It's Kind of a Funny Story

forty-three

This is your last full day at the hospital, is what I think when I get up—no one’s taking my blood today (it’s only happened once since Sunday) so I don’t get up super-early, but I’m still the first one in the halls. I take my shower and think about how much life would suck if hot water didn’t come out of the showerhead when you wanted. I’ve tried to take cold showers and they’re wonderful when they’re over, but during the process they feel like some form of animal torture. But then again, that’s the point—when you take a cold shower you’re supposed to get in and out as fast as possible; that’s why they do it in the army.

That’s right! Want to take a shot, soldier?

I don’t think so. Sir.

C’mon, what’s the matter with you? You got a lot going for you; you don’t want to keep it going?

I need a cold shower to keep things going?

That’s right. Less time in the shower, more in the battlefield.

Fine.

I can do this. I reach out and twist the temperature knob slowly to the left, then decide that I’m never going to get it done gradually so I’ll have to do it like a Band-Aid—I jerk it over. The water goes from toasty warm to frigid so quickly that it feels like it burns me. I bend my groin out of its path but I know that’s cheating, so I stick it back in as I furiously lather myself. Leg: up! Down! Other leg: up! Down! Crotch: uh, scrub scrub scrub. Chest: wipe. Arm: down! Back! Other arm: down! Back! Neck, face, turn around, wash your butt, and I’m out! Straight to the towel. I wrap it around myself and shiver.

I’m so desperate to put my clothes on that my socks stick to my wet feet. I go out to talk with Smitty.

“You okay?”

“First cold shower.”

“Of the day?”

“Of my life.”

“Yeah, that’ll knock ya.”

“What’s the news?”

Smitty holds up his paper. It seems that a new candidate is running for Mayor of New York promising to give everyone who votes for him a lap dance. He’s a multibillionaire, and at $100 per lap dance, he thinks he can lock up the vote. A lot of women are supporting him.

“That’s crazy.” I shiver. “It’s like . . . Who’s out there and who’s in here, you know?”

“Absolutely. Better music in here, though.” Smitty turns up the radio.

“By the way, that’s a question I have—can I play some music on the hall tonight? At the other end?”

“What kind?”

“There’s no words, don’t worry, nothing offensive. It’s something one of the people on the hall will like. Like a gift.”

“I’ll have to see it first.”

“Okay. And you know I’m bringing that Blade II movie tonight to watch with the group.”

“You think about that a minute. You’re bringing a vampire movie onto a floor full of psych patients.”

“They can handle it.”

“I’m not gonna get any nightmares?”

“Promise.”

“Nightmares are a big problem in my job, Craig.”

“Understood.”

Smitty sighs, puts his paper down, and gets up. “You want me to do your vitals?”

He straps me in on the chair, pumps me up, and puts his soft fingertips on my wrist. Today I’m 120/70. First day I haven’t been perfect.

forty-four

“How’re you doing?” Dr. Minerva is like.

It’s 11 A.M. I sigh. After vitals was breakfast, where the guy who was afraid of gravity and Rolling Pin Robert were gone—Humble told me and Noelle that they got discharged. Toward the end of the meal, Noelle touched her leg against mine for as long as it took me to drink the first sip of my after-breakfast Swee-Touch-Nee tea, which was a big sip. Then Monica announced that we’d be screening Blade II tonight opposite the smoking lounge and everybody got excited, especially Johnny: “Huh, that movie is cool; a lotta vampires die.” No announcements about my music, but then again it hadn’t arrived yet.

I took my Zoloft in my little plastic cup and drew some brain maps by the window in the corner of the hall next to Jimmy. I handled my phone messages, started thinking seriously about what I’d do the moment I got out—would I buy a cup of coffee? Walk to the park? Go home and start in on the e-mail?—and that got me started thinking about e-mail, and all of a sudden I was really glad to have Dr. Minerva to go to.

“I’m doing okay, I think.”

She looks at me calm and steady. Maybe she’s my Anchor.

“What’s got you in doubt, Craig?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you were okay ‘you think.’ Why do you just think it?”

“That’s an expression,” I say.

“This isn’t the place to be leaving if you’re not feeling better, Craig.”

“Right, well, I’ve been thinking about my e-mail.”

“Yes?”

“I’m really worried about getting out there and having to check it. The phones I’m caught up with, but the e-mail might be pretty deadly.”

“Deadly . . . How can e-mail be deadly, Craig?”

“Well.” I lean back, take a deep breath. Then I remember something. “You know how I had a lot of problems with starting and stopping my sentences before?”

“Yes.”

“Not lately.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s like the opposite, like words can just pour out of me, the way they used to, when I used to get in trouble in class.”

“Which was. . .” She focuses on her pad to write this down.

“A year ago . . . Before I went to Executive Pre-Professional.”

“Right—now tell me about the e-mail.”

“The e-mail.” I put my hands on the table. “I hate it. Like, right now, I haven’t been checking it for five days, okay?”

“Since Saturday.” She nods.

“That’s right. Now, what are people thinking while they’re trying to reach me? These are people who probably already have some idea where I am because Nia told Aaron the number and he figured it out.”

“Right: a big source of shame for you.”

“Yes. But even if someone has no idea where I am, what are they thinking? Five days. They’re like: He’s crazy. He must have OD’ed or something. Everyone is expecting me to answer them instantly and I’m not able to.”

“Who e-mails you, Craig?”

“People who want homework assignments, teachers, school clubs, announcements about charities I should volunteer in, invitations to Executive Pre-Professional football, basketball, squash games . . .”

