Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven Read Free Book Online

none of this matters, it’s what’s inside that counts. It’s what lies beyond this. All those things they like to tell you. Besides, I stopped feeling a long time ago.
    Except this is a lie too.
    —
    Sixty seconds later:
    I walk out of the bathroom and bump right into a girl almost as big as I am. She’s bawling her eyes out, and my first instinct is to get out of her way. She says, “What were you doing in there? Did you lock the door?” Actually, she shouts it.
    “It must have gotten stuck. Are you okay?” I talk softly and calmly, hoping she’ll follow my lead.
    She’s crying and hiccupping hard, and it takes her a minute. “Bastards.” This is a little less loud.
    I don’t have to ask what, only who. I can imagine by the size of her what’s happened. “Who?” I ask, even though I feel like I don’t know anyone at this school.
    “Dave Kaminski and his bastard friends.” She pushes by me to the sink, where she bends over, washing her face, wetting down her hair, which is wound in tight black ringlets. She’s wearing a Nirvana shirt and one of those candy necklaces you eat. I grab a paper towel and hand it to her. “Thanks.” She pats at her face. “Dave Kaminski grabbed me, and when I told him to let go he wouldn’t.”
    The Dave Kaminski I knew was a scrawny twelve-year-old with white hair who once stole his dad’s Johnnie Walker and brought it to school.
    “Where are they?”
    “Bleachers.” She’s still hiccupping, but not as bad. She glances up at the wall and starts reading. “What the…”
    My eyes follow hers. “I know, right? Look on the bright side. At least that’s not your name on the wall.”

Kam’s still running laps when these two girls come walking out of the school. One of them hangs back, but the other marches across the football field. She glances up at us for a second, and our eyes meet. And then she heads straight for Kam.
    At first, he doesn’t see her, which is a miracle because this girl is enormous. But then I can tell he sees her, and he picks up speed, laughing and sprinting away. Seth is sitting straight up, like a dog watching a squirrel. Under his breath he goes, “What the hell…”
    Just as the girl gets close, Kam takes off like he’s on fire, and
the girl runs after him.
I’m on my feet now because it’s the best damn thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, she is
flying.
    Seth starts clapping like a fool. “Oh
shit.
” He’s hollering at Kam and laughing himself blue, kicking and stomping at the bleachers, and the whole time I am rooting for the girl.
    “Run!” I yell, and I’m yelling it to her, though no one knows it. “Run! Run! Run!”
    Finally, Kam hurdles the fence and races off down the street away from us. Like a fucking gazelle, the girl hurdles the fence right after him, and the only thing that stops her from catching him is a truck that goes barreling past at just that moment. She stands on the street and stares after Kam, and then she walks, not runs, back toward the school. She crosses the football field, and as she walks her eyes are on me again. She doesn’t turn her head, just follows me with her eyes, and I am telling you she is pissed.

SIX YEARS EARLIER

I walk onto the playground, and Moses Hunt says to me, “Hey, if it isn’t Flabby Stout. What’s up, Flabby?”
    I say, “You’re flabby.” Even though he isn’t, but then neither am I.
    He does a sideways look at the boys grouped around him, the ones who hang on his every move all the time, even when he’s just making arm farts and repeating the swear words his brothers taught him. His eyes come sliding back to me, and he’s about to say something, and I know whatever it is I don’t want to hear it because no one could say anything nice with a mouth that looks like it swallowed a whole lemon, seeds and all.
    He opens that pursed-up lemon mouth and says, “No one will ever love you. Because you’re fat.”
    I stare down at my legs and stomach. I hold out my arms. If