“I don’t remember,” I lie. But I close my eyes and picture it. There is a TV tray in front of me, and every time I lean down to take a spoonful of soup, I jiggle the tray and it spills. Mom sits next to me with a roll of paper towels and reaches over every time, her eyes glued to the TV, and wipes up the spill.
I open my eyes again and Mom is staring. Her eyes glimmer with tears. “I wish I could help you,” she says.
“Then stay out of my business,” I grumble.
I can see this shocks her. I’ve closed the communication window that she has spent the day trying to open. Slammed it on her hand. “What have I done?” she asks.
“You killed my girlfriend,” I say.
“Oh, Cameron—”
“Don’t ‘Oh, Cameron’ me,” I shout. “I had her and now she’s gone. And you’re the one who took her away.”
Her mouth hangs open as she struggles to say something. “Cameron, this girl isn’t real. Am I wrong about that? If I am, I would dearly love to meet her.”
“She doesn’t want to meet you,” I say. “She doesn’t even like you.”
“How can she make a judgment about me if we’ve never met?”
“Because I told her,” I blurt out. “I told her how mean and uncaring you are.”
Now Mom’s face crumbles, and she fights to keep from falling apart. The tears ease their way down her cheeks. I watch one as it rolls along, like a raindrop on a window glass. I’m intrigued and step in closer to watch it.
“Why do you have to be this way?” Mom asks. “Why do you have to make me cry?”
I hear a crashing in my head, as if all my caged emotions are bumping off each other at once. Mad crashes into happy, and sad bounces off of guilty until they all lie in a big smoky heap in my mind.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she wails, but I’m busy trying to snatch each of those words out of the air and throw them back at her. I manage to snag done and wrong, but the rest of them float up to the ceiling and out of my grasp.
I mourn in my bed as warm air blows gently from the vent. I reach under my pillow and pull up the doodles I did of The Girl. I touch them with my finger but don’t feel anything back. I got mad at my mom, so at least I have one feeling, but I want something different. Love maybe? Why can’t I have that? Isn’t it normal for someone my age? I just know it’s the meds that keep me from love.
There are layers in my head, and I can almost see them, like levels of sedimentary rock exposed on a cliff. Layers of fear and pain and Mom and Dad and Beth and The Professor and The Girl and a sinister layer right beneath her: The Other Guy. He seems way down in a place I’ve never gotten to. I liked how he talked to my mom, but I’m afraid I haven’t heard all of him yet, and that makes me feel shaky. Thinking of these things, I can’t sleep and roll around like a ball in the bed of a rambling pickup truck.
The heat whispers on and off all through the night. I start to worry, which is a good sign. I need to figure out a way to get my girlfriend back. Finally, at three in the morning, darkness covers my brain and lets me be for a few hours.
Twelve
My mom makes me eat oatmeal the next morning. “It’ll stick to your ribs,” she says. I eat it slowly, but leave a tiny mound like a molehill in the middle of the bowl.
“Am I going to school today?” I ask. I think about what I must face when I get there. Everyone knows now. News like mine travels fast.
“That depends on how you feel,” she says.
I must choose between another day with my mom or facing the music at school.
“I don’t know,” I say.
She walks over and puts an arm around my shoulder. I can smell soap. “You don’t have to go,” she says.
“I’ll go,” I quickly say.
“But the bus has already come,” she says.
“You can take me.” And before she can say anything, I’ve bounded back up the stairs to my room.
Mom goes to the school office with me. We wait a few minutes for Mr. Rudy, the vice principal, who comes bustling in. He has buttoned his blazer wrong, and it hangs, bunched and lopsided, off his belly. Coffee has spilled on his white shirt, and I count four oblong brown droplets.
“Always a pleasure,” Mr. Rudy says.
I wonder briefly what could be the difference between Mr. Rudy’s voice and the ones I hear in my head. He would fit in easily as a character in Alice in Wonderland.
