Schizo (2 page)

DR. FRANKEL IS SHORT,
practically a midget.

When he sits in his plush leather office chair, his legs dangle two or three inches off the ground. The ground, in this case, being some kind of Persian tapestry rug over a hardwood floor—a rug covered in patterns like abstract palm trees—a rug I've stared at and tried to decipher at least five thousand times in the last two years.

I'm not sure how my parents found this guy. Or how they're paying for him.

What I do know is that my visits have finally been cut down to twice a month—so I guess I'll be staring at that goddamn pattern a little less now, won't I?

Dr. Frankel coughs.

Besides being incredibly short, he is also incredibly fat. He has these giant bushy eyebrows and a huge nose and a gullet neck and he wears shiny tracksuits like a mobster. Really, I think the reason I stare at the carpet so much is that he's actually kind of hard to look at.

But, I mean, I guess he's a pretty good doctor. The meds I'm on right now seem to be working—and that is the point.

“Miles, my boy.”

That's what he always calls me.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

“Miles, my boy, how have things been? Better?”

He's eating baby carrots out of a bag, so I keep my eyes focused on that strangely patterned rug of his.

“Uh, I don't know.”

I cross and uncross my legs.

He crunches noisily.

“The Zyprexa seems to be a winner, no?”

My eyes drift over to the built-in shelves with the rows and rows of different self-help books and things. A bunch of them he actually wrote himself—including the newest one:
Schizophrenia in the Adolescent Male: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatments.

That's the one he wrote about me.

Well, me and these two other kids I see, separately, in the waiting room from time to time. Not that I've ever spoken to them. I've never talked to anyone else with this disease.

And, of course, I haven't read his book, either.

If I want to see other schizophrenics, I don't really have to look too far. This is San Francisco. I see 'em standing on every street corner downtown—yelling at cars and talking to shit that isn't there.

Those are my peers: the people who construct helmets out of plastic coolers and cardboard boxes, trying to keep the voices out. The people whose clothes are so black with dirt and oil, it looks like they're wearing sealskin. The people whose hair is tangled together into a nest of fleas and lice and whatever else. The people who have no homes or families or friends. The people walking down the street with their pants around their ankles, shitting as they go.

I've seen it, man. This city's full of them. My dad wrote this big article about it for the
Chronicle
a few years ago, claiming it goes back to the eighties, when Reagan cut funding for mental health programs. They were all thrown out into the street, and there they've fucking stayed.

But now, from what Dr. Frankel says, it's getting seriously more common, like, all the time. There was even another schizo kid at my school who had to go off to some institution at the beginning of last year. I never met him or anything, but, of course, everyone heard the story. Dan Compton, his name was. And I think half the kids in school probably expect me to go the same way.

I don't blame them. Some days, I expect the same thing. It scares the shit out of me even though, as Dr. Frankel keeps telling me, I'm the lucky one—the one the medication's been working for.

And, yeah, to answer the good doctor's question, Zyprexa seems all right.

I tell him that.

He chuckles.

“Good, Miles, good. Carrot?”

I glance up and look at the carrot he's holding out to me. The color is, like, bright, toxic orange. Really, it's the most vividly fucking orange carrot I've ever seen.

“Uh, no. I'm okay . . . thanks.”

My eyes go back to the rug and then the bookshelf and then the rug again.

“How about the other medications? Are the side effects any more tolerable?”

I swivel around in my chair. “I don't know.”

He crunches loudly, smacking his lips together. “You don't know?”

“Well,” I say, “I still get hella nauseous when I take 'em all at once.”

“So, maybe don't take them all at once.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I know. But it's hard to remember otherwise.”

He suggests I make myself a schedule, and I think that's pretty fucking obvious. I do some more swiveling while he does some more crunching.

“Plus, didn't I tell you?” I add. “My mom says her insurance won't cover 'em anymore 'cause the school, like, cut her hours or something.”

His mouth turns down at the corners. “But aren't you working at that grocery store on the weekends?”

I laugh again. “Yeah, but that's, like, minimum wage. I mean, it's nothing.”

