Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky

  A deer ran in front of her car.

  Mary Katherine hit the brakes and skidded. The deer looked right into the headlights and froze. Mary Katherine screamed. The deer came closer and closer into the headlights.

  “PLEASE, GOD! NO!” she screamed.

  The car stopped an inch from the deer.

  Mary Katherine looked through the windshield. The deer stared at her. The deer was soon joined by a doe. And a fawn. It was a little family like Mary and Joseph after the manger. Mary Katherine’s heart raced. If she hit a deer with her car, she was going to Hell. This was God’s warning. He gave her a body as a vessel for His spirit. Not the other way around. She had better stop her sinful thinking. And get home, Mary Katherine. Now.

  But the deer were blocking the road.

  Mary Katherine had no choice but to turn around. She quietly put the car in reverse. She backed into a driveway and drove back the way she came. It would take a little longer to get home, but if she took a left at the next fork, she would be home before her parents knew she was gone.

  But when she got to the fork, she saw more deer blocking the road.

  Mary Katherine idled the car at the stop sign. She looked back into the rearview mirror and saw that the family of deer had followed her. On every street she scanned, there were deer. Blocking her path home. Leaving her only one street to drive on.

  The street toward the Mission Street Woods.

  Mary Katherine moved down the street. She reached the Collins Construction site. She turned the car around and saw them. Dozens of deer walking slowly toward her. Threatening to scrape the car with their antlers. Mary Katherine leaned on the horn.

  “Get away from me!” she screamed.

  The deer did not scatter. They did not run. They just inched closer and closer. Mary Katherine had no choice. She opened the car door and stepped out into the freezing night. The deer began to run at her. She climbed over the security fence and landed on the muddy ground. The deer stopped at the security fence, their antlers poking through the metal grate.

  She took off into the Mission Street Woods.

  Mary Katherine didn’t know if this was a dream or real. She prayed it was a dream. She prayed that she would wake up in her bed and never have had these thoughts. Never have taken the car out past midnight. Never have taken Doug into her mouth. She prayed that all of this was some horrible nightmare and that she was still a girl worth loving.

  She could hear more deer in the woods running behind her. Scattering like cockroaches on a fresh kitchen floor. She ran aimlessly, looking for a path she might recognize. She ran past an abandoned refrigerator, right into a tunnel.

  She dropped her cell phone. The tunnel went dark, the water from the melted snow squishing under her feet. Mary Katherine reached down and fished out her cell phone. She shook it. Nothing happened. She prayed for light. She dried the cell phone off on her overalls. Suddenly, the cell phone came back to life.

  That’s when she saw the deer.

  Dozens of them.

  In the coal mine.

  “Ahhhhh!” she screamed.

  Mary Katherine ran. Lighting the way with her cell phone until she finally found the moonlight again in the clearing.

  Mary Katherine saw the tree house. She remembered finding Christopher in there earlier that night. He grabbed her arm, and the heat shot through his fingers and made those tiny blisters. The blisters were warm. Like the tree house would be. Yes. That’s where she needed to go. The tree house would keep her warm and safe from the deer. Mary Katherine ran to the tree house just as the deer reached the clearing. She moved up the 2x4 steps. She opened the door and looked inside. The tree house was empty. Mary Katherine turned back around and saw the deer circling her like sharks in a tank.

  Then she began to pray.

  As she spoke the Lord’s Prayer, she looked up at the beautiful field of stars past the clouds. A shooting star flew across the sky. She remembered when Mrs. Radcliffe said that every shooting star was a soul going to Heaven. The memory soothed Mary Katherine. She thought about being a child in CCD with all those lessons about Jesus. God, she loved Jesus with all her heart. She was a child, and she did not know there was such a thing as a body that could do dirty things. Wouldn’t it be great to be that child again? To be pure of thought and deed. She whispered the Lord’s Prayer and crossed herself after the final line.

  “And deliver us from evil. Amen.”

