Authors: Brent Runyon
Robin's sitting next to me, not talking to anyone. She says, “Hey, Brent, what foreign language are you going to take when you come back to school?”
“I don't know. What should I take?”
“Well, the Latin teacher is supposed to be good. I take Spanish and I hate my teacher.”
“Yeah?”
Jake butts in, “Yeah, my French teacher sucks too.”
Chris says, “Who do you have?”
“Madame Goldberg.”
“She sucks?”
“She's the worst.”
I say, “I guess I'll take Latin, then.”
“Good idea.”
This pizza really isn't that good. It's too chewy. Mom's lighting the candles on my birthday cake. Alida turns out the lights. Everybody's singing, but there's something missing. Their voices sound disconnected, like they're not really trying. Wow, that's a lot of candles. Fifteen burning things coming right toward me.
Mom puts the cake down right in front of me. I can feel the heat from the candles. I lean back in my seat.
Stephen yells, “Make a wish.”
I close my eyes for a second and think about what my wish should be. Should I wish that I have sex in the next year? Should I wish that Megan will fall in love with me? Should I wish to be funnier? Or that everything would go back to the way it was before?
No. I know what I'm going to wish.
I wish that everyone will be happy, that everyone gets through this okay. That's what I wish.
I open my eyes and look at all the faces lit up by the candles. They're all waiting for me. I take a deep breath, lean forward, and blow, but I don't have enough air in my lungs and one is still lit. I take another quick breath and blow again. This time the last flame goes out.
Everyone's gone, but there's still a few pieces of the devil's food cake Mom made from the box. She's stuffing all the wrapping paper and dirty paper plates into a big black Hefty bag.
“Hey, Mom,” I say.
“Yes?”
“How come you didn't invite Megan?”
She looks up with a real surprised look on her face. She says, “I didn't know you would have wanted her here. I'm sorry, honey. I didn't know.”
“That's okay. Forget it.”
God, I feel like my whole life could fit in one of these trash bags. I walk downstairs and lie on the brown corduroy couch.
It's been nine months and I still don't know why I did it. I was so sad. I wanted to be funny and cool and I wanted everyone to love me, but I still don't know why I did it.
“Mom,” I call out. She's upstairs. She's coming down. I think she can tell I'm upset.
“What is it, honey?” She sits down next to me on the couch. I start crying. I can't keep myself from crying. Where is all this crying coming from? She says, “It's okay, honey. It's okay. You can tell me. You can tell me. It's okay.” She's hugging me and hugging me. And she's crying.
“I don't know why I did it. I was just so sad. I was so sad. I don't know why.” I'm crying so hard I can't get the words out. I can't say any more. I can't talk anymore, I'm crying so hard.
She's crying hard now too. She's holding me. She's hugging me. “It's okay, honey. It's okay. We love you so much. We're just glad you're okay. We're just so glad that you're okay.”
Oh God, I can't stop crying. I can't stop. The spit in my mouth is thick and my whole face tastes like salt. My face hurts from crying so hard.
I say, “I'm okay.”
“I know, honey. I know.”
“I'm okay, Mom. I'm okay now.”
Today is my first day going to Dominion Hospital. I have on this cool blue-and-white shirt my mom got me at the Gap, white in the front with blue arms and a blue back, and a pair of jeans. I'm nervous.
I put a notebook in my black book bag. I put on my plastic face mask and sit at the kitchen table, waiting for the school bus. Mom wanted to make me lunch, but I guess they have a cafeteria there, so she doesn't need to.
Mom hands me a sheet of paper with all the rules of the Adolescent Day Treatment Program.
Safety Rules
Please do not bring any of the following items with you to the hospital:
1. Items with sharp points and edges such as knives, firearms, scissors, razors, nail clippers, tweezers, cans, wire hangers, keys, and other items that staff may feel is unsafe to the program
2. Cigarettes, lighters, matches, pipes, chewing tobacco
3. Gum
Fucking great.
The bus is outside. Jesus, it's a short bus, one of the ones that they take retarded kids around in. I walk out and the bus driver opens the doors for me. There are only two other kids, both about my age. There's one girl in the front seat who's wearing a helmet and looking out the window. What the fuck.
