It's Kind of a Funny Story

thirty-six

The next day Humble isn’t around for breakfast. I sit with Bobby and Johnny, collect my shirt, perfectly folded, and put it on the back of my chair. I drink the day’s first “Swee-Touch-Nee” tea and ask what they did with Humble.

“Oh, he’s happy. They went and gave him some serious drugs, probably.”

“Like what?”

“You know about drugs? Pills?”

“Sure. I’m a teenager.”

“Well, Humble is psychotic and depressed,” Bobby explains. “So he gets SSRIs, lithium, Xanax—”

“Vicodin,” Johnny says.

“Vicodin, Valium . . . he’s like the most heavily medicated guy in here.”

“So when they took him away they gave him all that stuff?”

“No, that’s what he gets normally. When they take him away they give him shots, I bet. Atavan.”

“I had that.”

“You did? That’ll knock you right out. Was it fun?”

“It was okay. I don’t want to be taking stuff like that all the time.”

“Huh. That’s the right attitude,” says Johnny. “We got a little sidetracked by drugs, me and Bobby.”

“Yeah, no kiddin’,” Bobby says. He shakes his head, looks up, chews, and folds his hands. “Sidetracked isn’t even the word. We were off the face of this planet. We were holed up twenty-four hours a day. I missed so many concerts.”

“I’m sorry—”

“—Santana, Zeppelin, what’s that later one with the junkie, Nirvana . . . I coulda seen Rush, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, everybody. All this back when it cost ten bucks to get in. And I was too much of a garbage-head to care.”

“What’s a garbage-head?”

“Somebody who does anything, whatever,” Bobby explains. “You give it to me, I’d do it. Just to see what it was like.”

Jeez. I’ll admit that it sounds a little sexy. I see the appeal. But maybe that’s why I’m in here, to meet guys who take the appeal away.

“Do you think Humble stages scenes so he can get drugs?” I’m spreading cream cheese on a bagel now. I started ordering bagels x2 for breakfast; they’re far and away the best option.

“That’s the kinda thing you just can’t speculate about,” Bobby says. “Oh, here comes your girl.”

She rushes in with a tray and sits down in a corner, drinks her juice, dips at her oatmeal. She glances over at me. I wave as lightly as I can, so people think maybe I have a spasmodic twitch. I haven’t seen her since Sunday; I don’t know what she did all of yesterday. I don’t know how she eats if she doesn’t leave her room. Same with Muqtada. Maybe they deliver food to her? There’s still so much I don’t know about this place.

“Huh, she is a cutie,” Johnny says.

“C’mon, man, don’t be saying that. She’s like thirteen,” Bobby says.

“So? He’s like thirteen.”

“I’m fifteen.”

“Well, let him say it, then,” Bobby says to Johnny. “Leave the thirteen-year-olds to the thirteen-year-olds.”

“I’m fifteen,” I interject.

“Craig, you should probably wait a few years, because sex at thirteen can mess you up.”

“I’m fifteen!”

“Huh, I was doing stuff when I was fifteen,” says Johnny.

“Yeah,” says Bobby. “With guys.”

Pause. If Ronny were here, he would say it out loud: “Pause.”

“Huh. This food sucks.” Johnny pushes his waffles aside. “Kid,” he says. “Just do this for me. If you get with her, freak her a little bit. You know what I mean?”

“Stop it,” Bobby looks at Johnny. “You got a daughter that age.”

“I’d set him up with my daughter, too. Probably do her good.”

“Wait, how do you guys even know about this? I only talked with her once, and it was really short. Nothing happened.”

“Yeah, but you came into the activity center with her.”

“We notice everything.”

I shake my head. “What’s going on today?”

“At eleven the guitar guy is coming. Johnny here’ll play.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Huh, if the inclination hits.”

I finish up my bagel. I know what I’m going to do until the guitar guy comes: I’m going to make brain maps. I kind of have an audience now. Joanie lent me some high-quality pencils and glossy paper since I helped her out with clean-up after the card tournament debacle, so I can draw whenever I want. When I do, people line up to watch me work. Ebony is my biggest fan; she seems to like nothing better than to sit behind me and see the maps fill out in the people’s heads; I think she likes them more than I do. The Professor is big into them too; she says my art is “extraordinary” and I could sell it on the street if I wanted. I’m branching out into variations: maps in people’s bodies, maps in animals, maps connecting two people together. It comes naturally and it passes the time and it feels a little more accomplished than playing cards.

“I’m gonna work on my art,” I tell the guys.

“If I had half your initiative, things woulda turned out different,” says Bobby.

“Huh, yeah; I want to be you when I grow up,” says Johnny.

I walk out with my tray.

thirty-seven

The guitar guy’s name is Neil; he has a black goatee and a black shirt and suede pants and he looks totally stoned. He comes in with a vintage-looking electric guitar—I don’t know brands, but it looks like something the Beatles would have had—and plugs it into his amp on a chair before we file in. There’s something I didn’t expect in the room—instruments on all the seats around the circle—and people run for the ones they want. We have visitors today, nursing students who are learning what it’s like to work in a psych hospital, and they wade in with us and take seats and mediate disputes over who gets the bongo drums, the conga drums, the two sticks you bang together, the washboard, and the coveted seat by the electric keyboard.

“Hey, everybody!” Neil sways. “Welcome to musical exploration!”

He’s playing simple chords in a studded beat that I think is supposed to be reggae, and after a while I realize it’s “I Shot the Sheriff.” He starts singing and he’s just got a terrible voice, like an albino Jamaican frog, but we chime in as best we can with our voices and whatever instruments we ended up with.

Armelio bangs on his chair with some sticks and gets bored, leaves the room.