  Mary Katherine closed the door to the tree house.

  The instant the door snapped shut, she felt better. Calm and quiet. She realized it was not too late. God could have made her hit a deer, but He didn’t. He just warned her and led her to a child’s tree house. To remind her to love as a child loves. Because children don’t go to Hell.

  sCratch sCratch sCratch

  She heard the deer outside, but they couldn’t get her up here. And she still had a few hours until her mother would be awake. So, she could set the alarm on her phone and just wait for the deer to go away. Then, she could go home safely. Yes. That’s what she’d do. She would sleep inside the tree house. And in the morning, she would be safe as a child in her mother’s arms.

  sCratch sCratch sCratch

  Mary Katherine ignored the deer and set her alarm for two hours. She laid her head on the floor of the tree house, and she suddenly felt as snug as a child in bootie pajamas. Warm and safe as if Jesus were holding her. Spooning her the way they do in movies. Telling her that she was forgiven. And that she was loved. She curled up, and as she fell asleep, she dreamed that she could almost hear Jesus whisper in her ear. His voice was soft.

  Almost like a woman’s.

  Chapter 47

  Christopher sat up in bed. He looked outside his window and saw the Mission Street Woods in the wind. The bare branches swaying back and forth like arms in a church, worshipping. He could feel the itch stirring in the breeze.

  Waiting for the town to wake.

  Christopher took a deep breath and tried to quiet his mind. The last trip to the imaginary side had made the itch much more powerful. But with it came the pain. Christopher had gotten used to the headaches and nosebleeds.

  But this fever was a little scary.

  The heat rose from his skin like steam off highway asphalt. His temperature climbed until the town started going to bed. Christopher thought he could feel lights being switched off. Televisions going dark. And with the silence, his temperature dropped a little. The itch died down. And the flash cards slowed because most of the town was sleeping. But he knew that when the town woke up, the flash cards would come through his mind like a jackhammer. And he couldn’t let that happen. He had to focus on one thing and one thing only today.

  He had to find the message David Olson left for him at school.

  But making it to school was another matter entirely.

  Christopher didn’t know how much of a fever he had, but he knew it was bad enough to make his mother keep him home. So, he dragged himself out of bed and walked down the hall. He tiptoed past his sleeping mother to her bathroom. He climbed onto the sink, opened the medicine cabinet, and took out the bottle of aspirin she kept on the top shelf. He had gone through the kitchen supply a long time ago. He took other bottles, too. Aleve, Advil, Tylenol, and any cold medicine with the term “non-drowsy” on it. After wrestling the childproof caps off, he took a few pills from each bottle to avoid the suspicion of an empty. Then, he returned them all to the cabinet and tiptoed back through her room.

  “Honey? What are you doing?” the voice asked.

  Christopher turned and saw his mother sleeping.

  “I had a bad dream,” he lied.

  “About what?”

  “I dreamed you had gone away. I just wanted to make sure you were still here.”

  “I’ll always be here,” she whispered. “Do you want to sleep here tonight?”

  Yes.

  “No, thanks. I feel better now.”

  “Okay, I love you,” she said and rolled back over to dream
.

  Christopher went back to his bedroom and waited for morning to come. He would have read his books to pass the time, but the truth was that he had memorized all of them already. He saw them all like flash cards in his mind. Pages turning like generations from birth to death. Beginning to end. Trees to paper.

  As dawn broke, the itch broke with it. And with it, the pain. Christopher felt his neighborhood wake. Each stretch and yawn. Cups of coffee being poured and cereal crunching. He wondered how there could possibly be enough coffee for everyone to drink all the time. He remembered his father loved coffee and doughnuts with sugar on them. Christopher thought about his father’s funeral. How there were white headstones as far as the eye could see. He wondered about all those graves. If every soul who ever lived took up a grave, then eventually…

  Wouldn’t the entire earth be covered in graves?

  Half an hour before his mother’s alarm went off, Christopher crushed all thirty pills into a fine powder and ate it like a rancid Pixy Stix.

