Holding Up the Universe (30 page)

Marcus (tall, shaggy hair, pointy chin) stands over the kitchen sink, shoveling food into his face. I start to help myself to the coffee, and that's when I hear, “I said no.”

A woman walks in followed by a man wearing an official Masselin's store shirt. His mouth is open in midsentence, but he closes it when he sees Marcus and me. By process of elimination, these are my parents.

Mom says to me, “Put the coffee down now.” Then says to my dad, “We'll talk about it later,” and it's clear they're in the middle of an argument. I reach for the largest mug we have and pour myself a cup of coffee.

Mom asks Dad just what does he want her to do, and she sounds like she's swallowing razor blades, like the guy at Sad Carnival, as we call it, the one out by Big Lots. I try not to eavesdrop, but I can feel my whole body go on alert, the way it always does when they argue.

Dad says to my mom, “Tonight.”

“Not tonight.”

Marcus and I look at each other. He mouths, “What now?”

Dad goes, “There's slow surgery and there's ripping off the Band-Aid, Sarah.”

“I said not tonight.” She fixes her eyes on me, and she is not happy. “I need you to pick up Dusty after you're done today.”

“From where?”

“From Tams's house.” Picking up Dusty or Marcus or anyone is normally the last thing I ever agree to. Try not being able to recognize anyone and then having to go find them. But this morning I'm not about to argue with my mom.

Even with half of the bleachers folded up, the new gym is an enormous place. You can barely see the ceiling from the floor, and the lights are blinding. From up above, I would look no larger than an ant.

And all at once, that's what I feel like—an ant.

My palms are sweating. My heart is clenching, but not unclenching. I can't catch my breath. I watch as it runs out of the gym as fast as it can, just like I want to do.

WHY IN THE HELL DID I VOLUNTEER TO DO THIS?

Heather Alpern and her three squad captains sit in chairs, legs crossed. The squad captains are all seniors, and they look identical, their hair slicked back into ponytails, faces shining. I find their sameness almost as terrifying as Ms. Alpern's catlike beauty. Most terrifying of all is Caroline Lushamp, captain of the squad captains, who locks her eyes on me like a squid. A few other Damsel wannabes are sprinkled along the bottom row of the bleachers, waiting their turns to try out.

Caroline says, “Are you ready?” in this super-friendly tone that is completely unnatural.

I can barely hear her because I am trapped in my mind and body, shivering and afraid. I suddenly feel like I have face blindness because no one looks familiar or nice, and my eyes are flying all over the gym, searching for help. They land on Bailey, Jayvee, and Iris, at the very top of the bleachers. When they see me looking at them, they go blank, and maybe they can see my terror. Which means everyone else can probably see it too. I tell myself to move, to hide that terror and stuff it down and out of sight, and then Jayvee waves her arms and yells, “Shine on, you crazy diamond!”

You volunteered to do this because the dance is in you.
And then I think of something my mom used to say, about how as scary as it is to go after dreams, it's even scarier not to.

“Are you ready?” Caroline doesn't sound as super-friendly this time.

“Yes,” I say. And then I shout, “Yes!”

For my audition song, I chose “Flashdance…What a Feeling” by Irene Cara, in honor of my mom, in honor of me. As I wait for the music to begin, I tell myself,
Too many people in this world think small is the best they can do. Not you, Libby Strout. You weren't born for small! You don't know how to do small! Small is not in you!

And then the song takes off and so do I.

Shimmy shimmy kick kick. Shake boom boom.

It takes me about twenty seconds to forget about the staring faces and all that shiny, pulled-back hair and which of the girls on the bleachers may or may not be a better dancer than I am and the fact that I'm twice as big as anyone in this room. After that first thirty seconds, I disappear into the song. I become one with the music, one with the dance.

Kick. Bend. Twist. Flick flick. Shimmy. Shake shake shake. Boom. Kick kick. Pop. Twist. Bend. Flick. Shimmy. Shake. Kick. Boom boom boom.

I'm carried away on the notes, across the gym, high up into the rafters, out the doors, and through the school, all the way to Principal Wasserman's office, until I'm outside in the sun, under the sky.