Becca, the big girl, asks if she can trade her bongos (the little ones) for my congas (the big ones), and I switch. I try to play the fills that come after the choruses in “I Shot the Sheriff” and Neil recognizes that I’m trying, gives me a chance to shine each time, but I can’t pull them off.

Noelle, directly across from me, shakes maracas and her hair, smiling. I occasionally fire off a bongo fill just for her but I’m not sure if she notices.

The star of the show is Jimmy.

I didn’t have any idea that the high-pitched noises he made were singing. Once the music starts he goes right into the Jimmy-verse, banging against his washboard and letting it all hang out in a piercing falsetto that’s surprisingly on key. The thing is, he doesn’t sing “I Shot the Sheriff.” He sings only one phrase:

“How sweet it is!”

Doesn’t matter where the song is or what it is; Jimmy will hum along to the tune as necessary, and then, as soon as there’s a break that he can be heard over, remind us: “How sweet it is!” He sounds a little like Mr. Hankey from South Park. The nursing students, who are all West Indian like Nurse Monica, and young, unlike her, absolutely adore him and give him big smiles, which increases his activity. Jimmy may have only a few sentences in his repertoire, but he knows to keep going when pretty girls pay attention to him.

I send out a fill for him. He sings back. I’m convinced that some part of him knows we came in together.

When “I Shot the Sheriff” finishes in a crescendo of percussion that seems destined never to end (everybody wants to hit that last note, including me), Neil starts in on the Beatles: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “I Feel Fine.” The Beatles are apparently the cue for people to get up and dance. It begins with Becca, at Neil’s left. A nursing student pulls her up, she leaves her conga aside and starts wiggling her big butt in the middle of the circle—we yell out encouragement. She turns red and grins, and when she sits down, it’s Bobby’s turn—he moves like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, shaking his hips with a laconic tilt, turning his feet more than his body.

Johnny refuses to dance but bobs his head. The nursing students dance with one another and with Neil. Then it comes around to me. I hate dancing. I’ve never been good at it and I don’t mean that in the traditional scared teenager way: I’m really not good.

But a nursing student has both her hands out to me, and Noelle is across the room.

I put my bongos aside and try to think about what I’m doing as I do it. I know that you’re not supposed to think about dancing—what is that stupid expression, Sing like no one’s listening, dance like no one’s watching?—whatever. I want to dance like Bobby did, and I know the way to do that is to move my hips, so I focus there and think a lot. I don’t think about my arms. I don’t think about my legs. I don’t think about my head. I think about shaking my hips back and forth and then in and out and then in circles, and all of a sudden the nursing student is behind me—I had my eyes closed—and there’s another one in front of me, making a Craig Gilner sandwich, and I’m dancing as if I were one of those cool club guys with two chicks—heck, I have two chicks.

I hold out my hand to Noelle in a fit of confidence. She gets up and we go to the middle of the floor and shake our hips at each other, never touching, never talking, just smiling and keeping our eyes locked. I think she’s actually looking to me for tips, so I mouth to her: “Shake your hips!”

She does, her arms as out of place as my own, hanging at her sides with nowhere sexy to go. Where are you supposed to put your arms when you dance? It’s like the Universal Question. I guess you’re supposed to put them around someone.

When it’s Jimmy’s turn to dance, he gets up, throws down his washboard, and puts his finger over his lips at Neil. Neil stops playing. Jimmy does a pirouette over the unaccompanied wild percussion that we’ve built up and lands on his knee: “How sweet it is!”

thirty-eight

When Neil’s guitar is packed up he comes over.

“Good job with those drum fills.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen you before. What’s your name?”

“Craig.”

“You had good rhythm; you got people moving. Ah, I hope you don’t mind me asking this but . . . why are you here? You seem pretty, you know, good.”

“I have depression,” I say. “I had it really bad. I’m getting out in two days.”

“Great, wonderful, that’s great to hear. I have a lot of friends with that.” He nods at me. “Once you’re out, do you ever think you might consider . . . volunteering in a place like this?”

“Volunteering with what?”

“Well, do you play instruments?”

“No.”

“You probably could. You have a good musical sense.”

“Thanks. I do art.”

“What kind of art?”

I lead him out of the activity center past the nurses’ station and the phone, to my room, where Muqtada is in bed.

“Craig, I hear you all in music room,” he says.

“You should have come.”

Neil smiles at him: “Hello.”

“Hm.”

I pull my stack of my brain maps out for Neil. “I do these.” I give him a whole armful, maybe fifteen of the best of them by now. The one on top is a duo, a guy and girl with a bridge connecting the cities in their minds.

“These are cool,” Neil says. He flips through them. “Have you done these for a long time?”

“That depends,” I say. “Ten years or a couple days, depending on how you count it.”

“Can I have one?”

“I don’t know if I can give them away for free.”

“Ha! Listen, for real, here’s my card.” Neil pulls out a simple black-and-white business card that identifies him as a Guitar Therapist. “Whenever you’re out of here, and I’m sure it’ll be soon, give me a call and we can talk about volunteering, and—I’m serious—I might like to buy some of these. How old are you? You should be on the teen floor, right, but they’re renovating?”

“I’m young,” I say.

“I’m glad you came here and got the help you needed,” Neil says, and he shakes my hand in that way that people do in here to remind themselves that you’re the patient and they’re the doctor/volunteer/employee. They like you, and they genuinely want you to do better, but when they shake your hand you feel that distance, that slight disconnect because they know that you’re still broken somewhere, that you might snap at any moment.

