I'll Give You the Sun (16 page)

Because he can't swim.

Even after all that, Jude's still not home! It's an hour past our summer curfew now. I can only imagine. I have to stop imagining.

I have to stop holding this rock and praying he's going to come to the window.

He doesn't.

THE HISTORY OF LUCK

Jude

Age 16

I'm going to wish with my hands,
like Sandy said.

I'm going to use The Oracle.

I'm going to sit here at my desk and use it—in the traditional way—to find out everything I can about Guillermo Garcia aka Drunken Igor aka The Rock Star of the Sculpture World. I have to make this sculpture and it has to be in stone and he's the only one who can help me do that. This is the way to get through to Mom. I feel it.

However, before I do all this, I'm going to suck the living hell out of this lemon—the mortal enemy of the aphrodisiacal orange:

Nothing curdles love in the heart like lemon
on the tongue

Because I
have
to nip this in the bud.

Grandma pipes in. “Ah yes, Him with a capital H and I don't mean Mr. Gable. A certain big . . . bad . . . British . . . wolf?” She milks the last bit for all its worth.

“I don't know what it was about him,” I tell her in my head. “Oh man. Besides
everything,
” I tell her outside my head.

And then I can't help it. Giving it my best English accent, I say, “Such a chatterbox, a guy can't get a word in.” The smile I denied him in church overtakes my face until I'm beaming at the wall.

Oh Clark Gable, stop.

I shove the half-lemon in, shove Grandma out, tell myself the English bloke has glandular fever, cold sores, and tooth decay, the trifecta of unkissability, like every other hot male in Lost Cove.

Cooties. Major cooties. English cooties.

With sour making my whole head pucker, with the boy boycott back in full swing, I boot up my laptop and type into The Oracle:
Guillermo Garcia
and
Art Tomorrow,
hoping to find Mom's interview. But no luck. The magazine doesn't archive online. I input his name again and do an image search.

And it's Invasion of the Granite Giants.

Massive rock-beings. Walking mountains. Expression explosions. I love them instantly. Igor told me he wasn't okay. Well, neither is his art. I start bookmarking reviews and pieces, choose a work that makes my heart sink and swell at the same time as a new screensaver, then grab my sculpture textbook off the shelf, certain he's in it. His work is too amazing for him not to be.

He is, and I'm on the second read of his bona fide bonkers biography, one that belongs in Grandma's bible, not a textbook, so I've ripped it out and clipped it into the over-stuffed leather-bound book, when I hear the front door open, followed by a flurry of voices and a stampede of footsteps coming down the hall.

Noah.

I wish I'd shut my door. Dive under the bed? Before I can make the move, they're barreling by, peering in at me like I'm The Bearded Lady. And somewhere in that happy humming hive of athletic, preternaturally normal teenagers is my brother.

Best sit down for it:

Noah's joined a sports team at Roosevelt High.

Granted, it's cross-country, not football, and Heather's on the team, but still. He's a member of a
gang
.

To my surprise, a moment later, he doubles back and enters my room, and it's as if Mom's standing before me. It's always been the case, me fair like Dad, him dark like Mom, but his resemblance to her has become uncanny, therefore: heart-snatching. Whereas there's not a hint of Mom on me, never was. When people used to see us alone, I'm sure they assumed I was adopted.

It's unusual, Noah in my room, and my stomach's clenching up. I hate how nervous it makes me to be near him now. Also—what Sandy said today. How, unbeknownst to me, someone took pictures of my flying sand women and sent them in to CSA. It had to have been Noah, which means: He got me in only to end up having to go to Roosevelt himself.

I taste guilt right through the citrus.

“So, hey,” he says, shuffling back and forth on a pair of running mud-cakes, driving dirt deeper and deeper into my plush white carpet. I say nothing about it. He could chop off my ear and I'd say nothing about it. His face is the opposite of how it looked in the sky earlier today. It's padlocked. “You know how Dad's going away for the week? We—” He nods at his room, where music and laughter and uniformity resounds. “We thought it'd be cool to have a party here. You okay with that?”

