Holding Up the Universe (21 page)

It's midnight when I walk Caroline to her door. On the step, I grab her by her waist and pull her in, and her body is rigid, like she's made of broom handles and marble. I want to ask her what it is that makes her like this, all uptight and controlling and mean. I wonder where geeky Caroline is right now, if the other day was real or a fluke and this newer, shinier Caroline has really swallowed her whole.
Is there anyone in there?
I want to say. Instead I pull her in tighter and wrap both arms around her, and try to squeeze geeky, awkward, nice Caroline out of there.

“Ow,” she says. “You always do that too hard.” She pushes me off her. “People might like her more if she didn't have such a chip on her shoulder.”

“Who?”

“Libby Strout.” She has been talking about Libby all night—at dinner, during the movie, on the ride home.

I laugh because, coming from Caroline, this is
hilarious.

“Why is that funny?”

“It's not. But you know, pot. Kettle.”

“No, I don't know.” She crosses her arms. “Tell me more.”

Smooth it over. Tell her what she wants to hear.

But I don't because suddenly I can't do it anymore. She's exhausting and I'm exhausting, and we're exhausting. I've been telling her what she wants to hear for the past four years.

I say, “You know what? I'll talk to you later.”

“If you walk away, Jack, don't come back. You don't get to do that and come back.”

“Thanks. Got it.”

I feel this weird nervous energy, like I'm doing something big and life-altering. I tell myself,
You need her,
as I get back into the Land Rover and drive away.

I head straight to the scrap yard, where I jump the fence and wander through and no one bothers me because it's late and dark and I'm the only one here. It's amazing what you can find—old license plates, old screws, a metal bumper. For me, the greatest item of all is gears. Whether they're small or big, it doesn't matter—gears are like the power source for almost all machines, the thing that decides their force and speed.

I dig for a while, and it's peaceful, like I'm the only living soul for miles. But my mind's not in it. My heart's not in it. Too much of my life feels like this already—trying to recycle something old into something new and better, disguising someone else's trash as some fresh, shiny thing.

In the driveway of my house, I pull out my phone. Thirteen texts and one voice mail from Caroline, sent over the past hour. A text from Kam. Another from Seth. I open my email and wait for it to load. I'm thinking about Libby Strout when I see it. The email. Delivered at 6:35 p.m.

A reply from Brad Duchaine of the Prosopagnosia Research Centers at Dartmouth.

Before first period, Heather Alpern and the Damsels are running drills on the football field. I stand on the sidelines and watch them, and I can't move because
there they are.
I'm starstruck. The Damsels are sixty-five years old this year. They were originally created by two students who loved to dance, and the first-ever team was made up of twenty girls. They wore skirts to their knees, which some people found shocking, and white gloves, and they performed with pom-poms and flags. Now there are forty members, thirty-nine without Terri Collins. At the end of the school year, everyone in Amos will turn out for the Damsels Showcase, which is held in Civic Auditorium, the town's performing arts center.
And I want to be on that stage.

I'm in a good mood until third period. After all, I have faced Moses Hunt without the sky falling. I've made up my mind to be a Damsel. And I've walked around in Jack Masselin's skin and been, yes, the bigger person.

I'm practically whistling as I go to my locker. Iris follows me, wanting to know why I'm so happy. And then I open the door.

The letters fall out like confetti. They are everywhere, across the hallway, like a carpet. People are trampling them as they pass, and I'm on my knees trying to collect them before anyone can see them and connect them with me.

Iris bends over, helping me. She opens one up and reads, “ ‘You aren't wanted.' ” She opens another. “ ‘You aren't wanted.' ” I grab the letters from her so she won't stand there reading every single one. There must be a hundred of them. “Are these for you?”

“That's my guess, Nancy Drew.”

“Who would do this?”

But I know it's rhetorical because Iris Engelbrecht, more than anyone else, knows what people are capable of.

When I don't answer, she says in her matter-of-fact Eeyore voice, “You need to tell someone. Take them to the principal. Come on. I'll go with you. Let's go right now. They can write us a pass for next period.”

