Cracked (14 page)

“Crap,” I say. I totally forgot about Bull.

I am about to walk back into the group therapy room, but I stop because Bull is talking to Lisa. She must’ve gotten him to open up after we all left. And I think,
She is
good,
because we’ve only been gone for, like, two minutes. I overhear hear him say that his grandfather tried to stop him from shooting himself, they struggled with the gun, it went off, and he got shot in the leg. He says his grandfather is a real hero. His back is to me, and I wish I could see his face, because I have never heard him use that tone of voice. It sounds human—and I would really like to see if his face looks human too.

But I never will. Lisa pats Bull on the shoulder and gets up to turn his wheelchair around, and I panic. I jog back down to the common room, plop on the couch next to Nikole, and try to act like I’ve been there the whole time. When Bull is
wheeled in by Lisa, he’s got his regular I’m-a-total-shithead face on that I know well. He really does make me sick.

“You forgot your roommate, Victor,” Lisa says with a smile.

“Yeah,” I say, “I did.”

“Bye, everyone, I’m off,” she says. “Group’ll be regular time tomorrow. Enjoy your afternoon off, loverlies.”

Bull looks uncomfortable.

Andrew, the nonfat guy, asks him how he got all banged up. He starts to tell the room the same story I just overheard him tell Lisa. Nikole is also talking to me, but I can only hear Bull.

“Wow, so your grandfather found you with the gun? That’s crazy,” Andrew says, kind of in awe.

“Mmm-hmm, crazy,” he says.

Lacey chimes in. “I read that ninety percent of all suicides attempted by guns are successful, I swear. You must’ve really wanted out.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he says. He shifts in his wheelchair and drops his eyes like he wishes this conversation would go away.

“What got you so bummed out?” Lacey asks.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Well, we’ve all got reasons. None of us are here by accident. I just wanted to hear yours, that’s all.”

I feel a tap on my shoulder. “Victor? Over here,” Nikole says. I turn and look at her. “Have you even heard a word I’ve said?” she asks with a fake scowl mixed with a smile.

I shake my head and try to look apologetic. I tell her I’m sorry and then want to punch myself in the face for ignoring a girl. A girl who took me by the hand and pulled me to the side because she wanted to talk to me. What a moron. No wonder I’ve never had a girlfriend.

She motions to where Bull is sitting. “Why do you care about him anyway? He seems like a jerk to me.”

“I don’t care about him, believe me. And he is a jerk; you have no idea.”

“That sucks that you have to room with him. At least you only have to be in your room to sleep.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. God, I wish I could tell her how much her conversation means to me. That when she looks me right in the eye, it makes my organs quiver. Every single one.

“You have nice eyes,” she says.

I’m not kidding. She says those words, in that precise order, directly
to
me. I am rendered mute.

Nikole smiles at me. “I’m serious. You do. They’re the best brown. They kind of remind me of caramel. Sort of.”

I have never, as long as I’ve been alive, had anyone give me a compliment about how I look. I swallow hard and hope
to God my face doesn’t misinterpret my utter amazement for confusion or something worse.

She smiles again. And her whole face lights up. She looks so pretty that I’m not sure a professional poet would be able to capture it with words.

“I mean it,” she says, and then pokes me in the shoulder. “You should have more confidence.”

I nod and roll my eyes. Me with confidence. The thought almost makes me laugh out loud.

“My mother is always telling me and my sisters that ‘no one can hold a candle to her girls.’ We all just laugh and stuff, but you know what she’s doing? Building our confidence. Making us feel special. So, Victor . . .” Her voice trails off. She reaches over and grabs my hand. “No one can hold a candle to you, either.”

I feel light-headed.

“Thank you,” is all I can come up with. I wish I had the balls to reach over and kiss her, but I don’t. I wish I could make her swoon and giggle and do all the things I’ve seen the popular girls do whenever they talk to the popular guys. I drop my eyes. I’ve got zero game.

A loud bang makes Nikole and I jump, and our hands release. Andrew is punching the table like a maniac. Then he jumps up and lunges at Bull. And the first thing I think is: I hope he knocks him out.