I stare at him, beseeching the aliens or Clark Gable or whoever's in charge of soul abductions to bring back my brother. Because in addition to joining dangerous gangs and having parties, this Noah also goes out with girls, keeps his hair buzzed and tidy, hangs at The Spot, watches sports with Dad. For all other sixteen-year-old boys: fine. For Noah, it signifies one thing: death of the spirit. A book with the wrong story in it. My brother, the revolutionary weirdo, has covered himself in flame retardant, to use his terminology. Dad's thrilled, of course, thinks Noah and Heather are a couple—they're not. I'm the only one who seems to know how dire the situation is.

“Um, Jude, do you know there's a lemon wrapped around your teeth?”

“Of course I know,” I say, though it sounds like garble for obvious reasons. Ah, lightbulb! Taking advantage of the sudden language barrier, I look right at him and add, “What have you done with my brother? If you see him, tell him I miss him. Tell him I'm—”

“Hello? Can't understand you with the voodoo lemon in your mouth.” He shakes his head in a dismissive Dad kind of way and I can tell he's about to get on my case. My interests disturb him, which I guess makes us even. “You know, I borrowed your laptop the other day to do a paper when Heather was using mine. I saw your search history.” Uh-oh. “Jesus, Jude. How many diseases can you think you have in one night? And all those freaking obituaries you read—like from every county in California.” Now seems like a good time to imagine the meadow. He points to the bible outspread on my lap. “And maybe you could give that totally lame book a rest for a while, and, I don't know, get out. Talk to someone besides our dead grandmother. Think about things besides dying. It's so—”

I take out the lemon. “What?
Embarrassing?
” I remember saying this to him once—how embarrassing he was—and cringe at the former me. Is it possible our personalities have swapped bodies? In third grade, Mrs. Michaels, the art teacher, told us we were to do self-portraits. We were across the room from each other and without so much as sharing a glance, I drew him, and he me. Sometimes, now, it feels like that.

“I wasn't going to say embarrassing,” he says, brushing a hand through his bushel of hair, only to find that it's no longer there. He touches the back of his neck instead.

“Yes you were.”

“Okay I was, because, it
is
totally embarrassing. I go to pay for my lunch today and pull out these.” He reaches in his pocket and shows me the assortment of extremely protective beans and seeds I stowed there.

“I'm just looking out for you, Noah, even if you're a card-carrying artichoke.”

“Totally freaking mental, Jude.”

“You know what I think is mental? Having a party on the second anniversary of your mother's death.”

His face cracks for a second, then just as quickly seals up. “I know you're in there!” I want to scream. It's true; I do know it. This is how:

1) His weird obsession with jumping Devil's Drop and the sublime way he looked in the sky today.

2) There are times when he's slumped in a chair, lying on his bed, curled up on the couch, and I wave my hand across his face and he doesn't even blink. It's as if he's gone blind. Where is he during those times? What's he doing in there? Because I suspect he's painting. I suspect that inside the impenetrable fortress of conventionality he's become, there's one crazy-ass museum.

And most significantly: 3) I've discovered (search-history snooping is a two-way street) that Noah, who hardly ever goes online, who's probably the only teenager in America indifferent to virtual reality and all social media, posts a message on a site called LostConnections.com, always the same one and pretty much every week.

I check—he's never gotten a response. I'm certain the message is for Brian, who I haven't seen since Mom's funeral, and who, as far as I know, hasn't been back to Lost Cove since his mother moved away.

For the record, I knew what was going on between Brian and Noah even if no one else did. All that summer when Noah came home at night from hanging out with him, he'd draw pictures of NoahandBrian until his fingers were so raw and swollen he'd have to take trips from his room to the freezer, where he'd bury his hand in the ice tray. He didn't know I was watching him from the hallway, how he'd collapse against the refrigerator, his forehead pressed against the cold door, his eyes closed, his dreams outside of his body.

He didn't know the moment he left in the morning, I'd go through the secret sketchpads he hid under his bed. It was like he'd discovered a whole new color spectrum. It was like he'd found another galaxy of imagery. It was like he'd replaced me.

To be clear: More than anything, I wish I hadn't gone into that closet with Brian. But their story wasn't over that night.

