Holding Up the Universe (3 page)

I hear the shower running and voices downstairs. I pull the pillow over my face, but it's too late—I'm awake.

I turn on my phone and text first Caroline, then Kam, then Reed Young. The thing I say to all of them is that I was very drunk (an exaggeration) and it was very dark (it was) and I don't remember anything that happened because I was not only drunk, I was upset.
There's just this shit happening at home that I can't talk about right now, so if you can bear with me and find it in your heart to forgive me, I'll be forever in your debt.
The shit happening at home part is completely true.

For Caroline, I throw in some compliments and ask her to please apologize to her cousin for me. I say I don't want to contact her directly because I've already made a mess of things and I don't want to do anything else to make things worse between Caroline and me. Even though
Caroline
was the one who broke up with
me,
and even though we're currently in an off-again phase, and even though I haven't seen her
since June,
I basically eat crow and then throw it up all over my phone. This is the price I pay for trying to keep everyone happy.

I drag myself down the hall to the bathroom. The thing I need most in this world is a long, hot shower, but what I get instead is a trickle of warm water followed by a blast of Icelandic cold. Sixty seconds later—because that's all I can bear—I get out, dry off, and stand in front of the mirror.

So this is me.

I think this every time I see my reflection. Not in a
Damn, that's me
way, but more like
Huh. Okay. What have we got here?
I lean in, trying to put the pieces of my face together.

The guy in the mirror isn't bad-looking—high cheekbones, strong jaw, a mouth that's hitched up at one corner like he just got done telling a joke. Somewhere in the neighborhood of pretty. The way he tilts his head back and gazes out through half-open eyelids makes it seem like he's used to looking down on everyone, like he's smart and he knows he's smart, and then it hits me that what he really looks like is an asshole. Except for the eyes themselves. They're too serious and there are circles under them, like he hasn't slept. He's wearing the same Superman shirt I've been wearing all summer.

What does this mouth (Mom's) mean with this nose (also Mom's) and these eyes (a combination of Mom's and Dad's)? My eyebrows are darker than my hair but they aren't as dark as Dad's. My skin is a kind of middle brown color, not dark like Mom's, and not light like Dad's.

The other thing that doesn't match up here is the hair. It's this enormous lion's mane Afro that looks like it's allowed to do whatever the fuck it wants. If he's anything like me, the guy in the mirror calculates everything. Even though this hair
cannot be contained,
he's grown it for a reason. So he can find himself.

Something about the way these features add up is how people find each other in the world. Something about the combination makes them go,
There's Jack Masselin.

“What's your identifier?” I say to my reflection, and I mean the real identifier, not this giant lion fro. I'm having a right serious moment, but then I hear a distinct snicker, and a tall, skinny blur goes breezing by. That would be my brother Marcus.

“My name's Jack and I'm so pretty,” he sings all the way down the stairs.

I don't have my license, so Dad drives me. One of the many, many things I get to look forward to this school year is driver's ed. I wait for my father to offer me sage words of advice or a stirring pep talk, but the most he comes up with is “You got this, Libbs. I'll be here to pick you up when it's over.” And the way he says it sounds ominous, like we're in the opening scene of a horror movie. Then he gives me a smile, which is the kind of smile they would teach you in a parenting video. It's a nervous smile taped up at the corners. I smile back.

What if I get stuck behind a desk? What if I have to eat lunch alone and no one talks to me for the rest of the school year?

My dad is a big, handsome guy. Salt of the earth. Smart (he does IT security for a big-name computer company). Smushy heart. After they freed me from the house, he had a hard time of it. As awful as it was for me, I think it was worse for him, especially the accusations of neglect and abuse. The press couldn't imagine how else I would have been allowed to get so big. They didn't know about the doctors he took me to and the diets we tried, even as he was mourning the loss of his wife. They didn't see the food I hid from him under my bed and deep in the shadows of my closet. They couldn't know that once I make up my mind about something, I'm going to do it. And I'd made up my mind to eat.

