Holding Up the Universe (4 page)

Like the hair, the car is part of the image. It's a restored 1968 Land Rover that Marcus and I bought from an elderly uncle. It was originally used for farmwork before it sat rusting for forty-some years, but now it's part Jeep, part all-terrain vehicle, and one hundred percent total badass.

In the passenger seat, Marcus sulks. “Asshole.” This is said low and to the window. Unfortunately for me, he got his license a month ago.

“You're adorable. I hope eleventh grade won't spoil your boyish charm. You can drive next year when I'm at college.”

If I go to college. If I ever leave this place.

He holds up his middle finger in my direction. From the back, our younger brother, Dusty, kicks the seat. “Stop fighting.”

“We're not fighting, little man.”

“You sound like Mom and Dad. Make the music louder.”

A couple of years ago, my parents got along pretty well. But then Dad was diagnosed with cancer. The week before he was diagnosed I found out he was cheating on my mom. He doesn't know I know, and I'm not sure Mom knows, but sometimes I wonder. He's cancer-clear now, by the way, but it hasn't been easy, especially on Dusty, who's ten.

I turn up the song, an oldie—Justin Timberlake's “SexyBack”—and I can feel myself settling once again into my zone. I've got four soundtrack songs that I wish would start blasting every time I walk into a room, and this is one of them.

We pull up outside Dusty's school, and he goes leaping out before I can stop him. I get out after him, taking the keys so Marcus can't drive off with the car.

This summer, Dusty started carrying a purse. No one talks about it—not my mom or dad or Marcus.

Dusty is halfway up the walk before I chase him down. I have to keep my eyes on him so I don't lose him. He has the darkest skin of the three of us, and his hair is the color of a copper penny. Technically, Mom is half black, half Louisiana Creole, and Dad is white and Jewish. Dusty is dark like Mom. Marcus, on the other hand, couldn't be whiter. Me? I'm just Jack Masselin, whoever the hell that is.

Dusty says, “I don't want to be late.”

“You won't be. I just wanted to…Are you sure about the purse, little man?”

“I like it. I can fit everything in here.”

“I like it too. It's a really damn cool purse. But I'm not sure everyone's going to dig it as much as we do. There might be some kids here who are going to be so jealous of that purse that they'll make fun of you.” I see about ten of them walking past us right now.

“They won't be jealous. They'll think it's weird.”

“I just don't want anyone to be rough on you.”

“If I want to carry a purse, I'm going to carry it. I'm not going to not carry it just because they don't like it.”

And in that moment, this scrawny kid with big ears is my hero. As he walks away, I watch the way he moves, straight as an arrow, chin up. I want to follow him all the way into school to make sure nothing happens to him.

I clear a path all the way to my first class, where I take a seat in the row closest to the door, in case I need to flee at some point. I
just
fit behind the desk. Under my shirt, my back is damp, and my heart skips a beat. No one can see it, though. At least, I hope no one can see it because there's nothing worse than being known as the sweaty fat girl. As my classmates trickle in, a few of them stare. A couple of them snicker. I don't recognize any of the eleven-year-old kids I once knew in these teenage faces.

But school is exactly what I expected, yet more at the same time. For one thing, Martin Van Buren High School has about two thousand students, so it is a place packed with commotion. For another, no one looks as shiny and polished as they do in the TV and movie versions of high school. Real teens aren't twenty-five years old. We have bad skin and bad hair and good skin and good hair, and we're all different shapes and sizes. I like us better than our TV selves, even though sitting here, I feel like an actor playing a part. I'm the fish out of water, the new girl at school.
What will my story be?

I decide that what I've got here is a clean slate. As far as I'm concerned, this is me starting over, and whatever happened when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen doesn't exist now. I'm different. They're different, at least on the outside. Maybe they won't remember I was
that girl.
I don't plan on reminding them.

I look them in the eye and give them my father's new signature taped-up-corner smile. This seems to surprise them. A couple of them smile back. The boy next to me holds out his hand. “Mick.”

“Libby.”

“I'm from Copenhagen. I'm here for the exchange program.” Even with crow-black hair, he is Viking-like. “Are you from Amos?”

I want to say
I'm an exchange student too. I'm here from Australia. I'm here from France.
But the only boys I've talked to in the past five years are the ones at fat camp, which is why I don't do anything but nod.

He tells me how he wasn't sure at first whether to come here, but then he decided it would be a good experience to see the heartland of the States and “the way most Americans live.” Whatever that means.

I manage to say, “What's your favorite thing about Indiana?”

“That I get to go home one day.”

He laughs, so I laugh, and then two girls walk in and their eyes go immediately to me. One of them whispers something to the other, and they take the seats in front of us. There's something familiar about these girls, but I can't place them.
Maybe I knew them before.
My skin prickles and I have that horror movie feeling again. I look up at the ceiling as if a piano is about to fall on my head. Because I know it's going to come from somewhere. It always does.

I tell myself to give Mick a chance, give these girls a chance, give this day a chance, give myself a chance most of all. The way I see it, I've lost my mom, eaten myself nearly to death, been cut out of my house while the whole country watched, endured exercise regimes and diets and the nation's disappointment, and I've received hate mail from total strangers.

It is disgusting that anyone would ever let themselves get so large, and it is disgusting that your father wouldn't do anything about it. I hope you survive this and get straight with God. There are people starving in the world and it is shameful that you would eat so much when others don't have enough.

So I ask you, What can high school do to me that hasn't already been done?

With a minute to spare, we roll into the parking lot, into the last empty space in the first row of cars. Marcus drops his phone, and when he sits up again, it's as if he's a brand-new person. Like that, the Etch A Sketch in my brain is cleared, and I have to start over, adding up the parts:

Shaggy hair + pointy chin + eight-foot-long giraffe legs = Marcus.

The Land Rover's barely in park before he's out the door and calling to people. I want to say
Wait for me. Don't make me go out there by myself.
I want to grab hold of his arm and hold on so I don't lose him. Instead, I keep my eyes on him, not blinking because that will make him disappear. And then he morphs into the crowd, moving toward school like one of the herd.

The animal kingdom has crazy names for animal groups. A zeal of zebras. A murder of crows. An unkindness of ravens. And, my favorite, an embarrassment of pandas. What would this group be called? A horror of students? A nightmare of teens? Just for fun, I scan the faces going by, looking for my brother. But it's like trying to choose your favorite polar bear out of an aurora of them.

I sit for thirty seconds, enjoying the solitude:
30. 29. 28. 27…

This is it for the day until I'm home again. In this thirty seconds, I let myself think all the things I won't let myself think for the next eight hours. The song always starts the same way.

I have a fucked-up brain….