“EASY, DUDE!” I SHOUT, AND PUSH ANDREW BACK
with my good arm. “Don’t take it out on me! I didn’t make you run over that dog! Easy!” I look around to see if anyone’s coming to my rescue. Nope. Where are the hospital staff?

Andrew runs his fingers through his hair and sits down. He’s panting. I don’t say a word. Right before his meltdown, he was getting into his “story” with me. He’s definitely got anger issues. He’s bat-shit crazy.

Andrew’s dad left when he was seven and never came back; his Mom remarried a control freak who criticizes every move he makes. They have a second kid, who is the golden boy.
Makes Andrew feel worthless and stupid every single day. No wonder he’s pissed off at life.

Then his girlfriend dumped him, and he got cut from the basketball team because his grades were in the crapper, so he decided he was going to drive his car off the quarry cliff near his house. How about that one? Said he was going to drive right through the fence—gun it, you know? Except he took some pills before he left his house and was sort of high, and he ran over his neighbor’s dog. Right in front of the dog’s family. They were all outside waiting for the school bus. He said the little boy was holding his dog in his arms and wailing. Andrew said he hears the crying every single night just as he’s about to fall asleep.

That’s when he started pounding the table, screaming, “I can’t even get my own suicide right! I can’t even get that right! I can’t even get that right!”

And then he came at me.

He’s talking to me again.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I . . . I . . . I don’t know why I did that. Sometimes I—oh, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. We’re good,” I tell him. If he pulled that shit out in the real world, I would’ve handed him his ass on a platter. But I’m stuck in this wheelchair in the crazy joint. I let him slide.

I look around the room and everyone’s eyes are bulging out of their heads. The fat guy looks like he’s gonna pass out. Dicktoria and his little girlfriend are looking too. The girl with the long, black, greasy hair is squinting at me, like it was my fault. I squint back at her. She gives me the finger. I pucker my lips and send her an air-kiss. Then she gives me two fingers, one on each hand, side by side. I shake my head at her. If she were a cougar, I think she’d pounce on me and rip me apart. She puts her head down and goes back to writing in her dumb book. I turn away and leave her to her anger. She’s obviously whacked.

Andrew says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I try to judge if he’ll go ballistic again. He looks pretty calm, so I relax. I shrug my shoulders. “Sure. Just don’t come at me again, all right?”

“I won’t. I swear to God.”

“Good,” I say. I look around and no one is paying attention to us anymore. Even the double-fingered, greasy-haired maniac has her back to us. But I figure if I have to, I could always knock him out with my cast.

Andrew whispers, “Do you still have the gun?”

I squeeze my eyebrows together. “What?”

He leans in, rests his elbow on the arm of my wheelchair, and whispers again, “The gun? Do you still have it?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Shit,” Andrew says. He sits back hard in his chair and intentionally bangs his head against the wall.

Now I’m confused. “Why?”

He exhales really loudly, but doesn’t say a word.

“Dude, why?” I ask.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” What is this guy talking about?

Andrew closes his eyes in deep thought. The guy is weird. But at least he’s not flipping out anymore. I just let it go, and we both sit there for a few minutes. The babble and laughter of everyone else fills the quiet. I’m pretty sure I know what he wants the gun for—probably to finish off the job he messed up with the whole running-over-the-dog thing.

He still wants to die.

That makes me feel sad for him, and I don’t feel sad for other people. As in
never
. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. It’s kind of like a boulder in my brain. I look down at my lap and exhale.

Without lifting my eyes to Andrew’s, I say, “Don’t do it.” I can’t look at him, because me feeling sad for him might show on my face. I can’t handle him seeing that.

Andrew stands up and mumbles, “Why not? Why the
hell not?”

I have an inner battle raging inside. I squeeze the arm of my wheelchair with my good hand and grit my teeth. I look up at him.

“Just don’t do it, Andrew.” I wish I could give this kid a hundred reasons why he shouldn’t finish himself off, but I don’t know him well enough. Shit, I barely know myself.

Andrew stares at the floor and I can tell that he’s about to cry. And yeah, I
really
can’t handle that. He nods a few times and then walks away.