Twirl twirl twirl…

And then I'm in the sky. And now I
am
the sky! I sail over Amos, across Interstate 70, over into Ohio, and from there to New York and the Atlantic, and then to England, to France…I'm everywhere. I'm global.
I am universal.

I end, out of breath, suddenly back in the gym. The girls on the bleachers are standing up and whistling. They clap and stamp their feet, and my friends are the wildest of all. Over by the entrance to the court, I see Jack Masselin, paint-spattered and beaming like the sun. He's slow-clapping, and then he taps his forehead in a salute before vanishing. He and the rest of my fellow delinquents are painting the bleachers today.

Heather Alpern says, “Libby, that was wonderful.” And for the first time, I look directly at her.

Caroline goes, “How tall are you?”

And something in her loud, flat voice makes my stomach drop. The girls on the bleachers fall quiet and settle back into their seats.

“I'm five six.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“One hundred twenty pounds.”

Everyone stares.

“I'm sorry, did you mean my physical weight or my spiritual weight?”

The girls on the bleachers giggle. I am dripping, but I dab at my upper lip and the back of my neck as demurely as Queen Elizabeth.

“The weight that determines what size costume you would need.”

I say, “Is there a weight limit for this squad?”

Caroline starts to speak, but Heather Alpern interrupts her. “Technically, there is not a limit. We don't discriminate against size.” But they do. I can hear it in the careful way she's picking her words and I can see it in the tight corners of her smile.

“So why do you need to know my weight?”

Caroline sighs. Loudly. Like I'm as dumb as a rock. “For costume size.” Then she smiles this slow movie-villain smile. “Would you be willing to lose weight if you were
wanted
?” The word echoes across the court. “You know. If you were to make the team?”

Ms. Alpern shoots her a look. “Caroline.”

I say, “How much weight are we talking about?”

Caroline says, “A hundred pounds, probably more. Two hundred-fifty, maybe.” Which is ridiculous, because that would mean I'd weigh about the same as my aunt Tillie's dog, Mango.

Like that, I'm a kid again in ballet class, and Caroline is my teacher, frowning at me in this same exact way, a way that tells me I don't belong here, even though I probably belong more than any of them because the dance is in me, and there's a lot more of me than there is of them, which means there is
a lot more dance in there.

“Would you?”

“Caroline, enough.”

“You want to know if I'd be willing to lose two hundred pounds so that I can dance in formation and carry flags
with you
?” I'm hot with anger, which doesn't help the dripping, but I make my voice quiet and controlled.

“Yes.”

I fix my eyes on Ms. Heather Alpern, because she's supposed to be in charge here.

“Absolutely not.”

I'm supposed to go back outside to the bleachers to serve my sentence and do my civic duty, but I can't. Instead I call Rachel and ask if she can take me home.

By the time we finish painting the locker rooms, it's almost 5 p.m. The sky is thick with gray and the air is heavy, the way it always feels before it rains.

Through the wide window of Tams's house, I can see a clump of kids, and I think,
Great.
This is why I don't volunteer to pick Dusty up, because this right here is the stuff of nightmares. I can't find him in a crowd, and my parents think Dusty's too young for a phone, so it's not like I can text him to say I'm coming, wait outside. The few times I do go get him, I usually wait in the car and blow the horn.

Because this apparently isn't a one-on-one Tams and Dusty playdate situation but the ten-year-old equivalent of Coachella, this is what I do now. The rain pelts the windshield like gunfire. The clump of kids doesn't move, so I honk again.

I wait a couple more minutes, and then I turn off the car and twist the rearview mirror so I can look at myself. The guy who stares back at me has seen better days. He's still got a split lip, and an eye that's fading from black and blue to violet, thanks to defending Jonny Rumsford.
Super.

I search for anything I can use as coverage, for my face and from the monsoon. There's an old jacket, which must belong to Marcus, wadded up on the floor below the backseat. I grab it and lunge out into the rain, jogging up the walk, jacket wrapped around my head. I can hear the mad chatter of a thousand high-pitched voices as I ring the doorbell. The door flies open, and I'm greeted by a blond woman with short-cropped hair. This, I think, is Tamara's mom. She invites me in, and I say through the jacket, “That's okay. I don't want to bring all this water in. If you could just send him out.”

