• It’s great that the club is getting big and all, but for some people it makes it really hard to talk about certain other people because now those certain other people are members and listening in. So, I’m wondering if we can limit the membership or maybe have a separate meeting just with the original Cravers? —Kathleen
• With Mom in college and me looking after my kid sister, I really don’t have the time for the club anymore. It’s getting kind of crowded anyway. I promise I’ll be chanting at home, though, so please stop asking. —Hailey
• I never realized how powerful this was and I now know more than ever that we have to be careful and responsible, and I feel kind of silly I ever asked for something like clothes. Everybody’s talking about how fossil fuels are destroying the environment and causing wars and stuff, so why don’t we focus on some kind of sun-driven alternative energy source? —Beth
• The new meeting room’s great, but I think even it’s going to be too packed next time. Do you think we should hold our next Crave in the auditorium? —Tom
• Of course we’re all upset about what happened to Erica, but it’s important to remind ourselves that her own decisions brought her to her suicide attempt. Her choices. Her path. There’s no reason any of us should feel bad about it. —Vicky
13
Big, square thing, the county hospital, all brick and glass with a lot of dingy sky behind it. It was probably built by the same construction company handling the gym. The building, not the sky. Whatever. I was outside, my lazy ass on a bench. Erica Black was inside, in some room or ward, hooked up to all sorts of tubes, for all I knew, struggling to breathe, for all I knew. Dead, for all I knew.
I’d read her posts over the weekend and known something was up, but was too dense to guess what. At first I thought she’d just stayed home to mope in her dark place. I should have called, or at least posted something when she mentioned me by name, but I didn’t.
Slacker, you know?
Yeah, right.
Rumors flew like crazy—she’d slit her wrists with a razor, taken a bottle of pills, thrown herself in front of a train, run a vacuum hose from the exhaust of her parents’ car into the backseat, all of the above. Everyone seemed surprised that I didn’t know more, because I was her best (and apparently only) friend.
One guy, Jim Pindell, made a wisecrack about how, because she was so pale to begin with, they couldn’t tell if she was dead or not. I was about to punch him square in his big mouth, but he had a “1” pin on and Dylan and Mike were there.
They stepped between us real fast, like two fleshy tanks.
“Where’s your pin?” Dylan asked, nodding at my empty collar.
“Out in the field. Maybe some bird ate it by now,” I told him.
“Better get a new one,” he said.
Mike was a touch friendlier. “Really, man, you should.”
Dylan pressed his face close to mine. He’d had french toast for breakfast, judging by the smell. “Everyone’s gonna pass the algebra test!”
The idiot didn’t even realize the test had been canceled since Erica’s suicide attempt.
I walked. Scurried, actually, to put as much distance as I could between us before someone spilled it to the great ape Kong that I’d quit the Crave.
My actual resignation was pretty anticlimactic. By third period the “S” word (Slacker) wasn’t sitting too well, and I was thinking someone should do something, maybe even me. So I headed to the former office of The Otus. Ethan and Vicky were standing oh-so-close as they hung up a poster together and, just like that, I said, “I quit.”
No big fanfare. Two little words. Ethan looked like he pitied me. He mumbled something about having to choose my own path, like it was total news to me that I had free will. Vicky glared, like I was betraying her.
Ha. Me, betraying her.
I thought they should shut down the school and let us go home for the rest of the day. When they didn’t, I took off on my own. Hooky’s unusual for me. Breaking rules, you see, takes too much of an effort.
A bus ride or so later, I was sitting outside the hospital, too afraid to go in, too depressed and guilty to go home. I just stared at the building, wondering if it was going to fall down just because I was looking at it.
My brain kept drifting back to that girl on the Whirl-A-Gig, unbuckling herself and standing up, getting hurled from the ride, snapping her neck and dying. I pictured her blond and nasty, a real brat, someone you really wouldn’t mind seeing die.
But she kept changing into Erica.
I might have stayed there all day, or gone the coward route and slunk home, but this couple in their late forties came out, he in a tweed jacket, she pale, with horn-rimmed glasses, both looking professorial, both looking sad and exhausted, both looking just enough like Erica for me to make the connection.
“I shouldn’t have left my pills in that medicine cabinet,” the woman said, her voice cracking into tears.
“Yes, a medicine cabinet is an absurd place for medicine,” the man replied. “She’s fine. She’ll be fine. You heard the doctor,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder.
“It’s my fault,” she answered. “All my fault.”
“Come, now, neither of us saw it coming. No one did.”
“I knew how much she wanted that scholarship! I knew how that test was driving her crazy! I should’ve gotten her a tutor!”
“We couldn’t afford it, Lisa,” he said in a quiet voice. “And you’re not the one who quit his job.”
“Don’t you start,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek.
“She’ll be fine,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”
“We should go back.”
“She’s sleeping. Let’s just get some coffee.”
“To go?”
“Absolutely.”
How about that? What with The Rule floating around so much lately, it was the first conversation in eons I’d heard where people were arguing about taking the blame for something that happened to someone else. I wanted to run up, introduce myself, and explain how it was really all my fault. Then maybe we could all hug. Yeah, I know, I hate group hugs, but sometimes you just need one.