The bus driver asks me a question. “Where you going?”
“Dominion.”
“All right, stay seated, young man.”
“Okay.”
I walk toward the back of the bus because that's usually where the cool kids sit, but what's the point of sitting in the back by myself? I haven't been on a bus in so long. It smells like motor oil and asparagus.
After a couple of miles, we stop and the retard gets off the bus. I stand up and start to get off too, but the bus driver says, “Sit down. Not your stop, young man.”
“Okay.” I sit back down.
Michael Mager meets me in the waiting room, and we get buzzed into the main part of the building. He leads me into a little room with four other kids. They all look a little older than me, two girls and two boys, and they all look like trouble.
Michael says, “You guys, I'd like you to meet our newest student. Brent, this is the group. Group, this is Brent. I'll leave you to your own introductions.”
A chubby nurse who looks a little like that actress Shelley Winters comes over and shakes my hand. “Hi, Brent. I'm Suzanne. I'm the nurse around here.” She's got that kind of syrupy Southern accent I can't stand.
“I take care of the day-to-day things, so I'll dole out your medication when you need it, okay?” I don't take any medication. Shouldn't she know that?
I shake her hand. A tall skinny kid with a green hooded sweatshirt and hair falling in his face comes over. He says, “Hey, I'm Owen. What's up?”
I say, “What's up.” He looks like a skateboarder, I wonder why he's here.
The other boy stands up. He looks like he might lift weights. “Yo, wussup, man? I'm Steve.”
“Hey.” Oh, I see, he's white, but he acts like he's black. He looks tough, I better stay away from him.
A short girl in a long hippie skirt and dirty hair comes over. “Hi, I'm Calliope.”
“Hi.” She's kind of pretty.
The other girl comes over. “I'm Christina.” I don't know what to make of her. She's pretty, but she's dressed like a real slob in torn jeans and a sweatshirt.
We all sit around in a circle in orange cafeteria chairs. The girls sit next to each other on one side of the circle and the boys sit on the other side with a chair between them. I sit down next to the nurse.
Suzanne, the nurse, says, “So, Christina, you were saying?”
“Yeah, I was at this party this weekend, and it was just, like, you know, crazy. All these people were so fucked up, and I was like, should I get fucked up? And there was this kid there, and he took me into a room and showed me, like, forty sheets of acid.”
Suzanne says, “Did you take any?”
“No. That's what I'm saying. I was like, should I get high? And then I was like, no.”
What is she talking about? I mean, I've heard of acid, that's like LSD, but I didn't even know it came in sheets. This girl is fucked up.
Suzanne says, “Well, I think that's really good, Christina. Does anyone else want to tell us about their weekend? Steve?”
“Yeah, so I was, like, hanging out on my block, and this kid who's like a total punk ass came over, and he was like, ‘Wussup?' and I was like, ‘Nothin'.' Then he was acting fucking whack, man. Man, if I was strapped, man, I would have popped a cap in his ass.” He laughs, pulls up his shirt to show where the imaginary gun would be, pulls it out, and pretends to shoot it.
Everybody laughs except for me and the nurse. I can't believe this shit. I'm hanging out with a bunch of druggies and gangsters.
At lunchtime, they open the doors and let us walk up
the street to the Hardee's all by ourselves. I didn't know
we were going to be able to do this. Owen and Calliope walk ahead of the rest of us. I wonder if they're dating. Christina, the druggie, comes over to me. “Hey,” she says.
“Hi.”
“What's up?”
“Nothing.”
“You in here for drugs?”
“What?”
“You in here for drugs?” I can't believe she asked me that. Do I look like a druggie? I thought it would be obvious.
“No.”
A big truck drives by us and blows out a cloud of black smoke. The air smells like gasoline. I used to love that smell.
She's not going to quit. “So, why are you here, then, if you're not here for drugs?”
“Um.” I don't say anything for almost a minute, trying to think of what to say. She's not asking what happened to me, she's asking why I'm in the hospital. She's still waiting for an answer. I say, “I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“No.”