Neil leaves the room and I spend the rest of the day drawing and playing cards with Armelio. Around one-thirty I call Mom, tell her about the sing-along and the card tournament and how I danced, and she affirms that I’m sounding better and that she heard from Dr. Mahmoud that Thursday is a solid day and she and Dad will be ready when it’s time to pick me up. Even though it’s only a few blocks back to my house, they have to pick me up in person.

In the late afternoon, while I’m playing spit with Armelio and getting crushed, Smitty pops in and tells me I have a visitor.

I know it’s not Mom or Dad or Sarah; they’re coming tomorrow for one last time, when Dad brings Blade II. I hope to God it isn’t Aaron or one of his friends.

It’s Nia.

I see her through the big window in the dining room, looking like she’s been crying or she’s about to cry, or both. She comes slinking timidly down the hall and I walk away from Armelio without a word to go up to her.

thirty-nine

“What are you doing here?” I ask, then pause. That’s really a question other people should be asking me.

“What do you think?” She has on light makeup that makes her lips sparkle and her cheeks a slight Asian red; her hair is drawn back to accent the curved proportions of her face. “I’m here to see you.

“Why?”

She turns away. “I’m having a really hard time right now, okay Craig?”

“All right,” I get in step with her. “Come on, the best place to talk is over here.”

I lead her through the hall with a familiarity and confidence that she seems surprised by. I guess I’m a veteran here now. Sort of an alpha male. Which reminds me: still no Humble.

“Here.” I sit her in the chairs where I sat with my parents and Noelle. “What’s going on?”

She puts her hands on her knees. She has on a little beige combat outfit with black boots; she looks like a Soviet soldier recruit. The light comes in behind her and makes her skin sparkle. I’ve seen her in this get-up before; it’s one of her particularly hottest ones: when you bind up little breasts in guy-type clothing they’re just that much more intriguing.

“Aaron and I broke up,” she says.

“No.” I open my eyes wide.

“Yes, Craig.” She wipes her face. “After that night when he called here? And you told him I was on Prozac?”

“What? Are you saying that it’s my fault?”

“I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault!” She chops her arms against her thighs and takes a deep breath.

The Professor peers out of her room.

“Who are you?” Nia turns.

“I’m Amanda,” she says. “I’m Craig’s friend.”

“Well, we’re trying to have a conversation; I’m really sorry.” Nia wipes her hair.

“It’s okay. But you shouldn’t yell. Solomon will come out.”

“Who’s Solomon?” Nia turns to me. “Is he dangerous?”

“Nobody here is dangerous,” I say, and as I say it I put my hand over Nia’s, on her thigh. I’m not sure why I do it—to reassure her? I guess it’s just an instinct, a reaction. Subconsciously I suppose I’m thinking that it’s a really hot thigh and that I would love to have my hand there without her hand serving as a buffer. I haven’t really gotten the chance to touch any girl’s thigh, and Nia’s beige ones seem just about as alluring as thighs get. I even think it’s a sexy word: thigh.

“Craig, hello?”

“Sorry, I was spacing out.”

She looks down at my hand and gives a little smirk. She doesn’t move it away. “You’re funny. I was asking you if you like it here.”

“It’s not bad. It’s better than school.”

“I believe that.” Now her hand—her other hand—is on top of my hand on top of her thigh. I think of the dancing sandwich I was in before in the activity lounge. I feel how warm she is and remember how I noticed that at the party, eons ago. “I’ve been thinking about going to a place like this.”

“What?” I pull my body away but keep my hand under hers. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking of, you know, checking myself in, spending some time here, or somewhere like it, re-centering, like you.”

“Nia.” I shake my head. “You can’t just come in here because you want to.”

“Isn’t that what you did?”

“No!”

“What did you do, then?” She tilts her head.

“I . . . I had like a medical emergency,” I explain. “I called up the Suicide Hotline and they sent me here.”

Nia leans back. “You called the Suicide Hotline?” She holds my hand up, clutches it. “Oh, Craig!”

I look at my crotch. I’m springing up. I can’t help it. She’s so close. This face is so close to mine and it’s the same face I’ve jerked off to so many times. I’ve conditioned myself to want this face. I want her. I feel her on me and I want her right now in her little Russian army outfit. I want to see what she looks like with it off. I want to see what she looks like with it half off.

“I didn’t realize . . .” she continues. “I knew you wanted to kill yourself; I never knew you wanted to kill yourself. I never would have told Aaron that you called me from that weird number if I’d known it was so serious.”

“Well, what do you think people come here for?” My hand twitches around hers.

“To get better?” she asks.

“Yeah, exactly. But you have to be really bad before they make you get better here.”

Nia swishes her head and her hair slides around her dark eyes. “I thought that you got bad because of me. And I thought I could make you better.”

She’s so cute. The way she holds her face, it’s like she always knows the best angles. We hold each other’s eyes. I see myself in hers. I look expectant, ready, eager, stupid, willing to do anything.

I don’t like how I look. Humble wouldn’t like it either; it doesn’t have any strength or will. But I don’t have any strength or will when I’m with her. I don’t have any choice. We’re going to do whatever she wants.

“What about Aaron?” I ask.

“I told you.” She drops almost to a whisper. “I broke up with him.”

“You broke up with him?” I want it clarified.

“It was mutual. Is that important?”

“Permanently broke up?”

“Looks like it.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little soon for you to be coming in here and, like, touching me?”

She shakes her head and purses her lower lip.

“I’ve been thinking about you since we talked on the phone Friday night. And now I know you so much better. You’ve told me all this stuff about you and you’re really . . . I don’t know . . . you’re mature. You’re not like all these other people with their stupid little problems. You’re like, really screwed up.” She giggles. “In the good way. The way that gives experience.”

