It's Kind of a Funny Story (26 page)

forty-four

“How’re you doing?” Dr. Minerva is like.

It’s 11 A.M. I sigh. After vitals was breakfast, where the guy who was afraid of gravity and Rolling Pin Robert were gone—Humble told me and Noelle that they got discharged. Toward the end of the meal, Noelle touched her leg against mine for as long as it took me to drink the first sip of my after-breakfast Swee-Touch-Nee tea, which was a big sip. Then Monica announced that we’d be screening
Blade II
tonight opposite the smoking lounge and everybody got excited, especially Johnny: “Huh, that movie is cool; a lotta vampires die.” No announcements about my music, but then again it hadn’t arrived yet.

I took my Zoloft in my little plastic cup and drew some brain maps by the window in the corner of the hall next to Jimmy. I handled my phone messages, started thinking seriously about what I’d do the moment I got out—would I buy a cup of coffee? Walk to the park? Go home and start in on the e-mail?—and
that
got me started thinking about e-mail, and all of a sudden I was really glad to have Dr. Minerva to go to.

“I’m doing okay, I think.”

She looks at me calm and steady. Maybe
she’s
my Anchor.

“What’s got you in doubt, Craig?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you were okay ‘you think.’Why do you just
think
it?”

“That’s an expression,” I say.

“This isn’t the place to be leaving if you’re not feeling better, Craig.”

“Right, well, I’ve been thinking about my e-mail.”

“Yes?”

“I’m really worried about getting out there and having to check it. The phones I’m caught up with, but the e-mail might be pretty deadly.”

“Deadly . . . How can e-mail be deadly, Craig?”

“Well.” I lean back, take a deep breath. Then I remember something. “You know how I had a lot of problems with starting and stopping my sentences before?”

“Yes.”

“Not lately.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s like the opposite, like words can just pour out of me, the way they used to, when I used to get in trouble in class.”

“Which was…” She focuses on her pad to write this down.

“A year ago . . . Before I went to Executive Pre-Professional.”

“Right—now tell me about the e-mail.”

“The e-mail.” I put my hands on the table. “I hate it. Like, right now, I haven’t been checking it for five days, okay?”

“Since Saturday.” She nods.

“That’s right. Now, what are people thinking while they’re trying to reach me? These are people who probably already have some idea where I am because Nia told Aaron the number and he figured it out.”

“Right: a big source of shame for you.”

“Yes. But even if someone has no idea where I am, what are they thinking?
Five days.
They’re like:
He’s crazy. He must have OD’ed or something.
Everyone is expecting me to answer them instantly and I’m not able to.”

“Who e-mails you, Craig?”

“People who want homework assignments, teachers, school clubs, announcements about charities I should volunteer in, invitations to Executive Pre-Professional football, basketball, squash games …”

“So they’re mostly school-related.”

“They’re
all
school-related. My friends don’t e-mail me. They call.”

“So why don’t you just ignore the e-mails?”

“I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because then people will be offended!”

“And what happens then?”

“Well, I won’t get to join clubs, get credits, participate in stuff, get extra-credit. . . I’ll
fail.”

“At school.”

“Right.” I pause. No, it’s not exactly school. It’s what comes after school. “At life.”

“Ah.” She pauses. “Life.”

“Right.”

“Failing at school is failing at life.”

“Well… I’m
in
school! That’s the one thing I’m supposed to do. I know a lot of famous people didn’t do well at school, like James Brown; he dropped out in fifth grade to be an entertainer, I respect that… but that’s not going to be me. I’m not going to be able to do anything but work as hard as possible all the time and compete with everyone I know all the time to make it. And right now school’s the
one thing
I need to do. And I’m away from the e-mail and I can’t do it.”

“But your definition of school isn’t really one thing, it’s many different things, Craig: extracurricular activities plus sports plus volunteering. That’s not to mention homework.”

“Right.”

“How anxious would you say you are about all of this, Craig?”

