Holding Up the Universe (42 page)

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.”

And then he closes his eyes and describes how I look in a way I've never heard before. As I'm hearing it, my heart is racing, and I know this is something I'll never forget, not even fifty years from now.

He opens his eyes and says, “I know the way you move. I know the way you look at me. I see you see me, and you're the only one who looks at me that way. Whether I'm with you or away from you, I don't have to think about it or put the puzzle pieces together. It's just you. That's what I know.”

“That doesn't have to mean you love me. Just because you see me.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and he's laughing. “Who said anything about love?”

I want more than anything to disappear into thin air.

“If, hypothetically, I did love you, though, it's not
because
I see you, and,
Oh well, at least I can see her, so I might as well love her.
I'm pretty sure I
see
you because I
love
you. And yeah, I guess I love you because I see you, as in
I see you, Libby,
as in all of you, as in every last amazing thing.”

I wait for him to say
hypothetically
again, but he doesn't.

Instead he looks at me.

I look at him.

And we're having a moment.

It lasts for seconds, maybe minutes.

I pull the scarf up over my nose. I want to pull it over my whole head.

“Here.”

He hands me something. I turn it over in my palm, and it's a magnet.
OHIO WELCOMES YOU.

At first, I don't know why he's giving this to me. We've never been to Ohio together. I've only been to Ohio once.

Years ago.

With my parents.

Suddenly, I'm transported back to my house, back to the day my mom first stuck that on our fridge.
“We're going to fill this up with magnets of all the places we'll go,” she said. “Ohio may not seem exotic, but one day, when this is covered, you'll look back on it and think,
That's the one that started it all.”

He says, “I never should have taken it.”

“Taken it?”

“From your house. I went back that day, to see what I could learn about you. I had to tell the security guy to pay attention so you weren't looted.”

“After you looted this.”

“Yeah. And your book, the one I sent you.”

“What made you keep the magnet?”

“It reminded me of you.”

“Wow, you are sappy.”

He laughs, rubs his jaw. “Apparently.”

“That's okay.” My voice is muffled by the scarf. I fold my hand around the magnet. It sounds silly, but I can't help thinking,
She held this. Part of her is still here.
“I'm glad you took it.”

It's the one that started it all.

“Libby Strout.” His mouth and eyes are serious. I don't think I've ever seen him so serious. “You are wanted.”

And then he tugs the scarf away.

He takes my face in his hands, carefully, delicately, like it's a rare and precious jewel.

And he kisses me.

It's the greatest kiss of my life, which I realize isn't saying much. But it's one of those world-expanding kisses that I'd put against any other kiss that has happened and will ever happen to anyone anywhere. It's as if he's breathing for me, or maybe we're breathing for each other, and I'm merging into him and him into me, so that my limbs aren't limbs, and the bones melt away and then the muscle and the skin until all that's left is electricity. The hazy-gray, early-morning sky morphs into the night sky, and stars are everywhere, so close I feel I could really collect them and take them home, maybe wear them in my hair.

I don't know who pulls away first, maybe him, maybe me. But then we're standing with our foreheads touching, which I'm grateful for because there's this part of me that's inwardly shrieking,
Oh my God, it's Jack Masselin,
and I'm not awed, but I'm almost embarrassed because I know this boy in a way other people don't, and he knows me.

Eventually, our heads right themselves, our eyes move up and find each other, and I don't have to wonder what I look like to him, because I can see me there, in the reflection of his pupils, as if he really has stored me away and is carrying me around with him.

He says, “Huh.” And breathes out like he's been holding it all this time.

“Yeah.” I try to be funny, because this world is still new to me and I'm still finding my footing. I say, “I mean, it didn't exactly shake the earth.” And my voice trembles, just a touch.

But the thing is it did. It really did. It shook the damn pants off it.

We are doing it. This is happening. We are meeting and changing the world, his world and mine.

My body is like a single nerve ending from head to toe. Everything feels alive and
more.
My heart is opening, like the heart of Rappaccini's daughter, Beatrice, when she meets young Giovanni after he wanders into her garden. As I stand there, I can almost feel it unfold, petal by petal, beat by beat.

I say, “I love you.”

She says, “I love you too.” And then she laughs. “It's kind of crazy. I mean
you.
”

“I know. What the hell?”

She covers her mouth with one hand, but her eyes are shining. I'm thinking about a field of grass on a summer day. I'm thinking about the sun and being warmed from the inside and being warmed from the outside.

I take her hand under the gray-blue sky and I'm home.