We squeeze into Mr. Rudy’s office and sit opposite his desk. From the corner of my eye, I can see what’s going on in the rest of the offices.
“First of all,” Mom says, “I need to inform you that Cameron has had another episode, and that’s why he hasn’t been at school. I called Mrs. Johnson earlier . . .”
“Yes, yes,” says Mr. Rudy. “I received that message.” He turns to me and speaks over the top of his steepled fingers. “I’m sorry to hear about your problem,” he says.
I shrug but stay quiet.
Mom sends her eyes to the ceiling. “You’ll have to forgive him,” she says. Then she raises one eyebrow.
“Quit that,” I say.
But Mom misinterprets. “See what I mean?” she says in a whisper.
Mr. Rudy nods. “But before we continue, I do have a question.” This time he turns his whole body toward me and rests an elbow on the desk. “Do you happen to know where Nina Savage is?”
“Oh, Lord,” Mom says.
But Mr. Rudy puts a hand up to stop her. “Cameron?”
“She’s not in class?” I say.
“No. And she hasn’t been during the week you’ve been out. I was hoping you could shed some light on this mystery.”
“Maybe she’s home.”
“No one answers the phone or the door at her residence.”
“Maybe they decided to go on vacation.”
“It’s just that she was last seen with you,” says Mr. Rudy.
“Oh no,” says my mom, throwing herself back in her chair. “Cameron, if you know anything at all about this girl, you’d better start talking.”
“I don’t,” I say. But I wonder.
Later, Mrs. Johnson escorts me to class. Mrs. Owens seems glad to see me, and Griffin is full of questions. As I sit down, I see that Nina’s chair is vacant.
“Went loony, huh?” whispers Griffin. “Wish I would someday. They say it’s cheaper than drugs. Is it cool, Cam? I mean, when you go off the deep end?”
I just stare at him until he turns away. But he’ll bug me again soon, and I feel a burning frustration grow in my stomach. I throw up my hand and get up before Mrs. Owens calls on me. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, and I leave the room before she can grant me permission.
I veer away from the boys’ and head down the hall. I feel a fierce determination. Nothing can get in my way. I think I see Mrs. Johnson standing in the hall, but I don’t stop to confirm it. Instead, I power through the front door and out into the parking lot.
A few cars are parked there, but no one is around. I hurry across the lot and run to the other side of the street when I see a car coming. I figure out what I will say if someone tries to stop me from going farther.
Just try to stop me, I think. But no one does, and I move on to the little red house not far from the market.
I stand in front of it for a moment. I hear nothing and see only a black and white cat sitting, tail curled, on the front steps. I walk up the driveway and stand under the rotting carport. It smells wet and musty. I knock on the side door and wait. I knock again. “Nina?” I try the door, and the knob twists coolly in my fingers.
Well, well. Aren’t we the little juvenile delinquent.
The voice throws me back. I stumble and struggle to stay upright. “Please,” I whisper. The rule is that I don’t hear voices so soon after a shot. But this guy isn’t following the rules. Something must be wrong.
Breaking and entering. I like this.
“Stop it,” I say, and gently push the door open.
The laundry room sme
lls strongly of neglected cat, and it takes a moment for me to get used to it. I push myself against the door and close it. The chipped linoleum beneath my feet gives as I walk across it and into the tiny kitchen.
Old dishes wait to be done up in the sink. Plastic wrappers and an old greasy pizza box litter the counter. I smell something else in the air that reminds me of a few days in the hospital. Something that just plays with my senses, inviting me to explore further, to peek around the next corner.
To the side of the refrigerator, the room opens into a short hallway. I stand for a few seconds and scratch at my cheek. One foot gets courageous, but the other wants to grow roots.
“Nina?” I say.
The other foot finally loosens and I move into the hall. A few feet away a door stands open. A circle of watery light shines off a window. Below it, I see Nina in a T-shirt and boxers, her body spread out awkwardly on a bed. She is as still as a corpse. My breathing halts.
