Imaginary Friend (ARC)

by Stephen Chbosky

  “It is a miracle,” she said in her broken accent.

  They reached the parking lot. The nurse took away the wheelchair.

  Kate Reese was on her own.

  She put Christopher in the front seat and immediately drove to the Giant Eagle to fill the prescription. The hospital’s pharmacy was out for some reason. The traffic was almost as psychotic as her son had been accused of being. The horns honked so often it sounded like ducks on a pond.

  When she finally reached the supermarket, Christopher was so sick, he could barely move. She kissed his cheek, which felt like it was on fire. Then, she opened the car door to let the cold December air cut through the fever that the doctors assured her he didn’t have.

  “Can you walk, sweetheart?”

  Christopher said nothing. He just stared through the windshield and blinked. So, she helped him to his feet and carried him into the supermarket like a baby. He was too big to sit in the top of the shopping cart, so she took off her coat to soften the metal and gently laid him down inside. Then, she rushed to the pharmacy and handed the prescription over to the pharmacist.

  “It’ll be a few minutes,” the weary pharmacist told her as he scratched his hand.

  Christopher’s mother knew they could be holed up for a while, so she quickly walked the rows of Giant Eagle, looking for enough supplies to get them through the next few weeks.

  But there were none.

  Christopher’s mother had seen grocery stores picked clean before. She had traveled enough of the country to see what happens when a tornado or hurricane warning hits a community. Sometimes, she wondered if the supermarkets put a little pressure on the local news to sell the storms just to move some inventory.

  But she had never seen anything like this.

  All of the Advil, Tylenol, and aspirin. All of the skin rash and itching creams. All of the canned soup, the dried fruit, the canned meats and fish.

  Gone.

  If Christopher’s mother didn’t know any better, she would have thought that the town was preparing for a war.

  She picked up what she could. Beef jerky, boxes of Lipton soup and cold cereal. At least Christopher would get his Froot Loops. She went to the refrigerator section. She got some cheese because it keeps well. Then, she went to the milk. Dozens of Emily Bertovich’s pictures were keeping an eye on everything. She grabbed two half gallons and the last of the plastic jugs.

  Christopher’s mother gave a quick glance to the cart to make sure Christopher was comfortable. She saw that he was okay right before she realized that the people in the store were not. Everyone was short-tempered. Fighting over scraps. Yelling at the stock boys about not having enough supplies. Christopher’s mother kept her head down. When she had filled the cart, she went back to the pharmacy to pick up Christopher’s prescription. The pharmacist was in the middle of a heated discussion with an old man.

  “I asked if there was any aspirin in the back?” the old man said.

  “What you see is what we’ve got,” the pharmacist replied.

  “Can you check the back of the—”

  “What you see is what we’ve got,” the pharmacist cut him off.

  “I need my aspirin to thin my blood!”

  “Next!”

  The old man walked away, fuming. Christopher’s mother noticed that he was scratching his leg. She turned back to the pharmacist, who gave her a “can you believe that asshole” look and put Christopher’s pills in a white paper bag.

  “Should he take this with or without food?” Christopher’s mother asked.

  “Read the directions. Next!”

  After Christopher’s mother paid for the pills, she took the groceries to the front. There was a long line and only one checkout clerk. She was a little teenage thing. Very pretty. A man in muddy boots was groaning his impatience.

  “I’ve been here twenty minutes. Why don’t you open a new fucking register?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Everyone called in sick,” the teenage girl said.

  “Then, maybe you could pick up the pace, you little—”

  “Hey, why don’t you leave the girl alone!?” a burly man said behind him.

  “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

  “Why don’t you try to fucking make me?”

  A security guard stepped in to quiet the skirmish. Christopher’s mother stood still, waiting for the storm to pass. The man in front of her in line turned around and started looking at some of the things in her cart. His eyes found the milk, and he smiled a very ugly smile.

  “Nice jugs,” he said.

