by Ned Vizzini
“Aaron and I broke up,” she says.
“No.” I open my eyes wide.
“Yes, Craig.” She wipes her face. “After that night when he called here? And you told him I was on Prozac?”
“What? Are you saying that it’s my fault?”
“I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault!” She chops her arms against her thighs and takes a deep breath.
The Professor peers out of her room.
“Who are you?” Nia turns.
“I’m Amanda,” she says. “I’m Craig’s friend.”
“Well, we’re trying to have a conversation; I’m really sorry.” Nia wipes her hair.
“It’s okay. But you shouldn’t yell. Solomon will come out.”
“Who’s Solomon?” Nia turns to me. “Is he dangerous?”
“Nobody here is dangerous,” I say, and as I say it I put my hand over Nia’s, on her thigh. I’m not sure why I do it—to reassure her? I guess it’s just an instinct, a reaction. Subconsciously I suppose I’m thinking that it’s a really hot thigh and that I would love to have my hand there without her hand serving as a buffer. I haven’t really gotten the chance to touch any girl’s thigh, and Nia’s beige ones seem just about as alluring as thighs get. I even think it’s a sexy word: thigh.
“Craig, hello?”
“Sorry, I was spacing out.”
She looks down at my hand and gives a little smirk. She doesn’t move it away. “You’re funny. I was asking you if you like it here.”
“It’s not bad. It’s better than school.”
“I believe that.” Now her hand—her other hand—is on top of my hand on top of her thigh. I think of the dancing sandwich I was in before in the activity lounge. I feel how warm she is and remember how I noticed that at the party, eons ago. “I’ve been thinking about going to a place like this.”
“What?” I pull my body away but keep my hand under hers. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking of, you know, checking myself in, spending some time here, or somewhere like it, re-centering, like you.”
“Nia.” I shake my head. “You can’t just come in here because you want to.”
“Isn’t that what you did?”
“No!”
“What did you do, then?” She tilts her head.
“I … I had like a medical emergency,” I explain. “I called up the Suicide Hotline and they sent me here.”
Nia leans back. “You called the Suicide Hotline?” She holds my hand up, clutches it. “Oh, Craig!”
I look at my crotch. I’m springing up. I can’t help it. She’s so close. This face is so close to mine and it’s the same face I’ve jerked off to so many times. I’ve conditioned myself to want this face. I want her. I feel her on me and I want her right now in her little Russian army outfit. I want to see what she looks like with it off. I want to see what she looks like with it half off.
“I didn’t realize . . .” she continues. “I knew you wanted to kill yourself; I never knew you wanted to kill yourself. I never would have told Aaron that you called me from that weird number if I’d known it was so serious.”
“Well, what do you think people come here for?” My hand twitches around hers.
“To get better?” she asks.
“Yeah, exactly. But you have to be really bad before they make you get better here.”
Nia swishes her head and her hair slides around her dark eyes. “I thought that you got bad because of me. And I thought I could make you better.”
She’s so cute. The way she holds her face, it’s like she always knows the best angles.We hold each other’s eyes. I see myself in hers. I look expectant, ready, eager, stupid, willing to do anything.
I don’t like how I look. Humble wouldn’t like it either; it doesn’t have any strength or will. But I don’t have any strength or will when I’m with her. I don’t have any choice. We’re going to do whatever she wants.
“What about Aaron?” I ask.
“I told you.” She drops almost to a whisper. “I broke up with him.”
“You broke up with him?” I want it clarified.
“It was mutual. Is that important?”
“Permanently broke up?”
“Looks like it.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little soon for you to be coming in here and, like, touching me?”
She shakes her head and purses her lower lip.
“I’ve been thinking about you since we talked on the phone Friday night. And now I know you so much better. You’ve told me all this stuff about you and you’re really … I don’t know … you’re mature. You’re not like all these other people with their stupid little problems. You’re like, really screwed up.” She giggles. “In the good way. The way that gives experience.”
