Excerpt from I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

(Self-Portrait: Funeral in the Forest)

But Zephyr's not saying anything, he's just standing there, look- ing like his Viking self, except all weird and mute. Why?

Did I disable him with my mind?

No. He gestures in the direction of the ocean, says to Fry, "Hell with this. Let's grab the slabs and head out."

Relief swallows me whole. Is it possible he didn't feel it? No, it isn't—it was steel and he jumped away totally freaked out. He's still freaked out. So why isn't he pussyhomoBubbling me? Is it be- cause he likes Jude?

Fry twirls a finger by his ear as he says to Zephyr, "Someone's Frisbee is seriously on the roof, bro." Then to me: "When you least expect it, Bubble." He mimes my free-fall off Devil's Drop with his mitt of a hand.

It's over. They're headed back toward the beach.

Before they change their Neanderthal minds, I hustle over to my pad, slip it under my arm, and then, without looking back, I speed-walk into the trees like someone whose heart isn't shaking, whose eyes aren't filling up, someone who doesn't feel so newly minted as a human.

When I'm in the clear, I blast out of my skin like a cheetah— they go from zero to seventy-five mph in three seconds flat and I can too practically. I'm the fourth-fastest in the seventh grade. I can unzip the air and disappear inside it, and that's what I do until I'm far away from them and what happened. At least I'm not a mayfly. Male mayflies have two dicks to worry about. I already spend half my life in the shower because of my one, thinking about things I can't stop thinking about no matter how hard I try because I really, really, really like thinking about them. Man, I do.

At the creek, I jump rocks until I find a good cave where I can watch the sun swimming inside the rushing water for the next hun- dred years. There should be a horn or gong or something to wake God. Because I'd like to have a word with him. Three words actually:

WHAT THE FUCK?!

After a while, having gotten no response as usual, I take out the charcoals from my back pocket. They somehow survived the ordeal intact. I sit down and open my sketchbook. I black out a whole blank page, then another, and another. I press so hard, I break stick after stick, using each one down to the very nub, so it's like the blackness is coming out of my finger, out of me, and onto the page. I fill up the whole rest of the pad. It takes hours.

(A Series: Boy Inside a Box of Darkness)

Excerpted from I'll Give You the Sun by Liza Nelson. Copyright © 2014 by Liza Nelson. Excerpted by permission of Dial Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.