I think back to what Bobby said, about anxiety being a
medical
thing. The e-mail has been in the back of my mind since I got here, the nagging knowledge that when I get out I’ll have to sit on the computer for five or six hours going through everything I’ve missed, answering it in reverse order because that’s the way it comes in and therefore taking the longest time to respond to the people who e-mailed me in the most distant past. And then as I’m answering them more will
come in,
and they’ll sit on top of my stack and mock me, dare me to answer them before digging down, telling me that I need them, as opposed to the one or two e-mails that are actually about something I care about. Those will get saved to the end, and by the time I have the time to deal with them, they’ll be so out of date that I’ll just have to apologize:
Sorry, man. I haven’t been able to answer my e-mail. No, I’m not important, just incapable.

“Craig?”

“Very anxious,” I answer.

“The e-mail anxiety, and the failure talk . . . These are subjects you’ve brought up before. They’re very distressing to you.”

“I know. I’m sweating.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. And I haven’t been sweating for a while.”

“You’ve been away from your Tentacles.”

“Right. Not anymore. Now I get to go back and they’re all right there for me.”

“Do you remember what I asked you last time, about whether or not you’d found any Anchors in here?”

“Yes.”

She pauses. In order to ask a question, it is often possible for Dr. Minerva only to intimate that she might ask a question.

“I think I’ve found one,” I sigh.

“What’s that?”

“Can I get up and get it?”

“Absolutely.”

I leave the office and walk down the hall, where Bobby is leading a new recruit on his welcoming tour—a black guy with wild teeth and a stained blue sweatsuit.

“This is Craig,” Bobby says. “He’s real young, but he’s on the level. He does drawings.”

I shake the man’s hand. That’s right. I do drawings.

“Human Being,” the man says.

“That’s his name,” Bobby explains, rolling his eyes.

“Your name isn’t Craig; it’s Human Being too,” the man says.

I nod, break the handshake, and keep walking to my room. It’s literally like breaking away from a monster—the further I get from thinking about e-mail and Dr. Minerva and the fact that I’m going to have to leave here and go back to Executive Pre-Professional, the calmer I get. And the closer I get to the brain maps, to this little stupid thing I can do, the calmer I get.

I walk past Muqtada—he’s staring and trying to sleep—and take my art off the radiator cover. I cradle it in a stack past Bobby and Human Being— who’s now explaining how his real last name is Green and that’s what he needs, some green—back into the office.

“I kinda like it in here,” I say to Dr. Minerva.

“This room?”

“No, the hospital.”

“When you’re finished, you can volunteer.”

“I talked to the guitar guy Neil about that. I think I’ll try. I can get school credit!”

“Is that the reason you should volunteer, Craig—”

“No, no …” I shake my head. “I’m just
joking.”

“Ah.” Dr. Minerva cuts her face into a wide smile. “So what do we have here?”

I plop them down on the table. There are two dozen now. No kind of crazy breakthroughs, just variations on a theme: pigs with brain maps that resemble St. Louis, my couple for Noelle joined by the sweeping bridge, a family of metropolises.

“Your artwork,” she says.

She leafs through them, going “Oh, my” at the particularly good ones. I constructed this stack last night—not just for Dr. Minerva, for anybody. The brain maps have a certain order. Ever since I’ve been doing them, they’ve been making it clear that they should be stacked for presentation.

“Craig, these are wonderful.”

“Thanks.” I sit down. We were both standing. I didn’t even notice.

“You started these because you used to do them when you were four?”

“Right. Well. Something like them.”

“And how do they make you feel?”

I look at the pile. “Awesome.”

She leans in. “Why?”

I have to think about that one, and when Dr. Minerva makes me think, I don’t get embarrassed and try to skip it. I look to the left and stroke my chin.

“Because I do them,” I say. “I do them and they’re done. It’s almost like, you know, peeing?”

“Yes . . .” Dr. Minerva nods. “Something you enjoy.”

“Right. I do it; it’s successful; it feels good; and I know it’s good. When I finish one of these up I feel like I’ve actually done something and like the rest of my day can be spent doing whatever, stupid crap, e-mail, phone calls, all the rest of it.”