At first, I refused to talk to reporters, but at some point I needed to show the world that I'm okay and that my dad isn't the villain they made him out to be, stuffing me with candy and cake in an effort to keep me there and dependent on him like those girls from
The Virgin Suicides.
So against my dad's wishes I did one interview with a news station out of Chicago, and that interview traveled all the way to Europe and Asia and back again.

You see, my whole world changed when I was ten. My mom died, which was traumatic enough, but then the bullying started. It didn't help that I developed early and that all at once my body felt too big for me. I'm not saying I blame my classmates. After all, we were kids. But I just want to make it clear that there were multiple factors at work—the bullying coupled with the loss of my most important person, followed by the panic attacks whenever I had to leave my house. Through it all, my dad was the one who stood by me.

I say to my dad now, “Did you know that Pauline Potter, the World's Heaviest Woman, lost ninety-eight pounds having marathon sex?”

“No sex of any kind for you until you're thirty.”

I think,
We'll see.
After all, miracles happen every day. Which means maybe those kids who were so hateful to me on the playground have grown up and realized the error of their ways. Maybe they've actually turned out to be nice. Or maybe they're even meaner. Every book I read and movie I watch seems to give out the same message: high school is the worst experience you can ever have.

What if I accidentally tell someone off so that I become the Sassy Fat Girl? What if some well-meaning skinny girls adopt me as their own and I become the Fat Best Friend? What if it's clear to everyone that my homeschooling has really only equipped me for eighth grade, not eleventh, because I'm too stupid to understand any of my classwork?

My dad says, “All you have to do is today, Libbs. If it completely and totally sucks, we can go back to homeschooling. Just give me one day. Actually, don't give it to me. Give yourself one day.”

I tell myself:
Today.
I tell myself:
This is what you dreamed of when you were too scared to leave the house. This is what you dreamed of when you were lying in your bed for six months. This is what you wanted—to be out in the world like everyone else.
I tell myself:
It's taken you two and a half years of fat camps and counselors and psychologists and doctors and behavioral coaches and trainers to get ready for this. For the past two and a half years, you've walked ten thousand steps a day. Every one of them was pointing you to now.

I can't drive.

I've never been to a dance.

I completely missed middle school.

I've never had a boyfriend, although I did make out with this boy at camp once. His name is Robbie and he's repeating his senior year somewhere in Iowa.

Except for my mom, I've never had a best friend, unless you count the ones I made up for myself—three brothers who lived across the street from my old house. The ones I called Dean, Sam, and Castiel, because they went to private school and I didn't know their names. The ones I pretended were my friends.

My dad looks so nervous and hopeful that I grab my bag and push out onto the sidewalk, and then I'm standing in front of the school as people walk past me.

What if I'm late to every class because I can't walk fast enough, and then I get detention, where I will meet the only boys who will pay attention to me—burnouts and delinquents—fall in love with one of them, get pregnant, drop out before I can graduate, and live with my dad for the rest of my life or at least until the baby is eighteen?

I almost get back in the car, but my dad is still sitting there, hopeful smile still on his face. “You got this.” He says it louder this time and—I swear to you—gives me a thumbs-up.

Which is why I join the crowd and let them carry me along until I'm waiting my turn at the entrance, opening my bag so that the guard can check it, walking through metal detectors, stepping into a long hallway that splinters off in all directions, bumped and jostled by elbows and arms. I think,
Somewhere in this school could be a boy I fall in love with. One of these fine young men might be the one who at long last claims my heart and my body. I am the Pauline Potter of Martin Van Buren High School. I am going to sex the rest of this weight right off me.
I'm looking at all the boys going by.
It could be that guy or maybe this one. That's the beauty of this world. Right now, that boy right there or that one over there means nothing to me, but soon we will meet and change the world, his and mine.

“Move it, fat-ass,” someone says. I feel the sting of the word, like a pinprick, like the word itself is trying to pop me the way it pops my thought bubble. I forge ahead. The great thing about my size is that I can clear a path.