by Ned Vizzini
“The best seat’ll be over here, right by the speaker.”
“Yes,” he says, and sits down.
“I don’t like this,” Armelio looks up.
“What kind of music do you like, Armelio?” I ask.
“Techno.”
“Just.. . techno?”
“Yeah. Utz-utz-utz-utz. Like that.”
“Heh heh.” Muqtada laughs. “The Greek man is funny.”
“Of course I’m funny, buddy! I’m always funny! You just don’t leave your room. You want to play cards?”
Muqtada starts to leave; I stand over him and hold my hands out. “Wait one second, man. I know you can’t play cards for money, but Armelio doesn’t play for money.”
“This I know; I do not want to play.”
“Are you sure? He’s got no one else to play with.”
“That’s right. My friends are all watching this stupid movie. You want to play spades? I’ll crush you in spades.”
“Muqtada,” I say. He’s still looking up at me, hands on his armrests, ready to spring. “Remember when you saved me from that girl?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying to do the same thing for you now, to get you out of your room and save you. Please. Play with Armelio.”
He looks at me, then at the speakers.
“This I do for you, Craig. But only for you. And only because of music.”
“Great.” I pat his back. “Go easy on him, Armelio.”
“You know that’s not going to happen, buddy!”
I smile and walk down the hall, waving at them. As soon as I get to the corner, I run—I don’t have much time—but skid to a leisurely pace by Smitty and then, moving as slowly and calmly as I can, enter my room. Noelle picked up on what was happening: she’s already there, sitting on my bed, looking out the window.
“You’re very crafty,” she whispers. I shrug. “Come and sit. It’s a pretty view through your blinds.”
forty-nine
I sit down next to Noelle and it starts off right away, like it was destined to—though I don’t believe in destiny; I just believe in biology, and hotness, and wanting girls. There’s been so much hesitation in so many parts of my life that it’s shocking to not have any here, to just lean in and have this girl’s mouth open to mine, to be easing her down and touching her face and feeling the cuts there but understanding, not getting freaked out, just moving my hands down to her neck, which is clean and smooth, and her hitting my pillow and me next to her with my legs off the bed, still on the floor like I was sitting in class, like my lower half had no part in this. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
“You’re beautiful,” I stop and tell her.
“Shh, they’ll hear.”
She has her hand in my hair and that reminds me that my hands should be doing something—right now they’re just sort of touching her neck while I try and figure out what it is about her that’s so much more sexy than Nia. It’s her tongue, I think—it’s a whole different creature than Nia’s. Nia’s was small and flighty; Noelle’s is overwhelming—she slides it in and it almost fills me up. It’s like some deep dark part of her that I’ve gotten out, that no one else has access to. She presses it through my teeth and I keep my eyes open, although there’s nothing in the room but scattered moonlight to see her by. We press against each other as if we both had prizes at the back of our mouths and we could only get them out with the tips of our tongues.
It frickin’rocks.
I put my hands on her white top and she doesn’t stop me, not at all, and there they are, right through the soft fabric—one on each side, that is so cool— my palms envelop them and then rise from them and then envelop again. I’m not really sure what to do with them. They’re bigger than Nia’s; they fill up my hands. Should I squeeze them? I try that. I look up. She’s nodding. I squeeze them again, the whole things, both at once, and move my mouth down her chin to her neck, kissing the underside of it where an Adam’s apple would be, only this is a real girl.
She moves her hips against me. Not her hips, her crotch—I mean, that is a crotch, right? Girls have crotches? Or do they have like a prettier name for them? Wow, how far is this going to go? She presses it—whatever it is—against my thigh. My feet have levitated somehow and now I’m horizontal on the bed next to her, with my hands squeezing her and my shoes—my Rockport shoes—clanking against each other.
She says nothing. Everything is touching.
“Do you want me to?” I ask.
