Read Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend Online
Authors: Matthew Green
I know what he was thinking. He was thinking that his friends might stop calling him Tommy the ’Tard for not being able to read if he could show them that he knew how to whittle a stick with his Swiss Army knife. That’s the kind of thing kids do. They try to cover up their problems with things like Swiss Army knives.
But I don’t think the teachers understand this, which is probably why no one taught Max how to tell a teacher that a fifth grader has a knife without telling the entire world at the same time. So now Tommy Swinden, the fifth-grade boy who can’t read and owns a knife and is twice as big as Max, is heading for the bathroom while Max is inside, trying to poop.
‘Max!’ I say as I pass through the restroom door. ‘Tommy Swinden is coming!’
Max lets out a groan as his sneakers disappear from the crack between the stall and the floor. I want to pass through the stall door and stand alongside him, so he isn’t all alone, but I know I can’t. He wouldn’t want me to see him on the toilet, and he knows that I can be more helpful outside the stall, where I can see what he can’t.
Tommy Swinden, who is as tall as the art teacher and almost as wide as the gym teacher, comes into the bathroom and walks over to one of the toilets on the wall. He takes a quick peek under the stalls, sees no feet, and probably thinks he’s alone. Then he looks back at the door to the bathroom, looks right through me, and reaches back, pulling his underwear from the crack in his butt. I see people do this all the time, because I spend a lot of time with people who think they are alone. When your underwear is stuck in the crack of your butt, it’s called a wedgie and it can’t be too comfortable. I’ve never had a wedgie because Max didn’t imagine me with a wedgie. Thank goodness.
Tommy Swinden turns back to the toilet on the wall and pees. When he’s done, he shakes his thing a little before buttoning and zipping his jeans. Not the way I once saw a kid shaking his thing in the handicapped bathroom near the nurse’s office when Max asked me to check and see if anyone was in there. I have no idea what that boy was doing, but it was more than just a shake. I don’t like to peek in on people using the bathroom, especially when they are tugging on their thing, but Max hates to knock on the bathroom door because he never knows what to say when someone knocks on the door when he’s in there. He used to say, ‘Max is pooping!’ but then he got in trouble when a kid told the teacher what he said.
The teacher told Max that it’s not appropriate to say that you’re pooping. ‘Just say
I’m in here
the next time someone knocks,’ she told Max.
‘But that sounds silly,’ he said. ‘The person won’t know who
I
am. I can’t just say
I’m
in here.’
‘Fine,’ the teacher said in a way that teachers tell kids to do ridiculous things when they’re frustrated and don’t want to talk anymore. ‘Tell them who you are, then.’
So now when someone knocks on the bathroom door, Max says, ‘Occupied by Max Delaney!’ It makes people either laugh or stare at the door with a funny expression.
I don’t blame them.
Tommy Swinden is finished at the toilet and is now standing at the sink, reaching for the faucet, just about to turn the knob and fill the bathroom with the sound of running water, when he hears a
plop!
from the stall where Max is hiding.
‘Huh?’ he says, bending down again to see if there are any feet in the stall. He doesn’t see any, so he walks over to the first stall and bangs on the door real hard. Hard enough to make the whole stall shake. ‘I know you’re in there!’ he says. ‘I can see you through the cracks!’
I don’t think Tommy knows that it’s Max behind the door, because the cracks between the door and the wall are too small to see his whole face. But that’s what is good about being one of the biggest kids in school. You can bang on a stall door and not worry about who is behind it, because you can beat up just about every kid at school.
Imagine what that must feel like.
Max doesn’t answer, so Tommy bangs again. ‘Who’s in there? I want to know!’
‘Don’t say anything, Max!’ I say from my spot by the door. ‘He can’t get in there. He’ll have to leave eventually!’
But I’m wrong, because when Max doesn’t answer the second time, Tommy gets down on his hands and knees and peeks his head under the door.
‘Max the Moron,’ he says, and I can hear the smile on his face. Not a nice smile. A rotten one. ‘I can’t believe it’s you. It’s my lucky day. What’s the matter? Couldn’t hold that last one in?’
‘No,’ Max shouts, and I can already hear the panic in his voice. ‘It was already halfway out!’
