I’ll Give You the Sun(55)
Author: Jandy Nelson

Except I’m laughing now inside my hat and he’s laughing outside of it and we’re getting carried away, far away, and I don’t think I’ve been this happy maybe ever.

It’s very hot and steamy to laugh out of control inside a wool hat, so after a time I lift it up and see him there, his face splotchy and eyes watering from truly losing it, and I’m filled with something I can only describe as recognition. Not because he looks familiar on the outside this time, but because he feels familiar on the inside.

Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before—you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to

“So if you’re full of it ninety-eight percent of the time,” I say, collecting myself. “What about the other two percent?”

The question seems to suck all the residual laughter out of his face and I’m immediately sorry I asked. “Yeah, no one meets that guy,” he says.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps you’re not the only one in hiding.”

“How come you think I’m in hiding?”

“Just do.” He pauses, then says, “Maybe it’s because I’ve spent a fair bit of time with your photos now. They speak volumes.” He looks curiously at me. “But you could tell me why you’re in hiding.”

I consider it, consider him. “Now that we’re friends, just friends. Are you the friend I call if I find myself in possession of a dead body and a bloody knife in my hand?”

He smiles. “Yes. I would not turn you in. No matter what.”

“I trust you,” I say, surprising myself, and from the expression on his face, him as well. Why I trust someone who’s just told me he’s full of it ninety-eight percent of the time I don’t know. “I wouldn’t turn you in either,” I tell him. “No matter what.”

“You might,” he says. “I’ve done some pretty terrible things.”

“Me too,” I say, and suddenly I want more than anything to confide in him.

Write your sins on apples still hanging on the tree; when they fall away so do your burdens

(There are no apple trees in Lost Cove. I’ve tried this with a plum tree, an apricot tree, and an avocado tree so far. Still burdened.)

“Well,” he says, staring at his hands steepled in front of him. “If it’s any comfort, I’m pretty sure the things I’ve done are far worse than whatever it is you’ve done.”

I’m about to speak, to refute this, but the uneasy look in his eyes silences me. “When my mum was sick,” he says slowly. “We could only afford this day nurse. My mother wouldn’t go to hospital anymore and NHS wouldn’t cover it. So at night, I watched after her. Except I started gobbling down her pain meds by the handful. I was off my face all the time, I mean, all the time.” His voice has grown strange, tight, lilt-less. “It was just me and her, always, no other family.” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “One night, she took a tumble out of bed, probably she needed the bedpan, but then after she fell, she couldn’t get herself up. She was too weak, too sick.” He swallows. There’s perspiration on his forehead. “She spent fifteen hours on the floor, shivering, hungry, in excruciating pain, calling for me, while I was passed out cold in the next room.” He breathes out slowly. “And that’s just a starter anecdote. I have enough for a book.”

The starter anecdote has practically strangled him. And me too. We’re both breathing too fast and I can feel his desperation taking me over like it’s my own. “I’m so sorry, Oscar.”

That prison of guilt the counselor at school talked about, he’s in one too.

“Jesus.” He’s pressing his palms to his forehead. “I can’t believe I told you that. I never talk about that. Not with anyone, not even G., not even at meetings.” His face is in a whole different kind of turmoil than usual. “You see? Better when I’m full of it, isn’t it?”

“No,” I say. “I want to know all of you. One hundred percent.”

This unsettles him further. He does not want to be known one hundred percent by me, if his face is any indication. Why did I say that? I look down, embarrassed, and when I look back up I see that he’s rising to his feet. He won’t make eye contact.

“I need to do some work upstairs before my shift at La Lune,” he says, already at the door. He can’t get away from me fast enough.

“You work at that café?” I ask, when what I want to say is: I understand. Not the circumstances, but the shame. I understand the quicksand of shame.

He nods and then unable to help myself, I ask, “You said I was her, that first day in church. Who did you mean? And how could your mother have prophesized about me?”

But he just shakes his head and ducks out of the room.

I remember then I still have Guillermo’s note to Dearest on me. I scrolled it up and tied it in a lucky red ribbon. No idea why, until now.

To win his heart, slip the most passionate love note ever written into his jacket pocket

(Writing scripture on the fly here. Should I do this? Should I?)

“Hey one sec, Oscar.” I catch him outside the door and brush a layer of dust off the back of his jacket. “That’s one dirty floor,” I say as I slip the hot burning words into his pocket. As I press play on my life.

Then I pace around the small room waiting for Guillermo to return so I can start carving, waiting for Oscar to get the love note and run to me or away from me. A valve has loosened inside me and some kind of something is escaping, making me feel entirely different from the boycotting girl who walked into this studio with a burnt candle in her pocket to extinguish feelings of love. I think of that counselor telling me I was the house in the woods with no doors or windows. No way to get in or out, she said. But she was wrong, because: Walls fall down.

And then at once, from across the studio, it’s as if my practice rock has gotten on a loudspeaker to inform me what’s inside it.

What slumbers in the heart, slumbers in the stone.

There is a sculpture I need to make first, and it’s not of my mother.

• • •

I’m surrounded by giants.

In the center of the outdoor work area is one of Guillermo’s massive couples but unfinished, and against the far fence is another mammoth work called Three Brothers. I’m trying not to make eye contact with them as Guillermo demonstrates different techniques on my practice rock. Let’s just say, they’re not the jolliest of giants, those three stone brothers. I’m wearing every piece of protective gear I could find: a plastic suit, goggles, and face mask, because I did some research on the health risks of carving stone last night and I’m surprised any stone sculptor lives past thirty. While Guillermo instructs me on how not to bruise the surface of the rock, how to use the rasp, how to do something called cross-hatch, how to choose the right chisel for each task and what angles are best suited for what kind of carving, I try unsuccessfully not to dwell on Oscar and the stolen love note I gave him. Probably not my best idea, both the stealing of the note and the giving of it. Impulse-control issues, clearly.