Holding Up the Universe(12)

Seth’s identifier isn’t the fact that he’s the only black kid in school with a Mohawk. His identifier is his stupid laugh. Because he’s an idiot, he’s always laughing, and I’d know that laugh anywhere. With Kam, it’s the fact that he has this white-blond hair that makes him look like an albino. He’s the only person I know with hair that color.

I have no idea who this girl with the inner tube is, and the whole time I’m watching, I’m thinking Kam’s not really going to do it. He’s just trying to make us think he’s going to do it.

And then he’s doing it. He’s wrapped around the girl like cellophane, and at first you can tell maybe she’s happy because it’s Dave Kaminski, but the longer he holds on, the more upset she gets, till it looks like she’s going to start screaming or crying or both.

I stand up. I want to tell him to stop. Seth’s eyes are fixed on Dave and the girl, and his jaw goes slack before he starts pounding on his knee going, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” And then he’s laughing and says something to me that sounds like “You know she wants it.” And the whole time I’m thinking to myself, Say something, douchebag.

But I don’t. And right before she loses it, Kam lets her go. Then he breaks into a victory lap around the track.

“Fifteen seconds,” Seth says under his breath. “It’s a goddamn world’s record.”





Libby Strout is fat.

I am locked in the bathroom after school, black Sharpie squeaking against the ugly, ugly wall. There is an unused tampon lying on the floor and an empty lip gloss in the sink, even though the trash can is literally right there. A sign on one of the stalls says OUT OF ORDER because someone dropped (shoved) a math book in the toilet. It smells like air freshener and cigarettes in here, among other things. That old saying about girls being sugar and spice and everything nice? Not so true. All you have to do is visit the third-floor bathroom of MVB High School in Amos, Indiana, to figure that out.

Someone is pounding on the door.

I reach up one arm and write in thick letters as large as I can so that everyone will see.

Libby Strout is fat.

Fat and ugly.

She will never get laid.

No one will ever love her.

I catch sight of myself in the mirror, and my face is the color of beets, the ones Mom used to call “nice vegetables,” even though she knew there was nothing nice about them. Mom always did that—made things nicer than they were.

Libby Strout is so fat they had to destroy her house to get her out.

Word for word, these are the things I overheard Caroline Lushamp and Kendra Wu saying about me in gym, as the other girls stood around and listened. And laughed. I add in one or two other lines, the meanest things I can think of, so that I don’t have to hear it from anyone else. I write it so they don’t have to. This way, there is nothing they can say about me that I haven’t said myself.

Libby Strout is the fattest teen in America.

Libby Strout is a liar.

I step back.

These are the truest words of all, and until I see them I’m okay. But something about seeing them there, like someone else wrote them, makes me catch my breath. Too far, Libbs, I think.

Yes, I’m fat.

Yes, they had to partially destroy my house.

Maybe no boy will love me or want to touch me ever, even in a dark room, even after an apocalypse when all the skinny girls have been wiped off the earth by some horrible plague. Maybe one day I can be thinner than I am now and have a boyfriend who loves me, but I’ll still be a liar. I’ll always be a liar.

Because in about three minutes I’m going to open the door and walk down that hall and tell myself what did I expect, I knew this would happen, it was never going to go differently than this, they don’t matter, high school doesn’t matter, none of this matters, it’s what’s inside that counts. It’s what lies beyond this. All those things they like to tell you. Besides, I stopped feeling a long time ago.

Except this is a lie too.

Sixty seconds later:

I walk out of the bathroom and bump right into a girl almost as big as I am. She’s bawling her eyes out, and my first instinct is to get out of her way. She says, “What were you doing in there? Did you lock the door?” Actually, she shouts it.

“It must have gotten stuck. Are you okay?” I talk softly and calmly, hoping she’ll follow my lead.

She’s crying and hiccupping hard, and it takes her a minute. “Bastards.” This is a little less loud.

I don’t have to ask what, only who. I can imagine by the size of her what’s happened. “Who?” I ask, even though I feel like I don’t know anyone at this school.

“Dave Kaminski and his bastard friends.” She pushes by me to the sink, where she bends over, washing her face, wetting down her hair, which is wound in tight black ringlets. She’s wearing a Nirvana shirt and one of those candy necklaces you eat. I grab a paper towel and hand it to her. “Thanks.” She pats at her face. “Dave Kaminski grabbed me, and when I told him to let go he wouldn’t.”

The Dave Kaminski I knew was a scrawny twelve-year-old with white hair who once stole his dad’s Johnnie Walker and brought it to school.

“Where are they?”

“Bleachers.” She’s still hiccupping, but not as bad. She glances up at the wall and starts reading. “What the …”