“So they’re mostly school-related.”

“They’re all school-related. My friends don’t e-mail me. They call.”

“So why don’t you just ignore the e-mails?”

“I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because then people will be offended!”

“And what happens then?”

“Well, I won’t get to join clubs, get credits, participate in stuff, get extra-credit. . . I’ll fail.”

“At school.”

“Right.” I pause. No, it’s not exactly school. It’s what comes after school. “At life.”

“Ah.” She pauses. “Life.”

“Right.”

“Failing at school is failing at life.”

“Well. . . I’m in school! That’s the one thing I’m supposed to do. I know a lot of famous people didn’t do well at school, like James Brown; he dropped out in fifth grade to be an entertainer, I respect that. . . but that’s not going to be me. I’m not going to be able to do anything but work as hard as possible all the time and compete with everyone I know all the time to make it. And right now school’s the one thing I need to do. And I’m away from the e-mail and I can’t do it.”

“But your definition of school isn’t really one thing, it’s many different things, Craig: extracurricular activities plus sports plus volunteering. That’s not to mention homework.”

“Right.”

“How anxious would you say you are about all of this, Craig?”

I think back to what Bobby said, about anxiety being a medical thing. The e-mail has been in the back of my mind since I got here, the nagging knowledge that when I get out I’ll have to sit on the computer for five or six hours going through everything I’ve missed, answering it in reverse order because that’s the way it comes in and therefore taking the longest time to respond to the people who e-mailed me in the most distant past. And then as I’m answering them more will come in, and they’ll sit on top of my stack and mock me, dare me to answer them before digging down, telling me that I need them, as opposed to the one or two e-mails that are actually about something I care about. Those will get saved to the end, and by the time I have the time to deal with them, they’ll be so out of date that I’ll just have to apologize: Sorry, man. I haven’t been able to answer my e-mail. No, I’m not important, just incapable.

“Craig?”

“Very anxious,” I answer.

“The e-mail anxiety, and the failure talk . . . These are subjects you’ve brought up before. They’re very distressing to you.”

“I know. I’m sweating.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. And I haven’t been sweating for a while.”

“You’ve been away from your Tentacles.”

“Right. Not anymore. Now I get to go back and they’re all right there for me.”

“Do you remember what I asked you last time, about whether or not you’d found any Anchors in here?”

“Yes.”

She pauses. In order to ask a question, it is often possible for Dr. Minerva only to intimate that she might ask a question.

“I think I’ve found one,” I sigh.

“What’s that?”

“Can I get up and get it?”

“Absolutely.”

I leave the office and walk down the hall, where Bobby is leading a new recruit on his welcoming tour—a black guy with wild teeth and a stained blue sweatsuit.

“This is Craig,” Bobby says. “He’s real young, but he’s on the level. He does drawings.”

I shake the man’s hand. That’s right. I do drawings.

“Human Being,” the man says.

“That’s his name,” Bobby explains, rolling his eyes.

“Your name isn’t Craig; it’s Human Being too,” the man says.

I nod, break the handshake, and keep walking to my room. It’s literally like breaking away from a monster—the further I get from thinking about e-mail and Dr. Minerva and the fact that I’m going to have to leave here and go back to Executive Pre-Professional, the calmer I get. And the closer I get to the brain maps, to this little stupid thing I can do, the calmer I get.

I walk past Muqtada—he’s staring and trying to sleep—and take my art off the radiator cover. I cradle it in a stack past Bobby and Human Being—who’s now explaining how his real last name is Green and that’s what he needs, some green—back into the office.

“I kinda like it in here,” I say to Dr. Minerva.

“This room?”

“No, the hospital.”

“When you’re finished, you can volunteer.”

“I talked to the guitar guy Neil about that. I think I’ll try. I can get school credit!”

“Is that the reason you should volunteer, Craig—”

“No, no . . .” I shake my head. “I’m just joking.”

“Ah.” Dr. Minerva cuts her face into a wide smile. “So what do we have here?”

I plop them down on the table. There are two dozen now. No kind of crazy breakthroughs, just variations on a theme: pigs with brain maps that resemble St. Louis, my couple for Noelle joined by the sweeping bridge, a family of metropolises.

“Your artwork,” she says.

She leafs through them, going “Oh, my” at the particularly good ones. I constructed this stack last night—not just for Dr. Minerva, for anybody. The brain maps have a certain order. Ever since I’ve been doing them, they’ve been making it clear that they should be stacked for presentation.

“Craig, these are wonderful.”

“Thanks.” I sit down. We were both standing. I didn’t even notice.

“You started these because you used to do them when you were four?”

“Right. Well. Something like them.”

“And how do they make you feel?”

I look at the pile. “Awesome.”

She leans in. “Why?”

I have to think about that one, and when Dr. Minerva makes me think, I don’t get embarrassed and try to skip it. I look to the left and stroke my chin.

“Because I do them,” I say. “I do them and they’re done. It’s almost like, you know, peeing?”

“Yes . . .” Dr. Minerva nods. “Something you enjoy.”

“Right. I do it; it’s successful; it feels good; and I know it’s good. When I finish one of these up I feel like I’ve actually done something and like the rest of my day can be spent doing whatever, stupid crap, e-mail, phone calls, all the rest of it.”

“Craig, have you ever considered the fact that you might be an artist?”

