I’ll Give You the Sun(65)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“Get off me,” I say, but she’s talking over me.

“Nothing happened. You hear me? I’ve tried to tell you so many times but you wouldn’t listen.” She spells it out. “N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Brian is your friend, I get it. In the closet, he told me about something called a globular cluster, I think. He talked about how amazing your drawings are, for Pete’s sake! It’s true I was so mad at you because of Mom and because you totally stole all my friends too and because you threw away that note—I know you did that and it really sucked, Noah, because that was like the only sand sculpture I ever made that I thought was maybe good enough for Mom to see. So I might’ve had Brian’s name on a piece of paper in my hand at that party but NOTHING HAPPENED, okay? I did not steal your—” She pauses. “Your best friend, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. “Now get off me.” It comes out gruffer than I intend on account of my spanking new voice. She doesn’t move. I can’t let on what this information is doing to me. My mind is speeding around, rearranging that night, the last few months, rearranging everything. All the times she tried to talk to me, how I walked away, slammed the door, blasted the TV, unable to look at her, forget listen to her, how I even ripped up a card she gave me without reading it, until she gave up trying. Nothing happened. They’re not in love. Brian isn’t going to come back in a few weeks and escape with her into her bedroom like I kept imagining. They’re not going to be watching movies on the couch when I come home or looking for meteorites in the woods. Nothing happened. Nothing happened!

(SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy Hitches Ride on Passing Comet)

But wait. “Who’s Spaceboy then?” I was so sure it was Brian. I mean: outer space, hello?

“Huh?”

“Spaceboy, on the computer.”

“Spy much? Jeez.” She sighs. “That’s Michael, you know, Zephyr. ‘Spaceboy’ is the name of some song he’s into.”

Oh.

OH!

And I guess other people—probably millions of them—besides Brian and me have seen that alien movie. Or might joke with her about teleporting. Or might use the name Spaceboy!

Now I’m remembering the Ouija Board. “Zephyr’s M.? You like Zephyr?”

“Maybe,” she says coyly. “I don’t know yet.”

This is news but Nothing Happened steamrolls right over it. I forget she’s in the room, not to mention sitting on me, until she says, “So are you and Brian like in love with each other or something?”

“What? No!” The words fly out of my mouth. “God, Jude. Can’t I have a friend? I totally hooked up with Heather, if you didn’t notice.” I don’t know why I say all this. I push her off me. I feel the stone in my stomach get bigger.

“Okay, fine. It’s just—”

“What?” Did Zephyr tell her what happened that day in the woods?

“Nothing.”

She gets back in bed and we shoulder up again into the smush. She says quietly, “So you can stop hating me now.”

“I never hated you,” I say, which is a total lie. “I’m really—”

“Me too. So sorry.” She holds my hand.

We start to breathe together in the dark.

“Jude, I’ve—”

“So much,” she finishes.

I laugh. I’d forgotten this.

“I know, me too,” she says, giggling.

My next sentence, however, she will not be able to mind-read. I tell her, “I’ve probably seen all of your sand sculptures.” I feel a stab of guilt. I wish I didn’t destroy the photographs now. I could’ve shown them to her. She could’ve gotten into CSA with them. She could’ve had them forever. She could’ve shown Mom. This will have to do. “They’re freaking amazing.”

“Noah?” I’ve caught her completely off guard. “Really?”

I know she’s smiling because my face is too. I want to tell her how scared I am that she’s better than me. Instead, I say, “I can’t stand the ocean washing them away.”

“But that’s the best part.”

I listen to the waves pounding away at the shore outside, and think about all those incredible sand women being swept off before anyone can see them and I’m wondering how in the world that could possibly be the best part, tumbling that around and around in my head, when she says very quietly, “Thank you.”

And everything in me goes quiet and peaceful and right.

We breathe and drift. I’m imagining us swimming through the night sky to the bright moon and hoping I remember the image in the morning so I can make it and give it to her. Before I’m all the way gone, I hear her say, “I still love you the most,” and I say, “Me too,” but in the morning I’m not sure if we said it or if I just thought it or dreamt it.

Not that it matters.

• • •

It’s the beginning of winter break, otherwise known as The Return of Brian, and the off-the-hook smell wafting out of the kitchen has brain-commanded me out of my chair and down the hallway.

“Is that you?” Jude yells from her room. “C’mere, please.”

I walk into her room, where she’s reading Grandma’s bible in bed. She’s been trying to find some hogwash in it that will bring Dad back.

She hands me a scarf. “Here,” she says. “Tie me to the bedpost.”

“What?”

“It’s the only solution. I need a little reminder not to be weak and go in the kitchen. I’m not giving Mom the satisfaction of eating one bite. How come she decides to become Julia Child now? You shouldn’t eat anything she makes either. I know you got into that chicken pot pie after we came home from Dad’s last night. I saw.” She gives me a hard look. “Promise not one morsel?” I nod, but there’s not a chance in hell I’m not having whatever it is that’s filling the house with this supernaturally awesome smell. “I mean it, Noah.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Only one wrist so I can turn the pages.” As I tie her wrist to the bedpost, she goes on. “It smells like pie, apple or pear, or maybe turnovers, or a crumble. God, I love crumbles. Of all unfairness. Who knew she even knew how to bake?” She turns the page of Grandma’s bible. “Be strong,” she says after me as I head for the door.

I salute her. “Aye, Captain.”

I’ve become a double agent. This is how it’s been since Dad left: After eating takeout with Jude and Dad in his dead-body blue hotel studio, I, on arriving home, wait for the moment Jude locks herself in her room to chat with Spaceboy, who is Zephyr! Not Brian! and then head for the kitchen to feast with Mom. But whether I’m sitting with Dad watching Animal Planet, breathing gray air, pretending not to notice he’s all folded up like a chair, or with Mr. Grady in the art room making the final touches on my CSA portfolio paintings, or learning salsa dancing in the kitchen with Mom while soufflés rise, or playing How Would You Rather Die? with Jude while she sews, I’m really only doing one thing. I’m a human hourglass: Waiting, waiting, waiting for Brian Connelly to come home.