Not As Crazy As I Seem

by George Harrar

  Dad doesn't talk to me very much. I think he wanted a baseball-basketball-football-playing kid, since that's the type he was, growing up. After I got to be about eight, he stopped asking if I wanted to go out in the yard and have a catch. I never saw the point of catch. I never saw the point of sports, either. I told him that once, and he just shrugged and walked away.

  Mom reaches for the pitcher of water and fills her mug. Dad says we should just hook up a hose to her. That's pretty funny—for him—but the thing is he says it about twice a day, so nobody laughs anymore.

  "Therapy takes time, Frank. The doctor and Devon were establishing a relationship of trust with each other."

  "Their relationship cost us two thousand dollars—that's outrageous."

  Mom keeps eating her little mouthfuls. Dad taps his fingers on the table. It's the only nervous habit I've ever seen in him. They aren't looking at each other. It seems to me an odd way of arguing.

  What I'd like is for Mom to throw a roll at him and Dad to toss a spoonful of potatoes at her, and then they'd splash each other with their water. That would be an interesting argument. I wouldn't even mind cleaning up the mess.

  "How would you know therapy is outrageous? You've never tried it."

  "Why would I try it? I don't need to pay somebody two thousand dollars and get nothing to show for it."

  I agree with Dad—I have nothing to show for twenty sessions with Dr. Castelli except that I'm now an expert at Connect Four. I even went to the store looking for Connect Five, but they said the game doesn't exist. It's strange nobody has invented that yet. Maybe I'll do it.

  I estimate that I agree with my father ten percent of the time and with my mother twenty-five percent. I think that's a pretty high total for a kid agreeing with his parents, but I don't know for sure.

  Mom takes a bite of roll. "I'm just saying let's give it another try. A new therapist, a new school, a new town—let's give them all a try."

  Dad nods. "Of course we're giving them a try. That's why we moved, isn't it?"

  "Frank!"

  What does he mean? I thought we came to Belford so Dad could expand his funeral business and Mom could find more people who want to get divorced. They said we moved closer to the city for greater opportunities, and I thought they meant their own. "You mean we moved because of me?"

  Mom eats some of her potatoes. "We moved for everyone's sake, Devon."

  I stick my fork into my peas and come up with three. They're watching me again. My hand is starting to sweat. They keep staring. I'll show them. I close my eyes and eat the three stupid peas.

  CHAPTER 3

  Later, in my room, I log onto the Net in order to have something to do besides think about myself. Dr. Castelli had five months and six days to figure out exactly why I am like I am and couldn't do it. That makes me wonder, could I be some new psychological phenomenon? I know I'm strange compared to normal kids, but could I be strange even within the whole world of strange people? That makes me feel really odd.

  I call up google.com on the screen and search under "teenager," which I am, and "obsessive," which is the word Castelli used to describe how I kept my Connect Four chips in perfect piles of four before playing them. Two hundred and sixteen Web sites come up in .34 seconds. I like that google tells you how fast their search takes, but really, I wouldn't mind waiting a whole second. It's not like I have anything else to do in the two thirds of a second google saved me.

  I click in and out of "personality disorder" and "depression" and "teen mental health" until I see a site saying, "What Is Generalized Anxiety?" Since Dr. Wasserman used that term at our first session today, I click on it and read: "Generalized anxiety is characterized by shakiness, muscle aches, soreness, restlessness, fatigue, and irritability. The sufferer is on edge and easily startled." That doesn't sound like me at all. I don't shake or ache that much. I'm not sore or irritable or easily startled. How could a shrink be so wrong?

  I scroll down, clicking on every link, and come to "SocioPathways," by a kid named NOWAYNOTME. I like his name, so I keep reading:

  "Controlling myself is not nearly as satisfying as controlling others."

  I don't want to control others, but I do like controlling things, which is just as hard.

  "I find humor in life by looking for people to laugh at."

  I don't see the point of laughing at other people. Kids usually laugh at me, and they seem to have fun doing it, but I'm not into that.

