“What is it about heights that you’re afraid of?” he asked me.
What a dumb question. Falling, of course. I’m afraid of falling. That’s probably why I dream about it a lot. Actually, what I said to the doc was that I’m afraid that suddenly I’ll have this uncontrollable urge to climb up on the railing of the bridge or run to the edge of the cliff or whatever and just throw myself off before anyone can stop me.
Cat Poop wrote something on his pad, which by now we all know means I’ve said something he thinks is interesting. This time I asked him why he thought my answer was worth writing down. Since it’s my life he’s dissecting, I figured I had the right to know.
“Why do you think you have this urge to jump?” he said, instead of answering my question.
“I guess because sometimes it’s nice to lose control,” I said after I’d thought about it. “I feel like I’m always trying to keep control of my life. Sometimes I’d like to be able to just let go and fall.”
“Even if it means you might get hurt?” he said.
“I don’t think about that,” I answered. “I just think about the falling, with no parachute or net or anything to catch me. I just think about falling, and it scares me.”
“How about falling in love?” he said. “Are you afraid of that?”
What, is love like the topic of the month around here or something? It sure didn’t take him long to get back to that subject. “I’m only fifteen,” I said.
“A lot of people fall in love for the first time around your age,” said Cat Poop.
“Why do you want to know?” I said. “Do you have a daughter you want to introduce me to or something?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“What if you did?” I asked him. “Would you want her to date a guy like me?”
“That’s impossible to answer,” Cat Poop said. “I don’t have a daughter, so I don’t know how I would feel about her dating anyone. It’s purely hypothetical.”
“Well, purely hypothetically,” I said. “Would you want her to date someone like me? Someone who’d been in a place like this?”
Cat Poop scribbled something on his pad. “Are you afraid people won’t want to date you because you’ve been in here?” he asked me.
“I asked you first,” I said.
We stared at each other for a while. I guess we were having another game of Psycho Chicken. Anyway, Cat Poop blinked first this time. “I would want my daughter to date the person who made her the happiest,” he said.
“Even if that person was crazy?” I said. “Even if that person was like me?”
“If I remember correctly, you’ve spent a great deal of time telling me you aren’t crazy,” Cat Poop reminded me.
“I’m being hypothetical,” I said. “So, would you?”
He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said.
I laughed. “I didn’t think so,” I told him.
“Now answer my question,” Cat Poop said. “Are you afraid that no one will want to be with you if they know you’ve spent time here?”
“I don’t care what people think,” I told him.
“How about what you think?” he said.
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” I answered. “Let me get back to you.”
“How about Allie?” Cat Poop said. “Do you think she’ll still want to be friends with you?”
I didn’t know how to answer that one. Allie always said that we’d be best friends no matter what. Was that still true?
“You’d have to ask her,” I said.
He let me go after a few more minutes, and he didn’t bring up love again, which is really a relief, because I’m getting tired of that subject.
Getting back to the original question, the one about what I would change about myself, it’s not really my fear of heights that I’d change. I mean, it’s not like that’s keeping me from achieving my life’s dream of being a tightrope walker or anything. I think it’s funny that old Cat Poop got all excited about it, because really it was just something to say.
The truth is, I’d like to have a tail. Seriously. Not a dog tail or a pig tail or anything like that. I want a monkey tail. A long one that I could use to pick stuff up with and hang by. I think that would be completely cool.
Day 32
“What’s playing tonight on Nuthouse TV?” I asked Sadie.
As usual, we were in the lounge. Everyone else had gone to bed, even though it wasn’t all that late, and except for Moonie, we had the place to ourselves. It reminded me of how sometimes Allie and I stay up late watching movies. Well, how we used to.
Sadie flipped through the channels. “Um, we have a vampire movie, a documentary on whales, or the Home Shopping Network.”
“Definitely the Home Shopping Network,” I said.
Sadie settled on that channel. The host, a woman with big red hair and an even bigger smile, was showing off some ugly jewelry. She was holding up a ring with a giant fake diamond in it.
“And for only twenty-nine ninety-nine you can have this genuine artificial piece of crap that everyone will know isn’t real,” I said.
“No fair,” said Sadie. “You’re supposed to make up something completely different than what it really is.”
“That is completely different than what she’s really saying,” I argued. “She wants us to think that buying that ring will make our lives perfect.”
“Maybe it would,” Sadie suggested.
“Right,” I said, snorting.
“No, really,” Sadie said. “Maybe someone out there has been wanting a ring like that their whole life. Now they can get it for twenty-nine ninety-nine.”
“Plus shipping and handling,” I said. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “I’m probably just premenstrual or something. It just kind of makes me sad to look at that ring and think that somewhere there’s this person who has to have it. And I really wish that ring would make that person’s life better.”
“Did you take all your meds today?” I asked her.
Sadie turned the TV off. “Let’s just talk,” she said.
“About what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Sadie. “Me. You. Us. Anything.”