Everything about this situation is bad.
Max is trapped inside a public bathroom, a place that already frightens him. His pants are wrapped around his ankles and he probably hasn’t finished pooping. Tommy Swinden is on the other side of the stall door, and Tommy definitely wants to hurt Max. They are alone. Except for me, of course, but they might as well be alone for all the help that I can be.
It’s the way Max answered Tommy that scares me the most. There was more than panic in his voice. There was fear. Like when people in the movies see the ghost or the monster for the first time. Max just saw a monster peek underneath the stall door and he is frightened. He might already be close to getting stuck, and that is never good.
‘Open this door, dickhead,’ Tommy says, pulling his head back and standing up. ‘Make this easy on me and all I’ll do is bowl you.’
I don’t know what
bowl
means, but I have visions of Tommy Swinden rolling Max’s head across the bathroom like a bowling ball.
‘Occupied by Max Delaney!’ Max shouts, his voice screeching like a little girl. ‘Occupied by Max Delaney!’
‘Last chance, moron. Open it up or I’m coming in!’
‘Occupied by Max Delaney!’ Max screams again. ‘Occupied by Max Delaney!’
Tommy Swinden gets back down on his hands and knees, ready to crawl under the door, and I don’t know what to do.
Max needs more help than most kids in his class, and I am always there for him, ready to lend a hand. Even on the day that he tattled on Tommy Swinden, I was there, telling him to whisper, begging him to ‘Slow down! Don’t rush! Stop yelling!’ Max wouldn’t listen to me that day because there was a knife at school and that was such an important rule to break that he could not control himself. It was like the whole world was broken and he needed to find a teacher to fix it. I didn’t stop him that day, but I tried.
At least I knew what to do.
But I don’t know what to do now. Tommy Swinden is about to crawl under the door and enter a tiny bathroom stall where Max is trapped, probably perched on top of the toilet, knees in his chest, pants around his ankles, frozen in place. If he’s not crying yet, he soon will be, and by the time Tommy has made it all the way under the door, Max will probably be screaming, a high-pitched, breathless scream that paints his face red and fills his eyes with tears. He will ball his hands into fists and bury his face behind his forearms, closing his eyes, and screaming the wispy, almost silent screams that make me think of a dog whistle. Full of air but almost no sound at all.
Before any teacher gets here, Tommy Swinden will bowl Max, whatever that means. Even though I’m sure that being bowled would be bad for any kid, it’s going to be a lot worse for Max, because that is how Max is. Things stay with Max for ever. He never forgets. And even the tiniest, littlest things can permanently change him. Whatever
bowling
is, it’s going to change Max for ever and ever. I know it and I don’t know what to do.
‘Help!’ I want to scream. ‘Someone help my friend!’
But only Max would hear.
Tommy’s head disappears under the stall and I shout, ‘Fight, Max! Fight! Don’t let him in there!’
I don’t know what makes me say it. I’m surprised by the words as they come out of my mouth. It’s not a great idea. It’s not smart or even original. It’s just the only thing left to do. Max must fight or he will be bowled.
Tommy’s head and shoulders are now under the stall and I can see that he is about to pull his hips and legs under in one quick movement, and then he will be inside the stall with Max, standing over his small, shaking body, ready to hurt him. Ready to bowl him.
I stand like a dummy outside the stall. Part of me wants to go in, to stand by my friend, but Max does not like it when people see him naked or pooping. I am as stuck as Max has ever been.
Then there is another scream, and this time it’s not Max. This time it is Tommy who screams. It’s not Max’s terrified, locked-up scream. It’s a different kind of scream. A more knowing scream. Not panicked or frightened, really, but the scream of someone who can’t believe what has just happened. As he screams, Tommy starts to say something and he tries to stand up, forgetting the door above him, and he slams his back into the bottom of the door, causing him to scream again, this time in pain. Then the door flies open and Max is standing there, pants nearly pulled up but not buttoned or zipped, his legs straddling Tommy’s head.
