Incarnate

I set out that evening to paint the sunset. If a sunset doesn’t get me into CalArts, nothing will. There is a certain energy and emotion in a sunset that I find nowhere else.

My advisor told me to pick something that best represented me, at this moment, my innermost self, as she put it. I think a sunset can do that. To some people, a sunset is just something beautiful, rich with color and warmth. It’s not that to me, and that’s why I chose it. I imagine the fading light has captured all the essence of the day, every hope and dream, every setback and failure, every laugh, every scream, and painted them across the sky in a single message.

Behind those golden and reddish hues, the single most powerful light in our world is being pulled down into darkness, stretching out like a final grasping hand toward the precipice of the sky. Nothing can stop it, that pull down into oblivion, and the whole world becomes dark and cold after it’s over. Even the sun, in all its glory and majesty, cannot overcome the daily triumph of the void.

There was a time when I thought a sunset was supposed to be a symbol for the promise of a new sunrise. I thought I needed that promise. My shrink certainly thought I did. He encouraged me to paint all kinds of sunrises and sunsets. When they started to turn into eclipses that looked like scenes from a gothic horror novel, he stopped encouraging me. I’m not sure if he knows what to do with me now.

Score: Kieran one, shrink zero.

I made sure the easel’s wooden legs were thoroughly planted in the sand, and I put the canvas on it. I’d already mixed most of the colors I’d need. The burning question in my mind was whether this painting would really turn out the way I wanted, or if it would become some kind of twisted vision of non-reality that would make H. P. Lovecraft proud. I’d tried five times already to get it right, and now I was running up on the deadline. I only had three weeks before my application was due.

The sounds of a party from farther down the beach drifted up to me—a party I should be attending. My friends would be celebrating the end of the school year. For most of them, it was already their second year of college. None of them blamed me for being behind. Most of them understood, and even the ones who didn’t, the ones who told me with their looks that I should just get over it and move on, wouldn’t dare say anything out loud.

I enjoyed parties once. Not anymore. I hadn’t celebrated anything for the past three years, not my birthday or Christmas, or even my best friend’s birthday. I’d made myself mostly an outcast, and it was better that way.

My gaze moved along the waves and the endless Pacific horizon. I imagined I could see Hawaii out there if I squinted hard enough. My brush began working on the curving strokes of waves. Then I noticed something on the water. At first, it was just a bobbing speck, but after studying it for a moment, I knew it was a person—a surfer.

My first thought was that the guy was an idiot, and it was definitely a guy. This wasn’t a great time for surfing. The evening waves were small, and it was dangerous to be out on the water so close to dark.

Before I knew it, I had deftly included the surfer in my painting. I had also embellished his circumstances. A swelling wave grew beneath him, and the wave was painted gold by the sun. I decided my impulsive gesture didn’t look too out of place. I thought the boy perched on the crest of that great wave had captured just the energy and promise I’d intended. There was majesty and danger, the equal potential for glory or disaster.

As my painting moved on, so did my mind, and soon I forgot about the surfer boy. His feeble attempts to find waves as big as the one I had painted for him carried him away down the shore and out of my sight. The sun was sinking lower, and I knew I didn’t have much time left. I got a good outline of the rest of the picture down before I ran out of light. I would come back and add more tomorrow. It wasn’t like I had a big social calendar occupying my time.

The painting needed some time to air, so I walked down to the water, wading up to my knees and letting the cool waves lap at my thighs.

“You coming to the party?”

I knew the male voice behind me, knew it too well. Those deep, rich tones had been a comfort to me once. Now they made my spine tingle and my stomach knot.

“If I was, I’d already be there, wouldn’t I?” I answered without turning around.

“Your friends are there, Kieran. Emmalyn is there. She’s worth celebrating with at least, isn’t she?”

“She is,” I said. “We’ll celebrate later, probably at my house, and privately.”

Emmalyn was my best friend, and of course, Kalen would try to use her against me.

I felt Kalen behind me, heard the sound of his feet splashing into the water. At least he knew better than to try and touch me. We weren’t touching anymore.

“It’s not just Emmalyn that wants to see you, Kieran.”

I knew what he was implying.

“I don’t see why anyone else would want to see me.”

“Kieran.”

“What Kalen?”

His tone turned sharp. “You know what.”

“Maybe you need to spell it out for me. After all, I’m just an emotional idiot.”

“I…you know I didn’t mean that last time. You know I don’t think that about you. I was just angry.”

Finally, I turned toward him.

“You were angry? What right did you have to be angry? I was the one who lost a mother. I was the one who became an orphan that night. I was angry. I deserved to be angry. And you…your job was to try and make it better. You sucked at your job.”

