“Yeah, I guess,” he says. He shifts in his wheelchair and drops his eyes like he wishes this conversation would go away.
“What got you so bummed out?” Lacey asks.
He shrugs his shoulders.
“Well, we’ve all got reasons. None of us are here by accident. I just wanted to hear yours, that’s all.”
I feel a tap on my shoulder. “Victor? Over here,” Nikole says. I turn and look at her. “Have you even heard a word I’ve said?” she asks with a fake scowl mixed with a smile.
I shake my head and try to look apologetic. I tell her I’m sorry and then want to punch myself in the face for ignoring a girl. A girl who took me by the hand and pulled me to the side because she wanted to talk to me. What a moron. No wonder I’ve never had a girlfriend.
She motions to where Bull is sitting. “Why do you care about him anyway? He seems like a jerk to me.”
“I don’t care about him, believe me. And he is a jerk; you have no idea.”
“That sucks that you have to room with him. At least you only have to be in your room to sleep.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. God, I wish I could tell her how much her conversation means to me. That when she looks me right in the eye, it makes my organs quiver. Every single one.
“You have nice eyes,” she says.
I’m not kidding. She says those words, in that precise order, directly to me. I am rendered mute.
Nikole smiles at me. “I’m serious. You do. They’re the best brown. They kind of remind me of caramel. Sort of.”
I have never, as long as I’ve been alive, had anyone give me a compliment about how I look. I swallow hard and hope to God my face doesn’t misinterpret my utter amazement for confusion or something worse.
She smiles again. And her whole face lights up. She looks so pretty that I’m not sure a professional poet would be able to capture it with words.
“I mean it,” she says, and then pokes me in the shoulder. “You should have more confidence.”
I nod and roll my eyes. Me with confidence. The thought almost makes me laugh out loud.
“My mother is always telling me and my sisters that ‘no one can hold a candle to her girls.’ We all just laugh and stuff, but you know what she’s doing? Building our confidence. Making us feel special. So, Victor . . .” Her voice trails off. She reaches over and grabs my hand. “No one can hold a candle to you, either.”
I feel light-headed.
“Thank you,” is all I can come up with. I wish I had the balls to reach over and kiss her, but I don’t. I wish I could make her swoon and giggle and do all the things I’ve seen the popular girls do whenever they talk to the popular guys. I drop my eyes. I’ve got zero game.
A loud bang makes Nikole and I jump, and our hands release. Andrew is punching the table like a maniac. Then he jumps up and lunges at Bull. And the first thing I think is: I hope he knocks him out.
Bull
“EASY, DUDE!” I SHOUT, AND PUSH ANDREW BACK with my good arm. “Don’t take it out on me! I didn’t make you run over that dog! Easy!” I look around to see if anyone’s coming to my rescue. Nope. Where are the hospital staff?
Andrew runs his fingers through his hair and sits down. He’s panting. I don’t say a word. Right before his meltdown, he was getting into his “story” with me. He’s definitely got anger issues. He’s bat-shit crazy.
Andrew’s dad left when he was seven and never came back; his Mom remarried a control freak who criticizes every move he makes. They have a second kid, who is the golden boy. Makes Andrew feel worthless and stupid every single day. No wonder he’s pissed off at life.
Then his girlfriend dumped him, and he got cut from the basketball team because his grades were in the crapper, so he decided he was going to drive his car off the quarry cliff near his house. How about that one? Said he was going to drive right through the fence—gun it, you know? Except he took some pills before he left his house and was sort of high, and he ran over his neighbor’s dog. Right in front of the dog’s family. They were all outside waiting for the school bus. He said the little boy was holding his dog in his arms and wailing. Andrew said he hears the crying every single night just as he’s about to fall asleep.
That’s when he started pounding the table, screaming, “I can’t even get my own suicide right! I can’t even get that right! I can’t even get that right!”
And then he came at me.
He’s talking to me again.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I . . . I . . . I don’t know why I did that. Sometimes I—oh, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. We’re good,” I tell him. If he pulled that shit out in the real world, I would’ve handed him his ass on a platter. But I’m stuck in this wheelchair in the crazy joint. I let him slide.
I look around the room and everyone’s eyes are bulging out of their heads. The fat guy looks like he’s gonna pass out. Dicktoria and his little girlfriend are looking too. The girl with the long, black, greasy hair is squinting at me, like it was my fault. I squint back at her. She gives me the finger. I pucker my lips and send her an air-kiss. Then she gives me two fingers, one on each hand, side by side. I shake my head at her. If she were a cougar, I think she’d pounce on me and rip me apart. She puts her head down and goes back to writing in her dumb book. I turn away and leave her to her anger. She’s obviously whacked.
Andrew says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I try to judge if he’ll go ballistic again. He looks pretty calm, so I relax. I shrug my shoulders. “Sure. Just don’t come at me again, all right?”
“I won’t. I swear to God.”
“Good,” I say. I look around and no one is paying attention to us anymore. Even the double-fingered, greasy-haired maniac has her back to us. But I figure if I have to, I could always knock him out with my cast.
Andrew whispers, “Do you still have the gun?”
I squeeze my eyebrows together. “What?”
