Diary of a Witness (8 page)

She said, “Homemade macaroni and cheese.” Yeah. That should do it. She makes the sauce with extra-rich milk. And about a pound and a half of cheddar cheese. No exaggeration. Then tops it all off with
heavily buttered bread crumbs. But it really is fabulous. And I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Not now. It was a surprise for me. A special treat. Only the cruelest son in the world would tell her now.

I had no idea how I was going to eat any of it after my one and three-quarters banana splits. But somehow, for her, I knew I’d manage.

“It smells wonderful,” I said.

Then I went into her bedroom and snuck her little hand mirror off the dresser, and took it in my bathroom and used it to look at the back of my head in the bathroom mirror. I kept pressing, but it didn’t want to stop bleeding on its own.

I had done a bad job pulling out the hook. I forgot the part where you calm yourself and do it carefully. Do it right. I’d really ripped my scalp doing it in a panic.

I would have to hold pressure on it till it stopped bleeding, then wash the blood out of my hair and hope that didn’t start it up all over again.

All before dinner.

While I was waiting I thought about Will and how glad I was that he got home safe before this happened. Better me than Will. Especially today. I’m not sure Will could take it today. I’m not sure his poor back would hold one more straw.

About seven o’clock I was doing some research online, for my history homework, and I got the jingle. It was
Will. Of course it was Will. Who else would instant-message me? Unless, of course, they were delivering a death threat.

i just want to say youve been a good friend ernie i just wanted to thank you for being my friend

I know that sounds like a nice thing to say. But it scared me. Just the fact that he would get sappy like that. I wrote him back right away.

DONT TALK LIKE ITS THE END OF THE WORLD

no its fine everything is fine now

SERIOUSLY DUDE ARE YOU OKAY YOU DONT SOUND OKAY

ive never been better everything is okay now

YOU SURE YOU DONT WANT TO COME OVER

yeah

WANT TO DO SOMETHING TOMORROW

goodbye ernie thanks for being my friend

WAIT WAIT DONT GO AWAY WHAT DO YOU MEAN GOODBYE

I waited. No answer. I rang him back. Nothing. Then I saw his little symbol disappear off my messenger list. He’d gone off-line.

I grabbed up the phone and called him. No answer.

Now, what do you do in a situation like that? What the hell kind of position does that put me in? Was I supposed to run over there and see if he was okay? I would have, in a heartbeat. But I knew he probably wouldn’t answer the door if he wouldn’t answer the phone. So what good would that do?

Or was I supposed to call 911 and tell them we might have an actual emergency on our hands here? And then, what if I was wrong? What if all these ambulances and police cars went screaming over there, and they broke down his door with an ax or something, and it turned out he was just in there trying to be alone? But if you’re just home
trying to be alone, why message your best friend and say goodbye? That led me to an even worse question. What if I was right? What if no police cars or ambulances went screaming over and we really did have an emergency on our hands?

I picked up the phone and called 911.

The dispatcher lady kept trying to get me to calm down and give her really specific information. I guess I was trying to explain too much about his message, and his awful day, and other stuff she couldn’t really work with. So I gave her his address.

But she kept saying, “What is the nature of the emergency?”

I got more direct and said he might try to do something stupid. Clearly that was not direct enough.

She said it again. “What exactly is the nature of the emergency?”

I realized I was trying every way in the world to keep from saying it. And I had to stop that now. It was the truth, and I had to spit it out. I had to be a man and face those really harsh words.

I said, “I think he might try to kill himself.”

“So you’re saying there’s a possible suicide in progress at this address?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll get an emergency response team right over there.”

I hung up the phone and just sat there. I felt like I
couldn’t move. Like I was paralyzed. I was thinking, What did I just do?

I couldn’t possibly bring myself to wish I was right. Of course I didn’t wish that. But what a mess if I was wrong! I was in this weird situation where it was impossible to hope for the best. It was almost like there was no best to hope for.