‘Run!’ I shout and he does, stepping on Tommy’s hand, causing Tommy to scream again. Max runs past me, yanking his pants up the rest of the way, and then he is out the door. I follow. Instead of turning left toward his classroom, he turns right, buttoning and zipping his pants without stopping.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I still need a bathroom,’ he says. ‘Maybe the nurse’s bathroom is clean now.’
‘What happened to Tommy?’ I ask. ‘What did you do?’
‘I pooped on his head,’ Max says.
‘You pooped with someone else in the bathroom?’ I ask.
I can’t believe it. The fact that he pooped on Tommy Swinden’s head is unbelievable, but the fact that he managed a poop in the presence of another human person is even more amazing.
‘Just a little one,’ Max says. ‘I was almost finished when he came in.’ He takes a few more steps down the hall before adding, ‘I pooped this morning, so this was a lot less poop this time. Remember? It was a bonus poop.’
Max is worried that Tommy will tell on him the same way that he told on Tommy about the Swiss Army knife. But I know that he won’t. No kid wants his friends or even his teachers to know that he was pooped on. Tommy will want to kill Max now. Actually kill him. Make his heart stop beating and whatever else it takes to kill a human person.
But we’ll worry about that day when it comes.
Max can live with the fear of death just as long as he doesn’t get in trouble for pooping on Tommy Swinden’s head. Kids are afraid of dying all the time, so for Max, being afraid that Tommy Swinden might choke him to death or punch him in the nose is normal. But kids don’t get suspended from school for pooping on the head of a fifth grader. That would happen only in a broken world.
I tell Max not to worry about getting in trouble. He only half believes me, but that’s enough for him to stay unstuck.
Besides, Max pooped on Tommy Swinden three days ago and we haven’t seen Tommy since. At first I thought he was absent from school, so I went to Mrs Parenti’s classroom to see if he was there, and he was. Sitting in the first row, closest to the teacher, probably so she can keep an eye on him.
I’m not sure what Tommy is thinking. Maybe he is so embarrassed about having poop on his head that he has decided to forget about the whole thing. Or maybe he’s so angry that he is planning to torture Max before he kills him. Like the kids who burn ants with magnifying glasses at recess instead of just stepping on them and smearing them on the bottom of their sneakers.
That’s what Max thinks, and even though I tell him that he’s wrong, I know he is probably right.
You can’t poop on the head of a kid like Tommy Swinden and expect to get away with it.
I saw Graham today. I passed her on the way to the cafeteria. She waved to me.
She’s starting to fade away.
I can’t believe it.
I could see her spiky hair and toothy grin through her hand as she waved it back and forth in front of her face.
Imaginary friends can take a long time to disappear or a short time to disappear, but I don’t think Graham has much time left.
Her human friend is a girl named Meghan, and she is six years old. Graham has been alive for only two years, but she is my oldest imaginary friend and I don’t want her to go. She is the only real friend I have except for Max.
I am afraid for her.
I am afraid for me, too.
Someday I will raise my hand in front of my face and see Max’s face on the other side of it, and then I’ll know that I am fading away, too. Someday I am going to die, if that’s what happens to imaginary friends.
It must be. Right?
I want to talk to Graham, but I don’t know what to say. I wonder if she knows that she is disappearing.
If she doesn’t know, should I tell her?
There are lots of imaginary friends in the world who I never get to meet because they do not leave their houses. Most imaginary friends aren’t lucky enough to be able to go to school or walk around on their own like me and Graham. Max’s mom brought us to one of her friends’ houses once and I met three imaginary friends. They were all sitting in tiny chairs in front of a chalkboard. Their arms were crossed and they were frozen like statues while this little girl named Jessica recited the alphabet to them and asked them to answer math problems. But the imaginary friends couldn’t walk or talk. When I walked into the playroom, they just blinked at me from their chairs. That was it.
Just blinked.
Those kinds of imaginary friends never last long. I once saw an imaginary friend pop up in Max’s kindergarten classroom for fifteen minutes and then just disappear. It was like someone inflated her in the middle of the room. She got bigger and bigger and bigger like one of those people-shaped balloons they sell at parades until she was almost as big as me. A big, pink girl with pigtails in her hair and yellow flowers for feet. But when story time was done, it was like someone popped her with a pin. She shrank and shrank until I couldn’t see her anymore.