He leans in, rests his elbow on the arm of my wheelchair, and whispers again, “The gun? Do you still have it?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Shit,” Andrew says. He sits back hard in his chair and intentionally bangs his head against the wall.
Now I’m confused. “Why?”
He exhales really loudly, but doesn’t say a word.
“Dude, why?” I ask.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.”
“Figure what out?” What is this guy talking about?
Andrew closes his eyes in deep thought. The guy is weird. But at least he’s not flipping out anymore. I just let it go, and we both sit there for a few minutes. The babble and laughter of everyone else fills the quiet. I’m pretty sure I know what he wants the gun for—probably to finish off the job he messed up with the whole running-over-the-dog thing.
He still wants to die.
That makes me feel sad for him, and I don’t feel sad for other people. As in never. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. It’s kind of like a boulder in my brain. I look down at my lap and exhale.
Without lifting my eyes to Andrew’s, I say, “Don’t do it.” I can’t look at him, because me feeling sad for him might show on my face. I can’t handle him seeing that.
Andrew stands up and mumbles, “Why not? Why the
hell not?”
I have an inner battle raging inside. I squeeze the arm of my wheelchair with my good hand and grit my teeth. I look up at him.
“Just don’t do it, Andrew.” I wish I could give this kid a hundred reasons why he shouldn’t finish himself off, but I don’t know him well enough. Shit, I barely know myself.
Andrew stares at the floor and I can tell that he’s about to cry. And yeah, I really can’t handle that. He nods a few times and then walks away.
Ellie floats in and announces lunch is in the cafeteria. She gets behind my wheelchair and pushes me. But out in the hallway she starts wheeling me toward my room. She says I have a sur
prise waiting for me.
I have had enough surprises today to last me a freaking lifetime.
Victor
NO ONE HAS FIGURED OUT THAT BULL AND I KNOW each other. That I hate every cell in his body. I wonder when it will all come out.
The common room empties. I see Brian talking with nurse Agnes in the hallway, and she looks very concerned. She calls Andrew over, and Brian walks away. Andrew and Agnes walk down the hall, away from the cafeteria. I guess Brian told her about Andrew’s freak-out.
Jenny and Lacey come out of their room, and Jenny’s all dressed in regular clothes. Brian joins them, and they walk toward Nikole and me.
“What’s that about?” Jenny asks us.
“Andrew flipped out,” Nikole says. Then she turns to Brian. “Why did you tell on him, Brian? That wasn’t cool.”
Jenny makes a shocked face. “You told on him? You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I didn’t tell on him.” With a soft voice Brian adds, “I guess I’m worried about him, that’s all.”
“Well, Agnes’ll probably put him in solitary now. She’s a bitch. You ever been in solitary, Brian?” Jenny asks.
“No.”
“I have. I was only in there for, like, three hours, and I thought I was going to lose my mind. All I did was get mad and overturn my breakfast tray. I didn’t punch anything or almost attack someone. I don’t know. They say it’s for your own protection, but I think it’s just so they don’t have to deal with you. He’ll be on some good meds, though.” Jenny puffs her cheeks out and exhales. “Maybe I am ready to get the hell out of here, you know?”
No-nonsense Agnes asks us to clear the hallway, so we all say another good-bye to Jenny before heading to the dining room. The light is on in the doctor’s office for the first time since I’ve been here. Agnes pushes open the door, and Jenny walks in. I’m sure I will never see her again.
What’s left of the afternoon is spent zoning out in the common room watching the dumbest ’80s movie ever. Agnes comes in and announces that dinner’s ready. It feels like home. We all eat our pieces of fried chicken and spoon mashed potatoes into our mouths like robots. For, like, five minutes there’s just chewing and breathing. No one talks. Five minutes is a pretty long time to sit in silence. Not for me, though. I can go days without saying a word. Except for when I talk to Jazzer.
Jazzer . . .
Why did I have to think of her now? In front of all these people? I feel my face getting hot. My spoon slips out of my hand and bounces across the table.
I jump up and get out of there as fast as I possibly can. I leave my fried chicken, and I love fried chicken. My uptight mother never serves it. She calls it common and messy and poor-people food. I always ate it whenever they served it at school and loved every messy, common bite.
I run into my room. Stupidest idea ever. He’s in there, all propped up in his bed, eating his fried chicken with one hand. I want to smash his tray against the wall.
I turn to leave and bump into Nikole, hard enough that she falls backward and lands on her butt. I throw my head back and exhale.
She picks herself up before I have a chance to offer my hand.
“Geez, Victor, what’s the matter? You ran out of there like your dog just died.”
I start laughing. Then I start crying. Nikole must think I’ve lost my mind. I have nowhere to go. I can’t go into my own room. I can’t go back into the cafeteria. I panic. I bury my face in my hands and slide down the wall behind me. I try to cry as quietly as I can, but it gets too hard and I choke out weird noises. Nikole sits down next to me, rests her head on my shoulder, and takes my hand.
She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t really have to. Her actions are speaking to me—like, shouting to me, actually. I’m here for you, Victor! It’s going to be okay, Victor! Let it all out, Victor! I’m here. I marvel at this superpower.
