Pig points at him. “He’s here because he’s suicidal. Believes he can fly like a fairy, so he jumped from a third-floor balcony.”
. . . “He’s not suicidal then, he doesn’t want to die, he wants to fly,” I say and both of them stare at me. “What’s feedback group?”
“So you can like pre-count, if you know you’re going to say something?” Pig asks.
I nod my head.
“Oh, but now we gotta wait again. How are you even alive?” Red says and walks out of the room, adding, “Come see for yourself what this is all about.”
When I stand up, something beeps. Pig has started the timer on her watch and follows behind me. I turn to stare at her as I count. She stares back. Beady eyes unblinking.
When I’m done I say, “Please don’t.” And start counting again.
Pig huffs and walks out.
A minute later I shut my eyes and hop across the threshold of my room. I really miss my phone. At school I usually don’t have to talk; I text instead.
Tink’s high-pitched voice squeaks about how everyone’s opinion is highly valued. I use the washroom; that’s four doors to pass. Even washroom stall doors count. Even cupboard doors count, but not drawers. Drawers are different. No hinges.
After I jump into the rec room, everyone goes silent. I’d love to be rid of the jump; it attracts so much attention. The TV’s on, and Peter is too close to the screen to see anything more than a blur. Rottengoth stares at me with his mouth open. Pig’s watch beeps; she timed me anyway.
Vanet laughs. “What ho? She has to hop, too? That’s pretty sexy, isn’t it, heh? Like a Playboy bunny hops, and we gotta hop back to what we were talking about, right? Hop to it, Tink. Time is money.”
Tink presses her hands to her forehead. “Welcome, Milly. Who would like to explain for Milly’s benefit the purpose of feedback group?”
Everyone stares at stained ceiling tiles or interesting spiders climbing cracked walls, so Tink says, “This group’s a chance for everyone to contribute. Here you can put forward requests and opinions about the unit, and please no comments on other people’s thoughts.”
I nod because I think she expects me to, and then she taps her pencil on her clipboard.
“Okay, everyone, so we have one request for marijuana on the ward from Vanet.”
“Medical marijuana,” Vanet says. “Big difference, they’ve done studies and it’s actually good for you. Cures cancer. Do you think Milly would hop if she was hopped up on it? Or Red have her nightmares? Pig would probably burn even more stuff.” He mimics lighting a joint and then talks on. “But I wouldn’t be as busy, know what I mean, Tink? No fairies smoke up, so Peter over there would crash and burn. Totally do not, I say, do not, give any to Sleeping Beauty—she’s so relaxed already, she’d probably break into pieces. Contraindicated.”
“Thank you, Vanet.” He looks as though he is about to speak again, but Tink holds up a hand. “A request for more fairy movies from Peter.”
Pig snorts. “Yeah, more home movies for Peter. That’s what we need.”
“Red wants Theresa to join us even though she doesn’t respond, and Pig wants us to have parties and no singing of Disney songs allowed in common rooms, ever.”
“I am just saying we should celebrate more. You know like birthdays, and Hanukkah.” Pig adds, “Without singing.”
“Hanukkah? I’m not Jewish,” Vanet says.
“Your name’s Vanet,” Pig replies.
“That’s not Jewish,” Vanet says. “I’m black. How can a black kid be Jewish? Jewish people are from Israel and they don’t have a single black person there. Not one.”
I hear a siren and, if we weren’t already in a hospital, I would have assumed they were coming for nearly everyone in this room.
“If you’re black, then brown is the new black,” Red says.
“When you first came in, you said you were God. Is God black?” Pig asks.
Peter starts laughing in the corner.
“What’s funny? So what if He is?” Vanet says, leaning forward in challenge.
“Do you still think you’re God?” Red asks.
“I don’t think I’m God, but one day I’ll be president,” Vanet replies with a hand to the ceiling as if he’s won the election already.
“Is that close?” Red asks.
“Heck no. But close as we can get,” Vanet replies.
“There is no God,” Rottengoth says.
“God,” Pig replies, pointing at Rottengoth. “For sure. Wesley’s going to Hell.”
“Can’t be worse than this,” Rottengoth says.