“Craig, have you ever considered the fact that you might be an artist?”

“I have other stuff too,” I keep going.
What’d she say?
“First of all I was thinking about this perpetual candle, like a candle on the ground with another candle hanging upside-down over it, and as the first candle melts the wax is kept molten by some kind of hot containment unit and gets pumped up to the second candle and drips down like a stalactite-stalagmite thing, and then I was also thinking: what if you filled a shoe with whipped cream? Just a man’s shoe, filled with whipped cream? That’s pretty easy to do. And then you could keep going: a T-shirt filled with Jell-O, a hat full of applesauce . . . that’s art, right? That kind of stuff. What’d you say about artists?”

She chuckles. “You seem to enjoy what you’re doing here.”

“Yeah, well, duh, it’s not the most difficult thing in the world.”

“You’re not sweating now.”

“This is a good Anchor for me,” I say. I admit. I admit it. It’s a stupid thing to admit. It means that I’m not practical. But then again, I’m already in the loony bin; how practical am I going to get? I might have to give up on practical.

“That’s right, Craig. This
can
be your Anchor.” Dr. Minerva stares at me and doesn’t blink. I look at her face, the wall behind her, the door, the shades, the table, my hands on the table, the Brain Maps between us. I could do the one on the top a little better. I could try putting some wood grain in there with the streets. Knots of wood in people’s heads. That could work. “This can be my Anchor.” I nod. “But. ..”

“What, Craig?”

“What am I going to do about school? I can’t go to Executive Pre-Professional for
art.”

“I’m going to throw a wild notion at you.” Dr. Minerva leans back, then forward. “Have you ever thought about going to a
different school?”

I stare ahead.

I hadn’t. I honestly hadn’t.

Not once, not in my whole life, not since I started there. That’s my
school.
I worked harder to get in than I did for anything else, ever. I went there because, coming out of it, I’d be able to be President. Or a lawyer. Rich, that’s the point. Rich and successful.

And look where it got me. One stupid year—not even one, like three quarters of one—and here I am with not one, but
two
bracelets on my wrist, next to a shrink in a room adjacent to a hall where there’s a guy named Human Being walking around. If I keep doing this for three more years, where will I be? I’ll be a complete loser. And what if I
keep
on? What if I do okay, live with the depression, get into College, do College, go to Grad School, get the Job, get the Money, get Kids and a Wife and a Nice Car? What kind of crap will I be in then? I’ll be
completely crazy.

I don’t want to be
completely
crazy. I don’t like being here
that
much. I like being a little crazy: enough to volunteer here, not enough to ever, ever, ever come back.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I have thought about it.”

“When? Just now?”

I smile. “Absolutely.”

“And what do you think?”

I clap my hands together and stand up. “I think I should call my parents and tell them that I want to transfer schools.”

forty-five

“Visitor, Craig,” Smitty pokes his head into the dining room. I slide my chair back from the table, where I’m playing after-lunch poker with Jimmy and Noelle and Armelio. Jimmy doesn’t really have any idea how to play, but we deal him cards and he plays them face down and smiles and we give him more chips (we’re using scraps of paper; the buttons are locked up due to our recklessness) whenever he pockets his or chews them up.

“I’ll be back,” I say.

“This guy, so busy,” says Armelio.

“He thinks he’s all important,” Noelle says.

“I woke up, and the bed was on
fire!”
says Jimmy.

We all look at him. “You okay, Jimmy?” I ask.

“My mom hit me in the head. She hit me in the head with a
hammer.”

“Oh, wow.” I turn to Armelio. “I heard him say stuff like this down in the ER. Has he talked about this before?”

“No,
nuh-uh,
buddy.”

“Hey, Jimmy, it’s okay.” I put my hand on his shoulder. At the same time, I bite my tongue. You can think someone’s hilarious and want to help them at the same time.

“She hit me in the
head,”
he says. “With a
hammer!”

“Yeah, but you’re here now,” Noelle says. “You’re safe. Nobody’s going to hit you in the head with anything.”

