Holding Up the Universe (39 page)

I'm rounding the corner of the house, into the front yard, when I see Moses Hunt punch Jack Masselin in the back. In slow motion, Jack falls, and as he hits the earth, I swear I can hear the impact. Now Moses Hunt is punching him in the face, and one of the other Hunt brothers, Malcolm maybe, is kicking him in the ribs.

I don't even think. I must let out some sort of scream, because I can feel my own eardrums shatter and I see the faces of Moses and Malcolm and Reed Young and their friends turn and stare at me, mouths agape, as I go flying through the air.

I sock Moses right in the nose, and it sends him staggering backward. Then I shove everyone off Jack, and I'm not even thinking. I'm suddenly filled with all this superstrength, and I'm single-handedly fighting them all until Dave Kaminski and Seth Powell and Keshawn Price are there beside me, scaring the bad guys away.

I watch as the Hunts run off down the street, tails between their legs, and as Dave bends over Jack, trying to shake him back to consciousness.

The first face I see is Libby's. For a minute, I don't know where I am. I think maybe it's a dream and that I've conjured her. I reach up and cover her face with my hand. She bats it away.

“He's awake.”

But I have to touch her again to make sure she's real. I tweak the end of her nose.

“Please stop doing that. I'm real, Jack.”

A guy with white, white hair appears beside her. “They were going to kill you, Mass.”

“I'm okay.” And now I'm feeling my chest, searching for my heartbeat, making sure it's still ticking. Once I can feel it battering away in there, I say again, “I'm okay.”

A boy with a Mohawk pops up over Kam's shoulder. “Dude, she totally saved your ass.” And then he starts laughing like a fool.

Libby says, “I'm going to drive you home.”

“You don't have a license.”

“Seriously?”

“What? I can drive.” Even though I know I can't won't shouldn't will not do so.

“YOU'VE BEEN DRINKING. Where's your car?”

“Just down the street to the right. About three houses away.”

She brushes past so now she's walking ahead of me, leading me away from the party, and I catch a whiff of something—sunshine.

At first we don't talk. It's as if the car is being powered by our minds, and the harder we concentrate, the faster we'll get there. He is staring out the window, not doing anything except sitting, but I'm completely and fully aware of him. The way one hand rests on the seat, the other on the window. The way every now and then the streetlights catch the gold flecks in his dark hair. The way his legs are longer than mine, and the way he sits, like he's perfectly at ease no matter where he is.

He must feel me thinking about him, because he says, “It feels good just to sit here. With one purpose. Knowing where we're headed. Knowing what we'll do when we get there. Cut and dried. Black and white.”

“I guess it does.” And I know what he means.

He looks at me. “Do you know who Herschel Walker is?”

“Football player?”

He whistles, then goes, “Ow.” He cradles his jaw.

“When you're housebound, you watch a lot of TV.” Even things you're not interested in, like ESPN documentaries and home improvement shows.

“Well, as you clearly already know, he was one of the most powerful running backs in football history, right? But when he was young, I guess he was afraid of the dark—like, terrified of the dark. And he was overweight and he stuttered, and all the other kids gave him hell for it. So what he does is he creates this Incredible Hulk inside him, someone who could stand up to people and never give up.”

I decide I like Herschel Walker, and that in many ways, I
am
Herschel Walker.

“He'd read aloud every day, and by doing that, he taught himself not to stutter. In middle school, he started working out hard, and by high school he was a beast. He graduated valedictorian and won the Heisman Trophy, three years into his college career at UGA. When he retired from the pros, he started noticing this shift in his behavior, and that's when he found out he's got this thing called DID, dissociative identity disorder. Multiple personalities.” He gestures like Mr. Dominguez in driver's ed. “You want to get in your left lane.”

I change lanes and stop at the light.

“At the next light, you're going to turn left onto Hillcrest.”