Kalen was a handsome guy, at least objectively. He could be any gay boy’s poolside dream. His skin was nicely darkened by the California sun. He worked out a lot, probably too much, so he looked the part of an athlete even though he could barely run in a straight line and shouldn’t be trusted with any kind of ball. His hazelnut brown hair had a perm, and even I had to admit it looked good on him.

I remembered the way Emmalyn had squealed with excitement when she’d found out we were together. It had been nice. By my senior year of high school, I was out about being gay, but I’d also learned very quickly that finding a partner, a real boyfriend, a might-get-married-some-day kind of partner, is one of the hardest things in the universe. For a while, Kalen had been that guy. We’d been christened the “Double Ks” by just about everyone. Kalen had been sensitive and gentle, and while he didn’t have an artistic synapse in his entire brain, he always seemed to be awed and appreciative of art—especially my art.

That had all been before.

Those dark brown eyes bored into me, and I knew I was getting him riled. “It’s kind of hard to make someone feel better when they blame you for their mother being dead.”

“You needed a ride,” I reminded him. “You were the reason we were even on Sunset Parkway. If you hadn’t come over that night, then we wouldn’t have been there, and there wouldn’t have been an accident!” I was shouting at him now, just like I’d shouted at him a half-dozen times before during our long spiral toward a breakup, and the pain and anger fueling my words felt as fresh as if my mother had died yesterday instead of three years ago.

Tears flashed into Kalen’s eyes, sparkling in the last glimmers of sunlight. “It’s been years, Kieran. How can you still think it is my fault? You think I wanted that accident to happen? Fuck, I was in the car with you. We could all have died.”

“Well, we didn’t all die, did we? Only my mother died.”

“Andreia was like a second mom to me, too, Kieran. You think I wasn’t sad? But you just won’t let it go, will you? You just keep that blame coming and coming and coming, and it doesn’t matter how many times I apologize. I shouldn’t even have to apologize to you because I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Tears were in my eyes, too, but I wasn’t about to back down. “Why did you even come up here, Kalen?”

Kalen dashed the water. “I don’t even know. I guess I just thought, maybe, maybe with summer coming, it could be a different start, you know. Emmalyn dropped some hints, hints that maybe you were ready, that you were focused on Cal Art, really serious this time, and the future, and…” his voice trailed off.

I almost wanted to laugh. “So that’s it? You thought the start of a new summer would be like the wave of a magic wand, and I would be okay with us getting back together?”

The hurt on Kalen’s face was so genuine that it was almost enough to break me. Almost. I’d need to have some words with Emmalyn later. I didn’t blame her. It was no surprise that she’d talked about CalArts to Kalen. She still counted him as a friend. Leave it to Kalen to find a hint when there wasn’t one.

“I just…I just want this, whatever it is between us, to be over. I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

I tried to imagine my eyes were like two black holes swallowing all of Kalen’s hope into their depths as I stared at him. “Can you bring my mother back from the dead, Kalen?”

He seemed frozen, staring at me, tears running openly down that smooth, boyish face. For a guy with a deep voice and muscles, Kalen didn’t look much like a man. We were both twenty-one, almost twenty-two, but he looked more like an oversized seventeen. Still, he’d never been such a crybaby before my mother’s death. Now it seemed like he cried every time we talked. I didn’t need somebody who cried. I needed somebody who was strong, and not just in their biceps. Kalen showed me he wasn’t that guy.

“No,” he finally whispered.

“Then things can’t go back to the way they were, can they?” I knew my voice was fire and acid, and from the look on Kalen’s face, I imagined that they might actually burn. It still felt wrong to hurt him. I just didn’t want to have any more conversations like this one. We’d done this so many

times before, too many times. I couldn’t keep taking it. Either I was going to break and get back with Kalen, or I was going to snap from the constant rehashing of that night. I wasn’t sure which outcome I was more afraid of.

I looked at his arms, studied his chest, remembered those arms holding me, the feeling of that chest against me, how strong his heartbeat was. “Just go back to the party, Kalen. There’s nothing for us, all right? Nothing.”

Kalen remained frozen there for another half-minute. Then he just turned, trudged out of the water, and back along the beach. I hoped he had finally walked out of my life.

I spent a while looking out over the ocean. The sun was entirely gone now. Silver had taken the place of gold among the waves. I just stood there, feeling silent tears slide down my face. I’d been a loud crier once, but I was a silent one now. Nobody listened anyway.

