Get Well Soon

by Julie Halpern

  We flipped over the cards. Mine was a king. His was a three. “You win,” he smiled. “Good game.”

  “Free Time is over. Back to your rooms,” Bettina called.

  I was stunned. “Juicy.” Like J. Lo or Beyoncé or, I don’t know, who else is juicy? Britney Spears before the babies? Most famous people I can think of are just rods with big boobs. I mean, when I think of juicy, I think of sexy. Me, sexy? Maybe it’s just because Matt O. has been here six months and is slightly delusional. And he is a teenage boy, and the only other girls here are taken, possessed, or pregnant. But he didn’t have to say “juicy.” He could have just gone through the usual “You’re not fat” routine that my friends always give me (no offense, Tracy). I think I can live with juicy.

  BEDTIME

  Morgan is quite an entertaining plastic baby. She loves to play all sorts of games. Following is a short list:

  Morgan Overboard: This game involves Sandy and me standing on our respective beds and tossing Morgan back and forth as fast as we can. If we drop her, she falls into the ocean and is eaten by sharks.

  Hide-and-Seek: This is where one of us hides Morgan, and the other has to find her. I wonder what the staff here would say if they knew we were stuffing the “baby” under our mattresses.

  Smush in Morgan’s plastic face: Self-explanatory.

  We get so bored in our room. Sometimes we just stare through the “protective” mesh screen over our windows and devise escape plans. The pink and blue cars are still sitting in the parking lot. Sandy has dubbed them our getaway cars, and whenever we bust out of this joint we will escape in all their pastel glory.

  Day 11

  Monday, Day 11

  MORNING

  TMI, I’m sure, but I’m starting to get rather hairy (only on my legs and armpits, of course. It’s not like I’m growing a beard). We are not allowed razors (for the obvious reasons). It’s kind of weird, but I don’t really think my legs look bad with hair on them. I think it’s a myth that the hair comes back thick and prickly once you start shaving—my hair is soft and supple (Eeew! “Supple” is such a gross word, but I felt compelled to use it). My armpit hair is another story. Not that it’s all hard and crunchy, but I don’t like it quite as much. I think it makes me sweat more. And if I’m not actually sweating more, what I am sweating is just sitting in the small tufts of hair and is making me feel all moist and gross. I want to blot my armpit with tissues all of the time. If I ever get to talk to my parents, the first thing I’m going to ask them is to send me an electric razor. We’re allowed to use those, with proper supervision. Hopefully I’ll get one soon. In the meantime, send dry thoughts my way.

  I’m supposed to meet with Doc A-Hole today. I wonder if he has any news from home. Does he talk to my parents? What does he tell them? He’s probably sharing with them the marvels of modern antidepressants. But who can even tell if the antidepressants are working when I’m in such a completely different environment than the one at home? Why can’t I talk to my parents? What would I say to them if I did?

  I have to admit (only on paper—we wouldn’t want to give the adults any ideas that they’re doing something right) that things aren’t nearly as bad as they were when I got here. I haven’t cried or had a panic attack in days. I actually go to school (albeit fake school where I don’t do any work). I have friends, and, dare I say, I have a love interest? I’ve lost a bunch of weight. It’s like the total opposite of my real life. I know Lake Shit is a long way off from a fairy tale, but there’s just a teeny-weeny parallel to Cinderella. The teeniest of weenies.

  POST-BREAKFAST

  I still haven’t been eating much. Stuffing my face doesn’t seem as much fun as it used to. Maybe it’s because I’m so satisfied with the way my life is going right now (yeah, right), or maybe it’s because I don’t really have the time or the access to food. Or maybe it’s because the less I eat, the less I have to use the no-lock bathroom. Whatever the reason, the last time I was weighed the scale said I’d lost almost ten pounds!