“Huh.” I’m not sure what to say. No, wait, I know what to say: Go away, leave, I don’t need you; I finished with you on the phone before; I met a girl here who’s cooler and smarter; but when you’ve got a really gorgeous girl in front of you and she’s biting her lip and talking low and smiling—and you’re hard—what are you going to do?

“Huh . . . uh . . . well. . .” I’m back to stuttering. Maybe it was Nia that made me stutter. I’m sweating too.

“Do you want to show me your room?” she asks.

That’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea just as much as it’s a bad idea to skip meals or stay awake in bed in the morning or stop taking your Zoloft, but there’s no hope for me now. I cede control to my lower half, which is actually pointing toward my room, and lead Nia to it.

forty

Muqtada isn’t in the room. I can’t believe it—it’s like the first time since I’ve been here. I look at his rumpled sheets and try to make out a human form, but there isn’t enough bulk to account for him. I peek in the bathroom—nothing.

“You have a roommate?” Nia asks.

“Yeah, uh, he’s usually here . . .”

“Ewwww . . .” She waves in front of her nose. “Something smells.”

“The roommate’s Egyptian; I don’t think he wears deodorant.”

“Me either.”

I make like I’m cleaning up my stuff near my bed, but really I’m just taking my brain maps and flipping them over.

“You don’t get a TV?”

“No.”

“Do you read in here?”

“I like to read out in the hall with other people. My sister gave me a Star magazine, but the nurses took it away to read themselves.”

She walks toward me, looking up idly glib and innocent. “Do you get lonely here?”

“Actually, no,” I tell her. I move hair that is stuck to my forehead. I’m really sweating now. “It’s very social here. I made friends.”

“Who?”

“That lady you were talking to outside.”

“Her? She’s so rude. She totally horned in on our conversation.”

“She thinks someone sprayed insecticide in her apartment, Nia. She gets paranoid.”

“Really? That’s crazy. That’s really crazy.”

“I dunno. She might be right.” Nia is a few feet away from me now. Her shoulders are tilted up at me. I could pick her up and throw her on my unmade bed just like Aaron has done for the past two years. These words we’re saying are just a front. “She’s a college professor. There might be something to it.”

“Craig . . .” She’s right in front of me now. “Do you remember when you called me”—she touches my forehead—“oh, you’re sweating!”

“Yeah, I do that. When I get nervous.”

“Are you okay? You’re really sweating.”

“I’m all right.” I wipe it away.

“Seriously, Craig, that is gross.” She scowls, then gets back to where she was. “When you called me, you remember how you asked what I would do if you came over and grabbed me and kissed me?”

“Yeah.” My stomach is tight. The man is down there pulling on the rope. I thought I had him beat. I’d been eating so well.

“I’d let you,” she says. “You know I would.”

Now she’s got her glossy, sparkly lips turned up at me, and I feel this amazing dichotomy going on. It’s almost like before I came in here, when I was in my mom’s bed, when my brain wanted to die but my heart wanted to live. Now, quite literally, everything from my stomach up wants to run to the bathroom, to throw up, to talk to Armelio or Bobby or Smitty, to kick Nia out, to get ready for my second date with Noelle. But the bottom half has been denied too long. It’s been ready for this for two years, and it knows what it wants. It says that the real cause of all my problems is that I haven’t been satisfying it.

And these aren’t any lips, either, that I’m presented with to rectify my lack of play. These are lips that I’ve had access to for years in my mind. I’ve done terrible, horrible things to these lips in the privacy of my bathroom. So screw it. You’ve gotta try sometime.

I lean down and grab Nia and push her back on Muqtada’s bed.

I didn’t mean to; I meant to turn her around and put her on my bed, but she happened to be in front of me and I couldn’t switch directions in mid-grab. I cover her with my thin body and kiss her upper lip first, encase it in my lips, then do the lower one, then try to do them both at once, only that doesn’t really work, it’s like trying to pull the lips off her head, and she laughs, which gives me her beautiful smile to kiss, the hard white teeth—I don’t mind—and then I use my tongue the way I’ve seen in movies and put my hands on her soldier outfit and feel what I don’t have and have wanted for years pressing back at me, taut and yielding at the same time. Two of them.

“Mmmmmm,” Nia mmmmmms, putting her small hands on the back of my head. She feels my hair; I shake against her. I can’t believe how good it feels. This is how good it feels? Why the hell did I ever get depressed?

I remember what Aaron said about the inside of a girl’s cheek feeling like another place and I lick the insides of hers. She shivers; she likes it; it’s like Aaron said: she likes sex; her tongue becomes a jittery dart flicking in and out of my mouth. I feel the ring—a little metal bubble, something to add texture, foreign and dirty. Forget it. Let’s do it. I reach up to the buttons on her outfit. My eyes are closed, because if I open them I think I might get a little too excited and ruin my pants, and Mom didn’t bring me any pants.

Darn, the button I’m grabbing is in the middle. Up one. No. That’s not it. One more.

“God.” she pulls away. “I always wanted to hook up in a hospital.”

“What?” I look up at her chin. I’m still on top of her on Muqtada’s bed, my legs sticking way off, almost hitting my bed.

“This was totally on my checklist.” She looks down. “Me and Aaron never did anything like this.”

That’s a body blow to my whole body: the lower half that wanted this and the upper half that warned me about it. I can’t think what to say: Please don’t compare me to Aaron? Please don’t mention Aaron? What checklist? So I say: “Uh . . . um . . .”

“Sex!” I hear from the doorway.

It’s Muqtada.

“Sex! Sex in my bed! Children make sex in my bed!” He runs over to us; I jump off Nia and hold my hands up, thinking he’s going to hit me, but he grabs me and holds me close to his square smelly body and carries me like a girder to the corner of the room.