“I know what this is about,” I said. “Cat Poop got into your brain. He’s turned you into Therapy Girl.”
“Bite me,” Sadie said, slapping my leg. “Nobody talks around here,” she said. “We all pretend to, but we never really do.” She pointed to the television. “We’re like the people in there,” she said, like the TV was an apartment house or something. “We open our mouths, but nothing really comes out.”
I’d never heard her talk like this, and to tell the truth, it was a little freaky. I mean, I could always count on Sadie to be sarcastic and funny. Now she was going all Oprah on me.
“Come on,” Sadie said. “Tell me a secret.”
“Now we’re telling secrets?” I said. “What’s next, Spin the Bottle?”
“Tell me a secret,” she said again, poking her finger into my thigh to punctuate each word.
“Ow!” I said. “Okay. Okay. You win. I’ll tell you a secret.” Then, before I knew it, I blurted out, “I fooled around with Rankin.”
I couldn’t believe I’d said it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. I’d actually been thinking about telling her something about me and Allie. But that’s what came out. Afterward, I sat there wishing I could disappear.
“You fooled around with Rankin?” she said.
I almost told her I was kidding. I knew she would believe me if I laughed hard enough to prove it to her. But I didn’t. I just nodded. I couldn’t say anything. I mean, I’d just told her the worst thing I’d ever done in my entire life.
And do you know what she did? She rolled her eyes.
“You call that a secret?” she said.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “Don’t you?”
“Well, what do you mean y
ou fooled around?”
“We . . .” I said, then stopped. “We just . . .” I almost told her about sucking Rankin’s dick. But I couldn’t. So I moved my hand up and down like I was, well, like I was doing what Rankin and I did. The first time.
“You guys jacked off together?” she guessed.
I nodded.
“Wow,” she said, and made her eyes really big. For a second I thought she was going to freak out on me, and I started to panic. Then she laughed. “Big news flash,” she said. “Guys whack off. Film at eleven.”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought she would at least be a little surprised. I know she thought me seeing Rankin playing with himself was nothing exciting, but this was different. Totally different. This was me and Rankin playing with each other. Here I was totally freaking out about what happened, and she was treating it like it was nothing. I almost felt like I should apologize for being so boring.
“I meant a secret about you,” Sadie said.
“That was about me!” I said.
“No,” said Sadie. “It was just something you did that you think people would be freaked out about if they knew. Trust me, everybody around here has done stuff way weirder than that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Remember Alice?” said Sadie.
Like I could ever forget. I nodded.
“She used to catch flies—and eat them. And last time I was here there was this guy named Benny. He liked to hide things up his butt. Trust me, what you and Rankin did was so not secret-worthy.”
I looked at her while she waited for me to respond. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s all I’ve got.” Which wasn’t true, but for some reason I wanted to stop while I actually felt a little better. I was afraid if I told Sadie the rest, suddenly it wouldn’t be so “normal.”
“How about what happened between you and Allie?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on,” Sadie said. “I know you did what you did because something happened between the two of you. So what was it? You can tell me. Since we’re sharing and everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. To tell the truth, in a weird way I was kind of pissed off that she didn’t think the thing with Rankin was a real secret. I mean, even if it wasn’t a big deal, and even if I did feel a little better about it now, it was still a secret.
Sadie clearly wasn’t buying my cool act. “Yeah, there is,” she argued. “What? You slept with her and she freaked out? You and that Burke guy got into a fight over her? What was it?”
“I told you, it had nothing to do with her,” I said.
I thought she would push me some more, but she didn’t. She just looked at me for a long time. I looked right back at her. I’ve gotten pretty good at staring contests what with the doc and I having one practically every day. The trick is to sort of unfocus your eyes so that you’re looking at the person but not really seeing them. If you do it right, they can never tell.
That’s how I won the staring contest with Sadie. After a minute she just turned away and turned the TV back on. The sound was still off, so we sat and watched the host talk. Now she was pitching some fake pearl necklace.
Sadie was quiet for so long that I thought maybe she was pissed at me. I was just about to say something when she started talking again.
“Remember that Saturday morning cartoon show with all the superheroes?” she asked. “Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Superman?”
“Sure,” I said. “Super Friends. What about it?”
Sadie stared at the television. “They all looked like normal people until they turned into these other things, right? But it always turned out that they originally turned into superheroes when they were running from something they didn’t like about themselves. Like Batman fought the dark part of his soul by battling bad guys and all that.”
“I think Wonder Woman was just born Wonder Woman,” I argued. “And Superman was just Superman.”
“Okay,” Sadie said. “Bad examples. But think about the really interesting superheroes. Most of them were normal until they turned into something freaky. Like Wolverine. He was part of some experiment. And the guy who turned into the Hulk hated to do it because it meant he was mad. Plus, it hurt.”
“I guess so,” I admitted.
