I shook my head. “No,” I said. “You can’t be stupid. You went to school in Canada. I hear they have a way better education system than we do. Why, do you feel stupid?”
“There are people here who want very much to feel better about themselves,” he said, not answering the question. “It’s my job to help them do that. It’s not my job to sit and listen to you make up a ridiculous story because you don’t want to admit that you have a problem.”
I pretended to be shocked. “What do you mean?” I said. “I just told you—the Sugar Plum Fairy has taken over my body. She tried to kill me! You have to do something. Like an exorcism. Or a fairycism.”
“You’re wasting my time,” said Cat Poop. “We’re done for today.”
“What if she tries to make me hurt myself again?” I asked, all concerned. “Or what if she makes me hurt someone else? I might start pirouetting all over the lounge uncontrollably, and I don’t know what would happen if I did that. It could be a Sugar Plum massacre.”
“Are you finished?” Cat Poop asked.
“That depends,” I told him, talking like my normal self again. “Are you ready to let me go home now?”
“You’re here for the full forty-five days,” said Cat Poop. “You can waste every single one of them if you want to, but you’re going to spend them here.”
That made me angry. “I thought you said I was wasting your time,” I snapped.
“You are,” he said. “You’re also wasting yours, as well as that of someone else who would really like to be helped, who can’t be here because you are. I want you to think about that. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He looked down, and I knew that was my signal to leave. So I did. And I was happy to get out of there. I couldn’t believe he was lecturing me about wasting time when he’s the one keeping me in this place. All he has to do is say I’m normal and I’ll be out of here. If a real whack-job wants my place so badly, I’m perfectly happy to give it up. I’m tired of people thinking they’re doing me favors.
Day 07
This morning I went into the lounge and found Sadie writing a letter. When I asked who she was writing to, she said her best friend. “Don’t you have a best friend?” she asked me. “You know, someone you tell everything to?”
“Not really,” I told her. “I’m not big into friends.”
Sadie looked at me funny, then noticed the clock. “I’ve got to go see Katzrupus,” she said, folding up her letter. “See you later?”
“Sure,” I told her. “I’m just going to do some homework. Apparently being imprisoned in the cuckoo house doesn’t get you out of learning about the reproductive cycle of the frog.”
That was another lie. Not the part about homework, the part about not having a best friend. I do, actually. Her name is Allie. I just didn’t feel like talking about her with Sadie.
That’s right, her. Allie is a girl. I know it’s kind of weird for a guy to have a girl best friend, but I do.
The first time I saw Allie was when Mrs. Pennyfall, the principal’s secretary, walked her into our seventh grade social studies class. Allie stared around the room like she wished she could set it on fire. The only free desk was next to mine, so she had to take it. That whole class, she sat there with her head down, drawing on the cover of her notebook. I kept trying to see what she was drawing, but I didn’t want her to think I was staring at her.
Eventually she moved the notebook over a little and I saw what she was doing. The entire cover was covered in perfect little bats. They looked like they were swarming out of the center of the notebook, spiraling around in a big cloud. I couldn’t stop looking at them, and Allie noticed. She covered the notebook with her social studies textbook.
After class, I followed her into the hall and told her how cool I thought the bats were. She looked at me and said, “I really don’t need any friends, okay? I have enough problems.”
“Whatever,” I told her. “But you do need someone to show you around. Otherwise you might make the mistake of talking to the wrong people, and then your entire social life will be a disaster.”
She looked at me for a moment and then laughed. That’s how it started. We had lunch together, and the next day she sat by me in social studies again. I found out she liked some of the things I like—sci-fi movies and roller coasters and some other stuff—and I invited her over to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is the greatest movie ever made, and way better than Star Wars, no matter what the geeks say. She said okay, and after that we were best friends.
Allie’s story is that her mom and dad split up, and her mom moved her to our town because she said it was as far away from Allie’s dad as she could get without making it too hard for Allie to see him if she wanted to. Only Allie didn’t want to see him, because she was really angry at him for cheating on her mother. That’s why they divorced. Allie’s mom found out her husband was sleeping with her best friend, which didn’t go over very well with her.
Anyway, Allie only sees her dad when she has to, like every other year at Thanksgiving and sometimes in the summer when he decides to pretend they have a relationship and he makes her go on vacation with him and his new wife, who Allie totally hates because she’s always trying to get Allie to like her. Her name is Kati—with no e—and she says things like, “Think of me as your big sister,” which Allie says makes her want to puke.
Like I said, some people think it’s weird that my best friend is a girl. Sometimes I think it’s weird, too. Mostly people assume that we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, which I guess we could be. But that just seems too teen-movie, if you know what I mean. A boy and girl are best friends, neither of them dates anyone else, and then one night they look at each other and—bang—they realize they’ve been in love with each other the whole time. Everyone’s happy and they go to the big dance together.