She nods. Or maybe shakes her head. I don’t know. But I take two fingers of my right hand and put them through the soft seam in her top. Underneath is a bra, I’m pretty sure—something made of mesh that wraps around her. I twiddle my finger against it, not sure if she can feel it. Can you feel things through a bra?
She makes noises like someone about to sneeze. When I squeeze her breasts, she makes more; when I twiddle the side of the bra, she doesn’t make any. So I put my fingers in all the way through her shirt and feel up the dome of the bra—the highest point on her. An inch and a half above sea level.
“Hold on.” Noelle lifts her butt off the bed and inserts her hands, flat, palms-down, below herself. Now she’s got no hands. She wasn’t doing anything with them anyway, but it’s weird.
“Keep going,” she says.
“Okay,” I slide my fingers, still outside her bra, around her nipple. I decide to try something. I get the nipple right between the knuckles on my index and middle finger, and I squeeze.
You can’t get much of a squeeze on through a bra, but the noises are immediate.
“Unhh.”
“Um?” I look up.
“Mmmmmmn.”
Oh, this is awesome.
“Shh,” I whisper. “Smitty will come.”
“How much time do we have?” she asks.
“I don’t know. A little while.”
“You’re going to call me, right? When you’re out? And we’re going to hang out?”
“I want to go out with you,” I say. “I really do.”
“That’s what I mean. We will.” She smiles. “Where will I tell people I met you?”
“In the psych hospital. Then they won’t ask any questions.”
She giggles—yup, a real giggle. Now we’ve sort of lost the sexual nature of things. Can I get it back just by squeezing? It’s worth a shot.
“Mmmmmm.”
All right, cool, only now there’s one more voice that wants me to do one more thing. It’s the same voice that got me hooking up with Nia; it’s the voice of the lower half of me, but it feels truer now, and it knows it can’t get away with everything it wants to do, but it insists that we try something.
We need to test out that claim of Aaron’s.
My hand moves down Noelle’s body, down the seam of the frilly white shirt to the skirt, which has a slightly different grain to the fabric. I move down to its end, by her knees, shocked that I don’t get any resistance or hesitancy or punches in the face. I roll the skirt up—I’m really in danger of putting a hole through this bed at this point—and there I find underwear. Not underwear. Panties. Real panties!
Holy crap, I’m actually going to figure this out!
“Wow!”
Noelle gasps.
“It is like the inside of a cheek!”
“What?”
Noelle pushes me off her. The distended seam of the shirt is repositioned; the panties are jerked back in place; the skirt is down and the girl is up at the head of the bed, staring at me.
“What did you say about my cheeks?!”
“No, no, shhhhh,” I tell her. “Not your cheeks, um . . . your . .. your other cheeks.”
“My butt cheeks?” She pulls her hair over her real cheeks, holding it there, eyes wide and angry in the moonlight.
“No,” I whisper. Then sigh. “Let me explain. Do you want me to explain?”
“Yes!”
“All right, but this is like privileged boy information. I’m only telling you because we’re going to be hanging
out when we get out of here.”
“Maybe we’re not even. What did you say about my cheeks?”
“No, listen, it doesn’t have anything to do with your cheeks and your cuts, all right?”
“What does it have to do with?”
I tell her.
When I’m done, there’s a terrible pregnant pause, a pause that could hold all the hatred and yelling and screaming in the world as well as the possibility of me getting discovered as having another girl in my room (how did I get two? Am I a “player"?) and having to stay here for another week, never talking to Noelle again, going back to the Cycling, to being unable to eat, to move, to wake up, ending up like Muqtada. Single moments contain the potential for complete failure, always. But they also contain potential for a pretty girl to say—
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
—and to put her own finger in her mouth to test it out.
I hug her.
“What?” she asks, mouth clogged. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t feel the same at all.”
I pull back. “You’re so cool.” I look at her. “How did you get so cool?”
“Please,” she says. “We should go. The movie’s almost over.”
