by Ned Vizzini
Well, she’s not a filly.
I have a feeling filly means girlfriend. I look at Noelle. We’re trying to decide where to sit.
I only talked with her once.
She likes you, boy, and if you can’t tell that, you aren’t going to be able to tell a rifle from a cap gun in this war.
What war is that, again?
The one you’re fighting with your own head.
Right, how are we doing?
You’re making gains, soldier, can’t you see that?
Noelle and I sit with Humble and the Professor.
“I see you two have made each other’s acquaintance,” Humble says.
“Leave them alone,” the Professor says.
“Where were you?” Humble continues. “Were you in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G?”
“No.”
“Nothing’s happening,” Noelle says.
“We’re just sitting together,” I say.
‘"Craig and No-elle, sitting in a tree—’” He gets up and puts his hands on his hips, sashaying.
“Hold on, now, what’s going on here?” Joanie comes over. “Is there a problem, Mr. Koper?”
“No. What? What are you talking about?” He holds up his hands, sits down. “You mean me?”
Joanie scoffs and announces: “This is free-period arts recreational therapy, for all you latecomers!” Humble points at me and Noelle, making a little shame on you gesture. “That means you can draw whatever you feel like. It’s a great chance to explore your creativity and find out what you like to do for leisure! Leisure is very important!”
Joanie comes up behind me when she’s done announcing: “You’re new. Hi, my name is Joanie. I’m the recreation director.”
“Craig,” I shake her hand.
“You want pencil and paper, Craig?”
“No. I don’t have anything to do. I can’t draw.”
“Sure you can. It doesn’t have to be representative. You can do abstract. Do you want crayons?”
“No.” God, it’s so embarrassing. Being asked if you want crayons.
“How about paints?”
“I told you, I can’t draw.”
“Paints are for painting, not drawing.”
“Well, I can’t do that either.”
“What about markers?”
“No.”
“Everyone?” Joanie turns to the room. “Our new guest, Craig, has what we call an artistic block. He doesn’t have anything to draw!”
“That’s too bad, buddy!” Armelio yells from his table. “You want to play cards?”
“Armelio, no cards in here. Now, can anyone give Craig something he can draw?”
“Fish!” Bobby yells out. “Fish are easy.”
“Pills,” Johnny says.
“Johnny,” Joanie admonishes. “We do not draw pills.”
“Salad,” says Ebony.
“She wants you to draw it, but she sure as hell can’t eat it,” Humble guffaws.
“Mister Koper! That’s it. Please leave the room.”
“Ohh-hhhhhh,” everybody says.
“That’s right!” Ebony calls. She makes the umpire gesture. “You’re outta here!”
“Fine,” Humble stands up. “Whatever. Blame me. Blame the guy who has total respect for everybody else.” He gathers his things, which is nothing, and steps out of the activity lounge. “You’re all a bunch of yuppies!”
I watch him go.
“You can draw a cat!” the guy who’s afraid of gravity says. “I used to have one. It died.”
“Rolling pin,” the bearded man says. It’s the first words I’ve heard him say since I saw him in the dining room on my way in. He still rocks and he still paces the halls whenever he isn’t shuttled into a room.
“What was that, Robert?” Joanie asks. “That’s very good. What did you say?”
But he clams up. He won’t say it again. Rolling pin. I wonder what that means to him. If I had one thing to say, I don’t think it would be rolling pin. It would probably be sex. Or Shift.
“He can draw something from his childhood,” Noelle says next to me.
“Oh, there’s a good one. Noelle, you want to speak up?”
She sighs, then announces to the room: “Craig can draw something from his childhood.”
“That’s right,” Joanie nods. “Craig, do you like any of these suggestions?”
But I’m already gone. I’ve got the river started at the top of the page, looping down to meet with a second river. No, wait, you have to put in the roads first, because the bridges go over the water, remember? Highways first, then rivers, then streets. It’s all coming back to me. How long has it been since I did this? Since I was nine? How could I forget? I slash a highway across the center of the page and make it meet with another in a beautiful spaghetti interchange. One ramp goes off the junction through a park and ends in a circle, a nice hubbub of residential activity. The blocks start out from there. The map is forming. My own city.
“Oh, somebody got Craig’s mind unblocked!” Joanie announces from the other end of the room. I glance back. Ebony, who’s been sitting over there, goes through the arduous process of getting up with her cane and walks toward me. “I want to see.”
“Huh, thanks Ebony,” I say, turning back to the map.
She looks over my shoulder. “Oooh that’s pretty,” she says.
“What is it?” Armelio yells.
“Let’s not yell across the room,” Joanie says.
“That is extraordinary,” the Professor says next to me.
“I deserve half-credit,” says Noelle, sketching out a flower to my right. She glances at me through the sides of her eyes. “You know I do.”
“You do,” I tell her, taking a break to look at her. I go back to the map. It’s flowing out of me.
“Is that somebody’s brain?” Ebony asks.
