Last Night I Sang to the Monster (7 page)

“Look, they screwed me over. I didn’t do what they said I did.”

Rafael nodded like, you know, he wasn’t going there. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.” Yeah, not upset. Sharkey was definitely upset.

“Good,” Rafael said.

“Look,” Sharkey said. “Why don’t you go back to your personal relationship with that book?” He looked up at me. “Aren’t you a little young to be acting like him?”

I guess Sharkey thought that reading books was an old people’s thing. I didn’t know what to say so I just sort of shrugged.

“Hell,” he said, “I think I’ll go to the smoking pit.”

That’s when I decided Sharkey and I were going to be best friends. “You smoke?” I said.

“Yup.”

“Can I buy a smoke from you?”

He smiled. Look, if the guy would sell me some smokes, I’d listen to him complain till the leaves grew back on their trees.

It was funny, when we walked out to the smoking pit, Sharkey got real quiet. We stood out there in the cold and smoked a couple of cigarettes.

“Life sucks,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Rafael says it sucks better sober.”

That made Sharkey laugh. “I can’t decide if I like that guy.”

“I like him,” I said. I didn’t know why I said that. Well, it was the truth. I did like Rafael. So, what was wrong with saying you liked someone when you did like them?

“He’s a helluva lot nicer than my father.” He took a really deep drag off his cigarette. “Don’t get me going on my father.”

I guess his father really tore him up. God, it was cold. I hated winter.

“You have dreams?” I heard Sharkey’s voice in the dark.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t like having them.”

“I have them too,” he said. “I want to get rid of them.”

“Me too,” I said.

I wondered if he had a monster. Yes, he had a monster. Sharkey definitely had a monster.

Maybe everyone had one. Maybe I was just making that up. It was strange and funny and sad that we were standing there smoking and thinking that we could get rid of our bad dreams. Maybe we were both hoping that something would happen and things would be different. Maybe the changed Zach and the changed Sharkey would have different dreams. It wasn’t good for me to think these things. I knew that. Thinking things like that only made me sad. It was like that time when I thought that things between me and my dad could be different.

I kept the smoke in my lungs as long as I could, then just let it out slowly.

I hated winter.

I hated dreams.

I hated remembering.

I hated talking to Adam.

And I hated the fact that change was a word that existed in a dream I would never have.

There was this guy at school. His name was Sam. He was really tall and kind of a jock. Not that he hung with other jocks. I guess he was like me, kind of a loner. You know, like some coyotes. Coyotes really stun me out. They’re very fantastic animals. They’re really good parents for one thing. They take care of their pups and they raise them and they play with them and they teach them all the things they need to know in order to make it in the mean world. And even though coyotes like hanging out with each other and sing and howl at night, some of them like to just go off and be alone. They’re okay with being alone. I was one of those coyotes who liked to be off by himself. I think Sam was like that too.

He was always trying to talk to me and stuff. I talked to him too. Not that I’m all that good at talking. Talking is fantastically overrated. Too many people do too much of it. It stuns the hell out of me how so many people like to talk. Sharkey, for example. If talking is so good for you, what the hell is Sharkey doing here? The guy tears me up. Talking
does not
heal you. Talking just adds to the noise pollution in the world. If we were really serious about going green, then maybe we’d all just be quiet.

Maybe that’s why I felt connected to Sam. He was friendly and all of that and even though he wasn’t an extreme introvert (that would be me), he was quiet about the fact that he was an extrovert. I mean, God did not write
anxiety
on Sam’s heart. That really stunned me out.

One day Sam goes by my locker at school and asks me if I wanted to go hang out. I said sure. It was a Friday, and normally on Friday I’d go and get stoned out of my mind with my friends. I thought it might be good to change it up, you know? So Sam picks me up in his car and we go riding
around and we’re listening to music and talking and I’m trying not to want to smoke because I knew the guy didn’t smoke. And then he says, why don’t we go to a movie, and I say cool and so we go. I don’t remember what we watched but I knew that Sam was watching me more than he was watching the movie. And that was really stunning me out. But I pretended not to notice. I mean, what the hell did he see?