  Christopher’s mother knew her way around dangerous men. There was only one way to handle a guy like this.

  “Hey, little dick. You touch anything near my kid, and I’ll break your fucking hands.”

  The man looked her dead in the eye.

  “Cunt.”

  “Proud of it,” she said with her best poker face.

  The man finally turned back around, seething. Christopher’s mother looked at the security guard. She made sure to give him a nice flirty smile to keep him around the checkout line. After the men bought their supplies and left, she went to the front of the line. As the teenage girl checked her items, Christopher’s mother watched the “jugs” man walk out to his 4x4. The girl behind the counter coughed. She looked like she had the flu herself. Christopher’s mother saw the girl’s name tag. It read DEBBIE DUNHAM.

  “Tough night, Debbie?” Christopher’s mother asked.

  “Hell,” the girl said without a trace of humor. “Next!”

  Christopher’s mother waited in the store until all of the men from the line got in their pickup trucks and left. She knew the “jugs” man could have swung back and waited for her. Away from the security cameras. Away from the light. She had been in situations before. She had learned the hard way.

  But she had learned.

  The drive back from Giant Eagle should have taken ten minutes, but traffic had somehow gotten worse in the time she was in the store. It was backed up for a good three miles. A lot of people started blaring their horns. She heard windows rolling down and voices screaming into the night.

  “Come on! Let’s go!”

  “I don’t have all fucking night!”

  When she finally reached the front of the traffic jam, she realized that it was all because of one accident.

  “Rubberneckers,” she thought out loud.

  A deer had slammed into a pickup truck. The deer was wedged inside the driver’s-side window. It looked as if the deer had rammed it on purpose, trying to kill the driver. The driver sat slumped down as EMT workers tended to the wound on his hand. The deer’s antler had driven itself through his hand like a stake. After a moment, the driver looked up. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized the driver was the “jugs” man. She knew the man couldn’t see her in the dark, but it still felt like he was looking right through her and thinking the word.

  Cunt.

  Christopher’s mother quickly passed the accident and decided against getting back onto Route 19. She couldn’t risk another traffic jam. So, she took the back streets to their neighborhood.

  They passed the old Olson house on the corner. Christopher rested his head against the cold window. The heat from his forehead melted the fog off the glass. They pulled up between the log cabin and their house. The old lady sat in the attic, asleep in her chair.

  Christopher’s mother pulled into the driveway and parked the car in the garage. She quickly got out of her seat and moved to Christopher’s side. She opened the car door.

  “Come on, honey. We’re home.”

  Christopher didn’t move. He just stared out through the windshield. The only sign of life was him licking his dry, cracked lips. Christopher’s mother bent down and picked him up in her arms. It had been years since the last time she carried him in from the car. He was so small then. He was so sick now.

  Don’t you fucking cry.

  She carried Christopher into the house and brought him
up to his bedroom. She took off his old school clothes that he wore to the Christmas Pageant. God, how long ago was that now? Two days? Two and a half? It felt like a year. The clothes were covered in so much sweat from his fever that she had to peel them off like snakeskin. She took Christopher to the bathtub and cleaned him the way she had when he was small enough to fit in the kitchen sink. She wanted to get the hospital off his body. Get the germs off. Get the crazy off. She scrubbed him from head to toe, then put him in his new favorite pajamas. The ones with Iron Man on them. He had stopped wearing Bad Cat a month ago for some reason.

  Christopher’s mother put him under the sheets. She went back to the bathroom and got the pain relievers out of the medicine chest. She expected to find enough for weeks. But when she looked, she had maybe two doses of Children’s Tylenol and one of Children’s Advil left.

  “Christopher, have you been taking medicine on your own?”

