“A girl I know.”
“She’s pretty.” (It’s amazing how girls can say this and make it the most withering insult.) “Is she your girlfriend?”
“No. I don’t have a girlfriend. Never had a girlfriend.”
“So she was just a girl you were hooking up with in your room?”
“You saw, huh.”
“I saw everything: from out here to your roommate’s bed.”
“What, you were following me?”
“I’m not allowed?”
“Well, no—”
“You don’t like it?” She leans in. “You don’t like some poor little girl"—she throws on a Little Bo-Peep voice, fluffs her hair—"following big, manly Craig around the ward?”
“It’s not a ward, it’s a psych hospital.” But yes, yes I do like you following me around; yes, that’s awesome. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice you. …” I think of the flashes of time with Nia, if I ever glanced down the hall or checked behind me.
“You were in a state of excitement; that’s why.”
“Well. You want to know who she was?”
“No. I lost interest.”
“You did?”
“No! Tell me!”
“Okay, okay, she was this girl I’ve known for a long time, and she came in here—”
“Just overcome with lust for you?”
“Yeah, sure, exactly; she came in overcome with lust and I took advantage of her.” I flick my hand. “No, what really happened is she came in here lonely and confused, I think, and thinking that she belonged in a place like this . . .”
“That was pretty funny when your roommate caught you. That kinda made the whole thing worthwhile.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“You’re never going to be a good cheater. You’re going to be one of those guys who gets caught on the first try.”
“Is that good?”
“You didn’t even close the door. How’d you know the girl?”
“She was my best friend’s girlfriend since we were like thirteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Fifteen.”
“Me too.”
I look at her anew. There’s something about people who are the same age. It’s like you got piped out in the same shipment. You’ve got to stick together. Because deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.
“So you macked your best friend’s girlfriend?”
“No, they broke up.”
“When?”
“Uh, a few days ago.”
“She moves fast!”
“I think,” I think out loud, “she’s just one of these girls who’s never really not had a boyfriend.”
“Sometimes we call those girls sluts. Do you think she had a boyfriend when she was eight?”
“Ew.”
“Maybe she was letting—”
“Stop! Stop! I don’t want to hear it.”
“It happens.” Noelle looks at me.
I nod, and pause, and let that sink it. It does happen.
“Um . . . how are y ou?” I ask.
“You think you’re really smart, don’t you?”
I laugh. “No. That’s one of the reasons I came in here, actually. Thinking I was dumb.”
“Why would you think that? You’re in a smart school.”
“I wasn’t doing well there.”
“What were you getting?”
“Ninety-threes.”
Oh.” Noelle nods.
“Yeah.” I fold my arms. “I think you’re really smart. You probably get good grades.”
“Not really.” She puts her chin in her palms like someone in a painting. “You’re not very good at giving compliments.”
“What?”
“I’m smart! C’mon.” “You’re attractive, too!” I say. “Does that work?
You’re attractive! Did I say that already? I said it the other day, right?”
“Attractive? Craig, real estate is attractive. Houses.”
“Sorry, you’re beautiful. What about that?” I can’t believe I’m saying it. We’ll both be out of here in two days; that’s why I’m saying it. No regrets.
“Beautiful’s all right. There are better ones.”
“Okay, okay, cool.” I crack my neck—
“Ewwww. ““What?”
“Don’t do that. Especially when you’re about to compliment me.”
“Fine, okay. What are better words than beautiful?”
She puts on a Southern accent: “’Go-geous.’”
“Okay, okay, you’re gorgeous.”
“That sounds terrible. Do it my way: go-geous.”
I do it.
“You can’t even do a Southern accent? Oh my gosh, are you even from America?”
“Gimme a break! I’m from here!”
“Brooklyn?
“Yeah.”
“This neighborhood?”
“Yeah.”
“I have friends here.”
“We should meet up sometime.”
“You’re so terrible. Try some more compliments.”
“Okay.” I dig down deep. I got nothing. “Um . . .”
“You don’t know any more?”
“I’m not good at words.”
“See, this is why the math nerds don’t get girls.”
“Who said I was a math nerd? I told you my grades suck.”
“You might be one of those nerds who’s not smart. Those are the worst kind.”
“Listen,” I stop her. “I’m really glad you’re here talking with me, and I’ve met a lot of people in here.”
“Uh-oh,” she says. “Is this the part where it gets all serious?”
“Yes,” I say. And when I say it, the way that I say it, I see that she understands that I’m serious about being serious. I can be serious now. I’ve been through some serious shit and I can be serious like somebody older.
“I like you a lot,” I start. No regrets. “Because you’re funny and smart and because you seem to like me. I know that’s not a good reason, but I can’t help it; if a girl likes me I tend to like her back.”
She doesn’t say anything. I dip my head at her. “Um, do you want to say anything?”
