He told us to jump.
I thought I heard wrong until with an excited yelp, Jude flew off the shelf of his shoulder into the air, smiling crazily all the way down until the ocean swallowed her, still smiling like that when she broke through the surface of the water, where she bobbed like a happy apple, treading her legs, remembering everything we’d learned in our swimming class, while I, feeling Dad’s arm unfastening around me, grabbed at his head, his hair, his ear, the slippery slope of his back, but was unable to get a grip anywhere on him.
“It’s a sink-or-swim world, Noah,” he said very seriously, and then the secure belt of his arm became a sling that flung me into the water.
I sank.
All.
The.
Way.
Down.
(SELF-PORTRAIT: Noah and the Sea Cucumbers)
The first Broken Umbrella Talk happened that night. You need to be brave even when you’re afraid, that’s what it means to be a man. More talks followed: You need to act tough, sit up, stand straight, fight hard, play ball, look me in the eye, think before you speak. If it weren’t for Jude being your twin, I’d think you came about by partheno-whatever. If it weren’t for Jude, you’d be mincemeat on that soccer field. If it weren’t for Jude. If it weren’t for Jude. Doesn’t it bother you to have a girl fight your battles for you? Doesn’t it bother you to be picked last for every team? Doesn’t it bother you to be alone all the time? Doesn’t it bother you, Noah? Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
Okay already. Shut up! It does.
Do you have to be so you all the time, Noah?
They’re the team now, not Jude and me. So too bad. Why should I share Mom?
“This afternoon, for sure,” Jude’s saying to Dad. He smiles at her like she’s a rainbow, then fee-fi-fo-fums across the room, tapping me affectionately on the head and giving me a concussion.
Outside, Prophet squawks, “Where the hell is Ralph? Where the hell is Ralph?”
Dad mimes strangling Prophet with his bare hands, then says to me, “How about that haircut? Looking pretty pre-Raphaelite there with all those long, dark locks.” Because of Mom’s contagiousness, even Dad, for all his asshatness, knows a lot about art, enough to insult me with anyway.
“I love pre-Raphaelite paintings,” I mumble.
“Loving them and looking like a model for one are two different things, huh, chief?” Another swipe to my head, another concussion.
After he’s gone, Jude says, “I like your hair long.” And it somehow vacuums up all the ick and yuck between us, all my mean cockroachy thoughts too. In a tentatively cheerful voice, she says, “Want to play?”
I turn around, remembering again that we got made together, cell for cell. We were keeping each other company when we didn’t have any eyes or hands. Before our soul even got delivered.
She’s taking some kind of board out of the box she brought in.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Where the hell is Ralph? Where the hell is Ralph?” Prophet demands again, still in a tizzy. Jude leans out the window by the bed, hollers, “Sorry, Prophet, nobody knows!” I didn’t know she talks to Prophet too. I smile.
“A Ouija Board,” she says. “Found it in Grandma’s room. She and I did it once. We can ask it stuff and it gets the answers.”
“From who?” I ask, though I think I’ve seen one before in some movie.
“You know. The spirits.” She smiles and raises her eyebrows up and down and up and down in an exaggerated way. I feel my lips curving into a grin. I so want to be on a team with Jude again! I want things to be like they used to be with us.
“Okay,” I say, “sure.”
Her face lights up. “Come on.” And it’s like the whole horrible sticky stupid conversation didn’t even happen, like we weren’t just both in bits. How can everything change so quickly?
She teaches me how to do it, how to hold the pointer just barely so the hands of the spirits can push it through my hands to the letters or to the “yes” and “no” written on the board.
“I’m going to ask a question now,” she says, closing her eyes and putting her arms out like she’s being crucified.
I start to laugh. “And I’m the weirdo? Really?”
She opens one eye. “This is how you have to do it, I swear. Grandma taught me.” She closes the eye. “Okay, spirits. This is my question for you: Does M. love me?”
“Who’s M.?” I say.
“Just someone.”
“Michael Stein?”
“Uck, no way!”