It also made me feel so totally low about not going in, that as soon as they were out of sight, I got off my lazy ass and headed into the lobby.
Without even looking at me, the woman at the front desk asked, “Can I help you?”
“Erica Black.”
She clicked a few keys. “Room 243A. But visiting hours are almost over.”
“I won’t be long. Please.”
Now she did look up. Scanned me like I was a computer screen. I guess I passed whatever test she was giving, because she handed me a plastic visitor card.
The elevator opened out to a view of the nurses’ station. That weird mix of cleaning and bodily fluids that only hospitals and school cafeterias have hit my nostrils.
The station nurse was so wrapped up in her dog-eared paperback that she ignored me. Other than that, it was pretty empty, except for one short, balding guy in a hospital gown who was leaning on the wall and sort of half sliding down the hall.
I didn’t like looking at him—he’d been bruised pretty badly—but I didn’t know if it was ruder to turn away or stare. The welts on his skin were a deep purple, almost like Barney the dinosaur. Just as I put a name to him, he spotted me.
So I said, cool as I could, “Hey, Mr. Eldridge. How’s it going?”
“Dunne?” he answered, surprise replacing the pain on his face. He narrowed his eyes and gave me a purple smile. “Here to see me? Had no idea you cared.”
“Uh . . .”
He laughed. “Relax. I know Ms. Black’s here.”
At least I was able to make him forget his troubles by being the target of his mockery.
“So, you doing better, Mr. E?”
“If healing hurts a lot, I’m doing great.” He grimaced, then nodded curiously at my shirt. “Pin’s gone. Come to your senses?”
> “I guess.”
“Not so dumb after all. And apparently not the slacker you like to think you are. It’s harder to fight your friends than it is to fight city hall. Did you know our principal was wearing a Rule of Won pin when he came to visit me?”
“Wow.”
“Oh, don’t be surprised. Wyatt was always an idiot.”
“I’m really glad you’re okay, Mr. Eldridge.”
“I believe you are. Thanks, Dunne. We’ll talk again. You should visit your friend.”
He hobbled through the nearest doorway, which, I figured, led to his room. What with most of the school so happy about his accident, I was thinking he must feel pretty alone. But when I peeked in after him, I saw stacks of cards, flowers, and balloons, which meant, I guess, that he wasn’t so alone after all.
The last time I’d been in a hospital was when some old aunt of my mother’s (Lydia?) was on her deathbed. It was a big deal for Mom that I go in and see this dying woman I barely knew. I was ten and totally refusing. Mom begged, whined, pleaded, and tried to bribe me. I could tell from her exasperated sighing she was just about to give up, when Joey grabbed my arm, yanked me inside, and croaked, “Say hello to your great-aunt.”
It was a horror show. She was all wrinkled and yellow with a ton of tubes jabbed into various parts of her body. She never even opened her eyes while I was there, but Joey made me whisper to her anyway.
He saw how hard it was, but he didn’t care. On the way out, when I complained that she didn’t even know I was there, he said, “It’s not about her. It’s about you. You can’t make things go away just by ignoring them. The world won’t change just because you don’t feel like believing in it.”
Joey, man. Someday, I’m going to write a book filled with quotes by him. Be more useful than The Rule of Won, I bet.
I was kind of wishing he was here with me now, just to yell at me that I wasn’t ten anymore and Erica wasn’t Aunt Lydia.
Room 243A was a double room. Whoever was closest to the door was hidden behind a curtain, except for their toes, which poked up through the blankets at the end of the bed, looking white, like the sheets.
It wasn’t Erica. She was near the window. I had to wonder if that was smart, like, what if she wanted to jump or something? Then again, it was only one story down.
She lay with her head on three pillows, eyes closed, sleeping. The pillows looked stiff, and so did the pillowcases, sheets, and blankets. There were no tubes, just one little intravenous needle. The spot where it entered the back of her hand was covered up with tape. Under the blankets, her chest rose and fell.
I stood in the doorway, relieved she didn’t look like a total mess, worried there might be some invisible brain damage or something.
Erica’s chest heaved, then stopped moving. I was afraid she wasn’t breathing anymore, but she let out a few short bursts of air from her nose and smiled. Something she was dreaming about struck her as funny, I guess.
A nurse wheeled a cart behind me, making me step forward into the room to get out of the way. I didn’t hear myself make any noise, but Erica did, because her eyelids fluttered open.
“Caleb?” she said softly.
“Hey,” I said. “Pills, huh? I thought drugs cause cramp. Like that poem.”
“They do indeed.”
“But you’re okay?”
She blinked and stretched a little, then wriggled under her sheets. “Yep. Except for the Girl, Interrupted thing.”
“Right. That. Which was about . . . what?”
“I just . . . I just really wanted to get into Hampshire Arts.”
“And attempted suicide was on the application?”
“I misread the form.”
“No, really,” I said. “Was it guilt because you thought you caused Eldridge’s accident?”