I hug her one more time and pull her down to the bed. And in my mind, I rise up from the bed and look down on us, and look down at everybody else in this hospital who might have the good fortune of holding a pretty girl right now, and then at the entire Brooklyn block, and then the neighborhood, and then Brooklyn, and then New York City, and then the whole Tri-State Area, and then this little corner of America—with laser eyes I can see into every house—and then the whole country and the hemisphere and now the whole stupid world, everyone in every bed, couch, futon, chair, hammock, love seat, and tent, everyone kissing or touching each other… and I know that I’m the happiest of all of them.
fifty
Mom and Dad are dressed up to bring me out; I’m wearing what I wore all the time in here—some khaki pants and my tie-dyed T-shirt and my dressy shoes, my Rockports, the ones that people complimented me on every so often, that made me feel like a professional patient. Mom never brought a change of clothes.
They’re here early because Dad has to work; he wanted to see me before he left. Mom is staying home today to see that I’m all right. Then, tomorrow, Friday, I’m back at school, but with the official notice that I can pop into the nurse’s office at any time if I feel depressed. I don’t really have to go to class for the next week; that’s school policy. I’m encouraged to go but they don’t want to overwhelm me. It’s a good deal.
It’s 7:45 A.M. I’ve taken my last vitals—120/80— and I’m standing at the crux of the hall by the nurses’office, looking at the double doors I came in five days ago. It seems like five days; it doesn’t seem too long or too short; it seems like I spent the time here that I really spent. People are always talking about real-time—real-time stock quotes, real-time information, real-time news—but in here I think I had real-time real time.
Armelio shakes my hand a final time.
“Good luck, buddy.”
Humble says I should stay in a little longer.
“You’re gonna lose it on the outside, man.”
Bobby mumbles at me. It’s too early for him.
The Professor tells me to keep doing my art.
Smitty says he heard from Neil that I was thinking of volunteering and he hopes to see me sometime.
Jimmy ignores me completely.
Ebony says to be careful of liars and cheats and to always respect children.
Noelle pops out of her room at 7:50, just as breakfast is rolling in and my parents are stepping out of the nurses’office where they were signing papers.
“I’m out in the afternoon,” she says. She’s wear ing sweatpants and a T-shirt. “Call me tonight?”
“Sure.” I touch her number in my pocket, next to her two notes that I saved.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling like I can handle it.”
“Me too.”
“You’re a really cool girl,” I say.
“You’re kind of a dork, but with potential,” she says.
“That’s all I’m trying for.”
“Craig?” Mom asks.
“Oh, hey guys, ah, this is Noelle. We got to be friends in here.”
“I saw you last night,” Dad says, shaking her hand.
“A pleasure to meet you,” says Mom. Neither of them takes a second look at the cuts on her face. My parents have some class.
“Good to meet you too,” she says.
“Are you still in high school?” Dad asks.
“Delfin,” she says.
“A lot of pressure, huh,” says Mom.
“Yeah.”
“I think they might have to change the whole system. Look, two people like you, smart young people, sent in here because of pressure.”
“Mom.”
“I’m serious. I’m going to write my congressper-son about it.”
“Mom.”
“I’ll go,” Noelle says. “See you Craig.” And she dips her leg up behind her as she turns away and flicks a wave at me—that counts as a kiss, I think. If my parents weren’t here that would be a kiss.
“Are you ready?” Mom asks.
“Yeah. Bye, everybody!”
“Wait!” From down the hall, Muqtada moves forward as fast as he allows himself to, which isn’t very fast, sort of like a speed walk, and hands me the record.
“Thank you, Craig. This boy, your son,” he turns to my parents, “he has helped me.”
“Thank you,” Mom and Dad say.
I hug Muqtada and take in his smell one last time. “Good luck, man.”
“As you go through life, you think of me and hope that I am better.”
“I will.”
We separate and Muqtada migrates toward the dining room and the smell of food.
I look at my parents. “Let’s go.”
It’s incredibly simple. The nurses open the doors for us and there I am outside, looking at the “Shhhhhhhh! Healing in Progress” poster I saw when I came in. The bank of elevators stand sentry in front of us.