He shakes his head. “Hmmm. Well, let me see what I can do, okay, Miles? You really shouldn't be worrying about these things. Your job is to get well. Let your parents be your parents. And let yourself be a kid—at least for a little while longer.”

I pause for a second, cracking the knuckles on my left hand.

“I don't know,” I say. “I mean, sometimes I don't even see the point of all this. It's like, what kind of life can I possibly expect to have? You think I'm gonna hold a job, get married, have a family?”

Dr. Frankel stops crunching, and I can hear the chair creak as he leans forward.

“You can do anything you want.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I'm serious, Miles. Your life is just beginning.”

Yeah. Just beginning,
I think.
But it's already over.

My face contorts, and I wonder if maybe I shouldn't say what I'm about to say, but I go ahead and say it anyway.

“I appreciate you trying to give me hope and all. But I know what my chances are. It seems like I'd be doing everyone a favor if I could just end it, you know?”

He shakes his head again, and his gullet goes along for the ride, flapping back and forth. I can smell something stale and sour suddenly, like maybe he forgot to put on deodorant this morning.

“Miles, are you listening to yourself? You don't think your parents would be absolutely, cataclysmically devastated to lose you?”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” I tell him, averting my eyes again. “But, at least, then it would be over, all at once. The way it is now, I'm just gonna drag this fucking thing out so they can't ever move past it. You see what I'm saying?”

Dr. Frankel speaks gently. “Miles, come on, look at me.”

I don't want to do it, but I'm too goddamn polite not to. I raise my head up as he leans in even closer.

“What?”

“Can you honestly tell me that your parents would
ever
be able to get over it if you took your own life?”

I close my eyes and open them.

My words come out all stuttered.

“Yeah, you're right. I'm not serious. But, Janey . . . she needs our mom and dad way more than I do. They—”

He cuts me off. “And what about you, huh? Doesn't your sister need you, too?”

I laugh again, but not 'cause anything's funny.

“She'd be better off without me. They all would. Besides, you think my parents will ever forgive me?”

He sits forward, so his face is up closer to mine.

“What do you mean? Forgive you for what?”

I feel a burning suddenly behind my eyes.

“You know. For what happened.”

Dr. Frankel nods very slowly, and I can hear him sucking in air through his wide nose.

“You don't remember what we talked about?”

When I try to answer, the words don't come.

My throat swells.

I don't want to cry.

I don't want to fucking cry.

THE SUN BURNED HOT
and bright so the sweat ran into our eyes.

School was out.

We went to the beach—my mom, my dad, my little brother and sister, and me.

To Ocean Beach.

The sand was littered with trash and fallen trees and driftwood and broken-apart fishing boats, but still, the beach was pretty that day. The sky was clear blue, almost transparent so you could see the round perfect moon white in the midday sky.

The cliffs stretched up on either side.

There was no wind.

A group of surfers paddled out past the breakers—the swells forming neat, perfect lines nearly a mile out from shore.

The ocean reflecting the sky.

The ocean like a fire.

People watching the ocean like that, lying on their beach towels.

Teddy was seven then.

He was small—frail—with a whole mess of freckles and red, curly hair.

We went out wading in the water, which was cold and burned like a fire would. But the more we ran, the less it burned. And so we ran, chasing each other until I had to pee and so I went back over to my dad and Jane, who is two years older than Teddy. They were throwing a Nerf football back and forth on the hot sand—Janey with her long white-blond hair and my dad with his shirt off and his big belly hanging out over the waistband of his shorts.

When I reached the place where they'd set up camp my mom waved me over, but I ignored her and continued on toward the public bathrooms. I ran through the sand and climbed the crumbling concrete steps, up the breaker wall where a bunch of kids I recognized from my school were standing around. They were older, though, like, juniors or something—three boys and two girls. And they were smoking a blunt.

I'd smoked weed a few times before, and so I went over and they thought it was cool—some incoming freshman wanting to smoke pot with them.

The one girl, Angela, she had long dreads tucked away in a knit Rastafarian-looking hat. And then there was Pierre, who was short and a little heavy, and then Heroji, whose father was a famous Black Panther. I'd actually met them before at the end-of-the-year picnic; they'd all been playing in the Stanyan Hill funk band, and I'd been hoping to try to audition on guitar for them once I started in the upper school.