  And now for the real news: It could possibly, maybe, be official that Justin likes me. Here is what I am attempting to decipher: We were in line for breakfast in the caf; I was behind Matt O., who was behind Justin. As the line progressed, Justin somehow ended up switching positions with Matt O. so that he was directly in front of me. At first I was just looking at the back of his, well, back, and, Trace—it was gorgeous. He’s like over a foot taller than me, and all I wanted to do was nestle into the back of his soft green T-shirt. I leaned in just a little, to see if I could smell him. Since we had just showered (ooh! Not together!), he had a soapy smell, mixed with his deodorant, which I imagined to be called something like “Cool Blue.” At the moment of sniffage, he turned around to talk to me (and almost caught me taking a whiff of his manly goodness). I had to clear my throat so it seemed like maybe I was just dealing with morning allergies.

  “What are you gonna have for breakfast?” he asked.

  “Some Cap’n Crunch. What about you?”

  “Oh, I always start my day with The Cap’n. Every day since I was, like, six, I ate Cap’n Crunch. It’s delicious and nutritious and gives me just the right amount of energy to get me going in the morning.” He looked down and shifted his mouth to one side, as if he were embarrassed for opening up his sugary secret thoughts to me. So I said, “Cereal’s cool that way. You get all those vitamins and sugar at the same time. Plus, the wholesome joy of milk.” He smiled and looked into my eyes for maybe two seconds before he turned around and pulled out two boxes of Cap’n Crunch from the cafeteria buffet, one for him and one for me.

  So what do you think? I mean, if someone else told me that story and said a guy was acting that way towards them, I’d be all, “He totally likes you!” But I just can’t tell because it’s me. I don’t want this to turn into another Erik Johnson debacle. That was hideous, remember, Trace? In 7th grade that girl Doreen told me that Erik liked me, even though I’d never even talked to him. So forever I had the biggest crush on him and thought that every time I looked at him in the halls it was so mutual, our obvious connection. And then one day you and I called him, and I made him guess who I was by my voice. He kept on guessing different popular girls’ names, and I had to keep saying, “No, no, no.” When I finally told him who he was talking to, he had no idea who I was! But he was still all like, “Come over.” So we went over to his house, and it was so awkward. Remember how he had an open box of matzo sitting on the counter, and we were trying to figure out if he was Jewish or not because he was so blond? And then the next day in school and for the rest of forever he didn’t talk to me, until it was the first day of freshman year and I finally had a class with him because he was too stupid to be in any of my classes in junior high but in high school they didn’t level our English classes. One day the teacher asked Erik to take attendance. He went down the list of names, marking off people he already knew. When he got to my name, he called it out and waited because he didn’t know who I was! It took me months to get over him. I think what finally did it was when I caught him staring at the clock, and when I asked him what he was doing he said he was practicing for the staring contests he had with his cat.

  My point is that what if Justin is just another Erik Johnson, and I go over to his mental hospital room where he stores his matzo, and the next day he forgets I exist? I just can’t be too careful. I don’t understand how some people manage to date all of the time and know they look good and show cleavage and stomach and thong like that’s all perfectly normal. And even if I ever lose enough weight to want to show my stomach to the public, I could never feel normal anyway because I’m in a mental hospital.

  So do you think he likes me?

  AFTER INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

  Oh crap. Doc A-Hole told me that my parents are scheduled to call me tonight during Snack Time.

  “They are pleased to hear that you are doing so well,” A-Hole said.

  “You told them I was doing well? Why did you say that?”
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br />   “Well, you’ve moved up Levels, the teachers say you’re doing fine in school, you haven’t gotten any Restrictions, and according to your charts, you’re losing weight.”

  That disgusted me. Do all of the doctors monitor all of the patients’ weights, or is it just the fatasses? If some skinny guy was losing weight, they would be all over it. I lose weight, and they want to celebrate. I mean, so do I, but they don’t need to be so happy about it. It sounds like the reason I’m doing so well is that I’m not doing anything wrong. What else is new?

  I’m so nervous about talking to my parents. I wonder if it’ll be both of them, or if only my mom gets on the phone. My dad’s usually asleep by 8:00. I know I have to ask them for the electric razor, but then what? Why do I have to wait all day? My stomach is starting to hurt.