“No. No! This is fine. Keep going.”
“Well, okay, I’ve been thinking about how to put this. I like you for all this stuff but I also kind of like you for the cuts on your face—”
“Oh no, are you a fetishist?”
“What?”
“Are you like a blood fetishist? There was one of them in here before. He wanted to make me like his Queen of the Night or something.”
“No! It’s nothing like that. It’s like this: when people have problems, you know … I come in here and I see that people from all over have problems. I mean, the people that I’ve made friends with are pretty much a bunch of lowlifes, old drug addicts, people who can’t hold jobs; but then every few days, someone new comes in who looks like he just got out of a business meeting.”
Noelle nods. She’s seen them too: the scruffy youngish guy who came in today with a pile of books as if it were a reading retreat. The guy who came in yesterday in a suit and told me in the most practical way that he heard voices and they were a real pain in the ass; they didn’t say anything scary but they were always saying the stupidest stuff while he was in trial.
“And not only in here: all over. My friends are all calling me up now: this one’s depressed, that one’s depressed. I look at what the doctors hand out, and there are studies that show like, one fifth of Americans suffer from a mental illness, and suicide is the number-two killer among teenagers and all this crap … I mean everybody’s messed up.”
“What’s your point?”
“We wear our problems differently. Like I didn’t talk and stopped eating and threw up all the time—”
“You threw up?”
“Yeah. Bad. And I stopped sleeping. And when I started doing that, my parents noticed and my friends n
oticed, sort of—they kinda made fun of me—but I could go through the world without really letting on what was wrong. Until I came here. Now it’s like: something is wrong. Or was wrong, because it feels like it’s getting better.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“You’re out there about your problems,” I say. “You put them on your face.”
She stops, puts her hand in her hair.
“I cut my face because too many—too many people wanted something from me,” she tries to explain. “There was so much pressure, it was—”
“Something to live up to?”
“Exactly.”
“People told you you were hot and then all of a sudden they treated you different?”
“Right.”
“How?”
She sighs. “You have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can’t trust anyone anymore, because they’re all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how it was before …”
She pulls her face into one of those faces that could be laughing or crying—they use so many of the same muscles—and leans forward.
“And I didn’t want to be part of it,” she says. “I didn’t want to be part of that world.”
I grab her leaning into me, feel for the first time the soft dimple of her body. “Me neither.”
She puts her arms around me and we hold each other like that from our two chairs, like a house constructed over them, and I don’t move my hands at all and neither does she.
“I didn’t want to play the smart game,” I tell her. “And you didn’t want to play the pretty game.”
“The pretty game’s worse,” she whispers. “Nobody wants to use you for being smart.”
“People wanted to use you?”
“Someone did. Someone who shouldn’t.”
I stop.
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t you.”
“Should I not touch you?”
“No, no, you didn’t do anything. It’s okay. But… yeah. It happened. And I lied before.”
“About what?”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of surgery I have. I did it with half a scissor, Craig. It’s going to leave scars. I’ll have scars for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to get off the world a little after this… this thing… and now I’m never going to be able to have a job or anything. What are they going to say when I go into a job interview looking like . . .” She sniffles, chuckles, and snot comes out. “. . . like a Klingon?”
“There are places in California where they speak Klingon. You can get a job there.”
“Stop it.”
We’re still holding each other. I don’t want to look up. I keep my eyes closed. “There are antidiscrimination laws too. They can’t not hire you if you’re qualified.”
“But I look like a freak now.”
“I told you, Noelle,” I say into her ear. “Everybody has problems. Some people just hide their crap better than others. But people aren’t going to look at you and run away. They’re going to look at you and think that they can talk to you, and that you’ll understand, and that you’re brave, and that you’re strong. And you are. You’re brave and strong.”
“You’re getting better at the compliments.”
“Nah. I’m nothing. I can barely hold food down.”
“Yeah, you’re skinny.” She laughs. “We need to fatten you up.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad I met you.”
“You’re bare and honest, Noelle; that’s what you are.” Words come into my head like they’ve always been there. “And in Africa your scarring would be highly prized.”
She sniffles again. “I didn’t like seeing you with that other girl.”
“I know.”
“You like me more, right?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
I pull away from her—maybe the first time in my life I’ve ended a hug—because a level of eye contact is required.
“I owe you a lot more than I do her. You really opened my eyes to something.” My actual eyes have been closed for so long on Noelle’s shoulder that the hall is blinding. But when they readjust I see the Professor, watching us from her door, holding the doorknob with one hand and her shoulder with the other.
“I wanted to show you this.” I reach under my chair to pick up something for our meeting—I had it down there as a trump card. I didn’t think the date would go like this; I thought it would all be Noelle yelling at me and I’d have to do something drastic. But now I can do something drastic and it’ll be like a cherry on top.
