Holding Up the Universe(11)

For a minute, I’m tempted to say forget it, I’ll stay right where I am. Believe me, I’m more than happy to torment Monica Chapman for a semester. But I think about my dad losing his hair, about how paper-thin the chemo left him, about how frail he looked, like he might crumble away in front of us. I remember what it felt like to almost lose him. There’s a part of me that still hates him, that maybe will always hate him, but he’s my dad, after all, and I don’t want to hate him any more than I already do. Besides, I actually like chemistry, and why should I ruin that for myself?

I lean on the counter. I give the secretary a smile that says I’ve saved this up for you and only you. “I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient, and I don’t want to be a pain in the ass, but if it helps, I know we can get Mrs. Chapman to sign off on this.”





I decide to skip lunch. The thing that comes after it is gym, and I don’t think there is a heavy girl on this planet, no matter how secure she is, who doesn’t dread gym.

In the grand scheme of things, today could be worse. No one’s banned me from the playground. So far I’ve only been mooed at and laughed at four or five times, and stared at a couple hundred times. A lot of people haven’t looked twice at me, and a lot of them are treating me like anyone else. I’ve made at least one, maybe two, potential friends. I haven’t had a single panic attack.

But the hardest thing is something I didn’t expect—seeing people I used to know, people I grew up with, and knowing that while I sat in my house, they got older and went to school and made friends and had lives. It’s like I’m the only one who stopped.

So I don’t feel like eating. Instead I sit outside the cafeteria in the parking lot and read my favorite book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. It’s about a girl named Mary Katherine Blackwood. Most everyone in her family is dead, and she lives with her sister, holed up away from society, trapped in her house, not by her weight but by a horrible thing she did once upon a time. The people of her village tell legends about her and are afraid of her and sometimes sneak up to the house to try to catch a glimpse of her. I’m pretty sure I understand Mary Katherine in a way no one else does.

I read for a few minutes, and then I close my eyes and tilt my head back. It’s a warm, bright day, and even though I haven’t been housebound in a while, I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of sunshine.

Gym is worse than I imagined.





Of course it’s Seth Powell who says, “There’s this game I read about.”

Or maybe he saw it online, he can’t remember.

“It’s called Fat Girl Rodeo.”

And he’s laughing like it’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever heard. He laughs so hard he almost falls off the bleachers. “And what you do is you go up to some fat girl and you throw yourself around her like you’re riding a bull …” He leans forward, covering his face, and then he kicks the bleachers three times like it’s going to help him get his breath. When he finally looks up again, his eyes have gone squinty and wet. “And you hold on as tight as you can, really squeeze the shit out of her …” He doubles over and rocks back and forth. I look at Kam and Kam looks at me like, What a dumb motherfucker.

Seth sits up, shaking all over. “And whoever …” (These last words are the hardest to get out.) “… holds on longest …” (He’s barely breathing.) “… wins.”

I say, “Wins what?”

“The game.”

“Yeah, but what do they win?”

“The game, man. They win the game.”

“But is there a prize?”

“What do you mean a prize?”

Seth is pretty stupid, if you want to know the truth. I sigh like I’m carrying the world’s burdens, like I’m freakin’ Atlas.

“If you go to the state fair and you play the shooting gallery, they give you, like, a stuffed panda or some such shit.”

“When I was eight.” Seth rolls his eyes at Kam.

I rake my hands through the lion fro, making it bigger and badder. I talk very, very slowly, the way my dad does to foreigners. “So when you went to the shooting gallery at age eight, they gave you something when you won.”

Kam takes a swig of the flask he always carries, but he doesn’t offer us any. He snorts. “Like he ever won.”

Seth is looking at me, but he reaches out and slaps Kam on the side of his head. I’ll say this for him, he’s got good aim.

Seth squints at me. “What’s your point?”

“What do you get if you win the rodeo?”

“You win.” He holds up his hands like what more is there.

It could go on this way for hours, but Kam says, “Losing battle, Mass. Let it go.”

I look at Kam now. “Have you heard of Fat Girl Rodeo?”

He stands, takes another swig from the flask, and for a second I think he’s about to offer it to me. Then he caps it and shoves it back into his pocket. “I have now.”

And suddenly he’s out of the bleachers and on the ground and jogging toward some girl, who looks like she’s wearing an inner tube under her shirt. I don’t recognize her, but of course I don’t recognize anyone. Except for the inner tube, she could be my own mother, for all I know.