Inside Out

by Terry Trueman

  “Oops,” I say.

  Frosty says, “It’s okay. Just try and be quiet, all right?”

  I nod.

  Frosty kind of half smiles at me, but he can’t get his mouth to make a smile any better than the old lady could a few seconds ago. I guess he’s scared too.

  There’s a lot more noise outside the coffee shop. Policemen yell things to each other and their sirens blare and people holler. There’s the regular traffic sounds that I always notice when I’m waiting here for my mom, but now there’s police radio sounds, running footsteps, and some beep-beep-beep sounds, like when a truck is backing up.

  “Wing-wong—wing-wong—wong-gong.”

  I wonder if the feeling I’m feeling right now is fear? It’s hard for me to know what feeling is “appropriate” with what’s going on. I’m not appropriate sometimes. Sometimes I’m “inappropriate.”

  “Wong-wong—sing-song—Wasteoid—wong-wong.”

  Suddenly I hear this clicking sound. Click, click, click. At first I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but when I look around, I see that it’s Stormy’s gun. Stormy is pulling the hammer on his gun, the thing you cock it with, back with his thumb, then easing it back down, over and over again. Every time he pulls it back, then eases it forward, it goes click.

  I look at the gun for a while, then up at Stormy’s face.

  He’s staring right at me.

  I’ve been on the other end of a gun before. I didn’t like it much then—I still don’t.

  3

  Clinical note by Dr. Cal Curtis on Zachary M. Wahhsted: First psychotic episode, two years ago:

  Zachary is a 14-year-old Caucasian male apprehended while walking barefoot by the Spokane River on a freezing winter night. Police reports state that Zachary appeared “lost and confused” and told them that he was “afraid of zombies.” Zachary further stated that the mental health professional who initially interviewed him was “a zombie in a red sweater.”

  Initial diagnosis: Schizophrenia, adolescent onset, paranoid type.

  Thinking about it, I realize Frosty and Stormy are probably nicknames, kind of like Wasteoid. I wish I were called Frosty or Stormy. Especially Stormy—that’d be so cool.

  But most kids call me Wasteoid. A lot of kids see me as a wasteoid, you know, worthless. Heck, I sometimes feel that way about myself, too, especially when I listen to Dirtbag and Rat. They sure aren’t fans of mine! But when I stay on my medicine, things are all right. When I take my medicine on time, I’m okay.

  I wasn’t always mixed up like this, though. I can still remember things from when I was younger. My life was great back then. I had a lot of friends. I liked music. I got good grades without even trying. My biggest problem in those days was getting my hair to look right in the mornings, that and having a pimple once in a while. It was nice....

  Suddenly there’s a loud, roaring sound just outside the coffee shop. It’s a huge noise. Frosty, who is standing right next to the doorway that leads out into the front of the coffee shop, peeks around real quick, then turns back toward us.

  “What is it?” Stormy asks.

  “A fucking tank!” Frosty says, his face red and his hands shaking.

  “A what?!” Stormy asks, sounding confused.

  Frosty yells, “A goddamned TANK, like if we were terrorists and they needed army shit to take us out!”

  Stormy hurries over and peeks out the door, then jumps back. He looks scared, but he says, “It’s not really a tank. It doesn’t have a big cannon thing on top.”

  “Fuck!” Frosty snaps. “Okay, it’s NOT a tank, but it sure as shit isn’t an RV. It’s an armor-plated S.W.A.T. knock-down-the-goddamned-walls machine. They’ll kill us all if they drive that thing in here! Oh, man, damn it, if the cops don’t kill us, they’re gonna throw us in jail forever, for sure. We’ll never get out of this now, not with all the shit they have out there—and we can’t go to jail—we can’t!”

  When Frosty says the thing about all of us getting killed, one of the little old ladies sitting here on the floor makes this big snorting sound. I look over at her, and I see she’s started to cry. The little girl starts to cry again too, and now the little girl’s mom is crying. It’s turning into a cryathon back here on the floor of the coffee shop.

  Frosty and Stormy’s eyes dart back and forth, looking at everybody. I think they’re real nervous. I hear the cops, and their big machine roaring; Frosty and Stormy must hear this too. Even I can tell that everything is pretty tense. Tense isn’t good—bad things happen when things are too tense.