It was just a bad night no matter how you slice it.

When I could move again, I got up and found my mom in the kitchen. Cleaning up the dishes. Also polishing off the leftovers.

“I’m going over to Will’s,” I said.

“On a school night?”

“It’s Friday.”

“Oh, that’s right. So it is. T.G.I.F.”

“Thanks,” I said, and got out as fast as I could. Or tried to anyway.

“Ernie, wait.” I froze, wondering what now. “You have blood on the back of your hair.”

Great. Just great. Good moment for that, all right. All that washing. Twice. And it still had to bleed a little more. Just enough so my mom could bust me.

“Oh. That. Right. It was stupid. I stuck myself with a fishhook. I was practicing casting.”

I turned around to look, to see how the lie was going over.

“Practicing casting?”

“Right.”

“But you’re the best at casting.”

“Oh. Well. Sure. Because I practice.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “Can we talk when I get home from Will’s?”

“Sure. I guess. Sure, honey. You want a ride over there?”

That was a good question. Did I? It would be faster. But then my mom would see the ambulance. She’d freak out. And she wouldn’t just drop me there. She’d be with me through the whole fiasco. I love my mom, but she’s not so good in a crisis. I’d be spending the whole time keeping her calm.

“No, that’s okay. Thanks. I’ll walk. It’s good for me.”

I ran out before she could answer.

When I got to Will’s house, I was so out of breath I was worried I might be about to have a heart attack. And I wasn’t running, either. Just walking as fast as I could. I mean, as fast as I could without dying.

There was a police car there, and an ambulance in his driveway.

One of the cops was talking to the two EMT guys. It didn’t look like they were doing very much. It didn’t look like enough.

I went right up to the other cop. The one who was still standing by the squad car.

“I’m the one who called 911,” I said. “Will’s my best friend.”

“Is he in there alone?”

“Yeah, his mom and her boyfriend are out for the evening.”

“We’re going to have to break down the door.”

I got this sudden cramp in the pit of my stomach. What if Will had clicked off-line and then walked out the door? What if he wasn’t answering the phone or the door because he wasn’t even home? What if this was all a terrible mistake?

But he said goodbye. Why would he say goodbye?

“What if I’m wrong?” I asked the cop. “What if you break down their door and I’m wrong?”

“What if we don’t break down the door and you’re right?”

“Right,” I said. “You better break down the door.”

The two cops got this battering ram out of the trunk of their car. It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t big and impressive, like in those old movies where somebody storms a castle with a battering ram that’s like the trunk of a giant tree. It was just this iron thing about a foot and a half long, or maybe two feet, I don’t know, with a handle on each side. The cops each took one handle and carried it up to Will’s front door. The whole inside of me felt numb and cold, like it was floating in a freezing ocean. They swung it back, then hit Will’s front door once. It
broke open, but it didn’t swing wide, because the security chain stopped it.

That’s when I felt something in all that numbness. Something like a little electric shock. Because you can’t go out and put the chain on behind you. If the chain is on, you’re home.

They hit it again, and the door swung wide, and long splinters of wood flew around at the end of the chain.

The EMTs went running in.

We waited. And waited.

“Do I have to wait here?” I asked the cops.

One of them said, “No, you can go home now, son.”

That was
so
not what I meant.

“I mean can I go in and see if he’s okay?”

“Oh. No. Let the EMTs do their job. You wait out here with us.”

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

Then they came back out with Will on a stretcher. And I didn’t feel anything inside. I don’t mean I didn’t care. I just mean it was all dead in there. Whatever there was to feel, I couldn’t feel it. Yet.

“Is he okay?” I yelled out.

“He’s still with us,” one of the EMTs yelled back.

“I need to go with him,” I told the cops. “Can I go to the hospital with him? I’m his best friend.”

“I think that’s just for blood family,” he said.

So I just stood there on the lawn until long after the
ambulance roared away with the siren screaming. Then I got tired of standing, so I sat on the lawn. Long after the cops finished their report and drove away.

