Holding Up the Universe (17 page)

In the cafeteria, Kam and Seth and the other idiots I call friends can't talk about anything else. Seth is giving those who missed it a play-by-play.

“Shit, Mass,” one of the idiots says, and you can hear the admiration in his voice, see it there on his face.

I hitch up one corner of my mouth, as if I'm just too fucking cool to smile all the way, and hold up my hands like,
Whatever, man, all in a day's work.
“That's why I'm me and you're you, baby.” I slap Seth five and go back to watching the large girl by the window, who I'm pretty sure is Libby Strout.

At some point I feel Kam staring at me. “Whatcha looking at?”

“Nothing.”

He turns and looks toward the window, hangs out there for a few seconds, then turns back to me.

“You know, sometimes I can't figure you out. Are you as dickish as the rest of us? Or is there a heart beating in that underdeveloped chest of yours?”

I fake-grin. “I couldn't possibly be as dickish as the rest of you.”

And this is why I like Kam, in spite of himself. He's no dummy, and someday, about fifteen or twenty years from now, he may even become a nice guy. Which is more than I can say for the rest of them.

Seth and the others are congratulating me on how goddamn hilarious I am, and I'm feeling smaller and smaller, when a girl comes over, trailed by a group of girls, and they all look exactly the same. Same hair. Same lip gloss. Same clothes. Same bodies. The leader goes, “Why don't you pick on someone your own size, Jack Masselin?” And empties her Diet Snapple on my head.

Someone yells, “Not the hair! Anything but the hair!” Laughter.

I jump to my feet, dripping everywhere, and now people are applauding. The girl goes storming away, and Kam says to me, “If you're only picking on people your own size, I'm afraid that's going to limit you to freshmen.” And then he pulls out his flask, unscrews the top, and—for the first time ever—offers it to me.

“I hope that's orange juice.” It's a woman's voice, over my shoulder.

I'm looking at Kam, and he goes, “Of course, Mrs. Chapman. Vitamin C is not only crucial to our development, it protects us from scurvy.”

Monica Chapman shakes her head at Kam and then, in front of everyone, turns to me and goes, “I wanted to make sure you're okay.” She's eyeing my wet clothes and the puddle of Diet Snapple at my feet.

“I'm super, thanks.”

“I know today can't be easy.” To her credit, she lowers her voice, but this actually makes it worse. Like she's conspiring with me. As if we're the ones with the secret. “There's nothing that bonds people more than judging someone else, and even when we've done something wrong, it often doesn't warrant those judgments…”

And now she's talking about her, not me. I feel the rubber band compressing my cold, dead heart snap in two, and without a word, I'm outta there.

I escape outside into the fresh air and let out all the breath I've been holding for the past hour.
You returned to the crime scene and you survived.
Now that I can breathe again, it's coming in a rush, and I feel dizzy from so much oxygen in my chest and in my brain. It's important I keep my blood pressure low and steady. It's a matter of life and death. I am serious. Life. And. Death. Because this could be how it starts—soaring blood pressure followed by dizziness followed by goodbye, Libby.

It can run in families.

Like that, the time machine that lives in my head teleports me back to that day. I'm standing beside my mom's bed and wondering how something like this—her, unconscious in that bed—could happen.

“She looks peaceful,” my dad said on the ride to the hospital. “Like she's sleeping.”

In the ICU, my mom was connected to all these tubes and wires, and a machine was breathing for her. I didn't know what to do, so I sat by her and then I took her hand, and she was still warm, but not as warm as usual. I squeezed her fingers, but not too hard because I didn't want to hurt her. Her head was back, her eyes open, like she was just waking up. She didn't look peaceful. She looked empty.

I said, “I'm here. Please don't go. Please stay. Wake up. Please wake up. Please don't leave me. Please please please. If anyone can come back, it's you. Please come back. Please don't go. Please don't leave me alone.” Because if she went away, that's what I would be.

Outside the school, the sky is a mix of white and blue, but the cool air feels like a kiss against my hot, hot skin.

I dig a marker out of my bag. I find a blank space on one sneaker. I write:
You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. (Harper Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird
)
I tell my brain to focus on the good—the fact that no one tried to ride me like a bull in the cafeteria today, the fact that I seem to have three actual friends, and the fact that Terri Collins is moving to Minnesota.
The Damsels will need to replace her.
Yet I can't seem to shake the feeling that everyone belongs here but me.

I think about Mary Katherine Blackwood from
We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
I've always loved her and felt sorry for her because she's quirky and weird, just like me, and—I've told myself—misunderstood. But right now I have this unsettling, someone's-hiding-in-the-closet feeling, like maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's better that she's locked away from the rest of the world. Maybe she's not cut out to live like other people with other people. Maybe she belongs in that house forever.

In the ocean of people, I see this very large girl coming toward me, and it's her—Libby Strout. A group of girls elbows each other, and even though they're whispering, I can hear them say something about Fat Girl Rodeo. They stare at Libby, and that's the moment it hits me, square in the face. This is what I've done to her—painted a giant red target on her back.

As they're gawking, she stops in front of me and hands me a note. “Here.” This sends the girls into a giggling fit, and I can already hear the gossip mill churning.