I pull out my couple’s brain map and show it to her.
“It’s beautiful!”
“It’s a guy and a girl, see? I didn’t do any hair, but you can see how one has a feminine profile and the other is masculine.” They’re lying down, not on top of each other, just side by side, floating in space. They have sketched-out legs and arms at their sides, but that’s the whole point of my brain maps—you don’t need to spend a lot of time on the legs or the arms. What they really have are brains—full and complete with whirling bridges and intersections and plazas and parks. They’re the most elaborate ones I’ve done yet: divided thoroughfares, alleys, cul de sacs, tunnels, toll plazas, and traffic circles. The paper is 14” x 17” and I had room to make the maps huge; the bodies are small and unimportant; the key thing that your eye is drawn to (because I understand now, somehow, that that’s how art works) is a soaring bridge between the two heads, longer than the Verrazano, even, with coils of ramps like ribbons mashed up at each end.
“It might be my best yet,” I say.
She looks it over; I see the red in her eyes, fading. There aren’t any tear streaks—I still haven’t seen actual tear streaks on anyone. Her tears went right into my shirt; they cool and chafe now on my shoulder.
“You were the one who suggested I do stuff from childhood,” I continue. “I used to do these when I was a kid, and I forgot how fun they were.”
“I bet you never did them like this.”
“No, well, this is easier, because I don’t have to finish the maps.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks for getting me started. I owe you big.”
“Thank you. Do I get to keep it?” She looks up.
“Not yet. I have to fix it up.” I stand, stretch my back, and shrug down at her.
Do it, soldier.
Yes, sir!
“But, um, I kind of wondered if I could have your phone number, so I can call you when we’re out of here.”
She smiles and her cuts outline her face like a cat’s whiskers. “Crafty.”
“I am a guy,” I say.
“And I hate boys,” she says.
“But a guy’s different,” I say.
“Maybe a little,” she says.
forty-two
Humble is back at dinner. He has entirely new clothes, a sparkly clean-shaven face, and eyes that won’t quite open all the way; he stations himself at his usual table under the TV in the dining room, which everyone left empty while he was gone. Noelle ‘s there too, at the next table, her back to him; I walk in, say hi to both of them, grab the tables, put them together, and sit between them, smiling.
“Noelle, I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to meet Humble.”
“Not really,” she says. She’s still grinning. From our date, I hope.
“Humble, Noelle. Noelle, Humble.”
“Uhhhhhh . . ."he says, squinting his eyes. “Those cuts on your face are trippy.”
“Thanks?” They shake hands.
“You have a good handshake for a girl,” says Humble.
“You have a good one for a guy.”
My dinner is beans and hot dogs and salad, with cookies and a pear at the end. I tackle it.
“So where’d they take you?” I ask between bites.
“Across th
e hall to geriatric,” says Humble.
“With the old people?” Noelle asks.
“Yeah. That’s where they take you when they have to get you whacked outta your mind.”
“Where’d you hear the term ‘wack’?” Noelle asks.
‘"Whacked?"’Humble picks a piece of salad out of his teeth with his thumb.
“No, she thinks you’re saying ‘wack,’like ‘that’s wack,’” I explain.
“Wack, wacky, whacked, it’s all the same word. This is an old word. I used to have an uncle named Wacky—what are you laughing at? Man, don’t start with me. This kid is a lot of trouble.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Noelle. And she bangs her knee against my thigh. Awesome. A girl hasn’t done that to me since like fourth grade. “He’s a mess.”
“I know,” says Humble. “It’s because he’s too smart for his own good. He comes in here; he’s burned out. I’ve seen it before. I see it all the time, but in people in their twenties, thirties. This guy is so smart that he got burnt out in half the time. He’s having like a midlife crisis as a teenager.”
“Forget the midlife crisis,” I say. “It’s all about the sixth-life crisis.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Well…” I look at Noelle. She’s not going to hit me with her leg again? I’m not sure if I want to talk. I don’t want to bore her. But I know I won’t bore Humble, and if I don’t bore her either, that would make it like a major victory.
“Well, first there’s the quarter-life crisis,” I say. “That’s like the characters on Friends—people freaking out that they won’t get married. Twenty-year-olds. That’s probably true that people get quarter-life crises; I wouldn’t know. But I know that now things work faster. Before you had to wait until you were twenty to have enough choices of things to do with your life to start getting freaked out. But now there’s so much stuff for you to buy, and so many ways you can spend your time, and so many specialties that you need to get started on very early in life—like ballet, right, Noelle, when did you start ballet?”
“Four.”
“Okay. I started Tae Bo at six. So there are like— so many people angling for success and so many colleges you’re supposed to get into, and so many women you’re supposed to have sex with—”
“You gotta freak them,” says Johnny from across the room.
“Were we talking to you?” Humble asks.