“Not Max Fracker!”
“God no!”
“Then who?”
“Noah, the spirits aren’t going to come if you keep interrupting. I’m not going to say who.”
“Fine,” I say.
She spreads her arms and asks the spirits again, then puts her hands on the pointer.
I put mine on too. It beelines to No. I’m pretty sure I pushed it there.
“You’re cheating!” she cries.
The next time I don’t cheat and it still goes to No.
Jude’s supremely perturbed. “Let’s try again.”
This time I can tell she’s moving it to Yes. “Now you’re cheating,” I say.
“Okay, once more.”
It goes to No.
“Last try,” she says.
It goes to No.
She sighs. “Okay, you ask a question.”
I close my eyes and ask silently: Will I get into CSA next year?
“Out loud,” she says, exasperated.
“Why?”
“Because the spirits can’t hear inside your head.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. Now spill. And don’t forget the arms.”
“Fine.” I put my arms out like I’m on the cross and ask, “Will I get into CSA next year?”
“That’s a wasted question. Of course you’re getting in.”
“I need to know for sure.”
I make her do it over ten times. Each time it goes to No. Finally, she flips the board. “It’s just a stupid thing,” she says, but I know she doesn’t believe it. M. doesn’t love her and I’m not going to CSA.
“Let’s ask if you’re going,” I say.
“That’s dumb. No way I’m getting in. Who knows if I’m even going to apply? I want to go to Roosevelt like everyone else. They have a swim team.”
“C’mon,” I say.
It goes to Yes.
Again.
And again.
And again.
• • •
I can’t lie awake in bed for another minute, so I put on some clothes and climb onto the roof to see if the new kid’s on his. He’s not, which isn’t totally surprising since it’s not even six in the morning and barely light yet, but I kept thinking while I was tossing around in bed like a caught fish, that he was awake too, that he was up on his roof shooting electric bolts out of his fingers through the ceiling and into me and that’s why I couldn’t sleep. But I was wrong. It’s just me up here with the fading fathead moon and every screaming seagull from far and wide visiting Lost Cove for a dawn concert. I’ve never been outside this early, didn’t realize it was so loud. And so dreary, I think, taking in all the gray huddled-up old men disguised as trees.
I sit down, open my pad to a blank page and try to draw, but I can’t concentrate, can’t even make a decent line. It’s the Ouija Board. What if it’s right and Jude gets into CSA and I don’t? What if I have to go to Roosevelt with 3,000 toilet-licking Franklyn Fry clones? If I suck at painting? If Mom and Mr. Grady just feel sorry for me? Because I’m so embarrassing, as Jude says. And Dad thinks. I drop my head in my hands, feel the heat of my cheeks on my palms, reliving what happened in the woods with Fry and Zephyr last winter.
(SEL
F-PORTRAIT, SERIES: Broken Umbrella No. 88)
I lift my head, look over at the new kid’s roof again. What if he realizes I’m me? A cold wind blows through me like I’m an empty room and I suddenly know everything’s going to be terrible and I’m doomed; not only me, but the whole gloomy grubby gray world too.
I lie down on my back, stretch out my arms as wide as I can, and whisper, “Help.”
Some time later, I wake to the sound of a garage opening. I get up on my elbows. The sky’s gone blue: azure, the ocean bluer: cerulean, the trees are swirls of every hella freaking green on earth and bright thick eggy yellow is spilling over everything. Awesome. Doomsday’s most definitely been cancelled.
(LANDSCAPE: When God Paints Outside the Lines)
I sit up, noticing then which garage it was that opened—his.
Several seconds that feel like several years later, he cruises down the driveway. Across his chest is a duffel-like black sack. The meteorite bag? He has a bag for meteorites. He carries pieces of the galaxy around in a bag. Oh man. I try to prick the balloon that’s lifting me into the air by telling myself I shouldn’t be this excited to see a guy I only met a day ago. Even if that guy carries the galaxy around in a bag!