“Huh.” I’m not sure what to say. No, wait, I know what to say: Go away, leave, I don’t need you; I finished with you on the phone before; I met a girl here who’s cooler and smarter; but when you’ve got a really gorgeous girl in front of you and she’s biting her lip and talking low and smiling—and you’re hard—what are you going to do?
“Huh … uh … well…” I’m back to stuttering. Maybe it was Nia that made me stutter. I’m sweating too.
“Do you want to show me your room?” she asks.
That’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea just as much as it’s a bad idea to skip meals or stay awake in bed in the morning or stop taking your Zoloft, but there’s no hope for me now. I cede control to my lower half, which is actually pointing toward my room, and lead Nia to it.
forty
Muqtada isn’t in the room. I can’t believe it—it’s like the first time since I’ve been here. I look at his rumpled sheets and try to make out a human form, but there isn’t enough bulk to account for him. I peek in the bathroom—nothing.
“You have a roommate?” Nia asks.
“Yeah, uh, he’s usually here …”
“Ewwww …” She waves in front of her nose. “Something smells.”
“The roommate’s Egyptian; I don’t think he wears deodorant.”
“Me either.”
I make like I’m cleaning up my stuff near my bed, but really I’m just taking my brain maps and flipping them over.
“You don’t get a TV?”
“No.”
“Do you read in here?”
“I like to read out in the hall with other people. My sister gave me a Star magazine, but the nurses took it away to read themselves.”
She walks toward me, looking up idly glib and innocent. “Do you get lonely here?”
“Actually, no,” I tell her. I move hair that is stuck to my forehead. I’m really sweating now. “It’s very social here. I made friends.”
“Who?”
“That lady you were talking to outside.”
“Her? She’s so rude. She totally horned in on our conversation.”
“She thinks someone sprayed insecticide in her apartment, Nia. She gets paranoid.”
“Really? That’s crazy. That’s really crazy.”
“I dunno. She might be right.” Nia is a few feet away from me now. Her shoulders are tilted up at me. I could pick her up and throw her on my unmade bed just like Aaron has done for the past two years. These words we’re saying are just a front. “She’s a college professor. There might be something to it.”
“Craig . . .” She’s right in front of me now. “Do you remember when you called me"—she touches my forehead—"oh, you’re sweating!”
“Yeah, I do that. When I get nervous.”
“Are you okay? You’re really sweating.”
“I’m all right.” I wipe it away.
“Seriously, Craig, that is gross.” She scowls, then gets back to where she was. “When you called me, you remember how you asked what I would do if you came over and grabbed me and kissed me?”
“Yeah.” My stomach is tight. The man is down there pulling on the rope. I thought I had him beat. I’d been eating so well.
&
nbsp; “I’d let you,” she says. “You know I would.”
Now she’s got her glossy, sparkly lips turned up at me, and I feel this amazing dichotomy going on. It’s almost like before I came in here, when I was in my mom’s bed, when my brain wanted to die but my heart wanted to live. Now, quite literally, everything from my stomach up wants to run to the bathroom, to throw up, to talk to Armelio or Bobby or Smitty, to kick Nia out, to get ready for my second date with Noelle. But the bottom half has been denied too long. It’s been ready for this for two years, and it knows what it wants. It says that the real cause of all my problems is that I haven’t been satisfying it.
And these aren’t any lips, either, that I’m presented with to rectify my lack of play. These are lips that I’ve had access to for years in my mind. I’ve done terrible, horrible things to these lips in the privacy of my bathroom. So screw it. You’ve gotta try sometime.
I lean down and grab Nia and push her back on Muqtada’s bed.
I didn’t mean to; I meant to turn her around and put her on my bed, but she happened to be in front of me and I couldn’t switch directions in mid-grab. I cover her with my thin body and kiss her upper lip first, encase it in my lips, then do the lower one, then try to do them both at once, only that doesn’t really work, it’s like trying to pull the lips off her head, and she laughs, which gives me her beautiful smile to kiss, the hard white teeth—I don’t mind— and then I use my tongue the way I’ve seen in movies and put my hands on her soldier outfit and feel what I don’t have and have wanted for years pressing back at me, taut and yielding at the same time. Two of them.