“Um, Muqtada—”

“Craig, who is that?” Nia yells.

“I live here! You terrible girl corrupt my friend!” Muqtada puts me down, turns and stands with his arms crossed at Nia, guarding me. “You leave!” He points at the open door.

“There’s no door?!” Nia peers at it. On some kind of incredible girl-time, she’s gotten up, smoothed out her outfit, and collected her purse from near Muqtada’s pillow. She already has her cell phone out; it’s blinking at her side. She’s gesturing at me with it.

“There’s a door, yeah,” I say, standing on tiptoes to talk over Muqtada’s shoulder. “We just didn’t close it—”

“Don’t talk to her!” Muqtada turns and shakes his finger at me. “She try and make sex in my bed!”

“It wasn’t just me, okay?” Nia bends her face in at him. He turns back. “In case you didn’t notice, Craig was on top of me. And we weren’t going to have sex.”

“Woman is temptress. My wife leave me. I know.”

“Craig, I’m outta here.”

“Uh, okay!” I answer into Muqtada’s back. “Ah—” I try and think how to sum it up. “I like making out with you . . . but I don’t really like you as a person. . . .”

“Yeah, same here,” says Nia.

“What is going on in here?” It’s Smitty. He shadows the door. “Muqtada, what are you doing? And excuse me, young lady?”

“I was just leaving,” Nia says.

“You’re the visitor for Craig, right?”

“Not anymore.”

“What happened in here?”

“Nothing,” says Muqtada. “Everything fine.” He steps aside, turns, and gives me what I guess he thinks is a wink through his glasses.

“Yeah, absolutely.” I catch on. “Muqtada just came in and was surprised to see two people in the room.”

“Well, he should be,” says Smitty, “because you’re not supposed to have visitors in your room. Don’t let it happen again, okay?”

“No problem.”

“Yeah, because you won’t be seeing me again,” says Nia, and Smitty gives her a disbelieving look as she walks away from him, stomping down the hall, slamming her shoes with each step. He shrugs at us.

“All right,” he says to her back. “Sign out on your way out, miss.”

“Craig, what kind of girl is going to put up with this . . . crap?” Nia turns around, spreads her arms, and gestures to the hall as if she owns it while she backs away.

“Be quiet, Doomba!” yells President Armelio from somewhere. She turns back around and doesn’t give any more looks back.

“Huh,” Smitty says. “Lovely girl. Everything cool, guys?”

We nod like kindergartners. “Yes.”

“Don’t let anything like that happen again, Craig.”

“I won’t.”

“Otherwise you’ll be here a long time.” Smitty walks away from the door; Muqtada waits a few moments and then turns to me.

“Craig, I am sorry I only have very important beliefs about sex.”

“No, I understand. You did a good thing.”

“You are not in trouble, yes?”

“No, I’m fine. You handled it perfectly, man.” I put out my hand to get a slap from him, but he misinterprets that as a handshake attempt, so I take the initiative and turn it into a hug, a big smelly one. His glasses smack against me.

“I am out trying to get Egyptian music in hospital,” he says. “You give me idea. But they have none. Now I rest.” And he climbs back in bed, rearranges his sheet, curls into a fetal position, and stares through me.

I glance at the door. Right there, with her bright green eyes wide open, is Noelle.

I rush out to talk to her, but she flies down to her room and closes her door. I run up to it and knock, but there’s no answer, and when Smitty passes me, shooting a look, I have to stop knocking.

I check the clock in the hall and sigh. It’s five. Two hours until our second date.

forty-one

“I only have a couple of questions for you,” Noelle says, walking up fast at seven o’clock as I sit in the chair that I’ve come to call my conference chair, since I meet with so many people in it. I wonder what else has happened in this chair—people have probably peed on it, licked it, drummed their heads against it, and writhed around in it spouting gibberish. That gives me comfort. It feels like a chair with some history.

I didn’t think Noelle was going to show up, so I almost didn’t come—but then I decided I didn’t want any regrets. I’m done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed. When I get out in the world, from now on, if I start to regret something, I’m going to remind myself that whatever I could have done, it won’t change the fact that I was in a psychiatric hospital. This, right here, is the biggest regret I could ever have. And it’s not so bad.

Noelle seems to be looking at me for comment. But I’m amazed at how she looks. New clothes: a pair of tight blue jeans cut down dangerously low and a sliver of white underwear sticking out above them. The underwear looks like it has pink stars on it—do girls’ underwear really have pink stars?—and I almost stare, before my eyes are drawn by the soft curve of her stomach to her T-shirt, which is wrapped against her with some kind of mystical female force, reading I HATE BOYS.

How come girls are coming to me dressed all hot all of a sudden?

Above the shirt is her face, bordered by blond hair pulled back, and highlighted by her cuts.

“Uh . . . Why’d you wear that T-shirt?” I ask. “Is that a message to me?”

“No. I hate boys, not you. And this is one reason why: they’re so arrogant. Why is that?” She stands with her hands on her hips.

“Well . . .” I think. “Do you want like, a real, honest answer?” My brain is working better than it did before. It has bagels and soup and sugar and chicken in it. It’s firing almost like it used to.

“No, Craig, I want a big, dumb, fake answer.” Noelle rolls her eyes. I think her breasts roll in synch with them. Girls’ breasts are so amazing.

“Wait, you didn’t ask a question!” I smirk. “One point for you.”

“We’re not playing the game, Craig. We were going to, but I’m too mad.”

“Okay, well, darn . . .” I start. “What were we talking about?”

“Why guys are so arrogant.”

