll Give You the Sun(53)
Author: Jandy Nelson

He knows.

“You’re assuming I was thinking about you,” I say.

“Indeed.”

I roll my eyes at the absurdity.

He puts both hands on the rail. “Who were you bloody talking to, CJ?”

“Oh that,” I say. How to respond? I don’t know why, but like with Guillermo yesterday, I go with the truth. “Just Grandma popping in for a spell.”

He makes a weird choking-coughing sound.

I have no idea what’s happening on his face because I don’t dare look his way. “Twenty-two percent of the world’s population sees ghosts,” I tell him via the wall. “It’s not unusual. About one in four. And it’s not like I’m some ghost-whisperer. I don’t see ghosts per se. Just my grandmother and my mother, but my mom, she doesn’t talk or appear to me, she just breaks things. Except for the other day when she recited a poem to me.” I exhale. My cheeks are on fire. Probably less was more.

“What poem?” I hear. Not the response I expected.

“Just a poem,” I answer. Telling him which poem somehow feels too personal to share even after the admission that I converse with dead relatives.

There’s a moment of silence during which I listen intently for beeps indicating a 911 call. “I’m very sorry they’re both gone, CJ,” he says, his voice sincere and serious. I peer up at him, expecting to see The Poor Motherless Girl Look, but that’s not what I see on his face.

I think his mom’s dead after all. I turn away.

The good news is that he seems to have forgotten I was hooking up with my hand. The bad news is that now I’m running through the conversation that he might’ve overheard. Writing a love letter to him would’ve been less revealing. Nothing to do but cover the eyes with the hands. Desperate times call for ostrich measures. “How much did you hear, Oscar?”

“Hey, no worries about that,” he says. “I couldn’t make out much. I was sleeping when your voice started trickling into my dream.”

Is he telling the truth? Or just being kind? I do speak quietly. I fan my fingers. In time for his languid descent down the steps. Why does he move so slowly? Seriously. It’s impossible not to watch him, to hang on his every move, to wait for him to arrive . . .

He slinks in behind me, close as a shadow.

Not sure the Oscar case is entirely closed, actually. I didn’t account for proximity. And didn’t he just say he’d be more than happy to kiss me like in the painting? I’m remembering specifically how he said he’d: Give it a go, anyway.

“So what’d you wish for, then?” he asks. “I saw you communing with the angel as well as your grandmother.” His voice is low and silken and intimate and I don’t trust myself to answer this question.

He’s looking at me in that way of his that should be illegal or patented, and it’s affecting my ability to remember things like my name and species and all the reasons a girl might go on a boy strike. Why don’t I care one iota about the bad luck that might befall me? All I want is to comb my fingers through his tousled brown hair, to cup my hand around the blue horse on his neck, to press my lips against his like Sophia did.

Sophia.

I completely forgot about Sophia. It seems he did too, from the way he’s still looking at me. What a louse. A lousy louse. Such a scalawag rake bounder miscreant scamp playboy player guyslut!

“I made orange juice out of the oranges you planted in my bag,” I tell him, coming to my senses. “Pulverized them to pulp.”

“Ouch.”

“How come you’re doing this?”

“What?”

“I don’t know, this thing, this act. That voice. Looking at me like I’m this . . . this  . . . donut. Standing so close. I mean, you don’t even know me. Not to mention your girlfriend, remember her?” I’m talking too loud. I’m barking. What’s gotten into me?

“But I’m not doing anything.” He holds up his hands like he’s surrendering. “Not acting. This is my voice—just woke up. I don’t think you’re in any way, shape, or form a donut, trust me on that. I’m not chatting you up. I respect the boycott.”

“Good, because I’m not interested.”

“Good, because my intentions are honorable.” He pauses, then says, “Haven’t you read Jane Austen? We English are more uptight than you lot, isn’t that so?”

I gasp. “I thought you didn’t hear anything!”

“I was being polite. We English are very polite, you know.” He’s grinning crazily, kind of like he’s brainless. “Heard every word, I believe.”

“It wasn’t about you—”

“No? About the other bloke who rides a motorcycle and has two different-colored eyes and leans like James Dean. Thank you, by the way. No one’s ever commented on the lean.”

I have no idea how else to navigate this moment except to make a run for it. I turn and head toward the jail cell room.

“What’s more,” he says, laughing his breezy laugh. “You think I’m hot. Too hot, in fact. Way too hot, I believe were the exact words.” I close the door, hear through it, “And I don’t have a girlfriend, CJ.”

Is he effing kidding me? “Does Sophia know that?” I’m shouting like a maniac.

“As a matter of fact, she does!” he replies, equally maniacally. “We broke up.”

“When?” We’re yelling on either side of the door.

“Oh. Over two years ago.” Two years ago? But that kiss. Was it not as long and lingering as I thought? Anxiety can alter perception; I know that. “Met at a party and I believe we lasted five days.”

“Was that a record for you?”

“The record is nine days, actually. And I didn’t realize you were on the Morality Police Force!”

I lie on the cold cement floor and let all the contaminated dust and microbes and toxic black mold spores do with me what they will. I’m racing inside. If I’m not mistaken, Oscar and I just got into a fight. I haven’t fought with anyone since Mom. It doesn’t feel entirely bad.

Nine days is his record. OMFCG. He’s that guy.

I’m trying to get a grip, wondering when Guillermo’s going to return, trying to focus on the reason I’m here, the sculpture I need to make, trying to make myself think about what could possibly be hiding inside my practice rock and not the revelation that Sophia and Oscar are not a couple!—when the door opens and in comes Oscar, waving a clay-covered towel.