Heroji was the one who passed me the blunt. I inhaled it deep in my lungs and held it in and then exhaled.

At the time, it really didn't seem like a big deal. I mean, like I said, I'd smoked pot before, and it wasn't like my parents would be able to see me, since we were well hidden—and the spot where they'd set up camp was a good quarter mile down the beach.

So I hit the blunt again and exhaled and I passed it back, thanking all three of them. Heroji and I did a sort of slap, snap, handshake thing, and then I ran across the parking lot to the bathroom.

I peed for a long time facing the dull-colored wall.

And then . . .

It was as though someone was there, next to me, speaking, almost whispering in my ear.

The voice was like my voice, but deeper, more grown-up sounding.

It was like my adult voice, telling me not to go back outside.

“Don't go, Miles. It's not safe. They're coming. Don't go!”

I laughed at that.

I laughed and wondered how those couple of hits could've gotten me so goddamn high.

I walked to the door of the bathroom.

Reaching out for the handle, I tried to turn the lock, but it was like my hand couldn't quite grab hold of it.

I turned, and everything—the door, the walls, the scratched mirror, the sink, the urinals—was all covered in some kind of thick grease—like congealed fat, like wax, like Vaseline—pooling sweat, and beading in the heat of the tiny bathroom. I grabbed the handle, and my hand slipped. I called for help, but the voice was there again, telling me not to go out.

“They're coming for you, Miles. You can't go out there.”

But I had to.

I had to get out.

I pounded on the door.

I screamed and screamed.

“HELP! PLEASE! HELP ME!”

But no one came.

There was only the voice.

And that's when I saw them: the crows—black, fat, grotesque, the biggest I'd ever seen—trying to break in from all sides through the sealed plastic windows and vent openings. They cawed and cackled, and I knew that the voice was right. I couldn't leave. I had to stay locked inside or the crows . . . they were going to tear me apart.

I lay on the ground and held the palms of my hands pressed against my ears. I screamed and screamed as they clawed and cawed and fought to get in.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long I stayed there curled up on the cold gray concrete floor, or who first heard me screaming in terror, but no one could get the door open, so the fire department had to come and break through the lock with an ax.

Of course, I thought the firemen were the crows coming to take me, so I screamed even louder when I saw them and tried to run and I had to be tied down and then sedated.

It was an entire day later that I came to in the hospital.

I woke up and the doctor explained my diagnosis—starting me on my first round of medications.

They kept me on lockdown for another seventy-two hours, until finally my mom and dad brought me home.

And it was only then, over four days later, that I found out about Teddy.

No one had been watching him while I was screaming for help locked in the bathroom.

No one had been watching . . . and no one knew what happened.

When the police arrived, they found a witness who told them she'd seen a boy fitting Teddy's description getting into a Ford Explorer with a middle-aged white man—tall and thin and balding. An Amber Alert was immediately issued. They posted flyers and ran advertisements.

A few other people came forward as witnesses, too.

And there were many false leads.

But no real evidence ever surfaced as to Teddy's whereabouts.

He had disappeared.

But, of course, there was also the other possibility.

I mean, I hated to even let myself think about it, but the fact remained that the witness could have been wrong.

Maybe the boy she saw was not Teddy.

After all, Teddy had been out playing in the ocean by himself. The undertow, combined with a heavy riptide, could've easily been too strong for him.

He could have been pulled out to sea.

But I refuse to believe that.

After all, his body was never found.

And the cops and Coast Guard agreed it should have washed up on shore by now.

Teddy had to be out there.

Somewhere.

He'd be nine years old now.

It wasn't completely unheard of. Just look at that Elizabeth Smart girl. She was missing almost ten months before they rescued her.

Teddy could've been taken like that.

I have this sense that he's alive somehow. I'm not sure how to explain it. I just
feel
him—like he's not that far away at all.

Even if everyone else has given up hope.

My mom, my dad, the police, the private investigator—they've all stopped looking for him. They assume he died that day, I guess, or has died since.

But me? I can't stop looking; I can't give up hope.

Because it was my fault.

It was all . . .

All of it . . .

My fault.

So what fucking choice do I have?