“Right. Well, you know, we’re born into the world seeing that we’re just a little bit . . . We tend to have things a little bit easier than girls. And we tend to assume therefore that the world was built for us, and that we’re, you know, the culmination of everything that came before us. And then we get told that having a little bit of this attitude is called balls, and that balls are good, and we kind of take it from there.”

“Wow, you are honest,” she says, sitting down. “An honest asshole.” Yes! She sat down! “Who the hell was that girl?”

“A girl I know.”

“She’s pretty.” (It’s amazing how girls can say this and make it the most withering insult.) “Is she your girlfriend?”

“No. I don’t have a girlfriend. Never had a girlfriend.”

“So she was just a girl you were hooking up with in your room?”

“You saw, huh.”

“I saw everything: from out here to your roommate’s bed.”

“What, you were following me?”

“I’m not allowed?”

“Well, no—”

“You don’t like it?” She leans in. “You don’t like some poor little girl”—she throws on a Little Bo-Peep voice, fluffs her hair—“following big, manly Craig around the ward?”

“It’s not a ward, it’s a psych hospital.” But yes, yes I do like you following me around; yes, that’s awesome. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice you. . . .” I think of the flashes of time with Nia, if I ever glanced down the hall or checked behind me.

“You were in a state of excitement; that’s why.”

“Well. You want to know who she was?”

“No. I lost interest.”

“You did?”

“No! Tell me!”

“Okay, okay, she was this girl I’ve known for a long time, and she came in here—”

“Just overcome with lust for you?”

“Yeah, sure, exactly; she came in overcome with lust and I took advantage of her.” I flick my hand. “No, what really happened is she came in here lonely and confused, I think, and thinking that she belonged in a place like this . . .”

“That was pretty funny when your roommate caught you. That kinda made the whole thing worthwhile.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You’re never going to be a good cheater. You’re going to be one of those guys who gets caught on the first try.”

“Is that good?”

“You didn’t even close the door. How’d you know the girl?”

“She was my best friend’s girlfriend since we were like thirteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Fifteen.”

“Me too.”

I look at her anew. There’s something about people who are the same age. It’s like you got piped out in the same shipment. You’ve got to stick together. Because deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.

“So you macked your best friend’s girlfriend?”

“No, they broke up.”

“When?”

“Uh, a few days ago.”

“She moves fast!”

“I think,” I think out loud, “she’s just one of these girls who’s never really not had a boyfriend.”

“Sometimes we call those girls sluts. Do you think she had a boyfriend when she was eight?”

“Ew.”

“Maybe she was letting—”

“Stop! Stop! I don’t want to hear it.”

“It happens.” Noelle looks at me.

I nod, and pause, and let that sink it. It does happen.

“Um . . . how are you?” I ask.

“You think you’re really smart, don’t you?”

I laugh. “No. That’s one of the reasons I came in here, actually. Thinking I was dumb.”

“Why would you think that? You’re in a smart school.”

“I wasn’t doing well there.”

“What were you getting?”

“Ninety-threes.”

“Oh.” Noelle nods.

“Yeah.” I fold my arms. “I think you’re really smart. You probably get good grades.”

“Not really.” She puts her chin in her palms like someone in a painting. “You’re not very good at giving compliments.”

“What?”

“I’m smart! C’mon.”

“You’re attractive, too!” I say. “Does that work? You’re attractive! Did I say that already? I said it the other day, right?”

“Attractive? Craig, real estate is attractive. Houses.”

“Sorry, you’re beautiful. What about that?” I can’t believe I’m saying it. We’ll both be out of here in two days; that’s why I’m saying it. No regrets.

“Beautiful’s all right. There are better ones.”

“Okay, okay, cool.” I crack my neck—

“Ewwww.”

“What?”

“Don’t do that. Especially when you’re about to compliment me.”

“Fine, okay. What are better words than beautiful?”

She puts on a Southern accent: “‘Go-geous.’”

“Okay, okay, you’re gorgeous.”

“That sounds terrible. Do it my way: go-geous.”

I do it.

“You can’t even do a Southern accent? Oh my gosh, are you even from America?”

“Gimme a break! I’m from here!”

“Brooklyn?

“Yeah.”

“This neighborhood?”

“Yeah.”

“I have friends here.”

“We should meet up sometime.”

“You’re so terrible. Try some more compliments.”

“Okay.” I dig down deep. I got nothing. “Um . . .”

“You don’t know any more?”

“I’m not good at words.”

“See, this is why the math nerds don’t get girls.”

“Who said I was a math nerd? I told you my grades suck.”

“You might be one of those nerds who’s not smart. Those are the worst kind.”

“Listen,” I stop her. “I’m really glad you’re here talking with me, and I’ve met a lot of people in here.”

“Uh-oh,” she says. “Is this the part where it gets all serious?”

“Yes,” I say. And when I say it, the way that I say it, I see that she understands that I’m serious about being serious. I can be serious now. I’ve been through some serious shit and I can be serious like somebody older.

“I like you a lot,” I start. No regrets. “Because you’re funny and smart and because you seem to like me. I know that’s not a good reason, but I can’t help it; if a girl likes me I tend to like her back.”

She doesn’t say anything. I dip my head at her. “Um, do you want to say anything?”

“No. No! This is fine. Keep going.”

“Well, okay, I’ve been thinking about how to put this. I like you for all this stuff but I also kind of like you for the cuts on your face—”

“Oh no, are you a fetishist?”

“What?”

“Are you like a blood fetishist? There was one of them in here before. He wanted to make me like his Queen of the Night or something.”