“Nina?”
I step into the doorway. “Oh God,” I say right before Nina bolts off the bed as if she’s just been stung. She tries to pull the blanket around her, but it won’t move.
“Get out!” she screams. “Get out!”
Her words are like gale-force winds and push me away from the door. I stumble against the jamb, right myself, and hurry back to the kitchen. I lean against the sink, breathing hard.
She’s not shouting now, and I wait for some other noise. Pretty soon, she comes out.
“What are you doing here, you pervert!” she says.
I flee out the back. I’m already on the street before she can swing open the front door.
“Wait! Cameron! Wait!”
I stop and turn toward her. But as I do:
Be a man, Cammy. She’ll only try to get in your head.
Now I fear what I might do. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, and as she steps down to the grass, I add, “Stop right there. Or . . .”
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“The rules have changed,” I say.
Nina cocks her head. “How?”
“Don’t ask me how, but he’s back. The guy from under the bridge.”
Nina nods. I search for some bigger reaction on her face but don’t find it. “He went away and now he’s back?”
I check for The Other Guy, but my head is quiet. “They shot me up,” I say. “They took it all away.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Life sucks.”
“I’m sorry about sneaking in on you,” I say. “And about, you know, kind of threatening you just now.”
She stretches her back. “I wasn’t scared, Cam. Just surprised. I trust you.”
“You do?” I feel a nub of heat start up in my gut, and it turns into a blaze. “It’s all good,” I say.
“That’s what I like to hear,” she says.
But it’s something else that has me excited. If The Other Guy has shown up, what’s to keep The Girl from being here also? “Hey,” I say. “Hey.”
“Hey back,” Nina says. She tries to take my hand, but I’m moving around too much.
I walk farther out in the street, trying to concentrate.
“Cam?”
I’m turning in a circle. Whose voice was that?
I feel Nina come up behind me. Her touch gives me goose bumps. I turn around and grab her arms. “You’re the best,” I say, and feel the good words course through my body.
“Let’s go inside,” she says. She snags my hand and tries to pull me.
But I take my hand back. “They’re going to come looking for me,” I say. And I take off running down the street.
Thirteen
Back at school, I’m relieved that Mrs. Owens has not called anybody about my absence.
“I really had to go,” I insist, and she reluctantly accepts my excuse.
“You know you have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon,” she says as she unlocks a cabinet beneath the work counter on the side of the classroom. She peeks in and pulls out a paper cutter. “Your mother will be here to pick you up at two o’clock.” I must look worried, because Mrs. Owens touches my arm gently. “It’s okay, Cameron,” she says. “You’ll feel so much better afterward.”
I see right then that even the good people don’t really understand. But I still try to convince them anyway.
“I wish I didn’t need a crutch, Mrs. Owens,” I say.
“And I’m sure that’s what everyone wants for you too.” She raises the curved sharp handle of the cutter and places ten sheets of colored paper beneath it. I have an image of a guillotine and shudder as she brings the blade down, severing all the sheets cleanly.
“Are you happy?” I ask.
“Me? Yes, of course.” But I don’t believe her. I see her eyes dart away too quickly. She hurriedly places more paper beneath the blade and grabs the handle.
“You don’t look happy,” I say.
“Looks can be deceiving,” she says, and brings the blade down in a hard swift movement that makes me jump again even though I knew it was coming. It loosens something up in my brain.
Nobody gets you.
“I know,” I say out loud.
Mrs. Owens pauses with the blade in her grasp, and I have to think quickly.
“Can I go to the library?” I say.
Mom pulls up into the lot at precisely two o’clock. Not 1:59 or 2:01. She doesn’t see me until I’m right next to the window.
“You shouldn’t scare people like that,” she says as I slide in and she puts the car in gear.