After school, I walk down a flight of stairs off the main hall to the creepy basement, which is where the old basketball court is, the one they used years ago before they built a million-dollar sports complex that seats ten thousand people. Jack Masselin leans back on the bleachers, legs stretched in front of him, elbows propped on the riser behind him, chatting with Travis Kearns from driver's ed, a smiling girl with long brown hair, and a boy with a smooth, shaved head who I think is Keshawn Price, basketball star. They're hanging on Jack Masselin's every word, and he looks up, sees me, and keeps right on talking.

Or maybe he doesn't see me. Although I am the largest girl in here.

I sit apart from them, on the front row. This gym can fit probably six hundred, and there's something about it that feels sad and neglected, which, of course, it is. With every laugh coming from the group above me, I feel more and more invisible. Two other kids wander in, but I don't know their names. The girl sits next to me, about a foot away, and the boy takes a seat one row up. The girl leans over and goes, “I'm Maddy.”

“Libby.”

“Is this the Conversation Circle?”

But right then Mr. Levine moseys in. “Hello, hello. Thank you all for being here today.” He stops in front of the bleachers, hands on hips. He's wearing an orange bow tie and matching orange sneakers, and except for the gray hair, he looks like he could be one of us.

He says, “Let's get this out of the way. I'm not going to talk to you about the importance of tolerance, equality, and realizing that we're all in this together because I don't think you're stupid and completely lacking moral fiber. I think you're smart individuals who did really stupid things. Who wants to start?”

We all sit there. Even Jack Masselin goes silent. Mr. Levine keeps on. “How about ‘Why are you here?' The real reason, not ‘Principal Wasserman made me do this.' ”

I'm waiting for someone to say something. When no one does, I say, “I'm here because of him.” And point at Jack.

Mr. Levine shakes his head. “Actually, you're here because you vandalized school property, and because you punched him.”

One of the guys goes, “Nice.”

Jack says, “Shut up.”

“Gentlemen. And I use that term loosely.” Mr. Levine says to me, “You could have walked away.”

“Would you have walked away?”

“I'm not the one he grabbed.”

“Okay.” I take a breath. “How about I'm here because I lost my temper. Because when someone grabs you out of the blue and won't let go, you panic, especially when everyone's watching you and no one's doing anything to help you, and everybody but you seems to think it's funny. I'm here because I didn't know if it stopped there or if he was going to do something more than just hold on.”

Everyone is staring at Jack, at me. Mr. Levine is nodding. “Jack, buddy, feel free to jump in.”

“I'm good.”

That's what he says.
I'm good.
Lounging there with his bored expression, and that giant explosion of hair, too full of himself to participate.

“If he doesn't have anything to say, I'll go again.” If there's anything I'm good at in this world it's being counseled. I've had years of it, and I know how to talk about myself and the Whys of things. Even in front of a room of strangers.

Mr. Levine says, “Great. The floor is apparently all yours, Libby.”

“After they cut me out of my house, I was in the hospital for a while, and even when I was strong enough to go home, the doctor kept me there because he said I couldn't leave till I understood the Why. Why was I there. Why did I gain all that weight.”

Mr. Levine doesn't interrupt, but you can tell he's really, truly listening. So is everybody else, even Travis Kearns. I keep talking because I've been over this a hundred times, so much that it's barely a part of me anymore. It's just a truth that lives outside me in the world.
Libby got too big. Libby was cut out of her house. Libby got help. Libby got better.
If there's anything I've learned from counseling and losing my mom, it's that it's best to just say what's on your mind. If you try to carry everything around all the time, pretty soon you end up flat on your back in bed, too big to get up or even turn over.

“So the Why was a lot of things. It was inheriting my dad's Hulk-size thighs and slow metabolism. It was being bullied on the playground. It was my mom dying and the way she died, and me being afraid and me feeling alone and worrying, always worrying, and Dad being sad, and Dad loving food and loving to cook, and me wanting him to feel better and also wanting me to feel better.”

I hear a “Damn, girl,” from Keshawn before Mr. Levine says, “Well done, Libby.”

A couple of the kids applaud.

“Thank you.” For some reason, this means something, not the applause, but Mr. Levine. What he thinks of me matters. “I was housebound for a while, so I had a lot of time to think about it. And I've had a lot of time to think about it since.”

We all look at Jack, but he says nothing.

Mr. Levine turns back to me. “So why did you punch him?”

I want to go
Look at him. He's perfect. He's never had a bad day. Okay, he has this strange disorder that keeps him from recognizing people, but no one's ever called him fat or ugly or disgusting. No one's sent him hate mail or told him he would have been better off killing himself. His parents never received hate mail just for having him. Also, he has parents. I doubt he knows what it's like to lose someone he loves. People like us, we can't touch him because he's too good for you and me and the rest of these kids and this punishment. Not to mention his friends utterly suck.

I want to say
Why
wouldn't
I punch him?

But I don't really have an answer other than “I was mad.”

And I know it's not enough because of the look on Mr. Levine's face. I've seen it before. It's the look counselors get when they analyze you, when they know the answer before you do, but they're not going to tell you because you have to think of it yourself.