  Christopher went to the kitchen.

  He threw a stopper into the sink and ran the water quietly. He took the two ice trays out of the freezer, cracked them like knuckles, and dumped the ice into the water. He filled the trays and returned them to the freezer to cover his tracks.

  Then, he took his pajama top off and dunked his entire head, neck, and shoulders into the freezing-cold water. He wanted to scream, but he kept himself in that freezing soup for twenty-five Mississippis. Then, he pulled out his head, took a deep breath, and did it all again. And again. And again.

  The cold bit through his skin like little needles until his body went numb, but he didn’t dare get out. It was either this or the doctor. There was no plan B. Christopher knew plenty of kids who pretended to be sick to get out of school. He remembered when Special Ed showed him how to fake out a thermometer with a lightbulb and a heating pad. He just never thought he would be the first kid in history who faked being well to get back in. When his mother’s alarm clock went off (thank God she always hit SNOOZE), he quickly dried himself with a dish towel, pulled out the plug, and raced back upstairs to climb back into bed and pretend to be awakened by her.

  “Hey, how are you feeling?” his mother asked.

  “Much better,” he said, pretending to open his eyes. It wasn’t a lie. The thirty pills were starting to work. He did technically feel better.

  “Good. How did you sleep?” she asked.

  “Great. I can’t wait for school. It’s Taco Tuesday,” he said brightly.

  Then, he braced himself for the moment of truth. Christopher’s mother instinctively put her hand to his forehead. She felt his hair, still slightly damp from the water. Christopher thought he had blown it.

  Until she smiled.

  “I think your fever broke,” she said. “Let’s double-check.”

  She put the thermometer under his tongue. He looked down when the digital readout beeped.

  It was 98.6.

  “Sorry, kid,” she said. “I’m afraid you have to go to school.”

  It was a miracle.

  My mother wants…

  My mother wants…to invite the sheriff for Christmas dinner.

  My mother won’t…because of me.

  “Mom?” Christopher asked. “Where do people without families go for Christmas?”

  “Depends. Some visit friends. Others go to church. Why?”

  “Because I want people like Mr. Ambrose and the sheriff to have somewhere to go this year,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” she said. “You want to invite them over?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Now hurry up. You’re going to be late.”

  My mother is…

  My mother is…so happy right now.

  The school bus opened its doors.

  The minute Christopher stepped onto the bus, the voices began to pick up speed. He saw the students stare at him like a thing at the zoo. To them, he was just the boy who pissed his pants in front of the whole school.

  To him, they were something entirely different.

  The boy with the red hair…dresses in his mother’s clothes.

  The girl with braces…doesn’t eat as much as she should.

  The little girl with brown eyes…worries about her family in the Middle East.

  They are suffering. The whole world will be suffering soon, Christopher.

  You have to find the message from David Olson.

  Christopher passed the bus driver, Mr. Miller. He saw the tattoo on Mr. Miller’s arm. The tattoo from the marines. He could feel Mr. Miller bracing himself for the holidays. Every holiday he would think about the men he killed in a desert somewhere.

  Mr. Miller thinks…

  Mr. Miller thinks…he doesn’t deserve to live.

  “Mr. Miller?” Christopher said.

  “Sit down!” Mr. Miller barked.

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to thank you for keeping us safe on the way to school.”

  For a moment, Mr. Miller was silent. Christopher knew it was the nicest thing anyone had said to him in five years. Certainly the nicest thing any of these brats had ever said to him. Period. He would have thanked Christopher then and there, but he was afraid that if he spoke, he would burst into tears, and have no authority with these kids ever again. So, he said the only thing that he could think of.

  “It’s my job. So, stop distracting me and sit down,” he barked.

  Christopher simply nodded and sat down. The gesture helped Christopher. It calmed his mind long enough that he made it to school without thinking about every family in every house. When the bus stopped in front of school, Christopher smiled.