Sadie went on. “When I was a kid, I used to watch that show, sitting on the couch in my pajamas and wishing more than anything that one day I’d just change into this other person,” she said. “I thought that would explain everything. You know, about why I felt so different. Then I’d find out that my mother was really an alien or that I’d been bitten by a radioactive spider as a baby, and it would all be okay because I’d be able to fly and see through walls.”
She stopped talking and watched the TV some more. I thought that I should say something, but then she started talking again. “But it never happened,” she said. “I just went on being me my whole life, until one day I realized that all those superheroes were doing was fighting themselves, and that getting to breathe underwater or shoot fire from your fingers didn’t really make up for being screwed up in the first place. It was just the consolation prize—you got the great costume and the invisible jet for being a loser in everything else.”
She stared at the silent TV. Her expression was completely blank, as if her soul had just flown out of her body. It was actually kind of scary. “I guess I just want my invisible jet,” she said.
Day 33
Now I know for sure that all of this is a dream, because what happened tonight can’t possibly be real. It just can’t.
I don’t even know where to start. Rankin came into my room last night. I guess technically it was earlier today, since it must have been about one or two in the morning. I was sleeping, and then I felt something pressing against my back. Rankin had pulled my shorts down, and he was pushing himself against me. I was still only half awake, so I didn’t realize what he was doing at first. He put his arms around me and pulled me closer. I could hear him breathing in my ear.
Believe it or not, that’s not even the bad thing. If that was all, I could probably handle it. Probably. But that was just the beginning.
Like I said, Rankin was holding on to me and trying to . . . I don’t think I can even say it right now. But he was getting close. As soon as I realized what he was doing, I woke up fast. I even opened my mouth to tell him to stop.
And that’s when the screaming started.
At first I thought it was me screaming. Then I realized it was a girl’s voice. I don’t know what Rankin thought was going on, but he pulled me closer to him and put his hand on my mouth. Maybe he thought I was the one screaming too.
It was so weird. I was trying to figure out who was screaming and I was trying to get Rankin off me all at the same time. Everything was happening at once, but I felt like I couldn’t even move because I didn’t know what was more important, getting away from Rankin or helping whoever was making the awful noise.
That’s when the light came on. It snapped on like fireworks exploding over our heads. I couldn’t see. Rankin rolled off of me and sat on the edge of the bed, covering himself with his hands. I looked up and saw Carl and Nurse Moon standing in the doorway. The screaming had stopped, like the light switch controlled that too.
“Pull your shorts up, Jeff,” Moonie said. She wasn’t yelling or anything. She said it really calmly.
I pulled up my underwear. Rankin had picked his up from the floor and was pulling them on. I glanced over at Nurse Moon and saw that she was looking down to give him some privacy. Carl, though, was staring at us. Staring at us and shaking his head, like we were his grandkids and we’d just disappointed him big time.
“Rankin, back to your room,” Nurse Moon said when he was dressed.
Rankin didn’t look at me as he walked out of the room. He didn’t look at Moonie or Carl either. He rushed by them and down the hall. I looked at Nurse Moon, my heart pounding in my chest.
“What’s going on?” I aske
d. “Who was screaming?”
“It’s Martha,” Moonie told me.
That scared me. “Is she all right?” I asked. “What happened? Is she hurt?” I started to go toward the door.
“Don’t you worry about her,” said Nurse Moon, holding up her hand so that I stopped. “She had a bad dream. That’s all.”
I nodded. I know all about dreams that make you want to scream. Then I remembered why Carl and Nurse Moon were in my room in the first place.
“We were just . . .” I began.
Moonie interrupted me. “Dr. Katzrupus will talk to you in the morning,” she said. “Good night.”
That was it. Good night. Like she was tucking me in. No yelling. No “I’m very disappointed in you.” No nothing. And you know what? That was worse. If she’d yelled, or seemed disgusted, or even at all upset, I would have felt better. But she treated it like she didn’t care. Like it didn’t matter.
Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know anymore. Maybe Sadie is right and it’s just something guys do. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. I’d really rather not talk about it with Cat Poop, though. It’s exactly the kind of thing he writes about on his stupid pad.
When I finally fell asleep after Moonie left, I had the weirdest dream.
First we were in group—all of us, even the people who are gone now. Cat Poop asked us to go around the circle and say what we were most afraid of. Alice said she was afraid of being alone. Bone said he was afraid of cars, which seemed weird until I remembered the whole gas station thing. Juliet said she was afraid of teeth, which because she’s Juliet didn’t seem strange at all. Rankin said he was afraid of losing. Martha didn’t say anything.
Sadie said she wasn’t afraid of anything, and I believed her. In my dream it was like she had this force field around her that protected her from everything the rest of us have to watch out for. Then she looked at me and said, “Once you realize there’s nothing to be afraid of when you die, there’s nothing else to worry about.”
When it was my turn, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked around at the rest of the group and thought how messed up they all were. Then I looked at my wrists and realized that they were bleeding again. I pulled my sleeves down to cover them, but I could feel the blood soaking through, and I was afraid everyone was going to notice and start laughing at me.
Suicide Notes Page 13