Holding Up the Universe (11 page)

I'm lying on the cafeteria floor, and the girl is standing over me. My jaw feels knocked loose, like it's over somewhere in Ohio. I give it a rub to make sure it's still attached, and my hand comes away covered in blood.

I say, “What the hell?” My words are garbled.
Jesus, I think she broke my voice box.
“Why did you punch me?”

“WHY DID YOU GRAB ME?”

My eyes go to her backpack, to the letter sticking out of the pocket I just managed to shove it into. I want to say
You'll understand later,
but I can't speak because I'm wiping the blood from my mouth.

I may not know who anyone is, but every face in that cafeteria is turned toward us, eyes staring, mouths hanging open or gums flapping. The girl is still standing there, and from the floor I say, “I'm getting up. In case you're thinking of punching me again.”

A hand comes toward me, and it's attached to a tall white guy wearing a stupid black beanie. I hate hats because sometimes the only identifier is someone's hair, and a hat erases that, which erases them. I'm not sure whether I should take the hand, but no one else is offering one, so I let him pull me up. As he does, the son of a bitch starts laughing.

The girl turns on him. “You're a jackass.”

He holds his hands up like she's pulled a gun. “Hey, I'm not the one that grabbed you.”

“Maybe not, but I'm sure you had something to do with it.” Which tells me this might be Dave Kaminski.

Then another girl is there, dark and angry, with a mole by one eye, and she gets right up in the face of the girl I grabbed. “YOU HIT HIM? YOU STUPID COW! HE WASN'T HURTING YOU!” And only Caroline Lushamp can get her voice that high and loud.

I say, “I deserved it. I shouldn't have grabbed her.” And suddenly I'm defending my attacker.

“
She
did this to
you
?” A kid appears, pointy chin, shaggy hair. I'm searching his face for signs of who he is, but everyone is coming at me all at once, and this is my nightmare because I don't know who anyone is. People are pulling at me, and wanting to know
What happened, am I okay, it's going to be okay, don't you worry, Jack.
I want them to get off me and go away because I'm supposed to know them and I don't, and I might as well have amnesia. They are freaking me out and I want to tell them to fuck off. She's the one who deserves the attention, not me. It's my fault, not hers.

“What the hell happened, Jax?” The pointy-chinned guy is Marcus, my own brother, because this is what he used to call me when we were kids.

But I can't be sure, can I? Even babies recognize the people they know. Even dogs. Even Carl Jumers, who still—how many years after grade school?—has to count on his fingers, and last year ate a cat turd because he was dared.

One of the security guys appears, pushing people away. And also a teacher (gray hair, beard), who tries to restore order in the crowd. As he's telling them there's nothing to see here, go back to your business, another girl comes walking up, fast.

“Jack Masselin, what happened?” She's examining my face, and at this point I'm not sure where I'm bleeding from. Do I know this person? There's nothing about her that looks familiar, but then someone goes, “It was him, Ms. Chapman. He grabbed her.”

I jerk my chin out of her hand. I say, “It's
Mrs.
Chapman,” and I look her right in the eye. In that moment, I'm like,
Come on, lady. Show me what you got. Show me what makes you so special.
I mean, there must be something incredible here, right? Why else would my dad put his family on the line and risk everything?

But the only one who stands out from the staring, jabbering crowd of them isn't my own brother or the woman who's wrecking my parents' marriage. It's a girl I don't even know, the largest girl here.

Principal Wasserman is a wiry jumping bean of a woman. A plaque behind her desk says she's been a principal for twenty-five years. I sit across from her, next to the boy and a woman who must be his mother.

Principal Wasserman says to me, “Your dad should be here any minute.”

Suddenly I feel like I'm going to throw up because I've just gone reeling back in time to the worst moment of my life. I was in fifth grade, in the middle of a school assembly, when the principal found me and led me out of the auditorium in front of everyone. She took me to the office, where my dad was waiting along with a school counselor. A big box of Kleenex sat on the corner of the principal's desk, and that was what I focused on. It was such a big box, as if they'd created it especially for that moment.

“Your mom is in the hospital and we have to leave now.”

“What do you mean?”

He had to repeat it three times before I could understand, and even then I thought it was a terrible joke, that they'd all conspired for some reason to play this really cruel trick on me.

“Libbs?”

I look up as my dad walks in. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay.”

Someone brings in a chair for him, and then the principal tells everyone what happened in the cafeteria.

The boy's mom is staring at her son like he's Rosemary's baby. She says, “There's got to be some sort of explanation as to why
on earth
you would do such a thing.”

My dad says to her, “I'd like to hear the explanation that could make me understand this.”

The principal speaks over them. “I want to hear from Jack and Libby.”

Everyone looks at us.

“He grabbed me.”

“How did he grab you?”

“He launched himself at me and held on like I was a flotation device and he was the last man off the
Titanic.
”

This boy, Jack, clears his throat. “That's not exactly how it happened.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Really?”