“No! It’s nothing like that. It’s like this: when people have problems, you know . . . I come in here and I see that people from all over have problems. I mean, the people that I’ve made friends with are pretty much a bunch of lowlifes, old drug addicts, people who can’t hold jobs; but then every few days, someone new comes in who looks like he just got out of a business meeting.”

Noelle nods. She’s seen them too: the scruffy youngish guy who came in today with a pile of books as if it were a reading retreat. The guy who came in yesterday in a suit and told me in the most practical way that he heard voices and they were a real pain in the ass; they didn’t say anything scary but they were always saying the stupidest stuff while he was in trial.

“And not only in here: all over. My friends are all calling me up now: this one’s depressed, that one’s depressed. I look at what the doctors hand out, and there are studies that show like, one fifth of Americans suffer from a mental illness, and suicide is the number-two killer among teenagers and all this crap . . . I mean everybody’s messed up.”

“What’s your point?”

“We wear our problems differently. Like I didn’t talk and stopped eating and threw up all the time—”

“You threw up?”

“Yeah. Bad. And I stopped sleeping. And when I started doing that, my parents noticed and my friends noticed, sort of—they kinda made fun of me—but I could go through the world without really letting on what was wrong. Until I came here. Now it’s like: something is wrong. Or was wrong, because it feels like it’s getting better.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“You’re out there about your problems,” I say. “You put them on your face.”

She stops, puts her hand in her hair.

“I cut my face because too many—too many people wanted something from me,” she tries to explain. “There was so much pressure, it was—”

“Something to live up to?”

“Exactly.”

“People told you you were hot and then all of a sudden they treated you different?”

“Right.”

“How?”

She sighs. “You have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can’t trust anyone anymore, because they’re all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how it was before . . .”

She pulls her face into one of those faces that could be laughing or crying—they use so many of the same muscles—and leans forward.

“And I didn’t want to be part of it,” she says. “I didn’t want to be part of that world.”

I grab her leaning into me, feel for the first time the soft dimple of her body. “Me neither.”

She puts her arms around me and we hold each other like that from our two chairs, like a house constructed over them, and I don’t move my hands at all and neither does she.

“I didn’t want to play the smart game,” I tell her. “And you didn’t want to play the pretty game.”

“The pretty game’s worse,” she whispers. “Nobody wants to use you for being smart.”

“People wanted to use you?”

“Someone did. Someone who shouldn’t.”

I stop.

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“Should I not touch you?”

“No, no, you didn’t do anything. It’s okay. But . . . yeah. It happened. And I lied before.”

“About what?”

“It doesn’t matter what kind of surgery I have. I did it with half a scissor, Craig. It’s going to leave scars. I’ll have scars for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to get off the world a little after this . . . this thing . . . and now I’m never going to be able to have a job or anything. What are they going to say when I go into a job interview looking like . . .” She sniffles, chuckles, and snot comes out. “. . . like a Klingon?”

“There are places in California where they speak Klingon. You can get a job there.”

“Stop it.”

We’re still holding each other. I don’t want to look up. I keep my eyes closed. “There are antidiscrimination laws too. They can’t not hire you if you’re qualified.”

“But I look like a freak now.”

“I told you, Noelle,” I say into her ear. “Everybody has problems. Some people just hide their crap better than others. But people aren’t going to look at you and run away. They’re going to look at you and think that they can talk to you, and that you’ll understand, and that you’re brave, and that you’re strong. And you are. You’re brave and strong.”

“You’re getting better at the compliments.”

“Nah. I’m nothing. I can barely hold food down.”

“Yeah, you’re skinny.” She laughs. “We need to fatten you up.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad I met you.”

“You’re bare and honest, Noelle; that’s what you are.” Words come into my head like they’ve always been there. “And in Africa your scarring would be highly prized.”

She sniffles again. “I didn’t like seeing you with that other girl.”

“I know.”

“You like me more, right?”

“Right.”

“Why?”

I pull away from her—maybe the first time in my life I’ve ended a hug—because a level of eye contact is required.

“I owe you a lot more than I do her. You really opened my eyes to something.” My actual eyes have been closed for so long on Noelle’s shoulder that the hall is blinding. But when they readjust I see the Professor, watching us from her door, holding the doorknob with one hand and her shoulder with the other.

“I wanted to show you this.” I reach under my chair to pick up something for our meeting—I had it down there as a trump card. I didn’t think the date would go like this; I thought it would all be Noelle yelling at me and I’d have to do something drastic. But now I can do something drastic and it’ll be like a cherry on top.

I pull out my couple’s brain map and show it to her.

“It’s beautiful!”

“It’s a guy and a girl, see? I didn’t do any hair, but you can see how one has a feminine profile and the other is masculine.” They’re lying down, not on top of each other, just side by side, floating in space. They have sketched-out legs and arms at their sides, but that’s the whole point of my brain maps—you don’t need to spend a lot of time on the legs or the arms. What they really have are brains—full and complete with whirling bridges and intersections and plazas and parks. They’re the most elaborate ones I’ve done yet: divided thoroughfares, alleys, cul de sacs, tunnels, toll plazas, and traffic circles. The paper is 14” x 17” and I had room to make the maps huge; the bodies are small and unimportant; the key thing that your eye is drawn to (because I understand now, somehow, that that’s how art works) is a soaring bridge between the two heads, longer than the Verrazano, even, with coils of ramps like ribbons mashed up at each end.

“It might be my best yet,” I say.

She looks it over; I see the red in her eyes, fading. There aren’t any tear streaks—I still haven’t seen actual tear streaks on anyone. Her tears went right into my shirt; they cool and chafe now on my shoulder.

“You were the one who suggested I do stuff from childhood,” I continue. “I used to do these when I was a kid, and I forgot how fun they were.”

