I'll Give You the Sun

It is summertime; Noah surveys the neighborhood, the woods, and the beach, using his father’s binoculars. He sees Jude surrounded by a group of girls, all dressed in bright bikinis. Dianna thinks Jude’s changing behavior is on account of hormonal changes, but Noah is sure that it’s because Jude hates him; she has stopped going to museums with Noah and Dianna for a while now. Noah knows that Jude has no reason to be jealous; if Jude shows Dianna one of her sand women, Noah is sure that it will change everything. He has been watching Jude make them and secretly took pictures of them. One of them was so incredible, that after Jude left, he destroyed it before the water could. He could not risk Dianna seeing it.

Noah shifts to looking at the movers carrying a piano into a house down the street, admiring the men’s bodies as they work. He suddenly spots a boy on the roof of the same house with a telescope pointed straight at Noah. The boy grins at Noah, then throws a flat rock across for Noah to catch. Embarrassed, Noah quickly makes his way down to CSA, wondering about the boy. Noah has been visiting the institute for the past two weeks, curious about the place and the kind of art created there. In the process, he stumbled onto a live drawing class, which he now comes to watch through the window, drawing and applying the techniques being disseminated in each session.

For the first time, the class features a male model. Noah sketches with focus until the model asks for a break in an English-accented voice. The young man walks outside to where Noah is hiding, smoking a cigarette, before proceeding to retrieve and chug from a bottle of gin he had hidden outside. The man is startled to see Noah and asks to see Noah’s sketches. Impressed with Noah’s work, he asserts that Noah should be a student at CSA. To Noah’s question of whether he is an artist, the model answers that he is a “bloody mess;” after he goes back in, Noah repeats this to himself out loud in an English accent. During the next break, the model brings a stand and footstool out for Noah. However, when he goes back in, Noah watches him being apprehended by the teacher and then asked to leave, while the class is informed that he won’t be modeling at CSA anymore on account of being under the influence.

When Noah turns to head back home, he finds the boy from the roof waiting along the path. The boy admits to following Noah, but was immersed in an activity of his own, indicating a suitcase full of rocks. Unable to find his way back, he was waiting for Noah to lead the way. They walk back in silence until they reach the road in front of their houses, and the boy finally asks if Noah ever talks. He repeats Noah’s English-accented imitation of the model, and Noah is initially embarrassed at the boy having heard him, but both Noah and the boy eventually laugh about it together. Noah tells the boy that he mind-paints and has been doing so the entire walk; he confesses that he has been mind-painting the boy and feels embarrassed again. The boy asks Noah how he turned out in the painting, but Noah runs back home without answering him.

The next morning, Jude comes in while Noah is perfecting his final iteration of the sketch of the boy next door. He quickly hides the sketch, pretending to work on another sketch of the male model from the class. Jude is wearing a short dress and a face full of makeup—Jude and Dianna have been arguing a lot recently about Jude’s dressing. Noah believes it started after Dianna and Noah forgot Jude at the museum one day, absorbed as they were in their conversation about art as they headed home. They only remembered halfway through, at which point Dianna sped back to collect a visibly upset Jude. Jude sees Noah’s Cubist rendition of the model and is fascinated by it. To Noah’s insistence that he is not a real person, Jude wishes he were, and asks Noah for the drawing. Noah offers it to her in return for the "sun, stars, oceans, and all the trees” (74), in continuation of a game they have played since they were five, where they divvy up everything in the world. Jude initially gives up only the trees, stars, and oceans, but eventually acquiesces to Noah’s final demand: “Oh, all right, […] I’ll give you the sun” (74).

Jude mentions the new boy next door, calling him a “freak,” but asserting that no one is weirder than Noah. She calls Noah embarrassing, to which Noah retorts that at least he’s still himself. Jude defends herself, pointing out that at least she is not friendless. She says she had to make other friends because Noah is always holed up making “lame drawings” and discussing CSA with Dianna. Noah calls Jude jealous, to which Jude sadly asks Noah why he can’t share Dianna with Jude: “She’s my mom too” (76). Benjamin comes in to see if everything is alright, and Noah wonders how he can hate his father and want to be like him at the same time. Noah didn’t always feel this way; it began when Benjamin once took both kids out to the ocean on his shoulders and suddenly asked them to jump, stating that world was “sink-or-swim.” While Jude did so immediately, Noah had to be thrown off, and sunk to the bottom. Since then, Benjamin has been constantly comparing Noah to Jude and insisting that Noah needs to toughen up more. After Benjamin leaves, in an act of reconciliation, Jude invites Noah to play the Ouija board with her. They each ask the board in turn whether they will get into CSA; the board repeatedly answers no to Noah and yes to Jude.