So, when he takes me home, he says to me, we’re just sitting in his car, and he says to me, “Listen, Zach, have you ever kissed anybody?”

And then I see where we’re going with this, but I want to play it cool because, well, I liked Sam, and I didn’t want to freak out because I freak out way too much and really it’s no big deal that the guy wants to kiss me because, well, it wasn’t as if he was scary or anything. But I have to say I started to feel really anxious and I wasn’t about to kiss him. I mean, the guy was good looking and smart and he had these serious green eyes and he was all the things most guys really want to be and all of that and I knew a lot of girls that would have really liked to kiss the guy, but I, well, that just was not going to happen.

I just sat there and finally I said, “Why would anyone want to kiss me?” It was a really stupid thing to say. I don’t even know why I said that. I mean, the words just came out of my mouth. I really tear myself up sometimes.

“Why wouldn’t somebody want to kiss you? I mean, you’re really beautiful.”

That really wigged me out. Stunned the hell out of me. In a bad way. In a very bad way. I mean, I didn’t like that he said that. Why did he say that? I hated that. I really needed a drink and I really needed a cigarette. Look, I didn’t know what to do and he was bigger than me and he was a jock and what if he hit me? I didn’t like that. I mean, I’d had enough of that hitting crap with my brother.

I just got out of the car and reached in my coat pocket and lit a cigarette. I took a drag and walked inside the house. And then I found myself walking around some street, smoking and drinking. I mean, my feet didn’t have to ask my brain when they took me places. I got really drunk and I stumbled home. I don’t even remember how I got into bed.

But the next night, Sam was in my dream. He kept looking at me. God, I hate that I’m lying here in Bed 3 of Cabin 9 and remembering a guy named Sam. Sam with serious green eyes. I didn’t even know the guy. This doesn’t feel good. Nothing feels good. Nothing.

There are things I don’t know that I really know. That’s one of the categories of things around this place—at least in our group. We keep lists and categories for things so we can keep track. It’s weird. Of course it’s weird. Everyone in here is weird. And it stands to reason that most of the things we do are equally weird. Weird people have weird behavior. And if we weren’t weird we wouldn’t be here.

There’s this lady in our group, she could be my mom. Her name’s Elizabeth, but she likes to be called Lizzie. She calls this place “Trauma Camp.” I like Lizzie. She has her issues but I like her voice and she says funny things and she’s not all checked out like my mom.

See, that’s the thing in our group. We all suffer from trauma. Only, I’m not exactly sure what my trauma’s supposed to be. Everyone else in our group pretty much knows what their trauma is. Except me. I pretty much keep quiet about that. Well, I pretty much keep quiet about everything. Look, at least I listen. I don’t think we all have to participate in the same way. That’s my thinking. Sometimes, Sharkey tells me I have to speak up in group. “Look, dude,” he says, “we’re not here just for giggles and grins.” Sharkey, he’s not at all consistent. One minute he’s all into this place and says he’s ready to do the work. And the next minute he’s carping and whining and calling this place a shithole. But Sharkey, he speaks up in group, I’ll tell you that. Some days, he stuns the hell out of the whole group.

Our group is called Summer. You know, the season. There’s a big painting that hangs on the wall of our meeting room. There’s a huge tree
in the center of the painting. And I mean to tell you that this tree is seriously full of leaves. And there’s a group of people sitting under the tree and they’re all talking and smiling. And instead of fruit, the tree is growing letters and the letters spell out Summer. Adam says that summer is the fullest season, the season of the sun, the season when the sky is bluest, the season when the whole world is most alive. I guess that’s a nice thing. Yeah, okay, nice. Summer. The thing of it is that right now it’s the middle of winter. Winter, it’s the empty season. It’s the season when the sky is the grayest. The world is leafless and dead. Winter tears me up.