“I bet you never did them like this.”

“No, well, this is easier, because I don’t have to finish the maps.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks for getting me started. I owe you big.”

“Thank you. Do I get to keep it?” She looks up.

“Not yet. I have to fix it up.” I stand, stretch my back, and shrug down at her.

Do it, soldier.

Yes, sir!

“But, um, I kind of wondered if I could have your phone number, so I can call you when we’re out of here.”

She smiles and her cuts outline her face like a cat’s whiskers. “Crafty.”

“I am a guy,” I say.

“And I hate boys,” she says.

“But a guy’s different,” I say.

“Maybe a little,” she says.

forty-two

Humble is back at dinner. He has entirely new clothes, a sparkly clean-shaven face, and eyes that won’t quite open all the way; he stations himself at his usual table under the TV in the dining room, which everyone left empty while he was gone. Noelle’s there too, at the next table, her back to him; I walk in, say hi to both of them, grab the tables, put them together, and sit between them, smiling.

“Noelle, I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to meet Humble.”

“Not really,” she says. She’s still grinning. From our date, I hope.

“Humble, Noelle. Noelle, Humble.”

“Uhhhhhh . . .” he says, squinting his eyes. “Those cuts on your face are trippy.”

“Thanks?” They shake hands.

“You have a good handshake for a girl,” says Humble.

“You have a good one for a guy.”

My dinner is beans and hot dogs and salad, with cookies and a pear at the end. I tackle it.

“So where’d they take you?” I ask between bites.

“Across the hall to geriatric,” says Humble.

“With the old people?” Noelle asks.

“Yeah. That’s where they take you when they have to get you whacked outta your mind.”

“Where’d you hear the term ‘wack’?” Noelle asks.

“‘Whacked?’” Humble picks a piece of salad out of his teeth with his thumb.

“No, she thinks you’re saying ‘wack,’ like ‘that’s wack,’” I explain.

“Wack, wacky, whacked, it’s all the same word. This is an old word. I used to have an uncle named Wacky—what are you laughing at? Man, don’t start with me. This kid is a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Noelle. And she bangs her knee against my thigh. Awesome. A girl hasn’t done that to me since like fourth grade. “He’s a mess.”

“I know,” says Humble. “It’s because he’s too smart for his own good. He comes in here; he’s burned out. I’ve seen it before. I see it all the time, but in people in their twenties, thirties. This guy is so smart that he got burnt out in half the time. He’s having like a midlife crisis as a teenager.”

“Forget the midlife crisis,” I say. “It’s all about the sixth-life crisis.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Well. . .” I look at Noelle. She’s not going to hit me with her leg again? I’m not sure if I want to talk. I don’t want to bore her. But I know I won’t bore Humble, and if I don’t bore her either, that would make it like a major victory.

“Well, first there’s the quarter-life crisis,” I say. “That’s like the characters on Friends—people freaking out that they won’t get married. Twenty-year-olds. That’s probably true that people get quarter-life crises; I wouldn’t know. But I know that now things work faster. Before you had to wait until you were twenty to have enough choices of things to do with your life to start getting freaked out. But now there’s so much stuff for you to buy, and so many ways you can spend your time, and so many specialties that you need to get started on very early in life—like ballet, right, Noelle, when did you start ballet?”

“Four.”

“Okay. I started Tae Bo at six. So there are like—so many people angling for success and so many colleges you’re supposed to get into, and so many women you’re supposed to have sex with—”

“You gotta freak them,” says Johnny from across the room.

“Were we talking to you?” Humble asks.

“Huh, eat your salt.”

“What, tough guy? How about I knock your head off, how would you like that—”

“Boys.” Noelle stands up and pulls her hair away from her cheeks, which are red in addition to being cut up. Everybody shuts up.

“So now,” I continue, “instead of a quarter-life crisis they’ve got a fifth-life crisis—that’s when you’re eighteen—and a sixth-life crisis—that’s when you’re fourteen. I think that’s what a lot of people have.”

“What you have.”

“Not just me. It’s the . . . um . . . should I keep going?”

“Yes,” Noelle says.

“Well, there are lot of people who make a lot of money off the fifth- and sixth-life crises. All of a sudden they have a ton of consumers scared out of their minds and willing to buy facial cream, designer jeans, SAT test prep courses, condoms, cars, scooters, self-help books, watches, wallets, stocks, whatever . . . all the crap that the twenty-somethings used to buy, they now have the ten-somethings buying. They doubled their market!”

Bobby has pulled up a chair next to me. “This kid is a freakin’ lunatic,” he says.

“I hope they keep him in here,” says Humble.

“So pretty soon.” I keep thinking. “There’ll be seventh- and eighth-life crises. Then eventually a baby will be born and the doctors will look at it and wonder right away if it’s unequipped to deal with the world; if they decide it doesn’t look happy, they’ll put it on antidepressants, get it started on that particular consumer track.”

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmm,” Humble says. I think he’s going to follow it up with something, but instead he says: “Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

Then:

“Your problem is you have a worldview totally in formed by depression.” He leans in. “What about rage?”

“I was never big on rage.”

“Why?”

“It’s so much more angry in my head than it could ever be outside.”

“Extra cookies!”

It’s one of the nurses. We all get in line; it’s oat meal and peanut butter. As I shuffle forward, Noelle nudges me from behind; when I turn to her, she turns her face away as if I were trying to kiss her but she wouldn’t let me.

“You’re trouble,” I say.

“You’re silly,” she answers.

I did it. I talked and she liked me; she thought I was smart. I start to develop a plan. Once I get my cookies, I go to the phone to call Dad, who’s already bringing Blade II tomorrow night. I want him to bring something else too.