“I have other stuff too,” I keep going. What’d she say? “First of all I was thinking about this perpetual candle, like a candle on the ground with another candle hanging upside-down over it, and as the first candle melts the wax is kept molten by some kind of hot containment unit and gets pumped up to the second candle and drips down like a stalactite-stalagmite thing, and then I was also thinking: what if you filled a shoe with whipped cream? Just a man’s shoe, filled with whipped cream? That’s pretty easy to do. And then you could keep going: a T-shirt filled with Jell-O, a hat full of applesauce . . . that’s art, right? That kind of stuff. What’d you say about artists?”

She chuckles. “You seem to enjoy what you’re doing here.”

“Yeah, well, duh, it’s not the most difficult thing in the world.”

“You’re not sweating now.”

“This is a good Anchor for me,” I say. I admit. I admit it. It’s a stupid thing to admit. It means that I’m not practical. But then again, I’m already in the loony bin; how practical am I going to get? I might have to give up on practical.

“That’s right, Craig. This can be your Anchor.” Dr. Minerva stares at me and doesn’t blink. I look at her face, the wall behind her, the door, the shades, the table, my hands on the table, the Brain Maps between us. I could do the one on the top a little better. I could try putting some wood grain in there with the streets. Knots of wood in people’s heads. That could work. “This can be my Anchor.” I nod. “But. . .”

“What, Craig?”

“What am I going to do about school? I can’t go to Executive Pre-Professional for art.”

“I’m going to throw a wild notion at you.” Dr. Minerva leans back, then forward. “Have you ever thought about going to a different school?”

I stare ahead.

I hadn’t. I honestly hadn’t.

Not once, not in my whole life, not since I started there. That’s my school. I worked harder to get in than I did for anything else, ever. I went there because, coming out of it, I’d be able to be President. Or a lawyer. Rich, that’s the point. Rich and successful.

And look where it got me. One stupid year—not even one, like three quarters of one—and here I am with not one, but two bracelets on my wrist, next to a shrink in a room adjacent to a hall where there’s a guy named Human Being walking around. If I keep doing this for three more years, where will I be? I’ll be a complete loser. And what if I keep on? What if I do okay, live with the depression, get into College, do College, go to Grad School, get the Job, get the Money, get Kids and a Wife and a Nice Car? What kind of crap will I be in then? I’ll be completely crazy.

I don’t want to be completely crazy. I don’t like being here that much. I like being a little crazy: enough to volunteer here, not enough to ever, ever, ever come back.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I have thought about it.”

“When? Just now?”

I smile. “Absolutely.”

“And what do you think?”

I clap my hands together and stand up. “I think I should call my parents and tell them that I want to transfer schools.”

forty-five

“Visitor, Craig,” Smitty pokes his head into the dining room. I slide my chair back from the table, where I’m playing after-lunch poker with Jimmy and Noelle and Armelio. Jimmy doesn’t really have any idea how to play, but we deal him cards and he plays them face down and smiles and we give him more chips (we’re using scraps of paper; the buttons are locked up due to our recklessness) whenever he pockets his or chews them up.

“I’ll be back,” I say.

“This guy, so busy,” says Armelio.

“He thinks he’s all important,” Noelle says.

“I woke up, and the bed was on fire!” says Jimmy.

We all look at him. “You okay, Jimmy?” I ask.

“My mom hit me in the head. She hit me in the head with a hammer.”

“Oh, wow.” I turn to Armelio. “I heard him say stuff like this down in the ER. Has he talked about this before?”

“No, nuh-uh, buddy.”

“Hey, Jimmy, it’s okay.” I put my hand on his shoulder. At the same time, I bite my tongue. You can think someone’s hilarious and want to help them at the same time.

“She hit me in the head,” he says. “With a hammer!”

“Yeah, but you’re here now,” Noelle says. “You’re safe. Nobody’s going to hit you in the head with anything.”

Jimmy nods. I keep my hand on his shoulder. I keep my tongue bit down, but I make little chuffing noises as I try to keep from laughing, and he looks up and notices. He smiles at me, then laughs himself, then picks his cards up and claps my back.

“It’ll come to ya,” he says.

“That’s right. I know it will.”

I excuse myself from the room and head down the hall. Right at the end is Aaron, holding the record I want. Dad didn’t have it.

“Hey, man,” he says sheepishly, and as I approach, he leans it against the wall. He’s a dick, but I’m not perfect either so I come up and hug him.

“Hey.”

“Well, you were right. My dad had it—Egyptian Masters Volume Three.”

“I so appreciate this.” I take the record. It’s got a picture on the cover of what looks like the Nile at dusk, with a palm tree lilting left, echoing the brightening moon, and the purple sky rolling up from the horizon.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about everything,” Aaron says. “I. . . uh . . . I’ve had a weird couple of days.”

“You know what?” I look him in the eyes. “Me too.”

“I bet.” He smiles.

“Yeah, from now on, whenever crap goes down, you can be like ‘Oh, Craig, I had a bad few days,’ because I will get what you’re talking about.”

“What’s it like in here?” he asks.

“There’s people whose lives have been screwed up for a long time, and then there are people like me, whose lives have been screwed up for . . . you know . . . shorter.”

“Did they put you on new drugs?”

“No, same ones I was on before.”

“So are you feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

“What changed?”

“I’m going to leave school.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m done. I’m going somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m going to talk it over with my parents. Somewhere for art.”

“You want to do art?”

“Yeah. I’ve been doing some in here. I’m good at it.”

“You’re pretty good at school too, man.”