“Nonsense, Jack. Come on in.” She holds the door open wider, and the wind is blowing rain onto her and onto the floor around her, so I step inside.

“It's really coming down,” I say.

“You're telling me. They were supposed to be outside all day.” She laughs, but it's laced with hysteria, and I can see how tired she is.

I'm hoping Dusty will yell hello or otherwise identify himself, but the kids all blink at me, and one of them says, “It's like God is peeing.” And this must be some really clever ten-year-old joke, the kind you need to be ten to appreciate, because they all start laughing until they practically fall down.

The woman says to me, “Please take me with you.”

I laugh as I stand there, trying to seem calm and casual and
Hey man, whatever.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to find Dusty in the bunch of kids, but they all look the same. Skinny, short, ears that stick out. All the kids are wearing party hats and only a handful of them are obviously white. I feel a distant flicker of panic in my chest.

The woman says, “Do you want to stay for a bit?”

“That's okay. Dusty and I have someplace to be.” I put my hand on the doorknob as a way of saying
See?
I say to the room, “Anyone who answers to the name Dusty better join me now.”

The kids stare at me. In that instant, the flicker of panic sparks into an inferno. If my brother is one of these staring, silent kids, he's not letting on.

I look at the group of them and say in their general direction, “Come on, man. We don't want you to be late.”

When they don't budge, I zero in on the one who looks the most like my brother (ears that stick out, Adam's apple that sticks out, copper-brown hair) and go, “If you're worried about getting wet, I've got this jacket you can use.” And then, because it's been a long day and I'm sick of being stared at, and because I'm telling myself
This is bullshit. How can you not recognize your own brother?
I do something I never do—I walk over, leaving big, dirty footprints on the carpet, and grab the kid's arm before he identifies himself. And drag him toward the door.

The boy I'm holding on to is fighting me, and it's then I look up and see this other kid walk into the room. He's got ears that stick out and an Adam's apple that sticks out and copper-brown hair, and he goes, “Jack?” And starts to cry.

The kid I've just, until this moment, been dragging away shouts, “Get off me!” Now the other party guests are buzzing, and one of the little girls is crying too. As I let him go, the kid practically spits at me. “Assface.” And starts shaking.

The woman squats down in front of him. She says in this soothing voice, “It's okay, Jeremy. He was just joking around, but I think he realizes now that it wasn't funny.” She shoots me a horrible look.

“Do you really think it's funny to come in here and scare people?” This is from a little girl with red hair who may or may not be Tams.

“No, I don't.”

I wonder how many of them know me and how many of their parents will hear about this. I feel like I'm going to be sick, and I almost walk out.
Let Dusty find his own way home. Let my mom come get him.
But it's as if the floor is holding me there. My feet are like anchors. They won't move. I just stand there, staring past the kids staring back at me, at the kid who walked in, the one who's still crying.

“I'm sorry.” I say it directly to him a couple of times, but no one is listening. These kids could kill me if they wanted to. There are so many of them, and small though they be, fury is on their side.

An eternity later, the woman stands and says in this cold, cold voice, “
That
is your brother,” like I'm the world's biggest child predator. She pushes Dusty toward me like she wants both of us gone, like Dusty, by association, is also guilty.

I'm not an assface, not in this way at least. I have a condition called prosopagnosia. It means I can't recognize faces, not even the faces of the people I love.

I add, “They grow so quickly at this age. Makes it hard to keep track of them.”

And I grab the actual one-and-only Dusty and drag him outside. I throw the jacket at him, and he drapes it over his head, but it's clear he doesn't want to be near me, so he takes his sweet time coming down the walk. I'm soaked to the bone by now, but I hold the door open for him, and as he gets in he looks up at me with tears all over his face and says, “Why would you try to kidnap Jeremy Mervis?”

“I was only joking around.”

He is studying me the way he does my parents these days, like he's not sure if he can trust me. “Fourth grade is hard enough without being known as the brother of a child stealer.”

My hands are shaking, but I don't want him to see, so I grip the wheel till my knuckles turn white, and then ask him to tell me about the party. I can barely hear him over the sound of my heart as it goes
BAM BAM BAM
against the walls of my chest.