I'll Give You the Sun (22 page)

• • •

W
e walk over to a corner of the studio where there's a platform with one chair pulled up to it. I'm feeling unsteady—I didn't even tell the counselor at CSA the things I just told Guillermo. And so much for not being a poor motherless girl in his eyes.

Oscar, wearing the blue robe, is sitting reading, his feet propped up on the platform. It looks like a textbook, but he closes it too fast for me to catch what sort.

Guillermo pulls another chair over, then gestures for me to sit.

“Oscore is my favorite model,” he says. “He has a very strange face. I don't know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle.”

Oscar shakes his head at the ribbing. “I thought you didn't believe in God,” he says.

For the record, I'm in the midst of a penis panic attack.

At CSA, I'm fairly penis-neutral in life class, but not at the moment, no siree.

“You misunderstand,” Guillermo says. “I believe in everything.”

Oscar slips off the robe.

“Me too. You wouldn't believe the things I believe in,” I interject, sounding frantic, wanting to join in their repartee so I don't stare at
it
. Too late. Oh my effing Clark Gable—what was that again about a dinosaur he named Godzilla?

“Do tell,” Oscar says to me. Ha! Not telling what I'm thinking! “Tell us one thing you believe in, CJ, that we wouldn't believe.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to regain some semblance of composure and maturity. “I believe that if a guy gives a girl an orange, her love for him will multiply.” I couldn't resist.

He cracks up, falling out of the pose Guillermo just positioned him in. “Oh, I absolutely believe you believe that. I have evidence to support you believe it quite fervently.”

Guillermo taps his foot impatiently. Oscar winks at me, sending my stomach on an elevator ride. “To be continued,” he says.

To be continued . . .

Wait. Who's Sophia? His little sister? His great-aunt? The plumber?

“Quick sketches, CJ,” Guillermo says to me, and a brand-new set of nerves kicks in. Then to Oscar, “Change position every three minutes.” He sits down in the chair next to me and starts to draw. I'm aware of his hand flying across the page. It's stirring the air. I take a breath and begin, telling myself it's going to be okay. Five minutes or so pass. Oscar's new pose is stunning. His spine's arched and his head's hanging backward.

“You go too slow,” Guillermo says quietly.

I try to sketch more quickly.

Guillermo gets up and stands behind me, looking over my shoulder at my work, which, I see through his eyes, is dreadful.

I hear:

“Faster.”

Then:

“Pay attention to where the light source is.”

Then, touching a spot on my drawing:

“That is not a shadow, that is a cave.”

Then:

“You hold the charcoal too tight.”

Then:

“Do not take the charcoal off the paper so much.

Then:

“Eyes off the page, on the model.”

Then:

“Oscore is in your eyes, in your hands, your eyes, your hands, he travels through you, do you understand that?”

Then:

“No, all wrong, everything. What are they teaching you at that school? Nothing, I think!”

He squats by my side and his smell overwhelms me, a sign at least that I haven't died of mortification. “Listen, it is not the charcoal that draws the picture. It is you. It is your hand, which is attached to your body, and in that body is a beating heart, okay. You are not ready for this.” He takes the stick of charcoal out of my hand and throws it onto the floor. “Draw him without it. Use only your hand. See it, feel it, draw it. All one thing, not three things. Don't take your eyes off of him. See, feel, draw. One verb, go now. Do not think. Above all else:
Do not think so much
. Picasso, he say, ‘If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.' Pull out your brain, CJ, use only your eyes!”

I'm embarrassed. I want an eject button. At least, mercifully, Oscar's eyes are fixed to the opposite corner of the room. He hasn't looked over at us once.

Guillermo is back in his chair. “Do not worry about Oscore. Do not be self-conscious because of him,” he says. Is he telepathic? “Now draw like you mean it. Like it means something. Because it does, you understand this, CJ? It has to mean something. You hop a fence and climb up on my fire escape in the middle of the night. It means something to you!”