Allie and I did go to a dance together once—the spring social in eighth grade—just so we could see what was so thrilling to everyone else. Our mothers made a big deal about it, making us dress up and taking our pictures and all that crap. My mother still has one of the pictures framed and hanging on the wall in our living room. Every time Allie comes over she looks at it and says, “My hair looks like it exploded. Can’t you take that down?” But I think secretly she really likes that it’s there.
The best thing about Allie is that I can talk to her about pretty much anything. I wish I could talk to her about how I’m feeling right now, about how I hate being in this place with these other people and their weird problems. I know she’d get a laugh out of it all.
I guess I could write it all in a letter, like Sadie, but it’s not really the same. I’ll wait to tell her everything in person.
I was still thinking about Allie when Sadie came back. I was surprised that a whole hour had gone by already.
“How’d it go?” I asked her.
She said, “You know we’re not supposed to talk about our sessions with anyone. Seriously, it might set me back. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
“I’ll risk it,” I told her.
She slapped my arm. “Thanks for taking my mental health so seriously,” she said. “Actually, we talked about my dad.”
“What about him?”
Sadie sighed. “Oh, you know, about how I don’t think he really loves me and how maybe I was trying to get his attention.”
“Were you?”
Sadie looked at her nails, which were chewed down to almost nothing. “Seeing as how he was halfway around the world at the time giving a lecture on medieval architecture, I think I might have planned it a little better if I was,” she said. “Once he found out I wasn’t dead he waited another week to come home because there was a castle in Spain he wanted to see first.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. I mean, a dad who lectures on medieval architecture? That sounds like something I’d make up. But I don’t know if Sadie is a liar or not. It’s hard to tell with crazy people.
“Do you really think
he doesn’t love you?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “How do you really know if anyone loves you?”
When I didn’t answer, she looked at me. “Really, how do you know?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I guess you just assume they do until they tell you they don’t,” I said.
Sadie shook her head. “You need a better system than that.”
“Maybe you ask,” I suggested.
“If you have to ask, the answer is probably no. Do you think your parents love you?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I answered. “I do. They may be a little whacked, but they love me.”
“Do they tell you they do?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “My mom more than my dad, but I think that’s usually how it goes.”
Sadie looked at me for a long time. “You’re lucky,” she said finally.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Am I lucky? Am I lucky that I didn’t die? Am I lucky that, compared to the other kids here, my life doesn’t seem so bad? Maybe I am, but I have to say, I don’t feel lucky. For one thing, I’m stuck in this pit. And just because your life isn’t as awful as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You can’t compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn’t work. What might look like the perfect life—or even an okay life—to you might not be so okay for the person living it.
God, this place is starting to rub off on me. I sound like Cat Poop. I wonder what he would think if I told him about Allie. He’d probably ask me if I’m in love with her.
Day 08
This is my one-week anniversary at Club Meds. Instead of a party, my big surprise was that my parents came to see me. Or they came because someone told them to, at least. Anyway, when I walked into Cat Poop’s office for what I thought was going to be my usual brain-picking session, there they were. At first I thought I was seeing things, or that two people who just happened to look like my parents were there for their own session and I was interrupting. But it was them. They were sitting on the couch.
When she saw me, my mother stood up and started to come toward me, but then stopped. I think maybe Cat Poop had told her not to make any sudden movements because they might scare me, like I’m a wild animal or something, because she kept looking at him and then at me. Finally she just said, “Hello, Jeff,” and sat down again next to my father.
I sat in the big chair across from the couch and didn’t say anything. I mean, really, what do you say to your parents when the last time they saw you, you were practically dead and they had to call the paramedics? It’s not exactly your typical “How was school today?” kind of thing. And it’s not like we’ve ever been into the whole sharing thing, anyway. We’re not huggers.
“Jeff, is there anything you would like to say to your parents?” Cat Poop said when we’d all been quiet for what seemed like a hundred years.
Is there anything I’d like to say to them? I thought. Yeah, there was. Why didn’t you just let me die?, for starters. Why’d you have to come home early from your stupid party? Why’d you have to put me in this place with a bunch of whack-jobs?
But what I actually said was, “What did you tell everyone?”
My mother rubbed her hands together. “We told Amanda that you were in the hospital,” she said. “We didn’t tell her why.”
“She’s thirteen, not four,” I said. “She must have asked.” I know my sister. She’s got to know everything about everyone. She can tell you which girl at school just got her period for the first time and who’s thinking about asking who to the dance. There was no way she hadn’t asked them what was going on.
My mom looked at my dad, who looked at the floor. “We told your sister you were having some . . . problems,” he said.
I laughed. I don’t know why it was funny to me that they hadn’t told Amanda the truth, but it was. And I knew they were lying about what they did tell her. They must have told her something else. I wondered what she thought was wrong with me. Cancer? A brain tumor? I couldn’t wait to find out.