“Guys,” I tell them. “Can you go home yourselves, and I’ll walk after you in like one minute?”
“Why? Are you okay?”
“I just want to walk by myself a little.”
“Think things over?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not feeling . . . bad?”
“No. I just want to walk home myself.”
“We’ll take your stuff.” They grab the bag of old clothes and art I had with me, plus the record; wave, and take the next elevator down.
I wait for thirty seconds before hitting the button myself.
I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron’s, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it’s not an option now. It’s just… a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It’s not a very likely possibility.
I get in the elevator. It’s big and shiny. There’s a lot to look at in the real world.
I don’t know what I’m going to do today, still. I’m probably going to go home, sort through my art, and then call everybody I know and tell them that I’m going to be switching schools and from now on they should reach me by phone instead of e-mail. But I also might go to the park—how come I never go to the park?—and throw a ball around with whatever kids are out there. Or a Frisbee. It’s a real day outside. There’s actual weather out there.
I walk through the lobby. The smells! Coffee and muffins and flowers and sce
nted candles from the gift shop. Why does Argenon Hospital have a gift shop? I guess everybody has to have a gift shop.
I step out onto the sidewalk.
I’m a free man. Well, I’m a minor, but one quarter of your life is spent as a minor; you might as well make the best of it. I’m a free minor.
I breathe. It’s a spring day. The air is like a sheet billowing down on me in slow motion.
I haven’t cured anything, but something seismic is happening in me. I feel my body wrapped up and slapped on top of my spine. I feel the heart that beat early in the morning on Saturday and told me I didn’t want to die. I feel the lungs that have been doing their work quietly inside the hospital. I feel the hands that can make art and touch girls—think of all the took you have. I feel the feet that can let me run anywhere I want, into to the park and out of it and down to my bike to go all over Brooklyn and Manhattan too, once I convince my mom. I feel my stomach and liver and all that mushy stuff that’s in there handling food, happy to be back in use. But most of all I feel my brain, up there taking in blood and looking out on the world and noticing humor and light and smells and dogs and every other thing in the world—everything in my life is all in my brain, really, so it would be natural that when my brain was screwed up, everything in my life would be.
I feel my brain on top of my spine and I feel it shift a little bit to the left.
That’s it. It happens in my brain once the rest of my body has moved. I don’t know where my brain went. It got knocked off-kilter somewhere. It got caught up in some crap it couldn’t deal with. But now it’s back—connected to my spine and ready to take charge.
Jeez, why was I trying to kill myself?
It’s a huge thing, this Shift, just as big as I imagined. My brain doesn’t want to think anymore; all of a sudden it wants to do.
Run. Eat. Drink. Eat more. Don’t throw up. Instead, take a piss. Then take a crap. Wipe your butt. Make a phone call. Open a door. Ride your bike. Ride in a car. Ride in a subway. Talk. Talk to people. Read. Read maps. Make maps. Make art. Talk about your art. Sell your art. Take a test. Get into a school. Celebrate. Have a party. Write a thank-you note to someone. Hug your mom. Kiss your dad. Kiss your little sister. Make out with Noelle. Make out with her more. Touch her. Hold her hand. Take her out somewhere. Meet her friends. Run down a street with her. Take her on a picnic. Eat with her. See a movie with her. See a movie with Aaron. Heck, see a movie with Nia, once you’re cool with her. Get cool with more people. Drink coffee in little coffee-drinking places. Tell people your story. Volunteer. Go back to Six North. Walk in as a volunteer and say hi to everyone who waited on you as a patient. Help people. Help people like Bobby. Get people books and music that they want when they’re in there. Help people like Muqtada. Show them how to draw. Draw more. Try drawing a landscape. Try drawing a person. Try drawing a naked person. Try drawing Noelle naked. Travel. Fly. Swim. Meet. Love. Dance. Win. Smile. Laugh. Hold. Walk. Skip. Okay, it’s gay, whatever, skip.