He begins to sketch again next to me. I watch how ferociously he's attacking the paper, the lines so bold and certain, how quickly he flips the page, like every ten seconds. We do thirty-second drawings at school. But he's lightning.

“Go,” he says. “Go!”

And then I'm paddling through the break, watching a big wave swelling, coming toward me, knowing that in a moment it will sweep me up into something enormous and powerful. I would count down like I'm doing now for some reason:

Three, two, one:

I go. With no charcoal in my hand, I go.

“Faster,” he says. “Faster.”

I am flipping the pages like him every ten seconds, drawing absolutely nothing and not caring, feeling Oscar come alive in my hand.

“Better,” he says.

Then again:

“Better.”

See feel draw: one verb.

“Good. That is it. You will see with your hands, I promise you. Now I contradict myself. Picasso he do too. He say pull out your brain, yes, he also say, ‘Painting is a blind man's profession' and ‘To draw you must close your eyes and sing.' And Michelangelo, he say he sculpts with his brains,
not
his eyes. Yes. Everything is true at once. Life is contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works. Okay, now pick up the charcoal and draw.”

After a few minutes, he takes the scarf from around his neck, wraps it around my eyes, and blinds me.

“Understand?”

I do.

• • •

L
ater, I'm in the jail cell room, fetching my portfolio, waiting for Guillermo, who needed to run an errand, when Oscar, once again buttoned and zipped, with camera at the ready, sticks his head in.

He leans against the doorframe. Some guys are born to lean. He's definitely one of them. James Dean was another. “Bravo,” he says.

“Be serious,” I say, but in truth, I feel electrified, jangly,
awake
. I've never felt this way at CSA.

“I'm quite serious.” He's fiddling with the camera and his dark hair's fallen into his face. I want to push it back.

I zip up my portfolio to busy my hands. “Have we met before, Oscar?” I ask at long last. “I'm pretty sure we have. You look
so
familiar.”

He lifts his eyes. “She says after she's seen me naked.”

“Oh God . . . No, I didn't mean . . . You know what I mean . . .” Heat's radiating off of every inch of me.

“Whatever you say.” He's amused. “But not a chance. Never forget a face, especially not one like yours—” I hear the click before I realize I've even been shot. It's weird how he maneuvers the camera without even looking through the viewfinder. “Did you ever go back to the church after we met?”

I shake my head. “No, why?”

“I left something for you. A photo.” Did a flash of shyness cross his face? “With a note on the back.” Not breathing. “It's gone. I went back to check. Someone else must've taken it. Probably for the best. Too Much Information, as you lot say.”

“What kind of Information?” It's amazing one can speak and be stone-cold passed out at the same time.

He doesn't answer, lifts the camera instead. “Can you tilt your head like you just did. Yes, that's it.” He moves away from the wall, bends his knees, angles the camera. “Yes, perfect, God,
so
damn perfect.” What happened to me in church is happening again. When glaciers break up due to rising world temperatures, it's called calving. I'm calving. “Your eyes are so ethereal, your whole face is. I stared at pictures of you for hours last night. You give me chills.”

And you give me
global warming
!

But there's something else, something beyond chills and calving and global warming, something I felt from that first moment in church. This guy makes me feel like I'm actually here, unhidden, seen. And this is not just because of his camera. I do not know what this is because of.

Plus, he's different than the boys I know. He's
exciting
. If I made a sculpture of him, I'd want it to look like an explosion. Like kapow.

I take a long deep breath, remembering what happened the last time I liked a guy.

That done, WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION WAS IN THE NOTE AND WHAT PHOTO?

“So can I take pictures of you sometime?” he asks.

“You
are
taking pictures of me,
Oscore
!” I say it like Guillermo, packed with exasperation.

He laughs. “Not here. Not like this. At this abandoned building I just discovered by the beach. At sunset. I have an idea.” He peeks around the side of the camera. “And not with your clothes on. Only fair.” His eyes are bright as the devil's. “Say yes.”