I see the map in my mind—my old neighborhood. I learned every street in it the year I got my first bike. I would take off and ride all over, my mom running alongside me, laughing, saying, “Libby, you're too fast.” Even though I wasn't. But I remember the way she made me feel—like I could go anywhere and do anything.

Jack says, “So after all those years of pushing himself and not giving up, it's like the pressure did Herschel in. When he was asked about the DID, he compared it to hats—you know how we wear hats for all different situations? One for family. One for school. One for work. But with DID, it's like the hats get mixed up. So you're wearing the football hat at home, the family hat at work…”

“Too many hats.” I think,
I know what this is like.

“After a while, it gets hard to keep them straight.”

And I wonder if we're still talking about Herschel Walker or if we're now talking about Jack.

He says, “I think we're more like Herschel Walker than Mary Katherine Blackwood. I actually don't think we're like her at all.”

I can feel him looking at me, but I keep my eyes on the road.

He says, “Thank you for helping me tonight.”

“I prefer to think of it as saving.”

“Fine. Thank you for
saving
me.” And now I can't help but look at him. And he smiles. It is slow at first, creeping across his face like a sunrise until suddenly it shines like the hottest point of the day. I sit on one hand so that I don't cover my eyes, which is what I want to do.

I smile at him.

And our eyes lock.

Neither of us breaks away, and I actually don't want to, even when I remind myself I'm driving,
Hello.

I drag my eyes away and stare out the windshield, but everything is a blur. I can feel him looking at me.

You need to calm down, girl. Calm. Yourself. Down.

We hit a pothole, and the Land Rover sounds as if it's going to bottom out.

Jack says, “Christ, this car is shit.”

We turn onto my old street, Capri Lane. I haven't been back here since that day they carried me away to the hospital. Jack is talking, but I'm not listening because everything is coming back to me. My mom. Being trapped in there. The feeling of not being able to breathe, of thinking this was it, of thinking I was dying. Of being rescued.

When I woke up in the hospital, everything was white. Blue, gray, black, white, like they were the only colors in the world. “You had an anxiety attack,” my dad said. “You're going to be okay, but we need to make sure it doesn't happen again.”

We're getting closer to my house, and I can see it coming toward me, only it's nothing like it used to be because, of course, they had to tear my house down, didn't they? Even though it was the last place I saw my mom alive. Even though memories of her were in every wall and floor.

I expect to drive right by it, but Jack says, “Pull over here.” At first, I wonder if he's playing some sort of messed-up joke. But no, he's waving at the two-story house across the street and saying, “Let's see if my brother's in there. If he is, he can drive you home.” He gets out of the Land Rover and starts up the walk.

I don't move.

Then—somehow—I open the door. I set one foot on the ground. I pull myself out. I set the other foot on the ground. I stand there.

I say, “That's your house?”

He turns. “Come on already.” And then he looks past me at where I used to live, and his face goes blank, almost like he's seeing a ghost.

“How long have you lived there?” It's all I can do to get the words out.

He doesn't answer. He looks like he's having a stroke.

“Jack? How long have you lived there? In that house?”

Silence.

“Answer me.”

“All my life.”

And the world

just

stops.

“Can you tell me what happened, Libbs? Can you tell me what has you so panicked?”

“All of it.” That was my answer, even though I knew my dad was expecting something more specific. “Everything. It was you. Me. Aneurysms. Death. Cancer. Murder. Crime. Mean people. Rotten people. Two-faced people. Bullies. Natural disasters. The world has me panicked. The world did this. Especially the way it gives you people to love and then takes them away.” But the answer was actually simple. I had decided to be afraid.

I don't know how long it takes me to speak. Finally I say, “I used to live there.” I point at the new house, shiny and big and perfectly intact, that sits on top of the grave that is my old one. The new house is nothing like the one that was there before it.

“I know.”

“How do you know?” And by now, I'm waiting for it. I just want to hear him say it.

“Because I was there the day they cut you out.”