  "I like my personality flaws, because without them I'd have no personality at all."

  NOWAYNOTME makes me wonder what my personality would be if I didn't have my "tendencies," as Mom puts it. If I weren't Devon the Anxious, Devon the Obsessive, Devon the Clean, what kind of Devon would I be? There wouldn't be much Devon left.

  At least I'm not a sociopath, from what NOWAY says. Still, I click on "Chat" and register as Psychobabble, the user ID I always use. Then I enter the Sociopathic Chat Room.

  "hi, just surfed in..."

  JWGjr—"Welcome, Psychobabble, what brings you here?"

  "i'm trying 2 figure out what i am."

  JWGjr—"A noble effort. Perhaps figure out what you aren't and see what's left."

  "i don't have that long i have 2 go 2 bed soon."

  JWGjr—"Okay then try getting in touch with your inner sociopath."

  "i'm not sure i have an inner 1 of those."

  JWGjr—"Everybody does."

  "how would i get in touch with mine?"

  JWGjr—"Think terrible thoughts. Imagine the worst thing you would do to someone if you could and not get caught."

  "is that all?"

  JWGjr—"No, this is important—you can't feel guilty about your thoughts. Get rid of guilt and there you will find your inner sociopath." "thnx JWGjr out."

  I log off feeling pretty good about the Sociopathic Chat Room. It's not often on the Net you find someone as friendly and helpful as JWGjr on the first posting. I decide to follow his advice. I close my eyes and think of dismemberment—and not just arms and legs, either. I think of squeezing someone's eyes until they pop and sticking sharp objects down his throat. I try imagining doing these terrible things to people, but each time an actual face passes through my mind, I feel guilty and ashamed. I wouldn't make a very good sociopath, and I'm glad. The world already has too many of them.

  CHAPTER 4

  I get nervous on first days—first anythings, in fact. There's always too much to figure out. Beginning school in January means I'm the only new kid. Everybody will be watching me.

  Right now I'm watching them. I'm leaning on one of the huge columns outside of The Baker Academy pretending to be interested in the jagged outline of downtown Boston in the distance. I'm actually counting the kids going in the school. I don't know why I am—it's just something for my mind to do. But then as I count five and six and seven, it seems right that I should be the eighth kid going in, a multiple of four. Before I can reach the door a girl comes running up the steps and butts in front of me. So I go back to leaning and counting ... nine, ten, eleven. My chance comes up again, but this time two kids get there first.

  This is getting weird. It's never mattered before what number I was going in a door. I should just go in. I can do it. All the other kids are. But it seems to me that I can use all the luck in the world today, and that means using my lucky number. The 7:55 bell rings. Fourteen kids have gone in since I've started counting. I need one more. A tall girl comes up the steps—the tallest girl I've ever seen. I pretend I'm fixing something in my backpack so she won't think I'm staring, and she goes by me and inside. I follow her to the door. I pull out the tail of my T-shirt and stick my hand inside it to grab the handle. I yank open the door like that and then feel somebody behind me. I turn and see an older kid looking at my hand in my shirt holding the handle. He must think I'm crazy.

  "I have a cut on my finger and didn't want to get blood all over the handle."

  "Whatever." He shrugs and squeezes past me into the school. There's n
o one else coming. I have to go in, the seventeenth kid. This is not a good start.

  In the rear of tenth-grade English, I'm sitting straight, my elbows on my desk and my hands folded, which is my best position for blocking out distracting thoughts. The teacher, Ms. Hite, is talking so fast about "The Raven" that there isn't time for me to think about anything else. I like that. Suddenly she slaps shut her poetry book. "All right, class, in the remaining thirty minutes I want you to write an essay: Why does the raven repeat, 'Nevermore'? Any questions?"

  I have a question—am I supposed to do this assignment? She doesn't see my hand. I know this poem because it was my grandfather's favorite, and I read it to him probably fifty times. I could fake a pretty good answer. Still, I don't want to write the paper if I'm not supposed to.