Noah is unable to sleep and heads onto the roof of the house early in the morning to think. He sees the boy next door leave for the woods again with a bag full of rocks. Before the boy enters the grove, he turns and looks at Noah, as if expecting him to follow. Noah takes his sketchpad and heads for the woods, where the boy is looking at rocks under a magnifying glass. They exchange names, and the boy—Brian Connelly—explains that he is looking for “sky litter,” rocks that have fallen from out of the sky. Brian and Noah set about looking for rocks together, Brian talking about space and astronomy all the while. Noah thinks that Brian, just like Dianna, seems to have arrived from another planet. Brian asks if Noah finally painted Brian the way he saw him in his head, and Noah hands over the drawing which depicts Brian ethereally, floating into the air with an open suitcase in his hand out of which spills a sky of stars. Noah worries that the drawing depicts how he feels about Brian, but Brian seems to really like it.

The boys are interrupted by Fry and another large boy with him, whom Noah nicknames “Big Foot” in his head. Fry and Big Foot begin to insult Noah and Brian, calling them “homos.” Noah is terrified, while Brian seems eerily calm, warning Fry and Big Foot to back off. Laughing, Fry and Big Foot move to beat up the boys, and Noah mind-paints “(PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Brian and Noah Buried Side by Side)” (95). However, Fry and Big Foot are stopped in their tracks when Brian begins to rain rocks upon them with incredible speed and precision, missing them by millimeters. Terrified, Fry and Big Foot apologize, and Brian warns them that he will not purposely miss their heads if they turn up again. Brian reveals to Noah that he is a pitcher on his boarding school’s baseball team.

Noah spends the next week looking for rocks with Brian in the mornings. One evening Jude comes in and asks Noah about Brian. As they are talking, Brian climbs up to Noah’s window, inviting him out to stargaze. Jude comes over to meet him, and Brian begins flirting with her, which makes Noah jealous. He pushes Jude away when Brian invites her along, too, and Brian and Noah make their way to Brian’s roof to stargaze together. The boys exchange secrets: Noah confesses to spying on people to draw them, while Brian shares that he has recently become claustrophobic. Brian’s father has left, while Noah wishes his father would leave. Noah finally looks at the sky through the telescope and is awed by the burst of stars he sees. Brian comes up behind him to adjust it, and unable to bear the attraction Noah feels towards Brian, Noah abruptly leaves. Brian and Noah run into Jude’s group of girlfriends the next day, and one of them flirts with him. Brian effortlessly flirts back, and Noah realizes that, like Jude, Brian can change who he is based on who he is with. Upset, Noah heads back home as Brian continues chatting with the girls.

Jude and Dianna head out for a mother-daughter day, before which Jude comes in and apologizes to Noah for the way she has been acting. She invites Noah to watch a movie with her that evening, and he delightedly accepts. Noah heads down to CSA for the live drawing class, and Brian shows up. Noah is thrilled that Brian came looking for him, and Brian tells him not to worry about anything. Noah and Brian go back to Noah’s house and the group of girls arrive as well. Noah spends time with them, ditching Jude that night. Over the next few weeks, Noah begins to spend time with Brian and the girls, becoming popular by association, and Jude accuses him of stealing her friends. When they go for a movie together, even though they’re both sitting next to girls, Brian holds Noah’s hand under the armrest. When Noah discovers a note for Dianna from Jude asking her to come see one of Jude’s sand sculptures at the beach, Noah throws it away.

The day before Brian must leave for boarding school again, Noah goes to a party at Courtney’s house. He looks for Brian and sees him being led upstairs by Courtney. As Noah wanders the house, he comes across two boys kissing in a corner, and is transfixed by the image: “(PORTRAIT: Adam and Adam in the Garden)” (128). Heather finds Noah and brings him upstairs where Brian, Courtney, Jude, and a group of other girls and boys are waiting to begin a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. The girls pull the boys’ names out of the hat, but the pairings are rigged. In the closet, Noah imagines that the girl he kisses deeply is Brian. When they emerge, Brian looks livid. Jude picks Brian and a furious Noah leaves the party. Outside, he meets the model from CSA, who tells him about Guillermo Garcia, a sculptor for whom the model has posed. He suggests that Guillermo would be happy to have Noah over for sessions. Noah heads home furious with Jude and Brian. He finds his camera, which seems to have been moved, and deletes every picture of her sand sculptures. He then tears up the drawing of the model that he gave Jude, as well as every sketch that he has of Brian.