  “Have a good day, Mr. Miller,” he said.

  “You, too, kid,” the gruff man said.

  Mr. Miller won’t…

  Mr. Miller won’t…kill himself this Christmas.

  Christopher looked ahead at all of the children walking into the school with their thick coats and hats. There were hundreds of them. Hundreds of babies who were born to hundreds of parents. Every one of them the hero of their own life. All of those voices and secrets and thoughts. Christopher took a deep breath and put his head down. He tried to concentrate on David Olson, but the voices itched their way through his mind. He felt like he was standing in a batting cage while a machine gun shot baseballs at him. Most of the chatter was innocent. Rod Freeman was worried about his test. Beth Thomas wondered what was for lunch. But occasionally, there would be a violent thought. A memory. A daydream. Some kids wondered where Brady Collins was. Why Jenny Hertzog was absent. Where Special Ed and the M&M’s were. Christopher saw Ms. Lasko walking up the hall. She was scratching her arm. She looked very sick.

  Ms. Lasko didn’t…sleep last night.

  Ms. Lasko got…naked with the bartender because she can’t get drunk.

  “Ms. Lasko, are you okay?”

  “Sure, Christopher. Just feel a little under the weather is all,” she said, but her voice sounded like it was drowning in syrup. Too low and too slow.

  “Maybe you should go home,” Christopher said.

  “No. It’s worse there,” she said.

  Ms. Lasko patted the top of his head and moved on as the hallways became flooded (Floods! Floods!) with students. Father Tom said that God was angry, and He flooded the world. Christopher saw the kids all swimming upstream, their voices blending together into a white noise like ocean waves. He wondered if that’s how God created the sound of the oceans. He just took billions of voices and carried them out to sea. The energy moving through still water. The energy moving through otherwise dead flesh. All of these people connected.

  Like the mailbox people.

  Christopher fought the voices as best he could, but his brain couldn’t stop them anymore. So, he did the only thing left to him. He submitted. He let his mind go, and the voices took him like a surfer on a wave. Hundreds of voices carrying him out to sea. Moving him through the school hallways like the blood in their veins. In
science class, Mr. Henderson said that our bodies are 70 percent salt water. Like the oceans. We are all connected.

  Like the mailbox people.

  Christopher followed the voices, racing down the hallway to the library, moving past the lockers standing side by side like little coffins. The library was empty of students in the morning. There was only Mrs. Henderson. The moment Christopher saw her, he became concerned. Mrs. Henderson was standing on top of her desk, adjusting a white panel in the ceiling. Her skin was pale and shiny with a thin layer of sweat. Christopher knew she was terribly sick. Just like Ms. Lasko.

  Mrs. Henderson…waited in the kitchen all night.

  Mr. Henderson…didn’t come home until breakfast.

  “Are you okay, Mrs. Henderson?” he asked.

  For a moment, she did not speak. She just looked down at Christopher and scratched her arm. The skin was red and raw. Like it was missing a dozen layers. She got down off her desk. Woozy.

  “Yes, Christopher. I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” she said.

  Her voice sounded wrong. It was slow and distant. She was in a daze.

  “Mrs. Henderson, are you sure you’re okay? You look sick,” he said.

  Christopher reached out and touched her hand.

  In an instant she stopped scratching her arm. Mrs. Henderson looked down at his little face. For a moment, she forgot her husband didn’t love her anymore. She still had red hair. They got married at the fire hall. They helped each other through college. Back then, she couldn’t imagine all of the kids she would teach. Over the last fifty years, class after class moving through time like energy through ocean waves. She had helped thousands of kids become better people. Each of those kids took a little red out of her hair until it turned grey. They held those strands of hair like the strings of the Balloon Derby balloons every year. Mrs. Henderson just couldn’t stop thinking about how it all started with that first year. That first class. And that first student. She smiled when she thought of that little boy. Asking for another book. And another. And another. There was always hope with a sweet little boy like that.