  LATER

  This place sucks. During Community, I was totally planning on standing up and saying how I appreciated Justin for, I don’t know, talking and eating with me or something, and when they called “Appreciation” I even put my fingers out for the first time. Justin put his fingers out, too, but I’ll never know if he was planning on commending me for my juicy body because before any of us kids were allowed to Appreciate, Eugene made an announcement. “Appreciations have been getting repetitive lately, so we’ve decided that there will be no more Appreciations about eating meals or chatting with people. You guys are wasting our time trying to get points just because you talked to someone. This time is for real Appreciations only.”

  Everyone who had their fingers out put them down, except for Matt O. When Eugene called on him, Matt O. stood up, smirked, and said, “Eugene, I appreciate what a fat bastard you are.”

  Everyone laughed. In the real world, I can’t imagine anyone saying something like that and me thinking it sounded cool, but in here it seemed like the most excellent, rebellious thing ever. “Matt,” he said. “Go to the Quiet Room.” I swear I could see steam coming out of Huge Euge’s ears.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” Matt whined. His shiny eyes looked worried.

  Eugene mumbled into his walkie-talkie, and soon two of the T-shirt-tucking men from the Harold incident appeared. Eugene pointed at Matt O. , and the men walked towards him.

  “What the fuck? I didn’t do anything!” Matt jumped up and began to run, bowling over one of the two men. The other followed him out. We could hear Matt O. yelling and feet pounding, and then a door slammed. Community was completely quiet.

  LUNCH

  Lunch was anxiety-filled with the impending parental phone convo. Matt O. was locked in the Quiet Room, so Justin and I had our first official Anna and Justin Solo Lunch Chat. We sat at the end of the table, opposite each other. He ate with his left hand and, as usual, kept his right hand on his lap. I had to know. “Why do you eat with your left hand but write with your right?” I cringed when I realized how stalker-esque I sounded.

  Choking on a chip, he asked, “You noticed that?”

  “Well, yeah. I’ve always been interested in the right-handed, left-handed thing, and I thought it was cool that you were left-handed. Which I thought you were, since you eat with your left hand, but then I wasn’t sure because I saw you writing with your right hand.” Oh my god. I was so not helping my stalker case.

  He smiled a little. “You’re very observant.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s not much to look at here at Lake Shit, you know?” Was I hitting on him?

  “Um, thanks, I think.” He looked down and slowly lifted his right hand to the table and set it down close to my tray. “This is why I eat with my left hand.” It was my first good look at his right hand. His pointer and middle fingers were pudgy and misshapen. The skin was glossy, and there were several pink scar markings. “I don’t want to gross anyone out while they’re eating,” he said, “so I keep my hand under the table.”

  “It’s not that gross,” I said, although it was a little. The shiny skin looked almost waxy. “What happened?” I asked, looking up at him.

  He didn’t look back at me, but brought his hand back to his lap. “I’ll tell you some other time. Like I said, I don’t want to gross anyone out.”

  I nibbled on a pretzel until he decided he wanted to talk to me again. “So how come you have so many Ramones T-shirts?” he asked.

  I gushed, “They’re my favorite band. They make me feel like it’s possible, you know, that maybe I could be a musician someday because their songs are simple but amazing.”

  Justin surprised me. “I used to have this bootleg concert video, and I couldn’t believe how crazy they were on stage. They look kind of old and mellow in pictures.”

  “You have a bootleg video of The Ramones?” I couldn’t believe it. “What about the almighty Doors?”

  “I used to have it. That was a long time ago,” he said, chewing on his sandwich and swishing some OJ around in his mouth.

  It’s not like we’re eighty years old. How long ago could he have been into The Ramones that he could switch over so dramatically to The Doors? And what happened to his hand? I wish I was some teen super-sleuth so I could solve the mystery.

