Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven Page A

that these are six copies of the same book,
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson, although the bindings are different. I think,
She must really love that book.
    When I leave, I try not to touch anything except for one copy of the Shirley Jackson book and the Ohio magnet, both of which I take. I don’t know why. Maybe it makes me feel closer to the girl who lives there. Outside, the guard is still sleeping, and I rap on the glass to wake him up. When he rolls down the window, I say, “Stay alert, buddy. I imagine everything they own is in that house, and they’ve been through enough without losing it to looters.” Of course the book and magnet don’t count.
    —
    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. He’s playing a video game—the shoot-everyone-and-blow-shit-up kind.
    I do what I usually do—look for the signs that this is my brother. The pointy chin, the messy hair, the mopey expression. I look for the pieces and put them together because this is how I know it’s him.
    “Can I ask you a question?”
    “What?” He doesn’t take his eyes off the screen.
    “How do you remember people so well? How do you tell them apart?”
    “What?”
    “Take Squinty.”
    “Her name’s Patrice.”
    “Whatever. Patrice. How do you pick her out of a crowd?”
    “She’s my girlfriend.”
    “I know she’s your girlfriend.”
    “Do you know what she’d do to me if I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd?”
    “Yeah, but what is it about her that tells you it’s her?”
    He pauses the game. Stares at me for, like, a whole minute. “I just look at her. I just know. What’s wrong with you? Have you gone crazy?”
    My eyes move past him to the walls of basketball players. I want to ask if he can tell them apart without their jersey numbers or names on the back. When I look at him again, he’s still staring at me, only his features have shifted so that he’s brand-new. I say, “Never mind. I’m just messing with you.”
    —
    I go back into my room and dig out the old composition notebook I keep hidden away in a drawer and start flipping through it. This is where I sort out the projects I build—drawing them, planning them out. But in between the brainstorms and sketches and blueprints and lists of materials needed, there are passages like these:
Went to Clara’s Pizza with the family. Got lost coming back from bathroom. Took me a while to find them. Dad finally had to wave me down.
    I was so wiped out after Saturday’s game (we won in straight innings) I didn’t even recognize Damario Raines when he came up to congratulate me.
    Every few pages, entry after entry. Nothing earth-shattering or alarming until you start adding them up. As I’m reading them now, a feeling settles over me like a blanket, but not the warm, comforting kind. More like a thick and scratchy blanket thrown over the head just before you’re shoved into the trunk of a car.
    There is something wrong with me.
    Of all the people in the world, I feel like the girl would understand. I sit there the rest of the night thinking,
I hope she makes it.
And even though the news is protecting her identity, and all I know is her last name, I write her a letter to tell her this, tuck it into her favorite book, and go online to find the mailing address for the local hospital.

Dr. Weiss is thin and tall and probably couldn’t gain weight if he tried. He’s worried I’m trying to kill myself. I tell him, “If I wanted to kill myself, there are faster ways to do it.”
    He stands beside my hospital bed with his arms crossed. His face is hard to read because he does this thing where he can frown and smile at the same time. He says, “Your father says you’ve been housebound for six months.”
    “It depends on when you start counting. For