Ellie floats in and announces lunch is in the cafeteria. She gets behind my wheelchair and pushes me. But out in the hallway she starts wheeling me toward my room. She says I have a surprise waiting for me.

I have had enough surprises today to last me a freaking lifetime.

NO ONE HAS FIGURED OUT THAT BULL AND I KNOW
each other. That I hate every cell in his body. I wonder when it will all come out.

The common room empties. I see Brian talking with nurse Agnes in the hallway, and she looks very concerned. She calls Andrew over, and Brian walks away. Andrew and Agnes walk down the hall, away from the cafeteria. I guess Brian told her about Andrew’s freak-out.

Jenny and Lacey come out of their room, and Jenny’s all dressed in regular clothes. Brian joins them, and they walk toward Nikole and me.

“What’s that about?” Jenny asks us.

“Andrew flipped out,” Nikole says. Then she turns to Brian. “Why did you tell on him, Brian? That wasn’t cool.”

Jenny makes a shocked face. “You told on him? You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t tell
on
him.” With a soft voice Brian adds, “I guess I’m worried
about
him, that’s all.”

“Well, Agnes’ll probably put him in solitary now. She’s a bitch. You ever been in solitary, Brian?” Jenny asks.

“No.”

“I have. I was only in there for, like, three hours, and I thought I was going to lose my mind. All I did was get mad and overturn my breakfast tray. I didn’t punch anything or almost attack someone. I don’t know. They say it’s for your own protection, but I think it’s just so they don’t have to deal with you. He’ll be on some good meds, though.” Jenny puffs her cheeks out and exhales. “Maybe I
am
ready to get the hell out of here, you know?”

No-nonsense Agnes asks us to clear the hallway, so we all say another good-bye to Jenny before heading to the dining room. The light is on in the doctor’s office for the first time since I’ve been here. Agnes pushes open the door, and Jenny walks in. I’m sure I will never see her again.

What’s left of the afternoon is spent zoning out in the
common room watching the dumbest ’80s movie ever. Agnes comes in and announces that dinner’s ready. It feels like home. We all eat our pieces of fried chicken and spoon mashed potatoes into our mouths like robots. For, like, five minutes there’s just chewing and breathing. No one talks. Five minutes is a pretty long time to sit in silence. Not for me, though. I can go days without saying a word. Except for when I talk to Jazzer.

Jazzer . . .

Why did I have to think of her now? In front of all these people? I feel my face getting hot. My spoon slips out of my hand and bounces across the table.

I jump up and get out of there as fast as I possibly can. I leave my fried chicken, and I love fried chicken. My uptight mother never serves it. She calls it common and messy and poor-people food. I always ate it whenever they served it at school and loved every messy, common bite.

I run into my room. Stupidest idea ever.
He’s
in there, all propped up in his bed, eating his fried chicken with one hand. I want to smash his tray against the wall.

I turn to leave and bump into Nikole, hard enough that she falls backward and lands on her butt. I throw my head back and exhale.

She picks herself up before I have a chance to offer my hand.

“Geez, Victor, what’s the matter? You ran out of there like your dog just died.”

I start laughing. Then I start crying. Nikole must think I’ve lost my mind. I have nowhere to go. I can’t go into my own room. I can’t go back into the cafeteria. I panic. I bury my face in my hands and slide down the wall behind me. I try to cry as quietly as I can, but it gets too hard and I choke out weird noises. Nikole sits down next to me, rests her head on my shoulder, and takes my hand.

She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t really have to. Her actions are speaking to me—like, shouting to me, actually.
I’m here for you, Victor! It’s going to be okay, Victor! Let it all out, Victor! I’m here.
I marvel at this superpower.

Agnes and Ellie just leave us be in the hallway, which is great. After a few minutes Nikole must sense that I’m calming down. She pulls her head off my shoulder; right away, I wish she hadn’t. Her head felt warm. It felt right.

“You okay?” she asks, squeezing my hand.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m not sure.”

“Why did you freak out?”

I tell her all about Jazzer and thinking of her in the cafeteria. I tell her how Jazzer used to squeak when she slept and that she was the best listener and a bunch of other cool things about her. And then I drop my head and tell her that
Jazzer had been the only thing that kept me from killing myself.