(SELF-PORTRAIT: Last Sighting of Boy and Balloon Blowing West Over Pacific)
He crosses the street to the trailhead, then stops where we had our laughing fit, hesitating for a moment there before he turns around and looks right at me, like he’s known I’ve been here all along, like he knows I’ve been waiting for him since dawn. Our eyes lock and electricity rides up my spine. I’m pretty sure he’s telepathically telling me to follow him. After a minute of the kind of mind-meld I’ve only ever had with Jude, he turns and heads into the grove.
I’d like to follow him. A lot, very much, so much, except I can’t, because my feet are cemented to the roof. But why? What’s the big deal? He followed me all the way to CSA yesterday! People make friends. Everyone does it. I can too. I mean, we already are—we laughed together like hyenas. Okay. I’m going. I slide my sketchpad into my backpack, climb down the ladder, and take off for the trailhead.
He’s nowhere on the trail. I listen for footsteps, hear nothing but my pulse hammering in my ears. I continue down the path, clearing the first bend to find him on his knees, hunched over the ground. He’s examining something in his hand with a magnifying glass. What a toilet-licking idea this is. I won’t know what to say to him. I won’t know what to do with my hands. I need to get home. Immediately. I’m edging backward when he turns his head and looks up at me.
“Oh, hey,” he says casually, standing and dropping whatever was in his hand to the ground. Most of the time people look less like you remember when you see them again. Not him. He’s shimmering in the air exactly like he’s been in my mind. He’s a light show. He starts walking toward me. “I don’t know the woods. Was hoping . . .” He doesn’t finish, half smiles. This guy is just not an asshat. “What’s your name, anyway?” He’s close enough to touch, close enough to count his freckles. I’m having a hand problem. How come everyone else seems to know what to do with them? Pockets, I remember with relief, pockets, I love pockets! I slip the hands to safety, avoiding his eyes. There’s that thing about them. I’ll look at his mouth if I have to look somewhere.
His eyes are lingering on me. I can tell this even with my undivided attention on his mouth. Did he ask me something? I think he did. The IQ’s plummeting.
“Suppose I could guess,” he says. “I’ll go for Van, no got it, Miles, yeah, you totally look like a Miles.”
“Noah,” I blurt, sounding like the knowledge just flew into my head. “I’m Noah. Noah Sweetwine.” God. Lord. Dorkhead.
“Sure?”
“Yup, definitely,” I say, sounding chirpy and weird. My hands are totally and completely trapped now. Pockets are hand jails. I free them, only to clap them together like they’re cymbals. Jesus. “Oh, what’s yours?” I ask his mouth, remembering, despite the fact that my IQ is approaching the vegetal range, that he too must have a name.
“Brian,” he says, and that’s all he says because he functions.
Looking at his mouth is a bad idea too, especially when he speaks. Again and again his tongue returns to that space between his front teeth. I’ll look at this tree instead.
“How old are you?” I ask the tree.
“Fourteen. You?”
“Same,” I say. Uh-oh.
He nods, believing me, of course, because why would I lie? I have no idea!
“I go to boarding school back east,” he says. “I’ll be a sophomore next year.” He must see the confused look I’m giving the tree, because he adds, “Skipped kindergarten.”
“I go to California School of the Arts.” The words blasting out of my mouth without my consent.
I sneak a look at him. His brow’s creasing up and then I remember: It says California School of the Arts on practically every freaking wall of that freaking place. He saw me outside the building, not in it. He probably heard me tell the naked English guy I don’t go there.
I have two choices: Run home and then don’t come out of the house for the next two months until he leaves for boarding school, or—
“I don’t really go there,” I spill to the tree, really afraid to look at him now. “Not yet, anyway. I just want to. Like badly. It’s all I think about, and I’m thirteen still. Almost fourteen. Well, in five months. November twenty-first. It’s the painter Magritte’s birthday too, that day. He did that one with the green apple smack in front of that guy’s face. You’ve probably seen it. And the one where another guy has a birdcage instead of a body. Supremely cool and twisted. Oh, and there’s this one of a bird flying but the clouds are inside the bird, not outside of it. Really awesome—” I stop myself because, whoa—and I could go on too. There isn’t a painting I suddenly don’t want to tell this oak tree about in great detail.