Tink sits there, blinking. “Thank you,” she says. “Just a reminder that this is feedback group. Wesley? Feedback?” Rottengoth’s eyes flick to Tink and his tongue scrolls around the inside of his cheek.
“Well then, a good session.” Tink claps her hands. “Anyone for ping-pong before dinner?”
Good session? I have no idea what even happened.
Jumping up, Tink races to the ping-pong table as if to reach it first, but everyone drifts away from their chairs, some shouldering past me, others slumping on the couch and ignoring Peter’s protests that his fairies are disappearing from the screen.
Only Rottengoth remains. He’s thin and Asian-looking. His straight black hair hangs past his chin. On him, the cut’s girlish. Everyone here seems a bit jumbled in their genders, as if nature didn’t quite decide and we’d prefer to be something society says we’re not. Or maybe we’re all a bit of everything—didn’t I once wish I was a fairy? A knight?
Rottengoth stands, walks over to me, and stares into my face. “Sixty-nine, eighty-five, twenty-two, one, two, three, eighty-eight.” Then he walks away.
Looks as though Vanet has already told the boys about my counting too. I hope he’s going to Hell. Still, Rottengoth seems better than the last time I saw him.
I sit down on the couch in front of the television.
“Aren’t you supposed to be running from wolves?” Vanet asks. He’s playing an Xbox game that involves collecting gems and jumping around. “I’m the best at this,” he says as he shoves the controller this way and that as if the full body movements help. “I could be the top player in the world, if I bothered. Thousands of fans. Sponsorship. Ferrari tried already.”
His character dies. “You’re distracting me. It’s hard to play with a girl coming on to me the whole time.”
. . . “Vanet, you’re a jerk for pretending to be my doctor and worse for breaking pretend patient-doctor confidentiality and . . . and if you were the last computer game champion on earth, I wouldn’t be interested.”
“Sure you would,” he says. “I’m learning how to juggle like you asked.”
I’m counting, and he lifts his eyebrows knowingly. Silence is acceptance, so I accept everything. I go for my phone so I can type out for Vanet the true depths of my hatred, but then remember it’s gone.
I push off the couch and wander to the ping-pong table; Tink looks up hopefully, and then I curve away to the shelves. Everything from philosophy to comic books lines the wall unit. I pick out a Batman comic and start counting. I sit in a big corduroy chair and sigh, sinking into it, glad to lose myself in the exploits of the Joker or Catwoman.
“Milly,” Stenson says. “Your mom’s here.”
I clench my eyes.
“Her mom’s dead,” Red says from another chair.
“Thank you, Red,” Stenson says seriously. “I made a mistake. Milly, your stepmother is waiting in your room.”
I don’t want to see Adriana, but Vanet now has his shirt off and is doing push-ups. No—he’s dry humping the floor with Pig watching. I try to block the visual with my hand as I make a beeline for the door.
Two hundred counts later, Adriana unpacks a suitcase into the chest of drawers beside my bed. Despite each garment being crisply folded in the suitcase, she shakes them out and refolds them, forming sharp creases that always take forever to fall out whenever I wear them. There’s neat a
nd then there’s crazy neat. Maybe Adriana should check herself into the ward.
“I brought enough for a week,” she says. “Sorry about this morning. I had to leave.”
The clothes she’s obsessively folding were my favorites a couple of years ago, when I refused to give them up even though they are too small and worn out. I bought them with my dad, when Adriana and my dad first began dating. In the beginning, their relationship had been okay; it was as though I’d gained a big sister, but then she became my stepmother and I realized how much I missed my real mom.
Nothing she’s unpacked is dance-worthy and at the end of the week there’s the school dance.
“The dance,” I say. “I want to go to the dance. And I don’t fit into those. I’ll need a costume.”
She holds up a blouse and a skirt. “But . . . these are your fav . . . well, they’ll have to do for now. And if the doctor thinks you’re ready for the dance, then you can go to the dance.”
If my dad were here, I wouldn’t have to ask her; he wouldn’t care if I went to the dance.