“What about everybody else?” I asked my parents. “What did you tell my school?”
“We told them you were going to be out for a while,” my dad said. “That’s all.”
“Haven’t any of my friends called to find out what’s up?”
“Amanda has been letting them know that you’re sick,” said my mother.
“Sick,” I repeated. So that’s how they thought of me, as being sick. Poor little Jeff, sick and in the hospital while the doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with him. The idea of everyone feeling sorry for me made me angry.
“What about Allie?” I asked, surprising myself.
“She hasn’t called,” my mother said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Is there anything the two of you would like to say to Jeff?” Cat Poop asked my parents.
“We love you,” my mother said.
I nodded. Like I said before, Hallmark moments aren’t my style.
“And we want you to get better,” added my father. “So you can come home.”
I won’t bore you with the rest. There really isn’t much more, anyway. Basically, we all sat there for forty-five minutes not saying anything unless the doc made us. Then there was this awkward good-bye part where my mother broke the no-hugging rule and my father patted me on the back. Then they left. Cat Poop had me stay, and when he came back from showing my parents out he asked me how I felt things had gone.
“You could have warned me,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “Did you feel threatened by seeing them?”
“No,” I told him. “I just wasn’t expecting it, is all.”
“Were you embarrassed?”
“It’s not like the last time I saw them I was winning the national spelling bee or making the game-winning touchdown or anything,” I said.
“Who’s Allie?” he asked.
“What?” I said, pretending not to hear him, and kicking myself for saying her name. Of course he was going to jump on that.
“Allie,” he repeated. “You asked your parents if Allie had called to ask about you.”
“Oh, right. Allie. She’s a friend from school.”
“Tell me about her.”
I shrugged. “There’s not much to tell,” I said, hoping I sounded casual about it. “She’s just a girl I’ve been friends with for a while.”
“But it’s important for you to know that she cares what’s happened to you.” He said it like it was a fact, not a question.
I didn’t want to answer him. But he was waiting for me to say something.
“She and I were kind of going out,” I said finally. “God, you’re nosy. You’re worse than my sister.”
Cat Poop wrote something on his pad, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. I wondered how much time was left in our session and prayed it wasn’t much.
As if he could read my mind, he put his pen down. “That’s all for today,” he said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Oh, and your parents will be coming once a week from now on, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I got out of there as fast as I could, and I’ve been feeling weird the rest of the day. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because at first I thought getting out of this place would be a piece of cake. But I think I might have been wrong.
Day 09
Day 9 feels more like Year 100. The worst thing is, I think it’s starting to rub off on me. The crazy, I mean. Especially Sadie. I keep thinking about how she tried to kill herself.
That sounds so weird: “kill yourself.” It makes it sound like you tried to murder someone, only that someone is you. But killing someone is wrong, and I don’t think suicide is. It’s my life, right? I should be able to end it if I want to. I don’t think it’s a sin.
Everyone seems obsessed with it, though. I mean, think about it. We keep people alive on death row just so we can kill them later. We put prisoners on suicide watch
so they can’t do themselves in before we get the chance to put them on trial. That doesn’t make any sense. Why is it okay to put someone to death, but it’s not okay for those people to do it themselves?
I’ll tell you what I think. I think it pisses people off when you kill yourself because it takes away their chance to control your life, even a little bit. They don’t like it when you end things the way you want to and don’t wait for the way it’s “supposed” to happen. What if suicide is the way it’s supposed to happen? Do they ever think of that?
I know I’m ranting. It’s just that I’m tired of being cooped up in here and having people tell me to talk about my feelings. Like today in group. Cat Poop made us split into pairs and do this stupid exercise where for five minutes one of us had to watch the other one act out what we were feeling. We weren’t allowed to say anything; we could only use our bodies and our facial expressions. For five minutes. Then we had to switch and give the other person the chance to let it all out.
Unfortunately, I had to partner with Juliet. She tried to hook up with Bone, like she always does, but Cat Poop asked Bone to pair with Alice. I’d like to have paired up with Sadie, but she got added to the Bone-Alice group because there’s an odd number of us. The operative word being odd.
Anyway, Juliet seemed as thrilled about the whole thing as I was, looking at me the way she would if the last sandwich on the plate was olive loaf and marshmallow and she had no choice but to take it or starve to death.
“Why don’t you go first?” I suggested, and she was totally happy to do it. Big shock. The girl lives to have people pay attention to her. Seriously, I’ve never met anyone so obsessed with herself.
I sat in a chair and watched while she stood there for a while, I guess thinking about how she was feeling or getting in the mood or whatever. Then she held her hands up like she was holding on to the bars of a cage. She had this sad look on her face, staring at me but not looking at me, if you know what I mean. And she just stood like that for a couple of minutes.