I shrug. I don’t really need to explain this to Aaron. He’s been demoted from most important friend to friend, and he’s going to have to earn that, even. And you know what else? I don’t owe people anything, and I don’t have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.

“What’s up with Nia?” I ask. Have to tread care fully here. “I got your message, about how things were bad.”

“They got worked out. It was my fault. I got all freaked out about her being on pills and we broke up for like, a few days.”

“Why did that freak you out?”

“I don’t need any more of that in my life, you know? I mean, it’s bad enough with my dad.”

“He’s on medication?”

“Every form of medication in the book. Mom, too. And then me, with the pot . . . when you come right down to it, there isn’t anybody in the household who isn’t seriously drugged except the fish.”

“And you didn’t want your girlfriend to be, too.”

“Her smoking is one thing; I just . . . I can’t really explain it. I guess you’ll have to go out with someone for a long time to understand. If you’re with somebody and then you learn that they need to . . . take something on a daily basis, you wonder—how good can you be for them?”

“That’s pretty stupid,” I say. “I met this girl in here—”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, and she’s really screwed up, as screwed up as me, but I don’t look at that as an insult. I look at that as a chance to connect.”

“Yeah, well.”

“People are screwed up in this world. I’d rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and . . . you know . . . ready to explode.”

“I’m sorry, Craig.” Aaron looks at me deep and holds out a hand for me to slap. “I’m sorry I was a bitch to you.”

“You were a bitch.” I slap his hand. “This album partly makes up for it. Just, don’t do it again.”

“All right.” He nods.

We stand still a minute. We haven’t moved from the crux of the hallways near the entrance of Six North. The double doors that I came in through are eight feet behind him.

“Well, listen,” he says. “Enjoy the record. And—hey, they have a record player in here?”

“They still smoke in here, Aaron. They’re kind of back in time.”

“Enjoy it and be in touch, and I’m sorry once again. I guess you won’t be chilling for a while.”

“I don’t know. I may never be chilling again.”

“Did you almost kill yourself to get in here?” Aaron asks. “That’s what Nia told me.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t capable of dealing with the real world.”

“Craig, don’t kill yourself, okay?”

“Thanks.”

“Just. . . don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll see you soon, man.”

Aaron turns and the nurses open the door for him. He’s not a bad guy. He’s just someone who hasn’t had his stay on Six North yet. I take the record to Smitty to store behind the nurses’ station.

forty-six

Six North doesn’t need a PA system, because of President Armelio, but it does have one, used regularly for the simple and rhythmic messages of “Lunch is served,” “Medication,” and “All smokers to the smoking lounge; smokers, get your smokes.” This afternoon it pipes up with a longer message, courtesy of Monica.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon our patient Craig Gilner, who is leaving tomorrow, is going to be drawing his artwork for everyone on the floor. If you’d like your own personal piece of Craig’s art, come to the end of the hallway by the dining room. End of the dining-room hallway, five minutes. Have fun!”

I sit down in the backmost chair, by the window that peers out over the avenue that crosses the street I live on, so close to my real life. I look over at my conference chair where I meet with my parents and Noelle. I have a second chair set up in front of me as an art desk, with stacks of board games on it and a chessboard on top. It’s a little flimsy, but it’ll do.

President Armelio is first to approach. He strides up, barrel-chested and sure of himself, like a torpedo.

“Hey, buddy, this is great! You gonna make me one of your heads with the maps inside?”

“That’s right.”

“Well let’s go, buddy. I ain’t got all day!”

Right. Armelio is going to have to be done fast because he is fast. I sketch the outline of his head and shoulders without a second thought and start in on his brain map. Highways, that’s what Armelio has in his head—six-lane highways running parallel, streaking through a city, with purpose and minimal on-ramps. He doesn’t have any quiet little streets or parks; it’s highways and a grid, and no rivers either. The highways hardly even connect because Armelio doesn’t mix up his thoughts; he has one and does it and then he moves on to the next. It’s a great way to live. Especially when the biggest thought is wanting to play cards. Cards have to be represented in Armelio’s brain somewhere. So I sketch some streets into an ace of spades right in the middle—it’s not a great ace of spades, but Armelio gets it.

“Spades! Buddy, I crush you in spades.”

I put my initials on it, big and bold, “CG” like “computer-generated.”

“I’m gonna keep this, for real,” Armelio says. “You a good guy, Craig.” He shakes my hand. “You want my number for when you go?”

“Sure.” I take out a piece of paper.

“It’s an adult home,” Armelio says. “You’re gonna have to ask for Spyros, which is my other name.” He gives me the number and moves aside, and there’s Ebony, with her cane and her velvet pants, smacking her lips.

“I heard . . . that you were making your brains for people,” she says.

“That’s right! And you know who the first person who said they were brains was?”

“Me!”

“Absolutely. Now, look” —I gesture at my stack of work on the floor—“now I’ve got all this.”

“So I get paid, right?” Ebony laughs.

“Not quite; I haven’t really made it yet. As an artist.”

“I know. It’s tough.”

“So you just get a brain map for yourself, okay?”

“Good!”

I trace her head freehand, looking at her, not the paper. I look down and it’s pretty good. Ebony’s brain . . . what’s in there? A lot of circles, for all the buttons she stole. She was a nut with those buttons. Didn’t mess around. Quite a schemer. And with all of her gambling skill, she needs to have a Strip, like Vegas. So I get a big boulevard in the middle and lots of traffic circles around it, with circular parks, circular malls, little circle lakes. It comes out looking less like a city and more like a necklace with a central band and tons of bunched-up jewels hanging off.