But he's not looking at me. He's too focused on trying to seduce Principal Wasserman. He leans forward in his chair and talks in this low, drawling voice like he's conspiring with her. “It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. Is stupid. I've just…” He glances at his mom. “The past couple of years haven't been so easy.” He looks at Principal Wasserman in this superintense way, like he's trying to hypnotize her. “I'm not saying there's any excuse for what I did, because I doubt there's anything I can say to you to justify what happened out there…”

He's a snake charmer, this one, but lucky for me, Principal Wasserman isn't a fool. She cuts him off and turns to me. “I'd like to hear what precipitated the punch in the mouth.”

My dad goes, “You punched him?”

As evidence, Jack points to his face.

I say, “He grabbed me.”

“Technically, I hugged her.”

“It wasn't a hug. It was a grab.”

Principal Wasserman goes, “Why did you grab her, Jack?”

“Because I was being an idiot. I didn't mean anything by it. I wasn't trying to scare her. Wasn't trying to bully her. I wish I had a better reason, believe me.” His eyes are going,
You will forgive me. You will forget this ever happened. You will love me as all the others do.

“Did you feel threatened, Libby?”

“I didn't feel great, if that's what you're asking.”

“But did you feel threatened? Sexually?”

Oh my God.

“No. Just humiliated.”

Even more so now, thanks.

“Because we don't take sexual assault lightly.”

Jack's mother leans forward in her chair. “Principal Wasserman, I'm an attorney, and I'm as concerned as you are—if not more so—about what's transpired here today, but until we—”

Principal Wasserman says again, “I want to hear from Jack and Libby.”

Next to me, I can feel the life go out of this boy. I glance over at him, and he looks like a shell, like someone came along and sucked away every ounce of his blood. For whatever moronic reason he grabbed me, I know he didn't mean it
like that.

So I say, “It wasn't sexual. At all. I never felt threatened in that way.”

“But you hit him.”

“Not because I felt assaulted.”

“Why did you hit him, then?”

“Because he grabbed me in a totally nonsexual but still really annoying and humiliating way.”

The principal folds her hands on her desk. Her eyes are fixed on us like she'd turn us to stone, if only she could. “Fighting on school property is a serious charge. So is vandalism.” And it takes me a minute. She holds up a scan of a photograph, which I don't need to look at because I already know what's there. She says to Jack, “Do you know anything about this?”

He leans forward to study the picture. Sits back again, shaking his head. “No, ma'am, I do not.”
Ma'am.

My dad leans in. “Let me see that, please.”

As he takes the piece of paper, Principal Wasserman says, “I'm afraid someone has defaced one of our school bathrooms with derogatory comments about your daughter. I assure you it is going to be dealt with. I don't take something like this lightly either.” She looks at Jack again. His mom looks at him. My dad looks at him, his jaw tensing so much I'm worried it will crack in half.

I will myself to become invisible. I shut my eyes, as if this might help. When I open them again, I'm still in the chair and everyone is staring at me. I say, “Sorry?”

My dad waves the scan. “Do you know who did this?”

I want to say no. Absolutely not.

“Libbs?”

Here's my choice—I can lie and say no. I can tell them Jack did it. Or I can tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you know who did it?”

“Yes.”

Everyone waits.

“It was me.”

It takes them a minute.

The boy whistles.

His mom says, “Jack.”

“Sorry. But.” He whistles again.

Principal Wasserman's face has fallen, and I can imagine her sitting down with her husband tonight, telling him how kids have changed, how we break her heart, how it's a good thing she's almost retired because she doesn't know that she can do this much longer.

My dad says, “Why, Libby?”

And maybe it's the way he says “Libby” instead of “Libbs,” but for some stupid reason, I'm about to cry. “Because someone was going to write it.”

And suddenly I feel naked, like I might as well be laid out on a dissecting table, insides exposed to the world. There's no way I can ever explain to anyone other than my dad the importance of being prepared, of always being one step ahead of everyone and everything.

“Better to be the hunter than the hunted. Even if you're hunting yourself.”

My eyes meet Jack's. “Something like that.”

“And then I come along to prove your point.”

He holds my gaze for a few seconds, and then we both look away. We sit there, the five of us, in the most awkward silence of my life, until the principal says, “There are several different punishments I could give you. Suspension. Expulsion. In some cases, schools in Rushville and New Castle have even called in local police to make arrests.”

Jack goes, “How about we let my punishment be that the entire school saw a girl kick my ass.”

“Or we can prosecute you for bullying,” she says to him.

Jack's mother, the attorney, nearly falls off her chair. “Before we talk about prosecuting—”

Principal Wasserman speaks over her. “And you, Libby, for fighting.”

“It was self-defense!” My voice booms out, too loud and high. “When I punched him, I mean.” Although the bathroom was about self-defense too.

The principal nods at Jack. “Had he let go of you by the time you hit him?”

“Only because I pulled him off me.”

She shakes her head and sighs for three days. “I'm not going to make my decision right now. I want to talk to witnesses. I need to look at your records, weigh the options. But I want to make it clear that I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to violence, bullying, or anything that even
hints
at sexual harassment.” She narrows her eyes at Jack, then at me. “I'm not too crazy about vandalism either.”