I look up at her, rolling her mouth and smiling down. I look at the map. It’s not a brain, clearly; it’s a map; can’t she see the rivers and highways and interchanges? But I see how it could look like a brain, like if all roads were twisted neurons, pulling your emotions from one place to another, bringing the city to life. A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It’s the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding up at her. “Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s a brain.” And I stop my map in the middle—this was always a problem for me, finishing the damn things; I always ran out of energy before I got to the edge of the page—and draw a head around it. I put a nose and two paired indentations for lips and a neck running down. I draw the head so that right where the brain would be is this blob of city street map. I make a traffic circle the eye and bring down boulevards to lead to the mouth, and Ebony giggles above me, taps her cane.
“It’s so pretty!”
“It’s all right,” I say, looking down. I decide it’s done. I can do better. I put my initials in the bottom—CG, like “computer-generated"—and put the picture aside. I ask for more paper and start the next one.
It’s easy. It’s easy and pretty and I can do it. I can make these things forever. For the rest of arts and crafts, I make five.
I get so concentrated that I don’t even notice when Noelle leaves. I only find her note, sitting next to me, decorated with a flower, as I gather up my things from the room.
I’M TAKING A BREAK FROM YOU. CAN’T GET TOO ATTACHED. THE NEXT MEETING WILL BE TUESDAY, SAME TIME AND PLACE. DON’T BE WORRIED THAT IT’S SUCH A LONG WAIT. I THINK YOU’RE LOVELY.
I fold the note and put it in my pocket next to the other one. After arts and crafts is dinner, where Humble tells me he forgives me for getting him in trouble, and I thank him, and after dinner is cards with Armelio, who tells me that now that I’ve gotten a little experience under my belt, I might be ready for the big card tournament they’re having tomorrow night.
“Do you
play with real money?” I ask.
“Nope, buddy! We play with buttons!”
I hang outside the lounge during cigarette break—I basically just follow the group; wherever they go, I go—and talk with Bobby about my day. Then I go into my room with my map/brain art. My bed hasn’t been made during the day—they don’t pamper you in Six North—but the pillow has returned to its normal shape, no longer dented in by my sweaty head, and when I lie down it lets out air in the most slow, soothing hiss I’ve ever heard.
“You are feeling better?” Muqtada asks.
“Quite a bit,” I say. “You’ve really got to get out of the room more, Muqtada. There’s a whole world out there.”
“I pray every day that someday I will get better like you.”
“I’m not that much better, man.”
But I’m good enough to sleep. No shot necessary.
thirty-three
The next day is Monday and I should be at school.
I shouldn’t be eating with Humble and hearing about what his girlfriend used to do to him every time they passed a Burger King. I should be at school.
I shouldn’t be explaining to Ebony’s friend on the phone that what I drew was a map of a human brain and having her echo “He’s so good, Marlene, he’s so good.” I should be at school.
I shouldn’t be taking my Zoloft in line behind Bobby, who is dressed in my shirt for his interview. I should be at school.
I work up the courage to get to the phones at 11 A.M. and check the messages.
“Hey, Craig, it’s Aaron, listen, I’m really sorry, man. The truth is, I probably—well, I got in a big fight with Nia after you told me she was on pills and . . . I think I might have some of that depression stuff, too. Lately, I’ve been like, unable to get out of bed sometimes and I’m just… y’know, really sleepy and I lose my train of thought. So like, I probably called you the other night like that because I was projecting, that’s what Nia says, and I’m seriously interested in visiting you. Me and Nia are having problems.”
I call him back and leave a message for him. I tell him that if he feels depressed, he should go to his general physician first and get a referral to a psy-chopharmacologist and go through the process like I did. I tell him that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I tell him I’m glad he called but I don’t know whether he should visit because I’m really sorting my stuff out here and I think I’d like to keep in here and the outside world as separate as possible. And I ask him what’s going on between him and Nia, whether they made up yet.
“Hello, Craig, this is Mr. Reynolds again—”
I call him back and leave a message that I’m in the hospital for personal reasons and that he’ll have his labs when I’m good and ready to do them. I tell him that I’ll provide any documentation from doctors—including psychopharmacologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, recreation directors, and President Armelio—that I am being cared for right now in a facility where the stresses of doing labs are not allowed. And I tell him that if he wants to talk to me again, he can call the number here, and don’t be alarmed if someone answers “Joe’s Pub.”
“Hey, Craig, this is Jenna, I’m one of Nia’s friends, and like … okay, this is really embarrassing, but do you want to hang out anytime soon? I heard about all this stuff you went through, like you’re in the hospital or whatever, and my last boyfriend was really insensitive about that stuff, because I kind of go through that stuff too? And so I thought you’d probably understand me, and I always thought you were cute—we met each other a couple times—but I always thought that you were so shy that you wouldn’t be fun to hang out with; I didn’t realize you were like, depressed. And I think that’s really brave of you to admit it and I just think we should hang out.”
Well. I call Jenna back and leave her a message that I can hang out with her next week maybe.
That’s it. The other messages are from Ronny and Scruggs and they’re about pot and I ignore them. I put the phone down without slamming it on my finger. Muqtada is right in front of me.
