“Richmond.”
“Richmond?” It comes out sounding like ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME? RICHMOND?! WHY DON’T YOU JUST CHAIN A BOULDER TO MY LEG AND THROW ME IN THE RIVER?
“Yes, Richmond. There’s no way I’m taking you to one of the usual dumps in town. Not looking like that.”
Clara’s Pizza King is an institution. It’s the best pizza for miles, and there’s a red double-decker bus parked in the dining room. The place is crowded, but I’ve called ahead. We can sit in the bus or at a corner table upstairs that has a porch swing on one side. Libby chooses the porch swing.
We move through the tables, Libby in front of me, and I see people staring at her. This happens when I’m with Caroline—people look at her. But they look at Caroline because she’s the kind of tall, sexy girl you look at.
As we walk, I can see where the path is too tight, where Libby will have to squeeze through. I offer to go first because that way I can choose which way to go so she doesn’t have to worry about it. I’m clearing the way, and people are gawking, and it hits me that up until recently, I was one of them. Maybe not the snickering ones, but the ones sitting next to them. I don’t know what to feel or do, so I stare back. Do I know them or not know them? I don’t even care. They’re watching her and me, and this table of boys starts saying shit. Does she hear them? I can’t tell. Probably. I throw my head back—a move I like to think makes my hair instantly grow twenty times bigger, and me ten feet taller—and I give them the eye. They get quiet.
Upstairs, Libby takes a seat on the swing, and now I can sit on the other side of the table or I can sit next to her. I think, Fuck ’em all, these people who are staring. I say, “Is that space taken?” I nod down at the swing.
“You don’t have to.”
“What?”
“Sit by me.”
“Move it, sister.”
She shoves over, and we rock back and forth, like we’re kicking back on our front porch on a summer afternoon. Each table has an actual phone—the old-fashioned kind with a cord—and after I call in our order, I take her hand.
I say, “My palms are sweaty.”
“Why?”
“I’m nervous.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m sitting next to you on this swing and you’re beautiful.”
She hesitates, like she’s not sure whether to take the compliment. But then she says, “Thank you.”
Being out in the world with her is different from being alone with her. For one, there are too many other people. For two, I’m on guard, ready to take on anyone who tries to get it started with her or me. For three, it’s making me think about her weight in a way I haven’t really, truly thought about until right this moment.
We’re sitting there in silence, so I decide to tell her about Dr. Amber Klein and the tests and everything I haven’t told her about my time as Jack Masselin, Lab Rat. Libby’s not saying anything, but I can tell she’s listening. Her head is cocked to one side, and I can see her eyes taking it all in.
Finally she goes, “How do you feel?”
“The same. Maybe a little worse. Maybe a little better.”
“Are you going to tell your parents?”
“I don’t think so. What’s the point, right? I mean, there’s nothing any of us can do, short of downloading facial recognition software directly into this brain of mine. Telling them won’t magically create a cure. It’ll just give them more shit to worry about.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted there to be something they could do for you. Not because your brain isn’t awesome the way it is, but because it would make you feel better.”
Now it’s my turn to not say anything. I sit looking at her until it’s just us, Libby and me, no one else for miles. What I want to do more than anything is kiss her. I almost do, but then the waitress is standing there with our food.
As we eat, Libby is glancing around, and finally she looks at me and goes, “Richmond, huh?” And there’s something in her tone that makes me set down my drink.
“I thought you’d like Clara’s.”
“I do like Clara’s. It’s just that I would have been okay, you know, going somewhere in Amos.” And then she stares off toward the bus.
I say, “Listen, I may be keeping the face blindness a secret for now, but that doesn’t mean I want everything in my life to be a secret. It doesn’t mean I want to keep you a secret. I would never hide you away, if that’s what you’re thinking.” As I say it, I ask myself, Is that what I’m doing?
She starts blinking at the table, at the menu, anywhere else but at me.
“Holy shit. That’s what you were thinking. That I brought you out here so we wouldn’t run into anyone.”
“No.”
“Good, because that would be crazy.”
So why did you bring her here, asshole?
“I mean yes.”
“Uh, because that wouldn’t be crazy at all.” Now her eyes find mine. “Okay,” I say. “I get it. I’m king douchelord and you trust me but you don’t. You don’t know me well enough to know how deep the douchery goes.”
The whole while I’m asking myself, How deep does the douchery go? What if it goes deeper than you think?
She says, “Maybe not.” And I hate the careful, closed-off tone because it’s like a fence between us.
“Listen. I brought you here because you’re better than some shitty Amos chain restaurant. I brought you here because when I was six, I fell off the roof of our house, and my dad smuggled a Clara’s pizza into the hospital, and those kinds of memories are pretty rare for me right now—the ones where my dad is this really great guy. I brought you here because this is the first place I wanted to go after I got out of the hospital and was well enough to sit up straight. I brought you here because it’s one of the few places in a sixty-mile radius, if not the entire state of Indiana, that isn’t boring or typical. Because you’re not boring or typical.”
And I realize every word is true.
I reach over the fence and take her hand. I kiss the knuckles, one by one. As I do I’m thinking, How does this girl mean so much to me?
“Libby Strout, you deserve to be seen.”
“People can’t help but see me.” She says this to the tablecloth.
“That’s not what I mean.”
We sit there swinging, and now I’m kicking myself for bringing her here. I should have just gone to Red Lobster where we could have been stared at by everyone at school, including maybe Caroline, and where my idiot friends could have come over and hijacked our date with their stupidity.
I say, “Wait here,” and then I’m up and out of the swing, down the stairs, and over to the jukebox, which hugs the wall behind the bus. This is the same jukebox my parents used to play when they were coming here on dates about sixty years ago. As I’m flipping through the musical choices, I’m thinking about how Libby Strout makes me want to drive thirty miles to the closest place that is almost good enough for her and run through crowded restaurants to find her the perfect song.
And then I see it. The Jackson 5. I choose the song I was looking for and also a couple of others—Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind & Fire—so we can have a whole block of them. Then I go back to the table, which is the table in the upper northwest corner, the one with the girl in the purple dress.
She says, “You didn’t have to do that. You don’t have to do anything. I’m being dumb.”
“You could never be dumb.”
“I can be dumb.”
She takes a bite of pizza. I take a bite of pizza. We eat in this weird silence.
And then suddenly the song is playing, as in the song. I wipe my mouth with the napkin and toss it aside. I’m on my feet, hand out.
Libby blinks up at me. “What?”
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Just come on.”