Agnes and Ellie just leave us be in the hallway, which is great. After a few minutes Nikole must sense that I’m calming down. She pulls her head off my shoulder; right away, I wish she hadn’t. Her head felt warm. It felt right.
“You okay?” she asks, squeezing my hand.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m not sure.”
“Why did you freak out?”
I tell her all about Jazzer and thinking of her in the cafeteria. I tell her how Jazzer used to squeak when she slept and that she was the best listener and a bunch of other cool things about her. And then I drop my head and tell her that Jazzer had been the only thing that kept me from killing myself.
Nikole puts her beautiful head back on my shoulder and says, “Jazzer was your angel.”
She squeezes my hand again, lifts her head, and we are eye to eye.
“I’m thinking that what I said to you, about looking like your dog just died, was meant to be. Think about it. That is beyond weird, Victor. You were supposed to get this out. Don’t you see?”
I’m not convinced, but I muster up an “I guess” to keep the conversation going.
Nikole starts giggling. I think it makes her look even more adorable. But a terrible, familiar feeling creeps in. She’s laughing at me. Oh crap, she’s laughing at me. I can’t take her laughing at me.
She nudges me and says, “Oh come on, don’t you think it’s sort of funny? I mean, you fly out of the cafeteria because you’re thinking about your dog dying and right after that I say, ‘You ran out of there as if your dog just died.’ That’s . . . funny. That’s funny, Victor. It is.”
Her eyebrows are raised, waiting for my reaction.
I start laughing. It is funny.
“Victor, we’re going to be okay. For some reason, I just know it,” she says to me.
I get my laughing under control and say, “I wish I knew it.”
“Was that your wish? To make it?” she asks.
“No, that wasn’t it.”
Her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her hair—all of her is staring at me. I’ve never had someone look at me this way. My face goes red. At least I’m not crying this time.
She smiles at me. “I think I know your wish.”
I shake my head. “No, no you don’t. Believe me.”
Bull
I GOT A NEW BROWN BAG FROM FRANK. IT HAS TWO granola bars, an apple, and lemonade. No danish this time. There’s another Post-it note, though.
Enjoy! Hope you are
getting better in there.
Your bike is missing you.
So am I.
—Frank
P.S. You can keep the poem.
I keep reading the “So am I” over and over again. He doesn’t even know me. How could he miss me? But I like that he misses me. Which is weird because I’ve never met the guy. But he misses me. That’s cool.
Dicktoria flies in, stares at me for a second, and then runs out like a weirdo. I hear a muffled collision and then an oomph. I think he knocked his girlfriend down in the hallway. Smooth. I overhear Nikole ask him what’s wrong and then him say something about a dog dying. Then I hear him lose it. I wish I were out there to see him because I’d laugh right in his face. She lets him go for a few minutes and then gets him talking. He tells her that his dog was the only thing in the world that really loved him, understood him, saw him. He tells her how she used to wait for him in the window every day after school. And how he found her all curled up on his bed with her eyes open, dead.
I’m jealous that he can tell that girl how he feels. I’m jealous that he had a dog that loved him. I’m jealous that he had a bed.
But mostly, I feel bad for him. And that scares the shit out of me.
Victor
I AM SITTING ACROSS FROM THE PSYCHIATRIST IN HIS office. Ellie had seen me and Nikole sitting in the hallway. She’d told me I had my appointment with the doctor in five minutes.
And here I am.
I have the hardest time looking into his eyes. He has really long, black eyebrows with gray hairs mixed in. It’s like his eyebrows are waving at me, saying, Look up here.
Look up here. They are the longest and weirdest eyebrows I’ve ever seen in my life.
His face is odd too. Like the parts don’t go together or something. His eyes are really big, but really close together. He has a nose the size of a toddler’s, and a small mouth with no visible lips. But he is married. He found someone to love him. After spending two minutes with him I think his wife, whoever she is, must be either blind or deaf. His voice reminds me of breathing, and he is impossible to understand. It’s almost like he’s talking through me, not to me. I just keep nodding, pretending that I’m getting everything he’s saying. I think I hear him say “committed” and I panic.
“Doctor Billings, I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” I ask.
He exhales, obviously annoyed that I stopped his train of thought, and he speaks slowly, pausing between phrases for added emphasis. “I asked . . . if you’ve had thoughts of
suicide . . . since you’ve been involuntarily committed.”
“No,” I say.
“Good. Good. And why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.” And I really don’t. I’m not lying to him.
“Well, I’ve spoken with your grandmother and your parents. They’re very concerned about you, especially your grandmother.”
I skip right over my parents and ask about my grandmother. She’s the only one I care about at this point. Basically, she’s all I have.
“What did my nana say?”
“She just wants you to be okay, and to come home. She wants you to be happy,” he tells me.
This actually does make me happy. I wish I could tell her that. I’ll have to remember to tell her when I see her. That she made me happy. She’ll like that.
“Are they mad at me, my parents?” I ask him. I don’t know why I ask him this. I don’t know why I even care what they think.
“They’re very upset, Victor. You frightened them.”
Not enough for them to come home from their vacation, though.
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