Cracked (12 page)

broken

crumpled

longing for whispers

that everything will be okay

Dreaming

dreaming

dreaming

about survival

retribution

just a little peace

Children want to be loved

cherished

without conditions

restrictions

limitations

or boundaries

A child’s spirit is a fragile thing

a hollow egg

delicate and easy to shatter

Some wait to be filled

with direction

hope

Some wait for no one

they fill

themselves

up

I reread the Post-it and the P.S. smacks me right in the face. I think:
My bike!
I never locked it, and well, we all know what crazy crap happened next.

What did this Frank mean by “safe”? Did he mean he has my bike? How am I supposed to find it when I don’t even know where he lives? Then I think that he must’ve spoken to one of the nurses. He was in my room, so he had to have talked to someone, right?

I use the nurse call box and ask Ellie who dropped off the brown bag of snacks. She tells me his name is Frank and that she’s surprised I’m asking her this question, because Frank gave her the impression that the two of us were close, personal friends. I don’t want to get old Frank in trouble. So I tell Ellie that it must be my new pain medications playing with my head because, yes, I know Frank from the cemetery, like, really well. And yeah, we are close, personal friends. And thank you, Ellie. I add that last part so she won’t think I’m lying to her super-hot-nurse-self.

Now it’s just me, the bag of food, the Post-it, and the poem. I may read a lot, but I’ve never read a poem before. Well, that’s sort of a lie. I’ve been read stuff that rhymes, like Dr. Seuss and junk, but I’ve never read a real poem. Ever.

I read it once, then turn the clipping over to see if there’s another one on the back. There isn’t. I read it again. And again. And again.

And then I start crying. Yeah, I’m serious. I’m crying.

AFTER THE SNACK WE’RE ALLOWED TO GO BACK TO
the common room, where my interrogation lasts for another ten minutes. I guess everyone didn’t want to ask “those questions” at the table with the other nurses hanging around. Jenny, the other girl who was sitting on the sofa, tucks her brown hair behind her ears and changes the conversation. Thank God. She says to the hot, curly-blond-haired girl, “Nikole, tell everyone your story. It’s just so freaking sad.”

Nikole,
I repeat in my mind
.
I let the name sway and spin through my head as she talks. I say it over and over again. I think I hear her say she got here two days ago.

Nikole. Nikole. Nikole.

It’s the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard. Brian’s cough clears my thoughts, and I pay attention.

Nikole is saying, “Some drunk driver swerved and then a third car smashed into Greg’s side of the car.”

Lacey takes Nikole’s hand into hers and squeezes. “Why are some people so effing irresponsible? I swear.”

Nikole says to Lacey, “I don’t know. I loved him. And he loved me. We applied to the same colleges and—” She chokes out a cry.

Greg was her
boyfriend
.

No one says anything for a while, and the only sound is Nikole sniffling. Then she gets herself together and says, “So I took a handful of pills from my mother’s medicine cabinet, left a note, and went to bed.”

Even though Nikole is beautiful, she somehow seems gray and dull—like someone peeled off the shiny layer of her outer shell. I wish I could’ve seen her happy.

She told us that when she woke up in her bed the day after taking the pills, she was mad. Her mom found the note while Nikole was in the shower. Her mother then proceeded to freak out, call this place, and get her in treatment within two hours.

Jenny says, “I still can’t believe you didn’t need to get pumped.”

Nikole shrugs. “I didn’t take enough of any of the pills. I just grabbed a few out of every bottle I could find. The intake guy said I was lucky and if I’d taken, like, four more Valiums, I would’ve either been in a coma or dead.”

I hear Notebook Girl go, “Psh,” from the chair in the corner. She doesn’t lift her head or anything. She’s still writing, her face hidden by her hair.

None of the other kids appear to have heard the “Psh” because they don’t acknowledge the girl at all. Conversation kind of lulls, and pretty soon, one by one, the room empties out—even the girl in the corner leaves.

It’s just me and Nikole now.