“People shouldn’t be scared,” I say. Already my shoe is tapping out the anxiety I feel whenever I go to see Dr. Simons.
Something starts curving up inside me like the blade on Mrs. Owens’s machine. It beckons me with its threatening shine. I glance secretly at my mother. Her hands are solid on the wheel, her eyes unwavering on the road. Little does she know that one of the voices has come back so soon. And if one of them has come back, that means . . .
“I don’t want to do this,” I suddenly say.
“Cameron . . .”
“I’m fine,” I nearly shout out. “I don’t need it.”
“You do need it,” she says back. “You can’t be trusted to take the pills.”
I wait through two red lights before I say, “But what if I don’t need the pills? What if this is just my normal way of being?”
“Cam, it can’t be normal to hear and see the things you hear and see.” Her voice is more modulated again, like something coming out of a hospital intercom.
“Maybe not for you,” I say. “Maybe not for Dad and Beth. But for me, maybe it’s a different kind of normal.”
I spy on her again and see that she is struggling.
“Nobody knows for sure,” I continue. “Even Dr. Simons says nobody really knows what normal is.”
“Cam!” she says sharply. “I don’t want to talk about this. We’re going to Dr. Simons’s office, and you’re going to get a shot. That’s all there is to it.”
I lean back against the seat and fold my arms. “We’ll just see about that,” I say.
At 2:35 we are in Dr. Simons’s office. We haven’t exchanged words since the fight in the car. I am sitting in the big leather chair, and I swing it back and forth while we wait. My mom holds her paperback in front of her.
Soon, Dr. Simons walks in. Pens are perched behind each of his ears, and he carries one in his hand. “Hello,” he says cheerfully.
“Hello, Doctor,” says my mom. She puts down the book and smiles.
“Well now,” Dr. Simons says when he sees I’m in his chair.
“Let the doctor sit,” says my mom.
But I stay put and the doctor says, “It’s okay. Really.” He takes a wheeled chair nearby and rolls over to me. “Well now, how are we doing?”
“Not good,” I say.
“Better,” Mom says.
Dr. Simons looks from me to her and then back again.
“He’s not all manicky,” my mom says.
“Is that true?” asks the doctor.
“Do we know what normal is?” I ask.
Dr. Simons scratches his chin. “Well, we know what normal isn’t, if that helps.”
“You see?” my mom chirps.
I get up from the chair and start pacing the room. Dr. Simons follows me with his eyes. He is used to this, used to figuring out what is going on with his patients simply by observation. I stop at his fish tank and tap a couple of gourami away from the glass.
“He doesn’t want to take his shot today,” says my mom. “We’ve had a few words about it.”
“Hmm-hmm,” murmurs Dr. Simons. “How are the voices, Cameron?”
“You lied,” I spit out. “You told me once that nobody really knows what normal is.”
“They don’t,” the doctor agrees. “Normal is different for different people.”
“See?” I say back to my mother.
“He’s been like that since I picked him up,” she says. “Like a smart aleck.”
“Frankly, that seems normal to me,” says the doctor. “He is, after all, fourteen.”
“See?” I say again.
“He’s driving me absolutely crazy,” my mom says.
“It’s hard,” the doctor agrees.
While Mom is busy trying not to cry, I try desperately to get the doctor’s attention. When I do, I whisper, “Please don’t make me take another shot. Please. I don’t need it. I don’t have any more voices. Please.”
My mom suddenly jerks her hands from her face. “Cameron, I am your mother, and I make the decisions about what’s good for you. And I think getting a shot is what’s best for you. Therefore, you will be getting a shot today. When you reach the age of eighteen, then you can decide.”
She finally says the thing I’ve been waiting for her to say. Now I can tell them what Nina helped me learn in the library. “Not exactly,” I say.
“What do you mean, not exactly?” she asks.
“In the state of Washington, the age of consent for mental stuff is thirteen.”
Cameron and the Girls Page 6