“Okay. Want a cigarette?”
“Um, okay.” I've never really smoked a cigarette before, except for that one I smoked out by the shed that time, but everybody else here smokes, so what the hell, I might as well try it.
Christina lights the lighter and holds it out for me. I put the cigarette between my fingers and hold it over the flame. She says, “No, put it in your mouth.”
“Oh yeah.” I put the cigarette in my mouth and lean over the flame, but it's really hot, and I pull away. I try again, but I keep thinking it's going to set my hair on fire or my gloves or something. I pull away from the flame again and she pushes it closer to my face and I pull away again. Jesus, that's hot. She's just staring at me.
Finally I get the end of it lit and suck a little smoke into my lungs. I cough it out. The smoke is so hot and burning me on the inside, why would anyone want to do this? God, why would anybody do this? My hands are shaking.
I pretend to smoke it for a while and then put it out in the ashtray outside of the Hardee's.
When I get home, I go right to the basement and lie on the little bed we've got set up there. It's so cool and quiet down here. It feels like a little habitat for a snake or something.
I grab my new book,
101 Amazing Card Tricks,
that Mom got me at the bookstore. I find one that looks good and pretty easy. I separate all the cards and start practicing. I'm getting good at this.
Mom calls me up for dinner when Dad gets home, and they start asking me all about my day. I don't really have much to tell them.
Mom says, “So how was your first day?”
“Fine.”
“What'd you do?”
“I don't know, stuff.”
Dad says, a little gruffly, “Like what?”
“I don't know, sat around.”
I can tell they're getting frustrated, but I don't really care. I mean, come on, fuck them. It's my life.
I get up to get some more milk and Dad asks me to get him another beer. I go over and pour it for him, and then I realize I shouldn't be standing this close to him. He looks up at me and asks, “Have you been smoking?”
“What?”
“Have you been smoking?”
“No.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
Fuck. I drink my milk standing up and go back downstairs.
I want to show my new card trick to Michael Mager. He's into magic too. He's great at the disappearing coin trick. I mean, you really think it's in the hand that it's not in.
My trick is simple, it doesn't take all that much doing, but it's still a good trick. To do the trick, first I had to separate all the black cards from the red cards, so it's really easy to tell which one is his because his is the only black card in with all the red ones.
Anyway, here goes.
“Pick a card, any card.” My voice is shaking. I forgot what else I was going to say.
“All right.” He picks one and looks at it. He gives me a funny look as he puts it back in the deck, like he knows exactly what I'm doing.
Now I turn over the deck and start looking through them.
I say, “Is that your card?”
“Yup. Pretty good.”
“Yeah?” My hands are shaking as I push the cards back together.
“One thing, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Try not to make it so obvious that the red and black cards are separated next time.”
Fuck.
Dad's outside raking leaves. We always rake them into a brown plastic trash can and then I get in and stomp on them. I told him to call for me when he needs me. Mom's making brownies from a box. I'm just sitting on my ass, watching
American Gladiators
. Nitro is trying to shoot this guy with a tennis ball gun. The guy is trying to shoot the bull's-eye behind Nitro's head, but he doesn't aim long enough to even come close. Nitro is pretty accurate with the tennis ball gun. I wish I had one of those.
I hear Rusty barking like crazy and then Dad calls out, “Brenner, come here.”
“Wait a second.”
“Come here!” Why does he always have to yell when it's not even an emergency? I fucking hate that.
I go outside to see what he's yelling about. He put Rusty on her leash, but she's still barking like crazy. He's standing on the fence looking down at something in one of the big brown trash cans. I climb up there next to him, I bet we look like those guys in the rodeo getting ready to ride the bulls.
At the bottom of the trash can is a possum, curled up into a little ball.
I say, “Is it dead?”
“I don't know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Let's see if it's alive.”
Dad picks up a tennis ball from the yard, one that we throw around for the dog, and holds it over the possum. When my dad gets excited, he starts talking in this high-pitched voice with a funny accent that sounds like he's from Switzerland.
“All right, Brenner, get ready to run because when I drop this thing, man, we don't know what's gonna happen, budder.”