Holding Up the Universe (14 page)

On the other end of the phone Kam says, “I wish you could have seen it. The look on her face when you threw yourself around her, and then when you just hung out there and wouldn't let go.”

I force out this kind of halfhearted laugh that sounds like I'm being strangled. “Man, I bet she looked surprised.”

“As surprised as that chick in
Psycho
when Norman Bates interrupts her shower. So what did Wasserman say?”

“Oh, she was really fucking thrilled. Community service and counseling.
For weeks.
”

“Shit.”

“I know.”

“But it was worth it.”

“Says the man who doesn't have to do it.”

He's laughing again. “But wait, it gets better.”

Great.

“Remember the girl who got cut out of her house a couple of years ago?”

“What about her?”

“That's her.”

“Who?”

“Libby Strout. She's the one you rodeoed.”

I feel like I've been punched in the face again.

“Are you sure?” I try to sound like I don't really give a shit, but here's the thing—I do give a shit. I give five million shits, which is why I feel like I'm going to be sick all over these Legos.

“Oh, I'm sure.” He's laughing.

I do my strangle-laugh again, only it sounds worse this time.

“Man, you sound rough.”

“I think she broke my throat.”

“So do you remember her?”

“Yeah. I do.”

Outside, the neighborhood is asleep. I climb out my window and into the tree that acts as a ladder to the roof. I snake all the way up it until I'm there, and then I walk to the edge, over by the gutter. My weather station is anchored near the chimney, battered and lopsided. When I was six, I fell off the roof and cracked my head open. Without thinking, I reach up to feel the scar.

I run my fingers along it as I stare across the street. If I stand here long enough, I can see it—the gaping hole where the front wall of her house used to be.

I dream that the street's on fire. And then I wake up to sirens. I lie still and listen as they come blaring toward the house. It's end-of-days dark in here, but suddenly the ceiling flashes red and the sirens wind to a stop. I'm up and out of bed and grabbing shit off my dresser and bookshelves before I even know what's happening.

On my way out, I fall headfirst into the hallway, where I hear but don't see my dad, who says from the black recesses of his bedroom, “It's not us. Go back to bed.”

But the dream was
so damn real
that I'm still half in it, and I keep right on going. Outside, the air is cold but smells clean. No fire, no smoke. I'm still holding the shit I grabbed—my granddad's watch, my retainer, a stack of baseball cards, my phone charger (but no phone)—and of course there's no jacket.

It's the house across the street. Rolling up in front is this line of fire trucks, an ambulance, two police cars. I figure it must be drug lords or a meth lab or maybe even a terrorist. I think it would be really damn cool to have a terrorist on our street because Amos, Indiana, is one boring-ass place.

“Whose house is that?” It's Mom behind me.

“Strom, Stein…” This from Dad.

“Strout,” says Marcus, who's twelve, almost thirteen, and
knows everything.

I say before he can, “The Strouts moved out years ago.” The house has been empty since then. You never see anyone coming or going.

“No, they didn't.” My other brother—Dusty, seven—is hopping on one leg. “Tams and me went over last week and looked in the windows.”

“Dusty.” Mom shakes her head.

“What? We wanted to see the fat girl.”

“We don't say ‘fat.' It's not polite.”

“Teacher says ‘fat' is an adjective just like ‘beautiful' or ‘handsome.' It's only people that make it a bad word by saying ‘Listen up, fatso,' or ‘Hey, look at that fat-ass.' ”

Mom frowns at my dad like,
He's your fault,
and he says, “Dustin,” in a warning tone, but I can tell he's trying not to laugh.

I say, “Mrs. Buckley?” Dusty stares up at me, still on one leg. He nods. I nod. “That's about right.” Mrs. Buckley is a very large woman.

“Jack.” Mom sighs. My mom is always sighing. “Let's go. Back inside. It's cold. You've got school tomorrow.” If we don't stop her, she'll list a hundred and one reasons why we need to get off this lawn.

Just then another fire truck comes roaring up, siren blaring, and then this white truck comes lumbering along behind and this one's pulling a crane.

A
crane.

We watch in silence as the firefighters and police and these construction workers, who suddenly seem to be everywhere, set up giant spotlights. The front door to the house opens and closes, and people are moving like ants, scrambling across the yard and disappearing inside and blocking off the street. By now, all the lights on the street are on and every lawn is covered with gawkers. We're directly across from it all, front-row seats.

A man walks toward us, hands in pockets, glancing over his shoulder at all the commotion. He says to me, “Can you believe this?” He nods over at the house.

“I really can't,” I say, and then Dad goes, “I thought that house was empty.” He says it to the man, who falls in beside him, and they stand side by side, watching. There's an ease to it that makes me think my dad must know him, and then my mom calls the man Greg and asks about his daughter Jocelyn, the one at Notre Dame, and that's how I know it's Mr. Wallin, our next-door neighbor.

I stand there surrounded by the fire trucks and the spotlights and that giant crane, ruminating on my brain and how it's so weirdly, strangely different from Marcus's or Dusty's or the brain of anyone else I know. It's
so
weirdly, strangely different that for the past year I've been writing about it—not my life story, but a sort of
This is me, this is what I think
log because I like to understand how things work. Other brains are simple and uncomplicated, and there's room in them for Mr. Wallin and his daughter Jocelyn, whereas my brain seems to be made for bigger things. Baseball. Physics. Aeronautical engineering. Maybe president. This is the reason I don't watch a lot of TV or movies. I tell myself my brain is too busy thinking important things to keep track of the characters.

I watch as a news van rolls in, all the way from Indianapolis, and think again,
Terrorists.
I mean, what else could it be?

It's the feeling of being suffocated.

What being strangled must be like.

My world has tilted away and gone light and floaty, and maybe it's actually more like floating in space. I try to move my head. My arms. My legs. But I can't.

When I was little, my mom read me this story about a girl who lived in a garden and was never allowed outside the walls. The garden was all she knew, and to her that was the whole world.

I'm thinking about this girl now as I'm trying to breathe. I see my dad's face but he looks a hundred years away, like I'm circling the moon and he's down on earth, and I'm trying to remember the name of the story.

I suddenly need to remember. This is what happens when people die. They start to disappear if you don't watch it. Not all at once, but a piece here, a piece there.

Think.

The father was Italian.

Rappaccini.

Rappaccini's daughter.

Did the girl have a name?

I try to raise my head so I can ask my dad, but he says, “Stay very still,” from way down on earth. “Help is coming, Libby.”

Not Libby,
I think.
Rappaccini's daughter. I am here in my garden, and the world has stopped, and my heart has stopped, and I am all alone.

Then I hear something that brings me back to this planet, this town, this neighborhood, this street, these four walls. The sound of the garden being torn away, the sound of my world crumbling.