“It’s pretty!” she says.

“And you’re done.” I hand it to her.

“You like doing these, huh?”

“Yeah. It helps, you know . . . with my depression. I came in here with depression.”

“Imagine having depression when you were eleven years old,” Ebony says. “If all my children were in this hall, this hall would be full up, I tell you.”

“You have kids?” I ask, keeping my voice down.

“I had thirteen miscarriages,” she says. “Imagine that.” And she looks at me without any of the humor or attitude that she usually puts on, just with big wide eyes and empty questions.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“I know. I know you are. That’s the thing.”

Ebony shuffles away showing off her portrait (“That’s me! See? Me!”); she doesn’t leave a phone number. Humble is next.

“All right, man, what kinda scam you got going on here?”

“It’s nothing.” I start in on Humble’s bald head. Bald heads are easy. You know, if I had to right now, I think I could handle the lower tip of Manhattan. I look at Humble. He raises his eyebrows at me. “Make me look good, all right?”

I laugh. Inside Humble’s head is industrial chaos.

I don’t make any small blocks, just big ones—the kind of blocks where you’d find lumber shops and factories and bars where Humble would hang out at and work. I put the ocean in there, to represent his hometown, Bensonhurst, which borders the ocean, where he hooked up with all those girls way back when. Then I splash it with highways, erasing the streets and putting them over the top, throwing in crazy interchanges for no reason, making the whole thing look violent and random, but also powerful and true—the kind of mind that could come up with some great stuff if you harnessed it right. When I’m done, I look up.

“I guess it’s okay.” He shrugs.

I chuckle. “Thanks, Humble.”

“I want you to remember me,” he says. “No joke. When you’re a big-time artist or whatever, you gotta invite me to one of the parties.”

“It’s a deal,” I say. “But how am I going to be in touch?”

“Oh, right—I got a number!” Humble says. “I’m gonna be staying in Seaside Paradise; it’s the same home that Armelio is going to, but I’m going to be on a different floor.” He gives me the number; I put it on the same sheet as Armelio’s.

“You’re not gonna be in touch,” Humble says.

“I will,” I say.

“No you won’t; I can tell. But it’s okay. You have a lot going for you. Just don’t burn out again.”

We shake hands. Up next is Noelle.

“Hey, girl!”

“Don’t you dare start calling me that. This is very nice of you to do.”

“Least I could do. They’re all such cool people.”

“You’re like a celebrity now. Everyone wants to know if I’m your girlfriend.”

“And what do you tell them?”

“‘No!’ And then I walk away.”

“Good call.”

“So what are you trying to pull? You already made one of these for me. You just said it wasn’t finished.”

I pull out the one I made for her, with the guy and girl connected by the bridge, and write my phone number on the back of it.

“Oh my gosh.”

“Now it’s done.” I smile, standing up. I lean in and whisper: “It took me like twice as long as any of the others. And I’ll make you an ever better one when I get out—”

She pushes me away. “Yeah, like I want your stupid art.”

“You do.” I lean back. “I saw how you looked at it before.”

“I’ll keep it to make you feel good,” she says. “That’s it.”

“Fine.”

She leans in and kisses my cheek. “Thank you, for real.”

“You’re welcome. Hey, what are you doing tonight?”

“Well . . . I thought I’d be hanging out in the psych hospital. What about you?”

“I’ve got big plans,” I say. “We’ve got a movie coming in—”

“Right, I’m not seeing that stupid movie.”

“I know.” I drop to a whisper. “But when it’s halfway done, do you want to meet in my room?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Seriously.”

“Your roommate will be there! He’s always there!”

“Trust me. Come to the room.”

“Are you going to try and make out with me?”

“If you must know? Yes.”

“I appreciate your honesty. We’ll see.”

I give her a hug; she holds the brain map with her hands wrapped around me. “And I already have your number,” I say.

“You don’t get any second chances if you lose it,” she says. “I don’t give that number out twice.”

I take a quick wanting look at her as we pull away from each other and she moves off to the side.

Bobby is next.

“Who’s that behind you?”

“Huh, who do you think?” Johnny answers.

“Come on up together, guys. I’ll do you both at once.”

“Cool,” Bobby says, standing off to the side. Johnny stands next to him and I start drawing them, their shaggy hair and baggy clothing making for great outlines.

“So he’s drawin’ us?” Johnny asks Bobby.

“Be quiet, all right?”

“Where did you guys hang out?” I ask Bobby, not looking up from the paper. “Back when you were garbage-heads?”

“What? You’re gonna draw that?”

“No.” I look up. “I’m just curious. What neighborhood?”

“It was the Lower East Side, but don’t draw the Lower East Side,” says Bobby. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“All right, fair enough. Where do you want to live?”

“On the Upper East Side, with all the rich people,” Bobby answers.

“Huh, me too,” says Johnny.

“Wait, no, you’re getting a guitar,” I say.

“Oh, cool.”

I start on Bobby’s and Johnny’s brains. With Johnny, it’s fun to do a guitar in a street grid—some diagonal streets meeting for the body and then a big wide boulevard for the neck, a park for the head. Then I turn to Bobby. I know the Upper East Side pretty well; it’s in Manhattan and the big thing that it has is Central Park, so I draw that on the inside left of his head. Then I put in the stately grid of rich streets. I know the Guggenheim Museum is somewhere up there; I mark that with an arrow And then I put an “X” right next to it, on a corner where an apartment probably costs $20 million, and write Bobby’s pad.