Her narrow face regards me tiredly. My dad picked her because she looks like my mom: blue eyed, brown, straight shiny hair, with the same bangs my mom had before hers fell out. But Adriana’s younger and, although my mom was never really fun, Adriana’s even less so.
“I brought your book of fairy tales.” She places a thick book with a frayed spine and gold lettering on the dresser top. I step forward and take the book, holding it to my chest. My mom and I read it together at bedtimes. Before she really faded at the end, she told me that everything I needed in life could be found in fairy tales. Its pages are smooth like vellum and smell of ancient power.
. . . “I’ll be out in less than a week,” I say.
“Of course you will.” She puts a new bottle of shampoo and conditioner on the dresser. Enough for a month. “In a week you won’t have to count anymore. And you can walk right out that door.”
It sounds like a curse. Or perhaps an impossible task like in the fairy tales. To succeed, Milly, you must fight the wolf neither clothed nor naked, neither riding nor walking, neither in night nor day.
So I’ll be seeing the wolf somewhere around twilight, while wearing a fishing net and with one foot on a bike, the other on the ground. That’ll be some costume.
Chapter 9
“Dibs on sitting beside you at dinner,” Pig says to me and then lingers at her side of the desk. While we wait for the meal to start, she fiddles with papers. My sense is that she’s buying time to stay close to me. I rearrange everything Adriana put away in drawers, shaking out the tight folds and dumping the clothes back. Red tries to sleep.
“Wait a minute,” Pig mumbles. “Who did my homework?”
. . . “Helped,” I say eventually.
“I love you,” she says, smiling beneath her pinched eyes. “You’re going to feed me and do my homework? Today keeps getting better.”
“Dinner,” Todd says at the door. He’s wearing jeans and a blue collared shirt, except you can barely see the collar due to the shortness of his neck.
“It’s Toadie,” Pig announces.
Toadie has a wide gut and head. Big, fat lips squat beneath a flat nose. He pauses in the doorway and his distantly spaced eyes blink at Pig.
“The sitter,” Pig finishes. “What’s for dinner, Toadie?”
“My name’s Todd,” he says in a nasal tone. “Milly and I are acquainted.”
Pig is already on her way to the door. “Acquainted? Big word for a sitter. I still can’t believe people get paid for this. Did you grow up thinking, ‘You know what I wanna do? I wanna sit and watch people not eat?’”
“You just lost your off-ward privileges, Eleanor.”
“Never had any. Call me Pig.” Her eyes light like coals.
“Call me Todd,” Toadie challenges, but seems to shrink at the same time.
“I’m sick, I’ll burn this place down if you don’t call me Pig. You’ll lose your job. I’ll tell them about your slimy fingers always touching me.”
“No one believes you anymore,” Toadie says.
“Maybe not, but every report needs to be investigated, doesn’t it, Toadie? What are you hiding?” Toadie’s lower lip protrudes as he considers this. “That’s better.” Pig winks back at me.
. . . “I’d be careful, Pig, you know the story about the chicken?” I ask.
“Yeah, the one that wanted to cross the road.”
. . . “No, the fairy tale—” I say and I’m about to continue when Pig cuts in.
“There’s no chicken in fairy tales. Lots of pigs and wolves, a few frogs, but no chicken.”
. . . “There is in mine,” I say and throw my hands up to say “forget about it.”
“So why do I care about a stupid chicken?” Pig asks.
I ignore her.
“Let’s have it, tell us about the chicken fairy who showers us with McNuggets with the flick of her wand,” Red says.
. . . “It’s not a chicken fairy . . . never mind. It’s about a man who doesn’t want to share his roast chicken with a friend and so hides it when he comes by. After his friend leaves, the man takes it back out again, but it’s turned into a toad that jumps on his head. The man is forced to feed the toad every day or else it will eat his face.”
Sometimes I feel that my wolf is like the toad. I have to keep feeding it my count or it’ll eat me, eat everything.
“That’s stupid,” Pig says. “Toads have no teeth.”
“Watch out, Pig, or I’ll eat your face.” Toadie shows his chops.
“I’m telling the nurse you asked me to sit on your face,” Pig says, and Toadie’s eyes bulge even more. “Milly and Red heard you say it.”