As she speaks, I am doing everything in my power to respond with the appropriate facial expressions, which is probably backfiring and making me look like a complete weirdo. This whole talk-to-people-like-you’re-a-regular-person thing is as foreign to me as my parents’ love and acceptance. I tell my brain to shut up and just listen to her.

She tells me she had the weirdest dream last night: Greg came to her and kept reassuring her she would be all right. It made her want to live again.

Really, I can’t believe such a beautiful girl is talking to me, looking me in the eyes, and waiting for me to react to what she is saying.
Looking
at me.
Seeing
me.

“I knew you were pills,” she says, and smiles.

I feel my mouth try to form the shape of a smile, but I worry it looks like I just farted or something.

“What?” Nikole says, still smiling. “What’s that face for?”

I shrug and shake my head.

“So, do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asks.

“No, just me.”

“You’re lucky. I have three sisters, and I sometimes wish it was just me. You know, so that I could be who I am and not what they want me to be.”

“Yeah,” I say and look at the floor. I have no idea how to keep a conversation going.

She gets up from her couch and plops down next to me. “Did you ever wish for something, Victor?” she asks.

My breath is caught in my throat. She’s got tears in her eyes, which makes mine instantly fill up too. I make my lips tight so that I don’t full-on cry, because I know that would be the lamest thing I could do right now. I nod. She nods with me, raises her hand, and puts it on my cheek. Now the tears are dripping from my eye sockets and down my face. She takes her thumb and wipes them away without saying a word. To be honest, her
eyes
are telling me what I’ve desperately wanted to hear my whole life:
You’re okay just the way you are.

The funny thing is,
I
want to fix
her
.

I feel more bonded to Nikole after a few hours together than I do to both of my parents combined. And they’ve known me for sixteen years.

One of the nurses comes in, smiles, and says, “Just doing my rounds.” I quickly pull myself together. Nikole says she’s going to read in her room.

“Sure,” I say.

We both get up, even though I have nowhere to go. And in the hallway Nikole turns one way and I turn the other. I watch her walk toward her room. She turns around, walks back to me, and whispers in my ear, “Your dreams
are
going to come true, Victor. I can feel it.” Then she kisses my cheek.

Again I watch her walk toward her room, but this time I can feel the blood surge in my sweatpants. I go directly into the bathroom and brush my teeth, which I understand is a peculiar reaction. I am in there for two reasons:

1. I don’t want to have any interaction with Bull right now.

2. I need my boner to go away, and figure brushing my teeth is a pretty regular and mindless thing to do until it does.

Bull’s curtain is closed when I sit on my bed. I swear I hear a sniffle and a small choke. Then I hear it again. It’s very soft, but it is definitely the same sound.

Bull Mastrick is crying.

I wish I had a secret video camera. I could record this so I could show it to the whole cafeteria. Then maybe, just maybe, he would never punch the chocolate milk out of me again.

I imagine smiling as the whole school watches him cry like a little girl. I smile big and wide.

Then I hear the crying sound again, this time not so low. And Bull whispers, “Shit.”

I CAN’T BELIEVE DICKTORIA IS BACK AND I HAVEN’T
pulled my crap together. He knows I’ll end his life if he tells anyone about this. Maybe he didn’t hear me. Whatever, I’ll kill him if he talks.

I think I’ve read the poem at least ten times. Each time I read it, fresh tears roll down my stupid face. Every single line of that poem hurts. Each line is like a dog bite in the ass. Why would Frank give it to me? Was he
trying
to make my life even more depressing?

Why would a guy I’ve never even met drop off snacks like I’m going on some dumb field trip? And why shove this poem
in there? He must be ticked off that I keep sneaking into his damn cemetery when I’m not supposed to be there. He’s just as much of an asshole as Dicktoria.

Why did he call me “son”? I’m not his kid. Maybe he’s one of those creeps who like . . .

Whatever.

I’m not crying anymore, which is good because I hate crying almost as much as I hate getting pounded on by Pop.

My thigh hurts, my wrist hurts, my stomach hurts, my eyes hurt, and yeah, I’ll admit it, my heart hurts. I’m out.