  "You may begin."

  So I begin. I open the maroon and white The Baker Academy notebook that Mom bought for me and write, "Nevermore—What the Raven Means."

  I scan the poem in my textbook." ...its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore." That means the man in the poem doesn't even understand the raven, so how are we supposed to? I start writing:

  In the poem "The Raven," by the famous writer Edgar Allan Poe, the main character asks a question of the raven six times, and six times the bird says, "Nevermore."

  The man wants to know if he'll be reunited with Lenore in Heaven—"Nevermore."

  He wants to forget Lenore because thinking about her is driving him mad—"Nevermore."

  He tells the raven to leave ("Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!")—"Nevermore."

  I think the raven is like the part of a person's mind that keeps saying everything's going to be bad. No matter what the man asks, the raven says no. He will always suffer thinking of Lenore. He will never get her out of his mind.

  The raven says "nevermore" because it is a word that means something won't ever happen, and it's hopeless to hope. Also, "nevermore" rhymes with Lenore, which is important. If the raven had said "nope" instead of "nevermore," nobody would think this poem was very good.

  "Time's up." Ms. Hite sweeps around the room collecting the papers. I hand her mine. She looks surprised. "Oh, Devon, you didn't have to do this assignment." Then she gives me back my paper and laughs like I've done something funny.

  EnglishAlgebraBiologyLunch!

  I've made it through my first morning of classes at The Baker Academy. It's one of the best private schools around Boston—that's what Dad says. Nobody calls it Baker or even Baker Academy. It's always The Baker Academy, or just The Academy, as if there aren't any others.

  I felt panicky only twice so far today after coming in the front door. Once was in advanced biology, where there are these giant posters of different life forms hanging on the walls. The amphibians poster is crooked. The right corner is an inch higher than the left, maybe more. Crooked things didn't used to bother me that much, but I couldn't stop staring at that poster this morning. I tried looking at primates and reptiles, which were straight, but my eyes kept going back to amphibians. Finally I leaned down a little and put my hand over my eyes. After a minute the teacher, Mr. Torricelli, asked me if I was sleeping. I said no, and to prove it I repeated everything he had just said—that humans have only fifty percent more genes than a roundworm, twice as many as a fruit fly, and five times as many as slime mold. I can remember stuff like that, no problem. He didn't seem impressed. He still told me to keep my head up, so I had to stare at the crooked poster for the whole hour.

  Then after advanced biology I was walking down the hall past the gym, and there's a metal railing around the bleachers. I touched the top of the first support post and the second, and the third. But there were a couple of kids leaning near the fourth post. I waited for a minute, figuring they'd soon move away to their class. But they didn't. They were laughing and talking. One of them glanced toward me, and I knelt down to retie the laces of my sneakers. When they were all looking the other way I sneaked along the railing and reached under the kid's arm to touch the support.

  He whipped around on me. "What are you touching me for?"

  I said it was an accident. I said I was sorry. Then the bell rang, and we all took off running to our classes.

  He probably thinks I'm a real wacko. He might tell the whole school. But at least I touched the fourth support.

  Now for lunch. I walk down the long back corridor, hunting for an out-of-the-way place to eat. I pass the cafeteria, and it's as loud and messy as I expected. Kids are talking and eating and laughing and playing cards—it's a lot like my old cafeteria, except for the huge flags of the world hanging from the ceiling. And the black kids and white kids are eating together, which is strange. How did the school get them to do that?

  At the end of the hallway I come to a door. There's no sign saying "Emergency Exit Only," so I swing my hip against the release bar. The door opens on to a small parking lot full of cars. It's cold, but I've eaten in colder places back at Amherst Regional. I zip up my winter jacket and sit on the top stone step. When I open my lunch bag I see that Mom gave me exactly what I asked for—four small carrots, one peanut butter sandwich cut in squares, one small bottle of Evian water, four vanilla wafers and four M&Ms, all different colors. She wants me to have a good day, too. I eat the wafers first, then the M&Ms—yellow, red, green, brown. Sometimes I eat them brown, green, red, and yellow. Colors don't really make any difference to me.