“I follow your advice. Come out of room.”
“Hey, good morning! How are you?”
He shrugs. “Okay. What is to do?”
“There’s lots of stuff to do. Do you like to draw?”
“Eh.”
“Do you like to play cards?’
“Eh.”
“Do you like to . .. listen to music?”
“Yes.”
“Great! Okay—”
“Only Egypt music.”
“Huh.” I try to think of where I can get Egyptian music, or even what it’s called, when suddenly Solomon flops past in his sandals.
“Excuse me if you please I am trying to rest!” he yells at us. Muqtada takes one look at him and curls his face into a laugh, his glasses rising above his nose.
“What is the problem?” Solomon asks.
“Seventeen days!” Muqtada says. “Seventeen days the Jew will not talk to me! And now he does. I am honored.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to him,” Solomon points at me.
“Have you guys met?” I ask.
Muqtada and Solomon shake hands—Solomon’s pants fall down a little but he bows his legs to hold them up. Then he takes his hand back and stalks off. Muqtada turns to me: “This I think is enough for one day.” And he goes back into our room.
I shake my head.
The phone rings next to me. I call for Armelio. He scoots up, grabs the receiver, says “Joe’s Pub,” and hands the phone to me.
“Me?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
I take the phone. “I’m looking for Craig Gilner,” an authoritative voice says through the line.
“Ah, speaking. Who is this?”
“This is Mr. Alfred Janowitz, Craig. I’m your principal at Executive Pre-Professional High?”
“Holy crap!” I say, and I hang up.
The phone starts ringing again. I stand by it and ignore it, explaining to Armelio and everyone else who passes that it’s for me but that I can’t answer. They understand completely. It’s the principal. I was right. I’ve seen this guy before; he’s the one who greeted us on that first day when I was high with Aaron, and told us that only the best had been accepted and only the best would be rewarded. He’s the one who drops by classes and looks us over as we take tests and gives out chocolates as if that makes up for it. He’s the one who says “your school day shouldn’t end until five o’clock” and is always in the newspapers as the most no-nonsense principal around and now he’s on my ass because he knows I’m crazy and knows I haven’t been doing my homework. I never should have left that message for Mr. Reynolds. This is it. I’m being expelled. I’m out of school. I’m never going to go to high school again. I’m never going to go to college.
When the phone finally dies, I start pacing.
I was right all along. What was I thinking? You add up your little victories in here and think they count for something. You get lulled into thinking Six North is the real world. You make friends and have a pithy little conversation with a girl, and you think you’ve succeeded, Craig? You haven’t succeeded in the slightest. You haven’t won anything. You haven’t proven anything. You haven’t gotten better. You haven’t gotten a job. You aren’t making any money. You’re in here costing the state money, taking the same pills you took before. You’re wasting your parents’money and the taxpayers’money. You don’t have anything really wrong with you.
This was all an excuse, I think. I was doing fine. I had a 93 average and I was holding my head above water. I had good friends and a loving family. And because I needed to be the center of attention, because I needed something more, I ended up here, wallowing in myself, trying to convince everybody around me that I have some kind of. . . disease.
I don’t have any disease. I keep pacing. Depression isn’t a disease. It’s a pretext for being a prima donna. Everybody knows that. My friends know it; my principal knows it. The sweating has started again. I
can feel the Cycling roaring up in my brain. I haven’t done anything right. What have I done, made a bunch of little pictures? That doesn’t count as anything. I’m finished. My principal just called me and I hung up on him and didn’t call back. I’m finished. I’m expelled. I’m finished.
The man is back in my stomach and I rush to my bathroom, but something about me won’t let it go. I hunch over the toilet moaning and hacking, but it won’t come so I wash my mouth out and get into bed.
“What happened?” Muqtada asks. “You never sleep during the day.”
“I’m in big trouble,” I say, and I lie there, getting up only to munch through lunch, until Dr. Minerva comes by at three o’clock and pokes her head into my room.
“Craig? I’m here to talk.”
thirty-four
“I’m really glad to see you.” We’re back in the room that Nurse Monica checks me out in. Dr. Minerva seems very familiar with it.
“I’m glad to see you, too. I’m glad to see you well,” she says.
“Yeah, it’s really been a roller coaster, I have to say.”
“An emotional roller coaster.”
“Yes.”
“Where is that roller coaster right now, Craig?”
“Down. Way down.”
“What’s got you down?”
“I got a phone call from my school principal.”
“And what did he want?”
“I don’t know. I hung up.”
“What do you think he wanted, Craig?”
“To expel me.”
“And why would he want to do that?”
“Hello? Because I’m here? Because I’m not in school?”
“Craig, your principal can’t expel you for being in a psychiatric hospital.”
“Well, you know all my other problems.”
“What are those?”
“Hanging out with my friends all the time, getting depressed, not doing homework …”
“Uh-huh. Let’s hold off on that for a moment, Craig. I haven’t seen you since Friday. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to be here?”