She looked away and wrinkled her lips. “More that part of me didn’t mind if I did cause the accident. When I realized that, I felt like I didn’t deserve much of anything.”
“Like breathing?”
“Like breathing.”
I pulled up a chair and sat in it backward. “First of all, you never wished for Mr. Eldridge to get hurt. You haven’t got a mean bone in your body. Second of all, I’m starting to think The Rule of Won is totally whack. You didn’t make anything happen. It just did.”
“That’s what Mr. Eldridge said.”
“You talked to him about it?”
“Who better? I apologized.”
“Gutsy.”
“He said there was nothing to apologize for.”
“See? And he’s a teacher. He knows stuff.”
She smiled a little.
“But, Erica, you were freaking out way before Eldridge’s accident. What’s so damn important about a school? I mean, it’s just a school, right?”
She leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “I guess it’s hard for you to understand . . .”
“Because I’m a slacker? Because—”
“No. Because you’ve lived here all your life. You’re used to it. I just never felt like I could be myself in Screech Neck. It’s like I’m constantly surrounded by things trying very hard to make me not me. I just thought maybe at an arts college, I could be myself again, or maybe for the first time.”
I leaned in and nudged her shoulder. “Erica, wherever you wind up, I’m very, very sure you have been and always will be Erica.”
I wasn’t sure where that came from. She gave me that weird half smile she gets sometimes.
“You don’t hate me, do you, Caleb?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Or think I’m totally crazy.”
“Well, you did try to kill yourself. That does take a few points off the sane score.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Promise?”
She looked me in the eyes. “Yes. It wasn’t nearly as romantic or peaceful as I thought. Lots of crying and screaming, mostly, which I suppose means I never really wanted to die in the first place. I think it was just what they call a desperate cry for help.”
“Okay. But next time maybe you could just say, ‘help’?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. I was worried about that intravenous thing, but it didn’t seem to bother her. “And if I did, would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Help.”
“Uh . . . does it involve algebra?”
“Not right now, no.”
“Then . . . yeah.”
I shifted uncomfortably, then put my hand on hers. I expected it to be cold, because the room was chilly and her skin was always so pale, but even her fingertips felt warm. I was worried it’d feel strange, but it didn’t. It felt good.
We didn’t say anything else until the station nurse came in and said it was time for me to go. I was a little relieved. I was happy to sit with Erica, but her parents would be back and I didn’t feel like dealing with them, what with not knowing what to say and not wanting them to grill me or treat me like I was her boyfriend.
By the time I made it back into the hall, the elevator was opening and I heard some people talking. Worried it was the Blacks, I slipped into the stairwell.
And there I heard a voice. “Are they okay?”
On the next landing up a girl stood, maybe middle-school age. She had on these weird, tight stockings, one pink, one green. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
“Are they okay?” she asked again. “Erica Black and Mr. Eldridge?”
Turns out she was talking to me.
She spoke as if she were entitled to an answer. Her tone reminded me of someone.
“Uh . . . Eldridge is pretty bruised, but Erica seems fine. Do I . . . do I know you?”
An ever so slightly smug smile spread on her face. That looked familiar, too.
“My name’s Alyssa,” she said. “Alyssa Skinson.”
Of course. That’s who she reminded me of. Ethan.
“Oh. I’m—”
“Caleb Dunne. My brother talks
about you.”
“Okay. I saw some of your drawings. You’re good.”
She smiled more genuinely. “Thanks. Ethan thinks they make things happen.”
“No kidding. Do you?”
She shook her head and looked a little sad. “No way. It’s just coincidence, but he doesn’t believe me because of that book. He’s changed since he read it. I thought maybe if I helped him a little, he’d change back, but he’s only gotten worse.”
“Hard to believe he was ever better.”
“He was. He doesn’t like you, by the way. He didn’t like you before you quit, but now he really doesn’t. None of them do. It was only a few hours ago, but some of them are already talking about you on the board.”
“Ethan lets you read the message board?”
She raised an eyebrow. “He doesn’t let me. He just leaves his passwords lying around sometimes.”
Out of the blue, I asked, “Alyssa, do you think you could help me?”
“I won’t draw any pictures for you, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I mean,” I admitted. “Any idea what ‘Vanuatu’ means? Or Mondo Cane? Mondo Cane’s an old documentary, but I can’t rent it anywhere. I can order it online but I don’t have the money.”
“No,” she said. “Sorry.” She turned, ready to leave. “I have to get back now.”
I wanted something more from her, what, I couldn’t say. I didn’t think I should tell her I’d eavesdropped on that call with Ethan, but I wanted to hint that I knew something more was up, so I blurted out with my usual subtlety, “I think people should study on their own, too.”
She spun back and eyed me. “If that documentary’s old, it could be on tape. Do you have one of those VHS players?”
“My grandfather does. Still won’t switch to DVD.”
She nodded, then walked off.
It was dark by the time I made it home. The sky was as clear as it gets, and you could see one or two stars poking up above the buildings, like little Christmas lights. It was almost curfew for me, and I was looking forward to getting some sleep.
The Rule of Won Page 11