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.
Acknowledgments
Holding Up the Universe comes from my heart, as well as from my own loss and fear and pain, and from real people who are dear to me. Those people—along with many others—help hold up my universe. I wouldn’t have been able to write this book without them.
First and foremost, thank you to my readers around the world, who have become my family. (#ReadersAreLife) I love you epically and eternally.
Thank you to my incomparably brilliant, bright, bright place of an agent, Kerry Sparks, who is the savviest, wisest, most delightful human on the planet, and who is always, always looking out for me in every way. Thanks, too, to the entire team at Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. You have turned my world from black-and-white to Technicolor.
Thank you to my lovely-beyond-lovely editor, Allison Wortche, and every single one of her impeccable instincts. She doesn’t wield a red pen, she wields a magic wand. And thank you to my fantastically superb UK editor, Ben Horslen, for all his genius.
Thank you to everyone at Knopf, Random House Children’s Books, and Penguin UK for their kindness, support, and immense belief in me, and for being the very best there is. With endless thanks to Barbara Marcus, Jenny Brown, Melanie Nolan, Dominique Cimina, Jillian Vandall, Karen Greenberg, Kim Lauber, Laura Antonacci, Pam White, Jocelyn Lange, Zack O’Brien, Barbara Perris, Alison Impey, Stephanie Moss, Rosamund Hutchison, and Clare Kelly. And with thanks to David Drummond for the utterly spectacular cover.
Big thanks to my superstar assistant, Briana Bailey, for all she is and does, to the incredible Shelby Padgett (who is, I swear, part wizard), and to Lara Yacoubian, WBA forever. Also to Letty Lopez, and all the Germ Magazine editors, directors, writers, and contributors, with extra appreciation and hugs to Briana, Shelby, and Jordan Gripenwaldt. You make me lovely and you make me proud of all we—you—have done.
I did not have to be rescued from my house the way Libby was, but I have struggled with weight issues and anxiety over the years—particularly when I was Libby’s age—and I know what it feels like to be bullied. In addition to my own experience, I drew on the experiences of family and friends, who also understand firsthand what Libby has gone through.
I am not personally face-blind, but I have family members who are. My teenage cousin has learned to recognize the people in his life, not by faces, but by the important things like “how nice they are and how many freckles they have.” Thank you to him for helping me see as he sees.
And huge thanks to the remarkable—and prosopagnosic—Jacob Hodes, who gave the book a meticulous going-over. He offered me vital feedback on what worked and what didn’t, as well as invaluable suggestions for how to make Jack’s journey as real and authentic as possible.
Thank you to the Prosopagnosia Research Centers and Dr. Brad Duchaine, of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, for his help and generosity. He, along with Dr. Irving Biederman, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Southern California, patiently answered all my many questions.
I also want to acknowledge Chuck Close and Oliver Sacks, whose varied works have provided inspiration and information, and members of the Yahoo Face Blindness–Prosopagnosia group, who offered such fascinating, illuminating insight.
Thank you to Dr. William Rice III, of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, for his medical expertise, and my beloved cousin Learyn von Sprecken, engineering dynamo, who helped Jack and me with his mind-blowing projects.
Thanks also to:
My early readers, Louis Kapeleris, Angelo Surmelis, Garen Thomas, Nic Stone, Becky Albertalli, and devoted All the Bright Places fan Margaret Harrison, whose blurb for Holding Up the Universe would read: “To be honest, after All the Bright Places, I was kind of waiting for someone to get hit by a truck or something on the last page. I’m glad no one got hit by a truck.” And my fellow YA author, hero, and friend Kerry Kletter. Not only is she a terrific writer, she’s a terrific editor. She arrived at one of the most pivotal moments in this book’s life and stayed by my side through it, offering love and some much-needed hand-holding, as well as the smartest eleventh-hour edits an exhausted writer could ever hope for. I will always love you for what you gave to Jack, Libby, and me.
My other YA author friends for continued camaraderie and inspiration, and all of the booksellers and librarians and educators and bloggers I have met over the past two years. You are rock stars supreme, and I can never thank you enough for all you have done for me.