BULL STOPS CURSING AND CRYING AND IT IS QUIET.
I lie back on my bed even though it’s the middle of the day. What the hell else do I have to do? Silence always makes my mind go deep; I usually try to make it come up for air and get out of the murky depths. But I let it go this time. You think I’d be reliving the whole Nikole moment, but no, I sink down . . . down . . . down . . . down. . . .

My parents leave me home from our family vacation so I can get perfect SAT scores. My parents leave me behind. On purpose. Not like in
Home Alone
. It was a real decision—and I know it made them happy. This makes me sick and angry.

I start sweating. I turn over on my stomach and breathe rage into my pillow. I’m almost sure I hate my parents.

I struggle for a few minutes to conjure one good thing about them. Memories invade my dive into blackness, pulling me closer to the surface.

My mom is brilliant with wound care. Not that I got hurt a lot, but she would always swoop in with her first aid kit and bandage me up. Like when I fell off of my bike in fourth grade and ripped my knee wide open. It was so bad you could see bone. Did she get all woozy and call for my father? No, she calmly held the cut closed with one hand and worked the first aid kit with the other. But on the way to the emergency room, I distinctly remember her ruining the moment with, “Now, Victor, if that bandage isn’t sufficient to stop your bleeding, please tell me immediately. I don’t want your blood ruining the seats in my car. Do you understand me?”

Tenderness.

But I have this other memory that I’m not entirely sure I haven’t imagined. I was four, and I had woken up in the middle of the night because of a bad thunderstorm. I remember walking into my parents’ bedroom and tapping my mother awake. She had smiled, pulled the covers back, and patted the bed. I had crawled into my mother’s warm arms, and she’d kissed the back of my head. I’d laid still and
remember telling myself not to move because I didn’t want to be told to go back to my own bed, alone. I had felt perfect. I had felt safe. I had felt loved.

I don’t think it really happened. My mother isn’t capable of such compassion. I think I cooked it up just to make my mom seem human. More like an actual mom, you know?

I’ve never asked my mother if it was real, and I never will, because I know she’d tell me I was being ridiculous or pathetic or ludicrous. She’d say I must’ve made it up.

And then I’d be left with nothing.

I WAKE UP AND IT’S MORNING. I SLEPT FROM
yesterday afternoon (after my boo-hoo session) through the whole freaking night. I stretch carefully because my leg is wicked stiff.

My breakfast tray is sitting on the rolling table next to me. It smells like pancakes, which makes me think of my mother.

When I was in second grade, she went on this kick and decided to become the kind of mom who cooks for her kid. Up until then, cooking meant opening a can of soup or smearing butter on white bread. Dinner served.

But then she decided to go to the store and buy a whole
bunch of cooking crap. Like pancake mix and eggs and real potatoes and a whole chicken and rice. I’d never seen a whole raw chicken in my entire life, and I’ll never forget the three of us just staring at it on the counter like it was shrink-wrapped alien poop. It was that weird-looking. At eight years old I knew my mother wouldn’t know what to do with that dead bird, and I was right. It sat in our fridge until it started to stink. One day I came home from school, and I could smell it all the way from the bottom of the stairs. My pop made me wrestle it into the trash and smacked me in the back of my head because I didn’t get it out fast enough.

My mom did try to make pancakes, though. We didn’t have any milk or cooking oil, just pancake mix and eggs. So the pancakes sort of tasted like floury scrambled eggs. She also forgot to buy syrup. But it was food, so I ate it.

I got a good ass-kicking from Pop that morning. He said I was making faces when I ate the pancakes. I never made a face. He was the one making faces. I ended up with a serious welt right in the middle of my back, which made sitting at my school desk a real treat. I couldn’t lean back against my chair for two weeks.

Ahhhh, pancakes.

I lift the plastic lid off the hospital plate and smile; it
is
pancakes. And sausage. I don’t even bother with the spoon;
I eat everything with my one good hand. My plate is clear in less than two minutes. I move on to my fruit cup and down it. Then finish up with my orange juice. All gone.