“Bobby’s pad! That’s right! That’s where I’m headed.” He raises his arms. “Movin’ on up.”

“Enjoy.” I hand them the piece.

“Who gets what?” Johnny asks. “You want us to rip it apart?”

“No, man, we’re supposed to keep it together because we’re friends,” says Bobby. “I’ll make a photocopy.”

“Where’s the photocopy machine in here?”

“There isn’t one! I’ll do it when I get out.”

“Where’s that gonna leave me?”

“With a copy!”

“I don’t want a copy!”

“Would you listen to this guy? Nothing’s good enough for him—”

“Hey, Bobby,” I interrupt. “Any way I can get yours and Johnny’s phone numbers to talk to you after you leave?”

Johnny starts to say something, but Bobby leans in and stops him: “It’s not a good idea, Craig.”

“What? Why?”

He sighs. “I’ve been in and out of this place a lot, right?”

“Yeah.”

“There are good things about this place; I mean, the food is the best around; there are good people here . . . but it’s still not a place to meet people.”

“Why not? I met you guys and you’re really cool!”

“Yeah, well, all the worse, then, when you try to call me or Johnny up and find out that we’ve OD’ed, or been shot, or come back here even worse, or just disappeared.”

“That’s a pretty negative view.”

“I’ve seen it before. You just remember us, okay? We meet in the outside world, it just ruins it. You’ll be embarrassed of me and I . . .” He smiles. “. . . I might be embarrassed of me, too. And I might be embarrassed of you, if you don’t keep your stuff together.”

“Thanks. You sure no numbers?”

Bobby shakes my hand. “If we need to, we’ll meet.”

Johnny shakes my hand. “What he said.”

The last guy in line is Jimmy.

“I tell you, what’d I say? You play those numbers—”

“It’ll come to ya!” I answer.

“It the truth!” He grins.

Ah, Jimmy. What’s in Jimmy’s brain? Chaos. I do up his nearly bald head and shoulders and then start putting the most complicated, unnecessary, wild highways through him from ear to ear. I connect them in intricate spaghetti ramps. In one nexus, five highways meet; I have to erase and redraw the ramps a few times. Then I put in the grid—a grid laid out by a hyperactive designer, with blocks going in all different directions. When Jimmy’s brain map is done it might look the best—a catalog of a schizophrenic mind, but one that works somehow.

“Here you go,” I tell him. He’s sitting in a seat that he took next to me to watch me work.

“It’ll come to ya!” he says, and takes the map. I want him to finally open up, to call me Craig, to tell me that we came in together, but he’s still Jimmy—his vocabulary is still limited.

We sit back in our respective chairs; I doze off a bit. Making art on demand is tiring. But the last thing I see before I go to sleep is Jimmy unfolding his brain map next to me and comparing with Ebony, who says of course hers is a lot prettier. That’s not a bad thing to go to sleep to.

forty-seven

“Craig, are you okay?” Mom asks. I jolt up and I have a momentary seizure that it was all a dream, all of it—the whole Sixth North bit—but then I wonder, where would the dream start? If it were a nightmare, it would have to have started somewhere before I got bad; it would be like a yearlong dream. You don’t have those. And if it were a good dream, that would mean I was still back where it started, leaning over my parents’ toilet or lying in bed listening to my heart. I didn’t need that.

“Yeah! I’m—whoa.” I sit up. They’re all there—Dad, Mom, Sarah.

“Are you forcing yourself to sleep?” Mom asks. “Are you depressed?”

“Are you on drugs?” Sarah asks. “Can you hear me?”

“I was taking a nap! Jeez!”

“Oh, okay. It’s six o’clock.”

“Wow, I was asleep for a while. I was drawing my brain maps for people.”

“Oh, boy,” says Dad. “This doesn’t sound good.”

“What are brain maps?” Sarah asks.

“That’s his art,” says Mom. “This is why he wants to change schools. Making this art makes you happy, right Craig?”

“Yeah, wanna see?”

“Absolutely.”

I take the stack from beside me and pass it around. This is really what I was creating the stack for, I think; to show my parents.

“Some of the best were the ones I just did, for the patients.”

“Very original,” Dad says.

“I like this one,” says Sarah, pointing at the pig with quasi-St. Louis inside him.

“You put a lot of time into these, I see,” Mom says.

“Right, that’s the thing: they don’t actually take me much time,” I explain. “I’m starting to get a little bored of them, actually; I want to move to something else.”

“So how are you feeling, Craig?” Dad puts the stack back on the floor.

“You look a lot better,” Mom says.

“I do?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “You don’t look all freaky as much.”

“I used to look freaky?”

“She doesn’t mean freaky,” Mom tells us both. “She just means that when you were down, you looked a little under the weather. Isn’t that right, Sarah?”

“No, he looked freaky.”

“A flat affect, that’s what the doctors call it.” I smile.

“Right, well you don’t have that as much anymore,” Sarah says.

“So you want to quit school?” Dad brings us back to the real-deal stuff.

“I don’t want to quit.” I turn to him. “I want to transfer.”

“But that means quitting the school you’re currently at—”

“He can’t handle the other school!” Sarah says. “Look at—”

“Hold on a second. I can talk,” I say. “Guys.” I look at all three of them in turn. “One thing that they do in here is give you a lot of time to think. I can’t explain it; once you come in, time just slows down—”

“Well, you don’t have any interruptions, that’s probably it—”

“Also I think the clocks are a little off—”

I wave my hand. “Point is, you have time to think about how you got here. Because obviously, nobody wants to come back. I don’t want come back—”

“Good. Me neither,” says Dad. “What I said last time, about actually wanting to be here; that was a joke.”