  I try to think of something to say to make things better. “Don’t worry,” I say to Frosty and Stormy, pointing at the crybabies. “They’re just scared, I bet.”

  “You think?” Stormy says. He’s probably being sarcastic. I know people do that, like before, pretend they’re asking a question when they’re not really asking. But sarcasm doesn’t work on me ’cause I just don’t get it. I’ve tried really hard to listen for what people call a “sarcastic tone of voice,” but I can hardly ever hear it. And I don’t know how to be sarcastic myself. This time I figure I should probably answer just in case he means it.

  So I say, “Yeah, I think so. I think they’re scared, and they’re probably sad about having to sit on the floor and not have their coffee. They maybe wish they could have a maple bar, too, since they’re just sittin’ here having guns pointed at ’em and stuff. Do you wish you had a maple bar?”

  Stormy shakes his head. “Are you trying to be funny?”

  I answer, “No, I’m not, honest. Sorry, am I being inappropriate?”

  Suddenly the fat suit yells at Stormy, “You can’t keep us here!”

  Stormy lifts his little silver gun up so that’s it’s pointed right at the fat suit’s chest, and then Stormy says to him, “You can try to leave anytime you want.”

  The fat suit freezes. Neither he nor Stormy moves a muscle. The only sound in the world, other than all the cop noises outside, is the hum of a big freezer or heater or whatever it is that’s behind the closed closet door in the back of this little room. Stormy and the fat suit just stare at each other.

  Frosty finally steps in and says to the fat suit, “Listen, mister, we don’t want to be here any more than you do, but we’re all stuck now and that’s the way it is.” He pauses, then says, “Just cool your jets, big boy. If you tried to leave, they’d just run you over with their tank anyway.”

  The fat suit looks at their guns. His face, which was bright red a few seconds ago, turns pale. He says, “Okay. Sorry.”

  Everybody’s quiet.

  “Zach, you’re a wong-gong.”

  Why doesn’t this stuff ever make sense to me?

  “’Cause you’re a gong—wong is a gong, gong is a wong.”

  I don’t know what that means either.

  “Yes, you do, yes, you do: Wong is a gong, gong is a wong!”

  I hate to admit it, but I guess I do know what a “wong-gong” is, that part is kind of true. I just don’t like it.

  “YOU NEED TO LET THOSE PEOPLE COME OUT RIGHT NOW.”

  I wait for wong-gong or gong-wong.

  But Frosty moves quickly to the door of the back room and peers out. Frosty yells back, “WE DON’T WANNA HURT ANYBODY. BACK OFF AND GET YOUR TANK OUT OF HERE!”

  Wow! Frosty’s talking back to the voice; he hears it too.

  But after a few seconds I realize that the loud voice is one of the cops yelling at us from outside.

  Now the cop yells again, “LET SOME OF THE HOSTAGES GO, AS A SIGN OF GOOD FAITH, AND MAYBE WE’LL GET RID OF THE RESCUE VEHICLE.”

  Frosty yells back, “THERE AREN’T ANY HOSTAGES. THESE PEOPLE, THEY AREN’T HOSTAGES, AND I’M NOT TALKING TO YOUR ASS UNTIL YOU LOSE THAT FUCKING TANK!”

  The cop yells back, “OKAY, CALM DOWN—I’LL TALK TO MY PEOPLE OUT HERE. YOU JUST STAY CALM AND DON’T HURT ANYBODY.”

  “Wing-wong—hostage-gong—wing-wong—wong hostage-dong.”

  Stormy moves ov
er and stands real close to Frosty, talking in a whisper but loud enough so that I hear. “What’re we gonna do?”

  Frosty nods toward the old ladies. “Maybe we should send them out—buy some time until we can figure something out.”

  Stormy says, “You sure?”

  Frosty thinks for a second, then says, “No, I guess not. The cops don’t know anything about us, but they will if these ladies go out and tell ’em. It’s best if they don’t know everything that’s happening in here.”

  One of the old ladies whines, “We won’t tell them anything. Please just let us go.”

  Frosty says to her, “You’ll all be fine in a little while, but we gotta get out of this first.”