  "Hi."

  I look up and there's a thin black girl in a ski jacket coming through the door carrying a frozen ice cream cone. "Hi."

  She peels the wrapping from her cone. "I saw you in English—you're new, right?"

  "Yeah, I'm new."

  "Don't like the cafeteria?"

  I shake my head. "I never eat in cafeterias."

  "Me either. How come you don't?"

  School cafeterias are disgusting, that's why. If you inspected the tables under a magnifying glass you'd see bacteria that look like buffaloes. The orange plastic trays have probably been thrown up on by hundreds of kids. Think of how many mouths the forks have been stuck in. Think of all the lips that have sucked on the spoons and the tongues that have licked the knives.

  I can't really tell the girl any of this, because she'd call me a wimp. Before I can think of a fake reason, she starts talking again.

  "Kids don't hassle you much in this school, if that's what you're worried about. They leave you alone."

  "It's not that, really. I just like eating by myself at lunch."

  She picks up her backpack. "That's cool. You can have this place."

  "No, I didn't mean you."

  She sits next to me on the steps. Her green sneaker touches my green one. Her thin leg touches my thin leg. I've never been this close to a black girl before, and I think she has the most beautiful skin I've ever seen. It's like dark syrup. I can't stop looking at her thick pink tongue, which turns white with each swipe of the ice cream.

  She tilts her cone my way. "Want some?"

  "No, thanks." I eat a square of my peanut butter sandwich. I should offer her one, but what if she accepts? What if she takes a little bite and then hands it back to me? She'll think I'm racist if I don't eat it. I'll offer something she can't give back. "You want my carrots?" I pull the plastic bag of them from my lunch bag.

  She shakes her head. "I never eat anything for lunch except a vanilla cone."

  "Never? Every single day you eat a vanilla ice cream cone?"

  "Yeah, every school day. Except once last year they only had chocolate, and I was like really weirded out for the whole day. You know what I mean?"

  I know exactly what she means.

  She licks a drip of ice cream from the cone. "So, what are you into?"

  Lacrosse, wrestling, swimming, drama, the Latin club—I could say anything because how would she know I won't do any of them? "Nothing much. I just hang out."

  "No sports or clubs or anything?"

  I always thought I might go out for a sport wh
ere people don't sweat, but I don't think there is one. I don't mind sweating myself, but other people? I'm not into that. Most activities I can think of mean getting so close to someone that you're breathing in the air they're breathing out. That's pretty disgusting. Maybe if Dr. W. works a miracle I could go out for something, but I'm not ready yet.

  "I'd be in an animals club, if there was one."

  "You mean, like rabbits and frogs?"

  "Actually, I'm into predation."

  "Predation?"

  "You know, wolves, big cats. The world's divided between predators and prey. I like the predators."

  She turns over the cone and sucks through the hole in the bottom. The door opens again and a freshman-size kid looks out, sees us, and ducks back in. The door rattles closed.

  "You single?"

  Me, married? Is she crazy?

  She doesn't give me time to answer again. "I've been single since Thanksgiving. It's cool. No hassles, you know? Except now guys try to bust a move on me all the time 'cause they know I dumped Alonzo. He was my main man for three months. He was, like, all hands, you know? I got tired of that."

  So at this school single means not going steady. There could be hundreds of other words they use differently here. How am I supposed to learn them all?

  "I'm single, too. I've always been single."

  "I figured."

  That sounds like an insult, but I'm not sure, because she isn't laughing at me. Usually I don't care what other kids think, but this girl makes me wonder. "You think I'm hopeless with girls?"

  "Not hopeless, just kind of clueless." She pulls off the end of the wrapper and stuffs the rest of the cone in her mouth. Then she hoists her backpack to her shoulder and waves goodbye.

  She's leaving too soon. I don't know anything about her. "Hey, how come you don't eat in the cafeteria?"