“Mmmmmm,” Nia mmmmmms, putting her small hands on the back of my head. She feels my hair; I shake against her. I can’t believe how good it feels. This is how good it feels? Why the hell did I ever get depressed?
I remember what Aaron said about the inside of a girl’s cheek feeling like another place and I lick the insides of hers. She shivers; she likes it; it’s like Aaron said: she likes sex; her tongue becomes a jittery dart flicking in and out of my mouth. I feel the ring—a little metal bubble, something to add texture, foreign and dirty. Forget it. Let’s do it. I reach up to the buttons on her outfit. My eyes are closed, because if I open them I think I might get a little too excited and ruin my pants, and Mom didn’t bring me any pants.
Darn, the button I’m grabbing is in the middle. Up one. No. That’s not it. One more.
“God.” she pulls away. “I always wanted to hook up in a hospital.”
“What?” I look up at her chin. I’m still on top of her on Muqtada’s bed, my legs sticking way off, almost hitting my bed.
“This was totally on my checklist.” She looks down. “Me and Aaron never did anything like this.”
That’s a body blow to my whole body: the lower half that wanted this and the upper half that warned me about it. I can’t think what to say: Please don’t compare me to Aaron? Please don’t mention Aaron? What checklist? So I say: “Uh . . . um . . .”
“Sex! “ I hear from the doorway.
It’s Muqtada.
“Sex! Sex in my bed! Children make sex in my bed!” He runs over to us; I jump off Nia and hold my hands up, thinking he’s going to hit me, but he grabs me and holds me close to his square smelly body and carries me like a girder to the corner of the room.
“Um, Muqtada—”
“Craig, who is that?” Nia yells.
“I live here! You terrible girl corrupt my friend!” Muqtada puts me down, turns and stands with his arms crossed at Nia, guarding me. “You leave!” He points at the open door.
“There’s no door?!” Nia peers at it. On some kind of incredible girl-time, she’s gotten up, smoothed out her outfit, and collected her purse from near Muqtada’s pillow. She already has her cell phone out; it’s blinking at her side. She’s gesturing at me with it.
“There’s a door, yeah,” I say, standing on tiptoes to talk over Muqtada’s shoulder. “We just didn’t close it—”
“Don’t talk to her!” Muqtada turns and shakes his finger at me. “She try and make sex in my bed!”
“It wasn’t just me, okay?” Nia bends her face in at him. He turns back. “In case you didn’t notice, Craig was on top of me. And we weren’t going to have sex.”
“Woman is temptress. My wife leave me. I know.”
“Craig, I’m outta here.”
“Uh, okay!” I answer into Muqtada’s back. “Ah—” I try and think how to sum it up. “I like making out with you . . . but I don’t really like you as a person. . . .”
“Yeah, same here,” says Nia.
“What is going on in here?” It’s Smitty. He shadows the door. “Muqtada, what are you doing? And excuse me, young lady?”
“I was just leaving,” Nia says.
“You’re the visitor for Craig, right?”
“Not anymore.”
“What happened in here?”
“Nothing,” says Muqtada. “Everything fine.” He steps aside, turns, and gives me what I guess he thinks is a wink through his glasses.
“Yeah, absolutely.” I catch on. “Muqtada just came in and was surprised to see two people in the room.”
“Well, he should be,” says Smitty, “because you’re not supposed to have visitors in your room. Don’t let it happen again, okay?”
“No problem.”
“Yeah, because you won’t be seeing me again,” says Nia, and Smitty gives her a disbelieving look as she walks away from him, stomping down the hall, slamming her shoes with each step. He shrugs at us.
“All right,” he says to her back. “Sign out on your way out, miss.”