  The cop suddenly yells again, “OKAY, WE’RE MOVING THE VEHICLE. WE’RE GOING TO GIVE YOU SOME TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT. YOU THINK ABOUT LETTING SOME OF THOSE FOLKS OUT!”

  Suddenly I hear the roaring sound of the cops’ tank, or whatever it is. Frosty hurries over to the door and peeks around. “Adios,” he says as the engine sound grows fainter and farther away.

  I say to Stormy, “If we could just get to the maple bars, I bet we’d all feel a lot better.”

  Stormy shakes his head and says to me, “Are you sure you’re not retarded?”

  4

  Clearwater State Hospital at Greenville, Dr. Cal Curtis, clinical note based on observation of Zach’s first morning:

  When Zach woke up today, the first thing he appeared to notice was a sparrow on the brick ledge outside his window. The medication we gave Zach last night perhaps helps him to realize that this sparrow is just a bird, not a “zombie.” Still, Zach’s expression remains one of confusion and fear.

  The cops seem kind of quiet now. I guess the police really are giving Frosty some time to think about things. They say that in movies a lot; I guess they do it in real life, too.

  We are all just sitting here. Nobody says a word. It reminds me of the first time I was in the hospital. Everybody just sat around there, too. Dr. Curt said we were all quiet because we didn’t have any “trust” yet. Maybe everybody’s quiet here because we don’t have any trust either. Maybe sitting on the floor, hungry for maple bars while a couple guys wave guns all over the place, makes trust kind of hard.

  Okay, maybe if I start, like in group therapy, everybody will start to trust each other—it worked in the hospital.

  So I tell Stormy, “Like I told you, I’m not retarded. I just have a brain that works different than other people’s brains.”

  “Right, who cares?” Stormy says, and looks away.

  Frosty asks, “Is that why you take medicine?”

  I nod.

  Stormy is ignoring me, but Frosty is listening, so maybe the trust is working, at least with him. Still, he looks confused. His forehead is all wrinkled, and his eyes look like the eyes of a kid I once saw at a spelling contest who was stuck.

  Frosty finally says, “Your parents screwed you up, huh?”

  I tell him, “No, my parents, how they raised me and stuff, didn’t make me the way I am. You don’t get like me by being abused or told you’re stupid or having your nose rubbed in your sheets if you pee your bed.”

  This happened to a depressed guy I met in the hospital. When he was a little kid, his dad actually rubbed his nose on his sheet when the kid wet, like the kid was a dog or something. The kid said it took him weeks to stop smelling the pee smell after his dad did that, but that he still couldn’t stop peeing his bed.

  I tell Frosty, “You don’t get like me from anything that happens when you’re growing up. You just get it if it’s in your genes.”

  Stormy laughs and says, “It’s in your jeans, all right.”

  Frosty shakes his head and says, “Bummer.”

  I notice, again, the gun in Frosty’s hand.

  Suddenly I start to wonder what it feels like to get shot. I know it sounds stupid that I haven’t thought of this before, but lots of times it takes me a while to catch up with stuff.

  I wonder if Frosty and Stormy are going to shoot me. Like in that movie Pulp Fiction. The bad guys shoot lots people in that movie. I’m definitely NOT going to ask them about Pulp Fiction or about shooting us. I don’t want to give them any bad ideas.

  I don’t even want to think about getting shot, and so I try to be real quiet.

  While I’m being quiet, everybody else is, too—so much for building trust.

  After whispering to Stormy, Frosty says, “Okay, everybody, we’ve got an announcement.”

  All of us look at Frosty, but before he can say anything else, I hear words flying out of my mouth....

  “Frosty,” I ask, “did you ever see that movie Pulp Fiction?”

  5

  Transcript of videotaped recording of Zach’s first meeting with Dr. Curtis at Clearwater State Hospital at Greenville:

  Dr. Curtis: “You know you’re here at Clearwater State Hospital, right?”

  Zach nods.

  Dr. Curtis (smiling): “This is a safe place. Our main job here is to make sure you’re safe, okay?”

  “Yeah, I saw Pulp Fiction.” Frosty says.

  I ask, “Are you guys gonna shoot us, like they did in that movie?”

  Stormy laughs, but it’s a mean laugh, and he says; “Just you, pal.”