Jimmy nods. I keep my hand on his shoulder. I keep my tongue bit down, but I make little chuffing noises as I try to keep from laughing, and he looks up and notices. He smiles at me, then laughs himself, then picks his cards up and claps my back.

“It’ll
come
to ya,” he says.

“That’s right. I know it will.”

I excuse myself from the room and head down the hall. Right at the end is Aaron, holding the record I want. Dad didn’t have it.

“Hey, man,” he says sheepishly, and as I approach, he leans it against the wall. He’s a dick, but I’m not perfect either so I come up and hug him.

“Hey.”

“Well, you were right. My dad had it—
Egyptian Masters Volume Three.”

“I so appreciate this.” I take the record. It’s got a picture on the cover of what looks like the Nile at dusk, with a palm tree lilting left, echoing the brightening moon, and the purple sky rolling up from the horizon.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about everything,” Aaron says. “I. .. uh … I’ve had a weird couple of days.”

“You know what?” I look him in the eyes. “Me too.”

“I bet.” He smiles.

“Yeah, from now on, whenever crap goes down, you can be like ‘Oh, Craig, I had a bad few days,’because I
will
get what you’re talking about.”

“What’s it like in here?” he asks.

“There’s people whose lives have been screwed up for a long time, and then there are people like me, whose lives have been screwed up for . . . you know . . . shorter.”

“Did they put you on new drugs?”

“No, same ones I was on before.”

“So are you feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

“What changed?”

“I’m going to leave school.”

“You’re
what?”

“I’m done. I’m going somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m going to talk it over with my parents. Somewhere for art.”

“You want to do art?”

“Yeah. I’ve been doing some in here. I’m good at it.”

“You’re pretty good at school too, man.”

I shrug. I don’t really need to explain this to Aaron. He’s been demoted from most important friend to friend, and he’s going to have to earn that, even. And you know what else? I don’t owe people anything, and I don’t have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.

“What’s up with Nia?” I ask. Have to tread care fully here. “I got your message, about how things were bad.”

“They got worked out. It was my fault. I got all freaked out about her being on pills and we broke up for like, a few days.”

“Why did that freak you out?”

“I don’t need any more of that in my life, you know? I mean, it’s bad enough with my dad.”

“He’s on medication?”

“Every form of medication in the
book.
Mom, too. And then me, with the pot… when you come right down to it, there isn’t anybody in the household who isn’t seriously drugged except the fish.”

“And you didn’t want your girlfriend to be, too.”

“Her smoking is one thing; I just … I can’t really explain it. I guess you’ll have to go out with someone for a long time to understand. If you’re with somebody and then you learn that they need to …
take
something on a daily basis, you wonder— how good can you be for them?”

“That’s pretty stupid,” I say. “I met this girl in here—”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, and she’s really screwed up, as screwed up as me, but I don’t look at that as an insult. I look at that as a chance to connect.”

“Yeah, well.”

“People are screwed up in this world. I’d rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and . . . you know . . . ready to explode.”

“I’m sorry, Craig.” Aaron looks at me deep and holds out a hand for me to slap. “I’m sorry I was a bitch to you.”

“You
were
a bitch.” I slap his hand. “This album partly makes up for it. Just, don’t do it again.”

“All right.” He nods.

We stand still a minute. We haven’t moved from the crux of the hallways near the entrance of Six North. The double doors that I came in through are eight feet behind him.

“Well, listen,” he says. “Enjoy the record. And— hey, they have a record player in here?”

“They still
smoke
in here, Aaron. They’re kind of back in time.”

“Enjoy it and be in touch, and I’m sorry once again. I guess you won’t be chilling for a while.”

“I don’t know. I may never be chilling again.”

“Did you almost kill yourself to get in here?” Aaron asks. “That’s what Nia told me.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t capable of dealing with the real world.”

“Craig, don’t kill yourself, okay?”

“Thanks.”

“Just.. . don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll see you soon, man.”

Aaron turns and the nurses open the door for him. He’s not a bad guy. He’s just someone who hasn’t had his stay on Six North yet. I take the record to Smitty to store behind the nurses’station.