I wish I hadn't done a lot of things I did back then.

I wish going into that closet with Brian was the worst of it.

The right-handed twin tells the truth, the left-handed twin tells lies

(Noah and I are both left-handed.)

He's looking down at his feet. Intently. I don't know what he's thinking and it makes my bones feel hollow. He lifts his head. “We're not going to have the party on the anniversary. It'll be the day before,” he says quietly, his dark eyes soft, just like Mom's.

Even though the last thing I want is a bunch of Hideaway Hill surfers like Zephyr Ravens anywhere near me, I say, “Have it.” I say this instead of what I'd say to him if I still had the voodoo lemon in:
I'm sorry. For everything.

“Come for once?” He gestures toward the wall. “Wear one of those?” Unlike me, my room is one big blast of girl, with all the dresses I make—floating and not—hanging all over the walls. It's like having friends.

I shrug. “Don't do social events. Don't wear the dresses.”

“You used to.”

I don't say, “And you used to make art and like boys and talk to horses and pull the moon through the window for my birthday present.”

If Mom came back, she wouldn't be able to pick either of us out of a police lineup.

Or Dad, for that matter, who's just materialized in the doorway.
Benjamin Sweetwine: The Sequel
has skin the color and texture of gray earthenware clay. His pants are always too big and belted awkwardly so he looks like a scarecrow, like if someone pulled the belt he'd turn into a pile of straw. This might be my fault. Grandma and I have largely taken over the kitchen, using the bible as cookbook:

To bring joy back to a grieving family, sprinkle three
tablespoons of crushed eggshells over every meal

Dad seems to always appear like this now too, without the foreshadowing of say, footsteps? My eyes migrate to his shoes, which are indeed on his feet, which are indeed on the ground
and
pointing in the right direction—good. Well, you start to wonder who's the specter in the family. You start to wonder why your dead parent is more present and accounted for than the living one. Most of the time, I only know Dad's home because I hear a toilet flush or the TV turn on. He never listens to jazz or swims anymore. He mostly just stares off with a faraway perplexed look on his face, like he's trying to work through an impenetrable mathematical equation.

And he goes for walks.

The walking started a day after the funeral when all Mom's friends and colleagues still filled the house. “Going for a walk,” he'd said to me, bowing out the back door, leaving me (Noah was nowhere to be found), and not returning home until after everyone had left. The next day was the same: “Going for a walk,” and so were the days and weeks and months and years that followed, with everyone always telling me they saw my dad up on Old Mine Road, which is fifteen miles from here, or at Bandit Beach, which is even farther. I imagine him getting hit by cars, washed away by rogue waves, attacked by mountain lions. I imagine him not coming back. I used to ambush him on his way out, asking if I could walk with him, to which he'd reply, “Just need some time to think, honey.”

While he's thinking, I wait for the phone to ring with the news that there's been an accident.

That's what they tell you:
There's been an accident.

Mom was on her way to see Dad when it happened. They'd been separated for about a month and he was staying at a hotel. She told Noah before she left that afternoon that she was going to ask Dad to come home so we could be a family again.

But she died instead.

To lighten the mood in my head, I ask, “Dad, isn't there a disease where the flesh calcifies until the poor afflicted person is trapped within their own body like it's a stone prison? I'm pretty sure I read about it in one of your journals.”

He and Noah share one of their “glances” at my expense. Oh Clark Gable, groan.

Dad says, “It's called FOP and it's extremely rare, Jude. Extremely, extremely rare.”

“Oh, I don't think I have it or anything.” Not literally, anyway. I don't share that I think the three of us all might have it metaphorically. Our real selves buried so deep in these imposter ones. Dad's medical journals can be just as illuminating as Grandma's bible.

“Where the hell is Ralph? Where the hell is Ralph?” And a moment of family bonding ensues! We all roll the eyes in unison with dramatic Grandma Sweetwine flair. But then Dad's forehead creases. “Honey, is there a reason why there's a very large onion in your pocket?”

I look down at my illness deflector yawning open my sweatshirt pocket. I'd forgotten about it. Did the English guy see it too? Oh dear.