Holding Up the Universe: List 2

Even though I’ve spent almost three years eating nutritiously and boringly without a hiccup, Rachel and my doctors are worried I might end up spiraling into some wild, bottomless binge because I’m so deprived.

I can’t blame him for trying to take someone’s arm off. I mean, the man reached into his cage, and that cage was all the bear had in the world.
“The news report said they sent him over to Cincinnati for socialization.”

Masselin’s Toys has been in our family for five generations. It’s survived the Great Depression and race riots and the downtown explosion of 1968 and the recession, and it will probably be here long after my dad is gone and I’m gone, long after the next ice age, when the only other survivors are cockroaches.

Since birth, reliable, dutiful Marcus has been the one expected to take the baton from Dad.

At first I think he knows about my conversation with Dad, or about me, about the person I am at school, but then my eyes go to the purse, where one of the ugliest words in the English language is scrawled across one side of it in black marker.

This is where I take things apart and put them back together in new and stupefying ways.

As angry as I was today, I don’t remember feeling anxious. No heart palpitations, no nervous sweats.

My words are garbled.

But the only one who stands out from the staring, jabbering crowd of them isn’t my own brother or the woman who’s wrecking my parents’ marriage.

He had to repeat it three times before I could understand, and even then I thought it was a terrible joke, that they’d all conspired for some reason to play this really cruel trick on me.

He leans forward in his chair and talks in this low, drawling voice like he’s conspiring with her.

“I’m not saying there’s any excuse for what I did, because I doubt there’s anything I can say to you to justify what happened out there.”

He’s a snake charmer, this one, but lucky for me, Principal Wasserman isn’t a fool. She cuts him off and turns to me. “I’d like to hear what precipitated the punch in the mouth.”

“Principal Wasserman, I’m an attorney, and I’m as concerned as you are—if not more so—about what’s transpired here today, but until we—”
Principal Wasserman says again, “I want to hear from Jack and Libby.”

The principal folds her hands on her desk. Her eyes are fixed on us like she’d turn us to stone, if only she could. “Fighting on school property is a serious charge. So is vandalism.”

As he takes the piece of paper, Principal Wasserman says, “I’m afraid someone has defaced one of our school bathrooms with derogatory comments about your daughter. I assure you it is going to be dealt with. I don’t take something like this lightly either.”

As he takes the piece of paper, Principal Wasserman says, “I’m afraid someone has defaced one of our school bathrooms with derogatory comments about your daughter. I assure you it is going to be dealt with. I don’t take something like this lightly either.”

“Or we can prosecute you for bullying,” she says to him.
Jack’s mother, the attorney, nearly falls off her chair. “Before we talk about prosecuting—”

“The two of you will also meet with a counselor every day after school for the next few weeks. The Conversation Circle is being used effectively at more and more schools across the country, and I believe it will also be effective here. It’s important that you learn from the experience and each other. Mr. Levine”—the skinny guy waves—“specializes in some of the most prevalent issues affecting teens today, including bullying, prejudice, and sexual harassment.”

“The two of you will also meet with a counselor every day after school for the next few weeks. The Conversation Circle is being used effectively at more and more schools across the country, and I believe it will also be effective here. It’s important that you learn from the experience and each other. Mr. Levine”—the skinny guy waves—“specializes in some of the most prevalent issues affecting teens today, including bullying, prejudice, and sexual harassment.”

I clear my throat, which still feels raw. “I don’t think it’s fair to punish her for something I instigated. I’d rather serve the time for both of us.”

We finish the song, dancing in unison, and it’s awesome, but then the song is over, and Dusty drops onto his bed and gives me this look that lets me know we’re only in unison on the dance floor, nowhere else.

Someone’s posted a picture of me, which they must have snapped just after it happened, because there I am in the cafeteria, looking mad as a hatter, fist still clenched, Jack Masselin sprawled at my feet.

We’re both quiet as I think about my dismal, dead-end future.

I dump the contents of my backpack onto my bed and sort through my papers and notebooks and pens and gum wrappers, and all the miscellaneous rubbish I’ve stuffed in there, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I carry everywhere.

By now, all the lights on the street are on and every lawn is covered with gawkers.

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.

The emergency workers have erected scaffolding and a long, wide bridge up to the second-floor window.

I stare up at dingy metal instead of blue, and all at once I feel humiliated.

I knock on the door of Marcus’s room and then walk on in. His walls are covered with posters—mostly of basketball players. There’s a hoop attached to the closet door. A gangly, shaggy-haired kid hunches on the floor in front of his computer.