“Right. Hey, did you bring the movie?”

“Of course. I can watch some of it with you, right?”

“Absolutely. So anyway, I’ve been thinking about when things started getting bad for me. I realized: it started after I got into high school.”

“Uh-huh,” Mom says.

“That was the happiest moment of my life. The happiest day. And from there on it was all downhill.”

“Right, this happens to a lot of adults,” Dad says.

“Will you stop interrupting him?” Sarah interrupts. Dad folds his hands behind him and straightens his back.

“It’s okay, Sarah. I just. . . I think I was concentrated on getting into Executive Pre-Professional because it was like, a challenge. I wanted to have that feeling of triumph. I never really thought about the fact that I’d have to, you know, go to the school.”

“So you want to do art,” Mom says.

“Well, let’s consider. I never really liked math. I was good at it, but only because I liked having basic information in front of me to get through, to reach that feeling of accomplishment. I never really liked English. This”—I point at the brain maps—“this is something different. This is something I love. So I’d better do it.”

“You’d better love it,” Dad says. “Because it’s a hard life. It’s mostly the artists who end up in places like this.”

“Well, then he has to be an artist; that’s where he is!” Sarah says.

“Heh. It’s pretty simple.” I stand up. “Take a look around. I tried to go to the best high school in the city. And this is where I ended up.”

“True.” Mom looks behind her. Solomon rushes across our field of view.

“If I don’t make some kind of big change, I’m going to come out of here wondering how anything is different from before, and I’m going to end up right back here.”

“Right,” says Mom. “I’m with you, Craig.”

“What art school are you going to go to?” Dad asks.

“Manhattan Arts Academy? It’s easy to transfer to with my grades—”

“Oh, but Craig, that’s the school for kids who are all screwed up,” Dad says.

I look at him. “Yeah? Dad?” I raise my wrist, show him the bracelets. I have pride in them now. They’re true, and people can’t screw with them. And when you say the truth you get stronger.

Dad stands still for a minute, looks down at his feet, and then looks up.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll do whatever we have to do. You have to stay in school until you transfer, though. That’s going to be . . . until the end of the year at least, I think.”

“I’ll handle it,” I say.

“I know you will. We’ll help.”

“Dinner, get ready for dinner!” President Armelio walks toward us. “Craig and his family, dinner is almost here!”

“How’ve you been eating?” Mom asks as I stretch my legs.

“I have been. That’s good.”

“It’s wonderful, Craig.”

“Okay, so I’m leaving the DVD here with you.” Dad hands it to me. “And I’m going to be back to watch it when you’re done with dinner. When will that be?”

“Seven is good. But visiting hours end at eight. You won’t get to watch the whole thing.”

“We’ll see how long I can stay. You might be surprised.”

I swallow. I actually don’t want him sticking around that long. I’ll make sure Smitty gets him out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mom says. “The staff tells us we’re picking you up early in the morning, before I go to work.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“We’ve got lots of good food at home.”

“I’ll see you when I come home from school.” Sarah hugs my waist. “I’m so happy you’re back.”

I pat her head. “Are you embarrassed by this place?”

“Yeah, but whatever.”

“I am too,” I say. “It’s just a good type of embarrassment.”

forty-eight

Blade II . . . well, you have to like action movies to like it. I myself am a big fan of action movies. They’re like the blues; there’s a certain formula. You have the hero and the villain and the girl. The hero is going to almost die but not quite, and if there’s a dog it’ll be the same story with him. There’s going to be one sub-villain with a distinguishing facial characteristic, and he’s going to get killed in a printing press or a pool.

The plot of Blade II is that Blade is a guy who runs around killing vampires. He wears a leather coat with a sword stuck in the back of it; he regularly just walks around with this thing. I guess it’s possible that you could walk around a city with a sword and not have people notice, but the chances of your not cutting your butt open seem close to nil, especially if you’re running or doing jump flips.

Now, the real kicker is the way the vampires die. They digitally dissolve into multicolored ash—in slow motion. I could watch these vampires die all day. It’s so clean the way they go; they don’t leave a body or anything.

I explain all this to Humble as we help Monica roll out the TV from the activity center and plug it in. Monica has no idea how to use a DVD—the whole metal shiny disc concept scares her. We pop it in and have to hit the TV a few times to get it going, but then it’s blasting into our eyes: Blade killing his first swath of vampires in Prague by skidding down fire escapes, jumping over motorcycles, and stabbing dudes with his sword.

The audience is a good cross-section of Six North—Humble, Bobby, and Johnny; the Professor; Ebony; the new guy Human Being; Becca; and Dad. He came in right at seven and sat down in the corner, staying very quiet, blending in. Jimmy came by as soon as he heard the noise of the film and took a seat beside him.

“Hello,” Dad said.

“Your son?” Jimmy asked, pointing at me.

“Yes.”

“How sweet it is!”

Dad nodded and said, “Yes, yes it is.”

On the screen, Blade slices a vampire right through from his groin up to his skull.

“Whoa, this is wild,” says Humble. “Did you see that? That’s worse than gonorrhea, man.”

“Did you ever have gonorrhea?”

“Please. I’ve had everything. You know what they say: the Jews cut ’em off, the Irish wear ’em off.”

“Ewwww,” I say. “You’re Irish?”

“Half,” says Humble.

“Could you be quiet? I’m trying to watch the film,” the Professor says.