My painting seemed suddenly terrible. It was too happy, too hopeful for what I felt now. There was no way this represented my innermost self. Yet I couldn’t think of starting again. It had taken all of my mental energy to get this far, to choose a sunset. The thought of choosing again was too much.

Jaw tight, I began gathering up my painting supplies, wrapping the canvas carefully, breaking down the easel. I just wanted to be home, where I couldn’t hear the sounds of the party anymore. When I turned around, I screamed. My scream quickly turned into an embarrassed laugh. A guy stood behind me holding a surfboard.

“Who are you?” I asked, hiding my unease with a sharp demand.

The guy smiled at me. He was tall, taller than Kalen and a lot taller than me. His coppery hair was tousled and thick, just long enough to cover his ears and cast seductive shadows over his eyebrows. He was firmly built and muscled, but not ripped like those boys who spend all their time at a gym—surely trying to compensate for something. His build was natural, and he stood comfortably and relaxed, unlike me. The rising moonlight emphasized the sun-kissed skin of his smooth, bare chest.

I immediately pulled my eyes back to his face. His lower lip stuck out in a perpetual puppy pout, and his jaw was smoothly curved in a V-shape. Cute wasn’t how I usually described guys, but there was no other word. I stared and stared and stared. I tried to squash the foreign feeling rising in my chest, but it wouldn’t stay down. My hand twitched, caught in its own desire to reach out and brush my fingers across those lips, feel the butter smoothness of his bronzed skin. I managed to fight that impulse successfully.

“I’m Corbin,” the boy greeted.

His eyes caught me as he spoke. There was something surreal about them, as if the irises glowed with a kind of inner teal light. When I blinked, the light seemed to fade. It must have been a trick of the moon or something, but I still couldn’t stop staring at them.

My mind drifted back to the boy on the surfboard I’d painted. In all the emotions with Kalen, I’d forgotten about him. This guy was probably some party punk who liked dangerous things—surfing in the dark, for example. He was probably a lot like all the rest.

“Kieran,” I replied. “Never seen you around before.”

Corbin shrugged. “I’m new. I just moved here a few days ago.”

I laughed, and it sounded tinny and ridiculous even to me. My nerves were unraveling like the end of a hacked-off rope. “Right! That would explain why I don’t recognize you, obviously.”

If Corbin thought I was ridiculous, he didn’t say anything. His eyes just stared at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was checking me out or not. Corbin’s gaze was curious and studious, as if he was looking for something in particular and hadn’t quite found it yet. I couldn’t blame him for thinking an oversized paint-stained t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off and fraying cut-off jean shorts were not sexy. I only knew that his eyes didn’t make me feel uncomfortable the way most people’s eyes did, boys or girls, I just didn’t like to be looked at. I didn’t like to be noticed at all, really. If it were possible to hide behind a painting everywhere I went, that would be preferable.

“I like that name,” he said.

I remembered that Kalen had also told me that he liked my name. It was a dumb line. “You know, it’s dangerous to go surfing at night.”

He shrugged, the shadow of a grin crossing his face. “I’m comfortable in the water, but I came in before it got too dark. Do you like the water much?”

Okay, now, do I tell him the truth? I looked into his eyes. My aunt had always told me to search a person’s eyes if I wanted the truth about them. Corbin’s eyes held an unreasonable amount of confidence, and they seemed deep and knowing, as if he were older than he looked. I figured they would be able to catch me in any lie. “I do like the water.”

“Great, maybe you could go surfing with me sometime. I live right close.”

“I don’t surf,” I said quickly.

“Then you swim.”

This guy was not giving up. “Yeah, I swim,” I admitted.

“We should go swimming sometime.”

There was a steadfast confidence in his voice, but unease slithered through me. How do you trust a guy who comes up to you out of nowhere on a beach at night? Sure, he was cute…and hot…and he seemed nice, but still. That’s what all the bad boys are like, right? Maybe he had a cabin in the woods at the end of the beach. I was basically a twig with shoulder-length hair and no muscles. He was…yeah. Nobody would ever find my body.

“I’ve really got to get home. My aunt will be waiting for me.” I hoped he would take the hint.

“You live close by?”

My anxiousness meter ticked further upward. “Not too far,” I replied.

He smiled, and there was something about his smile that caught me like a fish on a hook. For a second, I swore his eyes glowed a flash of teal again, like a light in a deep pool. “I’ll see you around then,” he replied.

I could only nod. I gathered my supplies and hurried up the sandy path connecting my street to the beach. You could see my house from where we were, but it wasn’t obvious which one was mine.

That night, I dreamt about a boy with teal eyes.