Suicide Notes (14 page)

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 asked. “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.

When I woke up from the dream, I felt weird. I can’t really explain it. There was this knot in my stomach, the same kind I get when I wake up the morning of a big test I know I haven’t studied enough for. Then I remembered Rankin, and that I was going to have to talk to Cat Poop about what happened, and I knew why the knot was there.

Day 34

I’ll never know what Sadie would have thought about my dream. I was going to tell her, but she . . .

No. Wait. I have to start at the beginning. If I don’t, I’m going to get everything mixed up, because right now it’s all swirling around in my brain. I can catch bits and pieces of it, but trying to see the whole picture at once is really hard. I don’t even know if I want to see it. If I see it, I might fall apart.

So yesterday morning, after the famous Jeff and Rankin Get Busted incident, I got dressed and walked down the hall to the lounge. (I did
not
take a shower, which is a little gross, but I don’t exactly have a great track record in that department lately.) Part of me expected everyone to be lined up, waiting to tell me how awful I was before they threw me out. But no one else was up. Instead, Goody was sitting at the desk, reading a file. I wondered if it was mine, and if she knew what had happened.

“Dr. Katzrupus is waiting for you in his office,” she said, answering that question.

I walked down the hall to Cat Poop’s door and knocked. He opened it and I walked into his office, not saying anything or even looking at him. I sat down in the chair across from his desk and waited for him to tell me I was leaving.

“Do you want to talk about what happened last night?” he said.

“Not really,” I told him. “But I’ll bet a million bucks that you do.”

He nodded. “Do you have anything to say about it?”

I shook my head.

“Let me ask you this,” said Cat Poop. “How did it happen?”

“What do you mean, how did it happen?”

“How did it happen?” he repeated. “I think it’s a pretty straightforward question.”

I kind of huffed at him. It was a stupid question, is what it was. I shrugged. “He came into my room, got into my bed, and tried to butt burgle me,” I said.

Cat Poop pushed his glasses up. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” I answered. “Trust me, if some guy tries to stick his junk in you, you know it.”

“I meant that you’re certain you didn’t encourage Rankin in any way.”

I had to think about that one. I mean, Rankin’s the one who’s started it every time we’ve done anything. But it’s not like he’s ever
forced
me to do it, and until last night I’ve never exactly told him
not
to do what he’s done. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have kept trying. But I didn’t want to tell Cat Poop that. It would just make me look like a victim, and he’d want to talk about it even more.

“Are you suggesting that I asked for it because I wore my sexy boxers?” I asked instead.

“I spoke to Rankin this morning,” said the doc. “He said that it was you who talked him into doing it.”

“What?” I said. “He said
I
started it?”

I couldn’t believe that Rankin had lied. Well, yes, I could. Still, I was pissed off. “It was
not
my idea,” I said, more to myself than to Cat Poop. “He’s the one who came to
my
room. He’s the one who’s a—”

I stopped myself from saying it. But I thought it. A fag. Rankin was the fag around here. Not me.

Cat Poop pushed his glasses up his nose again. I almost told him to knock it off. “Jeff, I have to tell you that this is a serious breach of hospital rules. You could be asked to leave the program.”

“Finally,” I muttered. “If I’d known that, I would have done it a long time ago.”

“Unless,” said the doc, “there’s some other reason for your behavior. Something that relates to your overall reason for being here.”

It took me a minute to understand what he was saying. When I did, I got mad. “Nice,” I said. “You’re trying to get me to talk by threatening to kick me out for something I didn’t do. Where’d they teach you that, shrink torture school?”

Cat Poop leaned forward. “All I’m asking you is if what you did with Rankin has any connection to why you hurt yourself,” he said.

“No,” I said instantly. “It has nothing to do with it. I mean, I fooled around with Sadie, too, and that didn’t mean . . .”

I stopped, realizing that I’d just made a huge mistake.

“You and Sadie—” Cat Poop started to say. His finger was already halfway to his nose.

“No,” I interrupted. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What exactly
did
you mean?” he asked.