  Christopher just lay on the bed, looking out the window at the night sky. He said nothing. Christopher’s mother figured he must have been hiding this from her. How long had he been sick? And why would he fake being well just to go to school? Didn’t kids usually do the opposite? Christopher’s mother sat her son up in bed and gave him the Tylenol. She could feel that the pillow was already hot under his neck, so she instinctively turned it over. She put him back down on the cool side.

  “Honey, I’m going to make dinner now so you can have your pill. You just rest, okay?”

  He just lay there. Not speaking. Not moving. Christopher’s mother quickly headed downstairs. She opened a box of Lipton chicken noodle soup. His favorite since he was a little boy. “I like the small noodles, Mommy.”

  Stop it, Kate.

  She shook her head. She would not let herself cry. Be strong. Weak doesn’t help. She threw in some frozen vegetables for extra vitamins. She set the timer on the microwave for five minutes. Then, she took out the bread, butter, and cheese. She started the grilled cheese sandwiches. “I like mine brown, Mommy.”

  Stop it right now.

  As the food cooked, Christopher’s mother pulled out the bottle of aripiprazole. She quickly read the directions. It could be taken with or without food, but he was so sick, she wasn’t going to risk him throwing up the one thing that could help him. The one thing that might make the voices go away. “Daddy passed away.” “What does passed away mean, Mommy?”

  Stop crying God dammit.

  But she couldn’t. She could not stop her eyes from tearing any more than Ambrose Olson could stop his eyes from filling with clouds. She forced herself to read the directions. She saw the side effects for children. Fatigue. Sleepiness.

  “He’ll get some sleep. He needs to sleep,” she assured herself.

  Headache. Nausea. Stuffy nose. Vomiting. Uncontrolled movement such as restlessness, tremor muscle stiffness.

  Your son is crazy like your husband was.

  Christopher’s mother kicked the cabinet. She kicked the hell out of the kitchen. She had been awake for over two days now. She wouldn’t let herself sleep. She just held her son while he drooled on himself because no one knew what was wrong. This whole God damn system. A bunch of greedy people who will give away a child’s bed so they can charge another person’s insurance thousands of dollars a day for the same fucking bed and no fucking answers.

  Stop crying, you God damn cunt!

  DING.

  The timer on the microwave went off. Christopher’s mother looked around, confused. She set the timer five minutes ago. Where had the time gone? She took the soup off the stove. She flipped the grilled cheese sandwiches seeing that they were the perfect shade of brown. She put it all on a tray along with one single aripiprazole pill. She poured a nice cold glass of milk to wash it all down. Emily Bertovich stared back at her from inside the refrigerator as she closed the door. Christopher’s mother wiped all evidence of crying off her face, then went upstairs, fully prepared to feed her son the way she had when he was a baby.

  But when she got to his bedroom, Christopher was gone.

  “Christopher?” she said.

  Silence. She put down the tray of food and medicine. She rushed to the bedroom window. She looked at the snow in the backyard. There were no tracks. Only a couple of deer chewing on the evergreens in the Mission Street Woods.

  “Christopher!?” she screamed.

  Christopher’s mother raced to the bathroom. Images of her husband ran through her mind. Memories she kept locked away like an extinguisher in a glass case. Break in case of emergency. The day Christopher went missing. The day she came home to find her husband silent in a bathtub and her son crying next to it.

  She opened the door. He wasn’t in there. She moved to her room. To the other bathroom. He wasn’t in there either. She ran down the stairs. To the living room. Was he watching television? No. Was he in the backyard? No. The garage? The kitchen? The front yard? He was nowhere to be seen.

  “Christopher Michael Reese! You get out here right now!”

  No answer. She looked at the door to the basement. It was open. She rushed down into the darkness. She turned the corner and flipped on the fluorescent light. And that’s when she saw her son kneeling in front of the sofa. He wasn’t catatonic. He was wide awake.

  And he was talking to himself.

  “What have you been able to find out?” he whispered to the sofa.

  Christopher’s mother couldn’t speak. She walked to her son. She looked down at the sofa and saw her husband’s old coat lying with an old pair of pants. A white plastic bag served as the head. A scarecrow, flat and terrifying.