There are other groups and the people in the other groups have other things going on. You know, other issues. We all have issues. Like Sharkey says, “We’re not here for grins and giggles.” The world has stunned the hell out of us, torn us apart, beat us down. Sharkey says we’re lucky to be walking around.

Some people have eating disorders and there’s a special group for that. Some people have more than one person living inside them and there’s a special group for that. That’s serious stuff.
That really does stun the hell out of me.
I mean, I only have one of me living inside me and that’s bad enough. If I had more than one of me inside me, I’d off myself.

Look, let’s say I had two other guys inside me. That would make three of us. That would mean that God would have written
sad
three times on my heart. Just think about that. Man, I would be smoking for three and drinking for three. It would not be good.

Some people are addicted to love or to sex and there’s a special group for that too. I mean, that’s kind of weird too. Look, I’m not into touch so it’s hard for me to think too much about sex. I know I’m not normal. What’s normal? And anyway, at this place, normal doesn’t count. Not even the therapists are normies. Sharkey says that the only really cool thing about this place is that there are no earth people hanging out.

And there’s another group. I’m not sure what that group is all about. I think maybe the people in that group are like the people in our group. A trauma group. Maybe in that trauma group, they’re not addicts. That’s the other thing about our group, we’re all either alcoholics or drug addicts or both. And then it gets a little complicated because each group has other
kinds of troubled people. I guess that’s how I like to think about us, we’re troubled. Sharkey likes to say we’re damaged. But he’s way into drama. I mean, I think the guy is addicted to having a crisis. Okay, so God wrote
troubled
and
damaged
on our hearts. That really tears me up, that God did that to us.

And the thing is that a lot of people who are troubled hurt themselves. That’s a special kind of addiction. Around here, they call these types of people “self-harmers.” They cut themselves and stuff like that. I can’t take it. I just can’t. There’s enough blood in my dreams.

I guess I’m thinking that we’re all self-harmers. In a way we are. Yeah, well, maybe not. Like I would know. I understand that there’s something wrong with me. But I don’t have more than one person living inside of me and I don’t cut myself and I don’t yell and scream or cry all the time like some people around here do, so I figure that I’m about as close to being a normie as it gets. At least around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what Adam says, this isn’t a contest.
You belong here, Zach, trust me.
Like that’s supposed to me make me feel good.

See, I just want to get back to my plan. Finish school with all my A’s and go to college. I want my plan back. That doesn’t sound so complicated. I’m going to talk to Adam about this. Let’s just get me back to my plan.

But every time I want to talk to Adam about what I want to talk about, he brings other stuff up and we wind up talking about all kinds of issues that I just do not want to talk about.

Adam says I almost died from alcohol withdrawal. He says I was in a hospital for ten days before I came here. “Do you know how serious that is, Zach?” He didn’t say it like it was some kind of accusation. He said it, well, like maybe I was lucky to be alive. Okay. Lucky.

I don’t remember much about the hospital. I knew I was in there. But that’s it. The details didn’t hang around in my head. This is a good thing. I don’t like the ugly details of my life loitering around. Look, if Adam says
that’s what happened, I guess that’s what happened. I don’t take Adam for a liar. The guy does not have it in him to go around bullshitting people. He’s a straight-up guy. I mean, the guy is Mr. Get-Honest-With-Yourself. So, I guess I’m an alcoholic. But I just turned eighteen. So how can I be an alcoholic? If I was an alcoholic, I think I would know.

This is my thinking. I’m not really an alcoholic. I just overdid it one night and got some kind of alcohol poisoning. Okay, maybe I overdid it for a period of several days. Maybe weeks. But I’m okay now. That’s my thinking on the subject. No use in wigging out over things you shouldn’t wig out over. No use in getting all stunned out over alcohol. I’m okay. I’m fine. I may be torn up about a lot of things, but this alcohol thing, well, I’m okay on that score. I really am.