I'm stuffing the letters into my backpack. “I'm not going to the principal with this.” And I sound as hurt, angry, and upset as I feel.

“Weren't you the one who told me to be brave?”

“I never told you to be brave.”

“You told me if I didn't speak up, Dave Kaminski would think he could go on doing things like that to me.”

“This is different.”

“No, it's not. You have to let them see they can't do this to you. Let's go.”

I can feel the fluttering in my heart start to steady itself. This is another effect Iris has on a person. She's the human equivalent of Valium.

I slam the locker door closed, shoulder my backpack, and start walking, the weight of all those letters drilling me into the ground. Iris trudges along behind me, still talking. “Okay, I get it. I guess you can look on the bright side instead. It won't last forever. Eventually they'll find someone else to focus on, and then this whole Fat Girl Rodeo thing will be forgotten.”

As if on cue, a group of boys goes by, hollering in my direction. Things like “Saddle up, fellas! Who wants a turn?”

“Bastards.” This is from Iris, because instead of speaking I'm doing the thing I used to do when I was younger—trying to will myself small, as if by concentrating really, really hard I might start shrinking until I'm the same size as everyone else. An acceptable size, whatever that is. One that won't make all other people feel so uncomfortable.

Iris bumps my arm with hers, as if she's trying to remind me she's there and I'm not alone, but for some reason it ticks me off. I never volunteered to be her savior and protector. I can't even protect myself. She starts singing the Cowardly Lion's “If I Only Had the Nerve” verse from
The Wizard of Oz,
and as irritating as it is, I have to admit she's got a really pretty singing voice.

Bump.

Bump.

Bump.

I stop walking. “Why do you want to be my friend anyway?” I talk right over her singing. “Is it because I stood up for you that day? Is it because I make you feel less freakish by comparison? Or is it because when you're with me everyone leaves you alone for once and focuses on me?”

Her eyes go wide and then narrow, and Iris Engelbrecht is staring at me like she thinks I'm a bastard too. “It's because when you're not being a jerk? Like this? I like you. Because except for that jerkiness? You're who I want to be.” And she walks away.

“Beggars can't be choosers,” Kendra Wu crows as she strolls by with Caroline Lushamp.

I stand there, my hand on the classroom door, and yell, “What's that supposed to mean?”

They're still heading away from me, but Caroline turns to face me, as graceful walking backward as she is walking the regular way. “What she's trying to say is that you might not want to burn your bridges when you're standing on an island.” And then she smiles the meanest smile I've ever seen.

In driver's ed, Mr. Dominguez says, “Libby? Whenever you want to join us.”

“Sorry.” I stop staring into space.

Bailey passes me a note.
Are you okay?

Instead of answering, I sit there and pretend I'm paying attention, and even when Mr. Dominguez says, “Next week, we're ready to start driving”—the moment I've been waiting for all my short, sad life—it's like I'm sitting in another room, at another school, far, far away.

I'm in the bathroom after third period when two guys walk in, both white, both nondescript, except that one is a fucking mountain and the other is about my height. They shut the door. This is bad news because for as long as I've been at MVB, that door has never been closed.

“What's up?” I do the head nod, act casual, but even though I can't recognize their faces, I recognize the emotion. They're mad as hell. I saunter toward the exit, trying to look as carefree as one can in this particular situation, but the smaller one blocks my way.

“When you messed around with my girlfriend, I let it go, but when you jump me and my friends for no reason and try to beat the living shit out of us? You don't do that, man. You don't screw with the people I love.”

This tells me it's almost definitely (probably) Reed Young, and that right there behind him is definitely (probably) Moses Hunt. I'm feeling reckless enough to go, “So you're saying you love him?” I nod at Moses.

And they both lunge for me. I can't afford another fight, so I duck and Probably Reed goes sprawling while Probably Moses ricochets into the wall, and then I throw open the door and I'm out of there. I don't run. Hell no. But I burn a path in the floor all the way down the hall.

For as long as people have been around, we've relied on facial recognition for survival. Back in caveman times, whether a person lived or died could come down to being able to read a face. You had to know your enemy. And here I am, barely able to make it out alive from a high school bathroom.