Holding Up the Universe(49)

“Jack?”

I turn back. I see a woman there with glasses and sharp cheekbones and hair swept up off her neck. She says, “One person in every fifty is face-blind. It might help for you to remember that. You’re definitely not alone.”





On the drive back to Amos, I ask him questions about the test, and he answers them in this very short yes, no, yes, no kind of way. Then we’re quiet. He is far away, and I know what that feels like, to want to close yourself up. So I don’t force him to talk anymore. We just ride.

We ride for ten miles without saying a word. The silence covers us like a blanket. I’m staring out past the road into the great beyond, but after a while the blanket of silence starts to feel smothering, like it’s cutting off my circulation.

I almost tell him I was this close to getting tested too, but what comes out of my mouth is “I want to be a dancer. Not just a Damsel, but a professional dancer.”

To his credit, he doesn’t go veering off the road. He echoes, “A dancer.” And he’s still far away. But I can hear him tune in a bit.

“When I was little—not just young, but literally little—I took ballet. And I was great at it. I have this picture of me in a black leotard, standing in the most perfect fifth position you’ve ever seen. It was taken the night of our recital, my first ever, and I was glorious. Afterward my teacher told me, ‘You will never be a dancer. I can continue teaching you but it will only be a waste of your parents’ money. Your bones are too big. You don’t have the body for it. The sooner you learn this, the better.’ ”

“Wow. What a bastard.”

“It crushed me. For a long time I didn’t dance, no matter what my mom said. She offered to find me a different teacher, but something was ruined. I let that woman ruin it for me.” I stare at his profile, fixed on the highway. “But she can’t stop me from dancing. No one’s going to tell me not to dance anymore. No one should tell you what you can or can’t do either. Including you.”

We’re riding in silence again, but everything is lighter and cleaner. The mood has lifted and he’s back.

“My dad is having an affair.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. It’s Mrs. Chapman. At school.”

“As in Mrs. Chapman, chemistry teacher?”

“The very one.”

“Really?” Except for being young, there’s nothing about Mrs. Chapman that screams Take me for your mistress. “And you have to see her at school.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, you have to run into her at school.”

“Yeah.”

“What a bastard.”

“I’m sorry that people give you shit about your weight. I’m sorry for anything I did to make it worse for you.”

“I’m sorry you have to date Caroline Lushamp.”

He laughs, and suddenly the car is warm and crackling with electricity.

“I’m not dating her anymore.” These five words surround us, taking over the air, until he says, “I’m sorry my friends can be assholes.”

“I’m sorry you can’t recognize the people you know. Maybe if you could, you’d pick better friends.”

He laughs again, but not as hard.

“Look at it this way—everyone you meet, everyone you know, if they get on your nerves or piss you off, it’s okay. The next day they’ll just be new people. Different people.”

“I guess.” He’s not laughing now.

We come up on a road sign: AMOS … 5 MILES.

He says, “We could keep driving.”

“Into the sunset?”

“Why not?”

And suddenly it’s like I’m watching us from the sky—two outlaws, Jack Masselin and Libby Strout, sitting together in the front seat of a badass mo-fo of an old car, his leg inches from hers, his hands on the wheel, breathing the same air, thinking the same thoughts, sharing things with each other that they don’t share with anyone else.

His eyes are on mine again, and he says, “As someone recently diagnosed with prosopagnosia, I’m told that I don’t process faces like normal people. For instance, I avoid the eyes. But I don’t seem to have any trouble looking into yours. In fact, I like looking into them. A lot.”

Our eyes lock.

As in they lock.

As in I can’t imagine ever looking away.

“The road,” I say, but you can barely hear it.





I think about making a move on her. It would be so easy—pull the car over, lean in, touch her cheek, lean in a little more (close enough so she can feel my breath), catch her eye, look right into her, maybe brush her hair off her face. All the things I’ve learned to do in order to be the Guy Girls Want.

Her head is turned away so that I can only see her hair. When she speaks again, her voice sounds a little throaty, a little full, and there’s something else in it.

The something else is:

She might like you back.

Which means you might like her.

Because to like someone back indicates reciprocating something that was already in existence.

As in you liked her first.

As in I like Libby Strout.

Oh shit, do I?

And because I’m thinking about cancer and this old guy in San Francisco with face blindness and Dr. Amber Klein and aneurysms and how, when you get down to it, so much of life is out of our control, I decide to take control of something.