Holding Up the Universe(81)

“So are you still friends?”

“He lied to me.”

“Or he might have been trying to protect you. I’m not defending him, but he probably thought he was doing the right thing.”

“Maybe.” And then I tell her about the letters.

She sets down her drink. “When was the last time you got one?”

“It’s been a while. Since before I wore the purple bikini.”

“Did you find out who was writing them?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure I know. And I feel sorry for her because this person will never come out. She keeps who she really is locked away where no one can find her, where she can’t even find her.”

Rachel picks up her drink again. “To Libby Strout, the biggest person I know, and I don’t mean on the outside.”

We tap our recycled cups.

“And to Rachel Mendes, for loving me even though you don’t have to.”

I almost say And for saving my life because for some reason I’m thinking of myself at eleven and then at thirteen. That girl feels like a different girl, someone from a lifetime ago, not anyone who has anything to do with the me I am now. Except that I know I wouldn’t be me without her. I wouldn’t be Libby Strout, high school junior, with my very own group of friends. I wouldn’t have danced or twirled or tried out for the Damsels. I wouldn’t have stood up for myself or worn my purple bikini. I wouldn’t have gone to Bloomington or Clara’s with a boy I liked. Really liked. I wouldn’t have had my heart broken because I would have been too afraid. And even though the ache of that heartbreak hurts like hell, it’s so much better than feeling nothing.

Another thing I wouldn’t be doing: sitting on this bench, the cold biting my cheeks and nose, drinking hot cider with a good friend. And even though I didn’t know this exact moment existed, I wanted to be out here in the world to see it.

After Rachel leaves, I leave my copy—the copy—of We Have Always Lived in the Castle on the bench with this note:

Dear friend,

You are not a freak. You are wanted. You are necessary. You are the only you there is. Don’t be afraid to leave the castle. It’s a great big world out there.

Love, a fellow reader





Her dad tells me she’s at the park with a friend, and that’s where I’m headed. My phone rings, and it’s Kam, but I don’t answer.

So what if it was Dr. Klein calling to say she was wrong, that there’s a cure? What would I do? Would I alter my brain if it meant getting to recognize people the way everyone else does?

Would I?

I turn this over in my mind, trying to imagine it, trying to picture how it might change me.

I wouldn’t be me anymore, would I? Because as long as I can remember, this is how I find people. I study them. I learn their details.

The thing is I don’t know what it means to see the world like others do. Maybe I don’t recognize myself in a mirror, and maybe I can’t exactly tell you what I look like, but I don’t think I’d know myself the way I do without prosopagnosia. The same goes for my parents and my brothers and my friends and Libby. I’m talking about all the details that make them them. They look at each other and see the same thing, but I have to work harder to see what’s there behind the face. It’s as if I take the person apart and then reconstruct them. I rebuild them the same way I built the Shitkicker for Dusty.

This is me.

Does it make me feel special? A little. I’ve had to work really fucking hard to learn everyone, and even if skin color and hair color help me find people, that’s not who they are to me. It’s not about that. It’s about the important things, like the way their face lights up when they laugh, or the way they move as they’re walking toward you, or the way their freckles create a map of the stars.





I’m on the edge of the park, bundled in my jacket, scarf pulled up over my chin, when a rust-colored Land Rover comes cruising along. It slams to a stop in the middle of the road, and, engine still running, Jack Masselin climbs out and swaggers over to me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your dad said you were here. Jesus, it’s cold. Are you really walking back to your house?”

“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” I say it slower and louder.

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I lived and that I saw you the day you were rescued. I should have told you, and you have every right to be pissed at me.”

“Yeah, you should have.”

“I know. I was wrong. But if it’s okay with you, there’s something else I need to say right now. We can go back to that later, and you can give me hell about it all you want.”

“What, Jack?”

“You’re the one I see.”

“What?”

“You’re the one I see, Libby Strout. You.”

“What do you mean?”

“I see you. I remember you. I recognize you.”

I wave at my body. “It’s not like you have fat blindness.”

“Christ almighty, woman. Work with me here.”

“So what? You use identifiers to figure out who people are. The weight is mine.”

“Your identifier is you. I remember your eyes. Your mouth. The freckles on both cheeks that look like constellations. I know your smiles, at least three of them, and at least eight of your expressions, including the ones you only do with your eyes. If I could draw, I would draw you, and I wouldn’t need to look at you to do it. Because your face is stuck in my mind.”