  STUDY TIME

  Sandy and I aren’t really in the mood to do homework. It’s not like anyone back at school really cares if I do it anyway. Supposedly, I do my work and it’ll get sent to my teachers back at real school, but nobody is giving me any actual work to do. Yeah, there’s The Crucible, but my English teacher didn’t say I have to actually do much once I read it (except gag at how lame it is). Mrs. Downy, my art teacher at school, sent me a box of colored pencils and paper, as if the plastic walls I’m surrounded by are going to inspire me to create a masterpiece. She assigned us a collage project when I was at school, where we had to create a collage from magazine clippings and then draw the collage with colored pencils. Mine’s so bad. I don’t know why I decided to make it based on the life and death of Aaron Spelling. At the time we got the assignment, I thought it was pretty funny and easy, since there are pictures from his TV shows everywhere. But now that I’m stuck with these overlapping images of Heather Locklear’s fried hair, I don’t know how I’m going to draw all of the faces. I get stuck on the noses. Every person I’ve drawn so far looks like a jack-o’-lantern.

  I wonder what Mrs. Downy thinks about sending colored pencils to a student in a mental hospital. She knows me relatively well, as I’ve taken classes with her since freshman year, but I’ve never really been one of those stars of art class. I guess I don’t wear enough black or have enough piercings or smoke enough clove cigarettes. I’d rather hang out in the darkroom for photography anyway. At least there it’s more technical, which I think I’m better at. No noses to mess up in photos. Mrs. Downy didn’t include a note with the pencils. Maybe she doesn’t know where I am. What if no one else does? What if something happens to you, Tracy, and something happens to my family, like all of you are abducted by the future car people, and then no one knows where I am! Lucky for me, the future cars haven’t moved yet.

  LATER

  Matt O. is still in the Quiet Room. It’s not all that quiet, though, because the room is right next to me and he keeps pounding on the wall and yelling, “Hey, Anna! Hey, Sandy! Wut up?” Then he goes through his “proclamation” over and over again. “When I die, I want them to bury me facedown and ass up so that the whole world can kiss my ass!” I don’t quite get what he means, but it sounds funny as shit. Where did he even get that? I don’t know how funny it would be in the real world, but right now I can’t stop laughing. I hope I don’t get in trouble.

  Sandy hasn’t gotten any homework from her teachers yet, so we just spend most of our Study Time doing one of the following three things:

  Staring out the window and planning our escape. The pastel cars are always taunting me with their futuristic, yet retro, styling. I still can’t tell what the building across the street is. If it is a hotel, then it’s not a very nice one judging by the rusty old vans that are always pulling up at what appears to be the check-in.

  Talkin
g to the “spy cameras.” Sandy and I are convinced that the light fixtures in our room have cameras in them where all of the pervy workers watch us get undressed. Sometimes we do faux stripteases for them, but I feel gross and just assume no one would want to see me stripping anyway.

  Decorating. We’ve got quite a little art gallery going. They won’t give us any tape, and you can be damned sure we can’t get any tacks, but if we stick a piece of paper against the wall and dig our nail into the corners, it usually stays pretty well. Sandy’s got a lot of photos up of her boyfriend, but all I can manage in the way of dudes is ripping out movie star photos from the Friday section of the newspaper. I wish they’d stop putting pictures of Ben Affleck in it ’cause there’s no way I’m putting his nasty ass on my wall. The best I could do was a picture of Orlando Bloom dressed as Legolas, even though he is way hotter with his normal brown hair and eyes. I also got a picture of The Donnas rocking out. I wish I had the confidence to play the bass in public and have my hair go all crazy like that.

  The room still looks kind of sad, with pictures of her boyfriend she can’t even see or talk to and my newspaper pictures with raggy edges because I can’t use scissors to cut them out. We decided to use my colored pencils and paper to draw portraits of each other. I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of chins Sandy drew on me. When I had to do a self-portrait in art class, I looked like a droopy dog. One could even call her drawings flattering, not fattering. In the last hour we’ve managed to do ten total (I did six in a more abstract, slashy style, and she did four, neatly and precisely). I’ve never really done any kind of art outside of school, except for writing. Does writing count? I write all the time, but I don’t know if anyone would consider it art. Tracy, maybe you can gather all of the letters I write you (when you finally get them, of course), and when I’m ninety-seven years old and withering away in a loony bin you can publish them. We’ll split the profit, 50/50. Ah, you can have it all actually. I can’t do anything with money here anyway.