An orderly shakes his head as he enters and helps Sleeping Beauty into a wheelchair and places a bib around her neck.
I am counting and, by the time Beauty is in the hall, I’m ready to follow. The cafeteria door’s another matter.
“Let’s go, Count,” Toadie says and smirks.
“I’m the one who comes up with names around here, Toadie. Leave Milly alone,” Pig shouts from the cafeteria, without taking her eyes off the food other kids already have on their trays. She’s waiting in line while a server slops dinner with a spoon.
I’m really not sure I want Pig as my protector. Does that make her my prison wife? One of the troubles with my counting quirk is that people miss the typical social cues they use to determine if I like them or not.
Peter stands with his tray in the middle of the room, his pink tutu flaring.
“Hey, Tweedle Dee, you want that dessert?” Pig asks, reaching for it, but she backs away when Peter lifts a fist.
I grab a tray and wander to the food. From a bowl of fruit that I don’t need to wait in line for, I take an apple. When I move to turn away, Toadie says, “Tsk, tsk, a balanced meal, Milly.”
“Yeah, Milly, for once I agree with Toadie. You have your friends to consider, too,” Pig says. “It’s all you can eat and no one charges for what you can’t finish. Load up that tray.”
A woman in a hairnet and wearing a black apron stands opposite the line. As we near, she warily looks us up and down like we might have discovered something sharp on the ward. Bins of food before her hold mashed potatoes, Salisbury steak, and peas. She spoons them into the divisions of my tray.
“Isn’t this what we had yesterday?” Pig asks.
“Different gravy,” the woman says.
Unlike Pig, I don’t care what’s for dinner or if the hospital food is good or bad. So much of our lives are food. Buying, growing, preparing, cleaning, cooking, spicing, eating, cleaning, making money for it. It seems ridiculous that we can’t go more than a few hours without another entire meal of it. We’re the weakest species. If everyone ate as little as I did, no one would go hungry.
My platter is filled with food. I think this is an important moment with Toadie here. He sits me away from the other two tables full of kids and folds his arms across his chest.
This is a rematch, but with spectators. I have to show I won’t be controlled in this way. If I can outwait Adriana, I can outwait anyone.
One, two, three . . .
“Would you look at her . . .” Vanet says. “She’s casting a spell on us.”
“She’s counting,” Pig says. “I’d starve.”
“Oh yeah, counting to eat,” Vanet says.
“It’s weird,” Red replies. “What happens if you don’t count, Milly? Kaboom!?”
I try to ignore the banter. And Adriana wonders why I throw away my school lunches? How can anyone eat like this?
I lean my teeth against the apple and sheer a piece of skin, which I then chew.
“One, two, three, four, five . . . she counts a hundred chews, too?” Vanet asks. “Let me try that.” He takes a big bite of steak and smacks his lips as he chomps. “Nom-nom-nom-nom.” He lasts maybe fifty before he spits it out. “The only thing worse than hospital food is turning it into tasteless paste. Yuck!”
Luckily I don’t hold Vanet’s interest for long. Soon he and Rottengoth—who stared at his meal the whole time without eating—have left. My food cools, and gravy scabs over on the steak. Red complains of a headache and goes to bed early. Pig grows so frustrated that she stomps out, empty-handed, muttering about waste. Then I’m alone with Toadie. I haven’t said a word. Not for an hour. Toadie’s stomach growls. Ten minutes later, he gives in.
Toadie says, “They’ll put you on an IV and then a feeding tube, you don’t want that.”
I’ve googled these things. I’m not there yet. But he’s right; I don’t want a feeding tube.
“You’re going to miss evening group,” he says, but I know I don’t have to go if I don’t want to. A small part of me wants to. This place is like a terrible car crash you can’t look away from.
I glance up, and he smiles as if he’s found the lever he needs.
“Don’t want to miss group, do you? Get to talk about your stuff and everyone else’s stuff.”
Nurse Stenson waves at us from the doorway. “Todd, group is starting. Dinnertime is over.”
I pick up the apple and place it to my lips. Todd’s eyes light in triumph, and he turns to hold up a hand to stall the nurse.
Counting Wolves Page 5