“Craig, what kind of girl is going to put up with this … crap?” Nia turns around, spreads her arms, and gestures to the hall as if she owns it while she backs away.
“Be quiet, Doomba!” yells President Armelio from somewhere. She turns back around and doesn’t give any more looks back.
“Huh,” Smitty says. “Lovely girl. Everything cool, guys?”
We nod like kindergartners. “Yes.”
“Don’t let anything like that happen again, Craig.”
“I won’t.”
“Otherwise you’ll be here a long time.” Smitty walks away from the door; Muqtada waits a few moments and then turns to me.
“Craig, I am sorry I only have very important beliefs about sex.”
“No, I understand. You did a good thing.”
“You are not in trouble, yes?”
“No, I’m fine. You handled it perfectly, man.” I put out my hand to get a slap from him, but he misinterprets that as a handshake attempt, so I take the initiative and turn it into a hug, a big smelly one. His glasses smack against me.
“I am out trying to get Egyptian music in hospital,” he says. “You give me idea. But they have none. Now I rest.” And he climbs back in bed, rearranges his sheet, curls into a fetal position, and stares through me.
I glance at the door. Right there, with her bright green eyes wide open, is Noelle.
I rush out to talk to her, but she flies down to her room and closes her door. I run up to it and knock, but there’s no answer, and when Smitty passes me, shooting a look, I have to stop knocking.
I check the clock in the hall and sigh. It’s five. Two hours until our second date.
forty-one
“I only have a couple of questions for you,” Noelle says, walking up fast at seven o’clock as I sit in the chair that I’ve come to call my conference chair, since I meet with so many people in it. I wonder what else has happened in this chair—people have probably peed on it, licked it, drummed their heads against it, and writhed around in it spouting gibberish. That gives me comfort. It feels like a chair with some history.
I didn’t think Noelle was going to show up, so I almost didn’t come—but then I decided I didn’t want any regrets. I’m done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed. When I get out in the world, from now on, if I start to regret something, I’m going to
remind myself that whatever I could have done, it won’t change the fact that I was in a psychiatric hospital. This, right here, is the biggest regret I could ever have. And it’s not so bad.
Noelle seems to be looking at me for comment. But I’m amazed at how she looks. New clothes: a pair of tight blue jeans cut down dangerously low and a sliver of white underwear sticking out above them. The underwear looks like it has pink stars on it—do girls’underwear really have pink stars?—and I almost stare, before my eyes are drawn by the soft curve of her stomach to her T-shirt, which is wrapped against her with some kind of mystical female force, reading I HATE BOYS.
How come girls are coming to me dressed all hot all of a sudden?
Above the shirt is her face, bordered by blond hair pulled back, and highlighted by her cuts.
“Uh . . . Why’d you wear that T-shirt?” I ask. “Is that a message to me?”
“No. I hate boys, not you. And this is one reason why: they’re so arrogant. Why is that?” She stands with her hands on her hips.
“Well …” I think. “Do you want like, a real, honest answer?” My brain is working better than it did before. It has bagels and soup and sugar and chicken in it. It’s firing almost like it used to.
“No, Craig, I want a big, dumb, fake answer.” Noelle rolls her eyes. I think her breasts roll in synch with them. Girls’breasts are so amazing.
“Wait, you didn’t ask a question!” I smirk. “One point for you.”
“We’re not playing the game, Craig. We were going to, but I’m too mad.”
“Okay, well, darn …” I start. “What were we talking about?”
“Why guys are so arrogant.”
“Right. Well, you know, we’re born into the world seeing that we’re just a little bit . . . We tend to have things a little bit easier than girls. And we tend to assume therefore that the world was built for us, and that we’re, you know, the culmination of everything that came before us. And then we get told that having a little bit of this attitude is called balls, and that balls are good, and we kind of take it from there.”
“Wow, you are honest,” she says, sitting down. “An honest asshole.” Yes! She sat down! “Who the hell was that girl?”