I searched around in my head for some answer to give him, anything that could erase what I’d already said. But I knew I couldn’t. I’d gone too far.

“All right,” I said. “Yeah, I fooled around with Sadie. But I couldn’t.” I looked at my hands, which were in my lap. My fingers were wrestling with each other.

“Couldn’t what?”

I forced my hands to be still. “Couldn’t, you know,
do
it,” I mumbled. “And with Rankin it was just fooling around. Nothing serious. It’s not like I’m in love with him or anything. Not like it was with . . .”

Again I realized too late that I’d slipped up. That made twice in less than five minutes. If I didn’t do damage control, and fast, I was basically going to make sure I was on the next bus out of there. And for some reason, I didn’t want to be on that bus.

“With whom?” Cat Poop asked.

“Nobody,” I said. “I was just talking.”

“With Allie?” he said.

I could feel his eyes on me. I started to say that, yeah, it was Allie. But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. He was starting to win, and I didn’t want him to win. I wanted to be the winner, even if it meant letting him think I’d come on to Rankin or whatever.

And that’s when he dropped the bomb. “Jeff,” he said. “I have to tell you something. About Sadie.”

“I know we shouldn’t have—” I said, trying to head him off. It was bad enough that I was probably going to get kicked out. I didn’t want to be responsible for Sadie having to leave, too. So I just kept talking, hoping it would make him change his mind. “That time it
was
my idea. I’m the one who went into her room. She didn’t come into mine. And really, it was no big thing, anyway. I was just feeling lonely. You can even ask her.”

“Jeff, listen,” he said. His voice sounded weird, and suddenly I wanted to be anywhere but in his office. The way he looked reminded me of the way my dad looked the time he had to tell Amanda that her cat got hit by a car.

“What?” I asked. “Did she leave already? Did you kick her out? Because I’m telling the truth. You can’t just—”

“Jeff,” Cat Poop interrupted. “Sadie’s dead.”

I knew he hadn’t just said that. I mean, there was no way he could have said it. “
Sadie’s dead
?” No. I was sure I’d heard wrong. He’d said “
Sadie’s gone
.” That’s what he’d said.

“What do you mean?” I asked him. “You mean she
left
.”

“Last night,” he said. “You heard the screaming, right?”

“But that was Martha,” I said. “Moon Face said it was Martha.”

He nodded. “It
was
Martha,” he said.

“She had a bad dream,” I said.

Cat Poop actually took off his glasses. It was the first time he’s ever done that, and it made him look naked. Naked and tired. Then I realized that he hadn’t shaved. It was like he’d been up all night. He rubbed his eyes for a minute before talking again.

“Martha went to Sadie’s room,” he said. “I imagine she
did
have a bad dream and wanted to be comforted. She found Sadie.”

“Found her what?” I asked him, not understanding.

He shook his head. “Dead,” he said. Flat. Just like that. “She found Sadie dead.”

I laughed. I know it sounds weird, but I did. “You’re kidding,” I said. “You’d better be kidding. Because Sadie is
not
dead. She’s waiting to have breakfast with me. It’s pancake day.”

“I’m sorry,” said Cat Poop. “I know this is very difficult for you to hear and accept, particularly under the circumstances. And I wouldn’t have told you now, but—”

“Under the circumstances?” I said. Then I started laughing again. I don’t know why. It just started pouring out of me, this loud laughter. Like some kind of crazy clown. I don’t think I was even thinking anything. I was just laughing.

And then it turned into crying. I was crying. Just bawling my eyes out. Then the next thing I know, Cat Poop was beside me. He actually hugged me. And I let him. I let him hug me while I bawled. I still didn’t believe him about Sadie. But I cried anyway. After a while I didn’t even know why I was crying. I didn’t know if it was because of the Rankin thing or the Sadie thing or the Jeff thing. And it didn’t matter. It just felt good.

I don’t know how long I cried, but it felt like a hundred hours. I think part of me thought that if I just kept crying none of it would be real. Sadie wouldn’t be dead. The stuff with Rankin would never have happened. I wouldn’t be crazy.

But she is. And it did. And I am.