Then I got up and closed the front door so they wouldn’t get robbed, and so Sampson wouldn’t get out. I had no idea where Sampson was. I had no idea why he didn’t bark during any of this. But he was in there somewhere. And I didn’t want him wandering off after I left.

Then I walked home.

My mom drove me to the hospital.

She didn’t say much. Thank God. She was pretty much silent all the way there. But she frowned the whole time. And I had a bad feeling I knew what she was thinking. And that it was something along the lines of, Maybe you shouldn’t be friends with this Will boy if it’s always going to be some disaster like this.

Like, yeah, just what he needs. To have his only friend give up on him.

I said something I was proud of myself for saying. I said, “I need you to just drop me there.”

“Why shouldn’t I come in?”

“I need you to go over to Will’s house and wait for his mother. Somebody has to tell his mother why the door is broken and Will is gone. Somebody has to tell her he’s at Twin Cities.” Then, this is the part I was proud of. “Besides. This is something I need to do by myself.”

She frowned even harder. “I just worry that since you’ve been friends with Will … I worry that you’re learning
too
much about life.”

“How can I learn too much about life? Besides, what would Uncle Max say?”

“I don’t know. What would he say?”

“He’d say you don’t have to keep telling me what to be afraid of, because I already know. He’d say I’ve had a trauma and I need you to support me now. Take care of my insides.”

She just sighed.

Then we pulled up in front of the emergency room, and I said thanks for the ride and jumped out. And, amazingly, she did what I asked her to do. She drove away.

I kept asking the woman at the admitting desk about Will. Three or four times. She just kept saying a doctor would come out and talk to me as soon as he could.

I sat on this hard plastic chair in the waiting room until I finally saw somebody coming. He was an Indian guy. From India, I mean. Pretty young, but already a little bald. Really short and really skinny. Less than half of me. Size-wise, I mean.

“Is Will okay?” I asked before he even got down the hall to me.

“It looks good,” he said.

I breathed in a way I hadn’t breathed all night.

He stopped right in front of me. “Where are the parents?”

“Well, his dad’s in jail. And his mom is out with her boyfriend on a date and she doesn’t even know this happened. But my mom’s at his house, so when they get back, she’ll tell them. So, he’s going to be okay?”

“Looks that way. The pills hadn’t been in his system long. We pumped his stomach and probably got most of it. I doubt there was ever a lethal dose in his bloodstream.”

“So when can he come home?”

“Minimum three days.”

“But you said he was okay.”

He just stood there a minute. Like he wished he didn’t have to say what he was about to say next. “Case like this, I have no choice but to order a 5150.” I think it was clear by the look on my face that I had no idea what he was talking about. “Three-day mandatory psychiatric evaluation.”

“Oh.”

It sounded kind of awful. But then again, Will probably needed that. He needed somebody to see that he was dying inside. Maybe it would be a good thing. Maybe they’d really get him some kind of help.

“Are you the one who called this in?” he asked.

“Yeah. That was me.”

“Well, you probably saved his life. Because if he’d been home alone all evening, I wouldn’t like his chances one bit. If you hadn’t called it in, he probably wouldn’t be
here right now. Have the receiving desk call me when his mother gets here, okay?”

I went back to that hard plastic chair and sat down. The room was so bright, and I was tired, and the bright was starting to hurt my eyes and the inside of my head. I looked at the giant clock on the wall. It was a little after ten. I knew it might be hours before I got a ride home. And I was so tired. I just wanted to go to bed.

I wanted to write all this in my diary and then sleep for a decade.

I closed my eyes to try to keep the bright out. But it was even a little bright through my eyelids. I opened my eyes, and the woman at the admitting desk smiled at me. That’s when I broke down and cried. It didn’t matter that I hated to cry in front of anybody. It didn’t make any difference. There was nothing I could do. It was like a flash flood. Like a dam giving up under pressure. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.