  “Christopher, who are you talking to?”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” he asked the white plastic bag.

  After a moment, Christopher turned around and smiled at her.

  “This is my friend, Mom. The nice man,” he said.

  Then, Christopher put a finger to his lips.

  “Now, shhhh. Or the hissing lady will know he’s down here.”

  Chapter 62

  Christopher’s mother held the pill in her shaking hand. She watched as her little boy muttered to himself at the kitchen table. His nose had started to bleed again. His skin was so ghastly pale, it looked like his body didn’t have any blood left. She tried to take him out of the basement without the white plastic bag, but he screamed bloody murder and fought her with all of the fury of the “terrible twos,” “threenagers,” and “fucking fours” put together. She finally gave in and let him bring the bag. And now, she willed her mouth into the shape of a reassuring smile like a trophy fish with two hooks in its mouth.

  “I’ll get you some milk, honey. You’ll feel better after the pill,” she said.

  Christopher just whispered to the white plastic bag.

  “Is she here yet, sir? Is she coming?”

  Your son is crazy the way your husband was. You didn’t do anything wrong, Kate. It’s not your fault. You just need to deal with the problem.

  You just need to love him.

  Christopher’s mother grabbed the glass of milk. Trying to keep her hands steady.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said in a calm voice.

  She put the pill in his mouth and raised the glass of milk. She waited for him to swallow the pill. He kept it in his mouth for ten seconds and exhaled with the last ounce of his strength.

  Christopher spit the pill on the floor.

  “Mom,” he said in a barely audible whisper. “The nice man says I can’t have those pills. Please don’t give them to me.”

  He’s crazy, Kate. Just give him the pills. It’ll help.

  “Christopher, it’s going to be okay. Trust Mom. I’m going to help you.”

  Christopher’s mother picked up the pill bottle. She pushed down on the lid to unlock the childproof cap. It cracked a little under her weight. Christopher’s mother shook a fresh pill into her hand. She looked up at her son, who was whispering under his breath.

  “Mom, please. You have to believe him. Don’t make m
e sleep.”

  Do you want them to take him away, Kate? Put him in an asylum?

  “Take the pill, honey,” she said.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Christopher pushed over the glass. Freezing-cold milk spilled down the table and all over her blue jeans. Fury ran through her.

  “God dammit, Christopher! I’m trying to help you!” she hissed.

  She hated herself for being angry. For yelling. For not seeing his illness earlier. She got up quickly and poured another glass of milk. She turned back and saw her little boy, whispering to the white plastic bag. Blood poured out of his nose. He didn’t even bother to wipe it away.

  “I know I can’t let her, but she thinks I’m crazy. What can I do?” he whispered.

  Look at him, Kate. This is killing him.

  Christopher’s mother approached her son. She would have to force the pill into his mouth and hold it closed until he swallowed and asked for milk. It was the only way. She lost her husband. She wouldn’t lose her son.

  “Don’t make me take the pill, Mom,” he begged.

  “Christopher, you have to take it. It’ll help you sleep.”

  Christopher turned to the white plastic bag.

  “Please, sir. Help me! Tell me what to say!”

  He’s going to hurt himself. Give him the pill.

  “Honey, there’s no one there! Just take the pill. It’s going to be okay.”

  “No!” he cried to the white plastic bag. “She already thinks I’m crazy. If I tell her, she won’t love me.”

  Christopher’s mother stopped.

  “I’ll always love you, honey,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “Mom…” he said. Christopher looked up at her. His voice was shaking with fear. Tears started to wet his eyes. They fell on his face like water on a hot skillet. “The nice man wants me to tell you something.”

  Don’t listen to this, Kate.

  “Tell me what, Christopher?”

  Her little son took a deep breath and turned to the white plastic bag for strength. Then, he nodded and spoke softly.