“No!” I cry. “Are you kidding? So creepy. Ax-murderer Avoidance Rule Number One: Don't go to the abandoned building with the total stranger and take off your clothes under any circumstance. Jeez. Does that line usually work for you?”

“Yes,” he says. “It
always
works.”

I laugh, can't help it. “You're
such
bad news.”

“You have no idea.”

“I think I do. I think they should arrest you and lock you up as a community service.”

“Yes, they tried that once.” I feel my mouth drop. He really has been in jail. He reads my shock, says, “It's true. You've definitely fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

Except I feel the opposite. I feel like Goldilocks. Everything is just right here as it is wrong at home.

“What did they arrest you for?” I ask.

“I'll tell you if you say yes to my invitation.”

“To be ax-murdered?”

“To live a little dangerously.”

I practically choke on his words. “Ha! Wrong girl,” I say.

“Beg to differ.”

“
You
have no idea.” Our rapport is so easy. Why is it so easy?

Grandma answers, sing-songing in my head, “Because love is in the air, my blind little bat. Now get a strand of your hair into his pocket. Immediately.”

As long as a man has a lock of your hair on his person,
you will be in his heart

(Thanks, but no thanks. I did this with Zephyr.)

I pretend she's a normal dead person: silent.

There's a tap-tapping of heels on the cement floor. Oscar glances out the door. “Sophia! In here.” Definitely not the plumber, unless the plumber wears stilettos. He turns to me. I can tell he wants to say something before we're interrupted. “Look, bad news I may be, but I'm not a stranger. You said so yourself. ‘I'm
so
familiar to you,'” he mimics me with perfect beach girl inflection, then snaps the cover on his lens. “I'm certain I've never met you until that day in the church, but I'm also certain I was
meant
to meet you. Don't think me a nutter, but it's been prophesized.”

“Prophesized?” I say. Is this the Information? It must be. “By whom?”

“My mum. On her deathbed. Her very last words were about you.”

What someone says to you right before they die will come true?

• • •

S
ophia—definitely not his little sister nor his great-aunt—and her comet of red hair streaks into the room. She has on a fuchsia fifties swing dress with a neckline that plunges to the equator. Green-and-gold sparkling sweeps wing her pale blue eyes.

She glitters like she walked out of a Klimt painting.

“Hello my darling,” she says to Oscar in a thick accent, I swear, identical to Count Dracula's.

She kisses his left cheek, right cheek, then presses her lips to his in a long, lingering finale. Very long and lingering. My chest caves in.

Still
lingering . . .

Friends do not greet each other like this. Under any circumstances.

“Hello there,” Oscar says warmly. Her magenta lipstick is smudged all over his lips. I have to put my hand in my sweatshirt pocket so I don't reach over and wipe it off.

I take back all that Goldilocks garbage.

“Sophia, this is CJ, Garcia's new disciple from The Institute.” So he does think I go there. He thinks I'm their age. And a good enough artist to get into The Institute.

I don't clear up any of it.

Sophia reaches out a hand to me. “I've come to suck your blood,” she says in her Transylvanian accent, but perhaps I misheard, perhaps she said, “You must be a very good sculptor.”

I mumble some gibberish in reply, feeling like a sixteen-year-old darkness-eating troll with leprosy.

And she, with her flaming hair and bright pink dress, is an exotic orchid. Of course he loves her. They're two exotic orchids together. It's perfect. They're perfect. Her sweater's fallen off her shoulder and a magnificent tattoo is twisting out of her dress and around her entire arm, a red-and-orange fire-breathing dragon. Oscar notices the sweater and adjusts it like he's done it a hundred times. A dark surge of jealousy rises in my chest.

What about the prophecy, whatever it is?

“We should go,” she says, taking his hand, and a moment later, they're gone.

When I'm certain they've left the building, I run at a full sprint—thankfully Guillermo's still not back—down the hallway to the front window.