Holding Up the Universe(78)

It’s warm in the car and quiet. So quiet. I must blur off for a bit because my phone buzzes and I jump. I dig it out of my pocket and there’s a text from Kam.

You ok, man?



I text back: Fine.

Seth said something about you going blind?



I stare at the screen, at the back of Libby’s head. I click my phone off, then click it on again. I write:

I’m face-blind. Prosopagnosia. It’s a thing. Just diagnosed.



When he doesn’t write back, I shove the phone into my pocket. I get this urge to shout into the silence, but I don’t. In a few minutes my phone buzzes again. I don’t bother to look at it.

We eventually get to her neighborhood, and Marcus slows the car to a crawl, inching along, peering out the window. Part of me hopes we’ll never find her house so that I can make this right, and another part of me is just done. Done with her. Done with everything.

Inevitably, we’re there, and I’m struck all over again by how her house looks exactly like all the other ones. If I was designing a home for Libby Strout, it would be exceptional. It would be one of a kind. It would be bright red with a tin roof, at least two stories, possibly more, a state-of-the-art weather station, and lots of turrets. Also a tower, but not one to lock her in. It would be a place where she could sit and look out over and beyond the town, as far as the horizon, maybe even past it.

Marcus says, “We’re here.”

Libby tells him thank you and practically hurls herself out of the car. I always forget how fast she is. She’s at her front door by the time I manage to get myself up the walk.

She whips around to face me. “What? What is it, Jack? What? What?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t want to embarrass you any more than I already had.”

“You could have mentioned it.”

“I could have mentioned it. If it helps, I’ll write you a letter of apology.” I give her a hopeful smile, but she waves her hand at me like she’s erasing it.

“No. Keep that to yourself, do you understand me, Jack Masselin? Put that smile away. That doesn’t work on me. You’re so worried that you can’t ever be close to anyone, but it’s not the face blindness that’s to blame; it’s you. All the smiling and the faking and pretending to be what you think people want you to be. That’s what keeps you isolated. That’s what screws you up. You need to try being a real person.”

I drop the smile.

“Next to my mom dying, being cut out of my house was the worst moment of my life. Do you know I got hate mail? Everyone had something to say about what happened, about how fat I was, about my dad. They wanted to make sure I knew just how disgusted they were and how disgusting I was. They sent them to the hospital and they sent them here. They found my email and sent them directly. I mean, who does that? Who sees a story like that on the news and says, I’m going to write her a letter and give her a piece of my mind. I wonder if I should mail it to the hospital or just hand-deliver it. Did you and your brothers have a good laugh over it?”

Her eyes are blazing. She is daring me to say Yes, that’s exactly how it was, my brothers and I split a rib over it. We love to watch people almost die.

Instead I say, “I’m sorry.”

In that moment, I want to write not just one apology letter but hundreds, one for every horrible person who ever did or said anything mean to her.

“There’s no way anyone would have done that if they knew you. And just so you know, not everyone was wishing you harm. We were rooting for you. I was rooting for you.”

“What did you say?”

“I was rooting for you.”

Something passes across her face, and I can see it—she knows I’m the one who sent her the book.





My dad is sitting in front of the computer. The minute he hears me come in, he’s up and pointing at the clock on the wall. “What happened?”

I tell him because I’m too tired to pretend everything’s fine. Honestly, he does need to worry about me. I can’t protect him forever. So I tell him everything, starting with Mick from Copenhagen and the fight and Moses Hunt and taking Jack home and realizing he was there the day they knocked down our house, and finding out that all this time he was Dean of Dean, Sam, and Castiel. And then I tell him the other things I stopped telling him a while ago—about the letters and the Damsels and the purple bikini. I’m weary and angry and sad and heartbroken and empty, and more than anything, I want to go to sleep. But my dad is all I have.

He is pacing as I talk, and as soon as I stop, he stops. He says, “I need to know that you’re okay. I need to know if I should go over to the Hunts’ and punch that kid myself.”

He is angry at the world outside this house, and that makes me love him even more.

“I’m good, Dad.”

“You’d tell me.” It’s a question. “You will tell me.”

“I will. Always. From now on.” And then I say, “I’m sorry. For everything I put you through.”

I can tell he knows I’m talking about everything, not just tonight.

“I’m sorry too, Libbs.”

And it hits me square in the face. All the grief my dad has taken and swallowed and carried—not just the loss of my mom, but the loss of compassion from the people who blamed him for what happened to me. If he got mad, I never saw it. He just carries on, making sure I eat healthy, trying to keep me safe and feeling loved.