  Frosty gives Stormy a shove and quickly says to me, “No, he’s just messing with you. We don’t wanna shoot anybody if we can help it. But like I was saying before, we’ve got an announcement, so listen up.”

  Frosty pauses for a second until we’re all looking at him. Even though I usually can’t figure out “social cues,” I’m guessing, by looking at everybody’s faces, that I should stay quiet again.

  Frosty says, “We’re trying to figure out some way to get out of this mess. We can’t think of any way yet. We don’t want to hurt any of you, but we’re NOT gonna go to jail and right now you’re the only thing keeping us from that. So we’re all gonna have to just sit tight for a while until we figure out how we can work a deal.”

  The skinny suit, who hasn’t said a single word until now, suddenly says, “It’s not fair.” His voice is real whiny.

  Frosty looks at him and says, “No shit, Sherlock, but that’s the way it is.”

  The old lady with the purple-pink hair sitting closest to me, who smells so nice, speaks up. “You’re going to have to face the music sometime, you know. That’s the way it is too!” She sounds real strict and mean. Her voice is old too; it sounds like a squeaky door.

  But she smells so nice. I close my eyes and I breathe in her scent. If I don’t look at her, at all her wrinkles and stuff, once she stops talking and I just smell her, I imagine that she’s a beautiful girl and that …

  “Wong-gong, wong-gong, happy long long dong.”

  “Shut up,” I say.

  The old lady looks at me now. She looks pissed.

  I say to her, “I wasn’t talking to you, lady.” I don’t like her much, even if she does smell nice.

  Frosty lifts his hand, the one without a gun, up to his mouth, but I can tell he’s grinning. Maybe he doesn’t like pissed-off old ladies either.

  I hear a real loud crackle sound. It’s coming from the cops outside again. A second later there’s a voice, and it’s got that real scratchy sound of coming through a broken stereo speaker. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I hear “hostage situation,” “ten-four,” “affirmative.” It’s just like a cops movie. Cops and robbers.

  “Robber-snobber … wong-gong … long-long.”

  I’m hearing that a lot more now, and that’s not good. I wonder when I’m going to get my medicine.

  Frosty and Stormy are looking at the door, listening to all the noise coming from out front. Across the room I notice the guy who works here at the coffee shop sneaking toward one of the shelves near where he sits. I look where he’s moving and I see what he’s doing. On the bottom shelf, under some white tablecloths, is a big knife. I watch the guy slowly reach up toward the handle....

  “Get
your hand off that!” Stormy yells.

  The store guy freezes but looks mad, too. He just stares at Stormy.

  Then Stormy says, “I mean it, man. Get your hand away from that knife.”

  He shoves his gun right up against the guy’s head.

  Frosty goes over to them and points his gun at the store guy. Frosty says, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  With Frosty’s gun pointed at the coffee-shop guy, Stormy takes his gun away from the guy’s head.

  The coffee-shop guy’s face is bright red and his lips quiver. He moves his hand off the knife but spits out, “Fuck you.”

  BLAM!

  The sound in this little room is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard!

  That blam goes blam-blam-blam-blam like an echo through my skull, and then I hear a real high-pitched ringing. The old ladies lift their hands to cover their ears, the fat suit grabs his chest like his heart’s gonna explode, the skinny suit begins to shake.

  I think, right away, about Pulp Fiction! Who’s been shot?

  Stormy almost drops his gun; he stares at it like it’s some weird alien thing.

  “Jesus, Joey!” Frosty yells at Stormy.

  I think, Who’s Joey?

  Stormy yells back to Frosty, “I didn’t mean it. It just went off.”

  “Just went off?” Frosty says. “Are you crazy?!”

  He looks around at all of us. “Is everybody okay?”

  The little girl has wet her pants. Actually her dress. At first I wonder if her mom will rub her nose in the pee, but her mother hugs her close, saying, “It’s all right, Katy, you’re all right.”

  “Damn!” Frosty says.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Stormy says again. His voice sounds shaky like he might start crying. He holds the gun down at his side, and his shoulders are droopy.

  Frosty says to him, “It’s okay, man. Nobody’s hurt.” He looks around at all of us and asks again, “Nobody’s hurt, right?”

  Everybody says no except for the mom and the little girl, who don’t say anything.