I slowly turn to Brian, who’s staring at me with his squinting eyes, not saying anything. Why isn’t he saying anything? Maybe I used up all the words? Maybe he’s too freaked out that I lied, then unlied, then started a psychotic art history lesson? Why didn’t I stay on the roof? I need to sit down. Making friends is supremely stressful. I swallow a few hundred times.
Finally, he just shrugs. “Cool.” His lips curve into a half smile. “You are a bloody mess, dude,” he says, throwing in the English accent.
“Tell me about it.”
Then our eyes meet and we both crack up like we’re made of the same air.
After that, the forest, which had stayed out of it, joins in. I take a deep breath of pine and eucalyptus, hear mockingbirds and seagulls and the rumbling surf in the distance. I spot three deer munching on leaves just yards from where Brian is now rummaging through the meteorite bag with both hands.
“There are mountain lions around here,” I say. “They sleep in trees.”
“Awesome,” he says, still searching. “Seen one?”
“No, a bobcat, though. Twice.”
“I’ve seen a bear,” he mumbles into the bag. What’s he looking for?
“A bear! Wow. I love bears! Brown or black?”
“Black,” he answers. “A mother with two cubs. At Yosemite.”
I want to know everything about this and I’m about to launch into a series of questions, wondering if he likes animal shows too, when it appears he’s found what he’s been looking for. He holds up an ordinary rock. The expression on his face is like he’s showing me a frill-necked lizard or a leafy seadragon, not a plain old hunk of nothing. “Here,” he says, putting it in my hand. It’s so heavy it bends my wrist back. I reinforce with my other hand so I don’t drop it. “This one’s for sure. Magnetized nickel—an exploded star.” He points to my backpack with the sketchpad sticking out. “You can draw it.” I look at the black lump in my hand—this is a star?—and think there’s nothing I can imagine
less interesting to draw on earth, but say, “Okay. Sure.”
“Excellent,” he says, and turns around. I stand there with the star in my hand not sure what to do until he turns back around and says, “You coming or what? I brought an extra magnifying glass for you.”
This makes the ground tilt. He knew I was going to come even before he left his house. He knew. And I knew. We both knew.
(SELF-PORTRAIT: I’m Standing on My Own Head!)
He takes the extra magnifying glass out of his back pocket and holds it out to me.
“Cool,” I say, catching up with him and taking the glass by the handle.
“You can classify too in the pad,” he says. “Or draw what we find. Actually, that’d be totally stellar.”
“What are we looking for?” I ask.
“Space garbage,” he answers like it’s obvious. “The sky’s always falling. Always. You’ll see. People have no idea.”
No, people don’t, because they’re not revolutionaries like us.
Hours later, however, we haven’t found one meteorite, not one piece of sky litter, but I so don’t care. Instead of classifying, whatever that means, I’ve spent most of the morning in a belly flop, using the magnifying glass to look at slugs and beetles, all the time getting my head stuffed with intergalactic gobbledygook by Brian, who traipsed around me scouring the forest floor with his magnet rake—yes, a magnet rake, which he made. He’s the coolest person ever.
He’s a blow-in too, no question. Not from another realm like Mom, but probably from some exoplanet (I just learned this word) with six suns. It explains everything: the telescope, this mad search for pieces of his homeland, the Einstein talk about Red Giants and White and Yellow Dwarfs (!!!!), which I immediately started drawing, not to mention the hypnotizing eyes and the way he keeps cracking me up like I’m some skin-fitting someone who has tons of friends and knows the perfect place in every sentence to say dude or bro. Also: The Realm of Calm is real. Hummingbirds laze around him. Fruit falls out of trees right into his open palms. Not to mention the drooping redwoods, I think, looking up. And me. I’ve never felt this relaxed in my life. I keep forgetting my body and then have to go back and get it.