“Oh, don’t start. You don’t care about this movie; Cary Grant’s not in it,” says Humble.

“Cary Grant was a real man. Don’t you say anything about him.”

“I can say whatever—”

“What’s that guy doing?” Bobby asks.

“He’s sucking that girl’s blood, can’t you see?”

“I thought she was a vampire, though.”

“So? Vampires have blood.”

“Vampires ain’t got no blood,” says Human Being. “Vampires ain’t got nothing but green running in their veins, and green means money.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Humble says. “If you drink blood, how are you not going to have blood?”

“I met a lotta vampires in my time, and their blood was always green. Been sucking me dry in their little temples.”

“What temples?” Becca asks. “I go to temple. You better not be talking about the Jewish people.”

“I’m Jewish too,” says the Professor. “That’s why they tried to insecticide my house.”

Noelle walks toward the TV from down the hall, wearing a long black skirt and a white top with little frills around the shoulders, locking eyes with me. I look around; no seat for her.

Dad notices as soon as she becomes visible. He leans over and gives me a look:

So is this why you’ve been feeling better, son?

I shrug.

She comes up to me. “There’s nowhere to sit.”

“Here!” I stand up and point at my armrest.

She sits down right in the middle of the chair. “Ooh, you warmed it! Thank you.”

“No, I meant—where am I going to sit?”

She pats the armrest.

“Darn, girl.”

I sit down and we watch Blade slice up some more vampires. Topics discussed among the audience include surgery, the moon, chicken, prostitution, and jobs in the Sanitation Department. Dad leans back and lets his eyes fall; I had a feeling that would happen. As soon as I see him breathing heavy and steady I get up, go to Smitty, and I tell him that it’s after eight o’clock.

“You want me to kick out your own Dad?” he asks.

“I need to be independent,” I say.

“All right.” Smitty walks down the hall with me. “Mr. Gilner—I’m sorry; visiting hours are over.”

“Oh, hm!” He gets up. “Right. So, Craig, you’ll bring this back tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Thanks.”

“Thank you for getting here and getting help.” He hugs me. Smitty backs away. It’s a big hug, and long, and right in front of the television, but no one says anything.

“I love you,” I mumble. “Even though I’m a teenager and I’m not supposed to.”

“I love you too,” Dad says. “Even though . . . eh . . . No. I don’t have any jokes about it. I just do.”

We separate and shake hands and he makes his way down the hall, waving without looking back.

“Good-bye Mister Gilner!” a chorus of those paying attention calls out.

I dip down next to Noelle, whisper in her ear. “That’s one; I gotta settle one more thing, and then I’ll see you in my room.”

“Okay.”

I walk down the hall and pop into my room, where Muqtada is putting his distinctive shape in the bed, turned toward the window, in his continuous dead reverie.

“Muqtada?”

“Yes.”

“You remember how you wanted Egyptian music?”

“Yes, Craig.”

“I got some for you.”

“You did?” He pulls his top sheet aside. “Where?”

“I got a record over,” I say. “You know we’re watching a movie, right?”

“Yes, I hear. This sounds very violent, no good for me.”

“Right, well, in the other hall, by where the smoking area is, I asked Smitty to put the Egyptian music.”

“And he did this thing?”

“It’s ready to go on right now. You want to hear?”

“Yes.” Muqtada pushes the sheets aside in a gesture of hope and strength and determination. It’s tough to get out of bed; I know that myself. You can lie there for an hour and a half without thinking anything, just worrying about what the day holds and knowing that you won’t be able to deal with it. And Muqtada did that for years. He did that until he needed to be hospitalized. And now he’s getting up. Not for good, but for real.

I walk with him out of the room, passing Smitty at the nurses’ station and nodding at him. He opens a door behind his desk and goes in to turn on the turntables, changing the PA music from the normal funky lite FM to the sounds of deep plucked strings, and rolling over it, a voice of dangerous clarity and yearning, hitting three ascending notes and then bending one beyond where I thought you couldn’t bend a human voice, sounding like a man drawn out and smacked to vibrate around a little.

“Umm Kulthum!” Muqtada says.

“Yeah! Uh . . . Who’s that?”

“This is Egypt’s greatest singer!” he yells. “How you find this?”

“I have a friend whose dad has some records.”

“This I have not heard in so long!” He’s grinning so much I think his glasses are going to fall off.

Armelio is playing solitaire in the back of the hall, by the smoking lounge. “You’re out of your room, buddy? What’s going on? Is there a fire?”

“This music!” Muqtada points up to it. “This is Egyptian!”

“You Egyptian, buddy?”

“Yes.”

“I’m from Greece.”

“The Greeks, they took all our music.”

“This?” Armelio looks up. “This ain’t nothing like Greek music, buddy.”

“You want to sit, Muqtada?” I ask him.

He looks around, then up at the music.

“The best seat’ll be over here, right by the speaker.”

“Yes,” he says, and sits down.

“I don’t like this,” Armelio looks up.

“What kind of music do you like, Armelio?” I ask.

“Techno.”

“Just . . . techno?”

“Yeah. Utz-utz-utz-utz. Like that.”

“Heh heh.” Muqtada laughs. “The Greek man is funny.”

“Of course I’m funny, buddy! I’m always funny! You just don’t leave your room. You want to play cards?”

Muqtada starts to leave; I stand over him and hold my hands out. “Wait one second, man. I know you can’t play cards for money, but Armelio doesn’t play for money.”

“This I know; I do not want to play.”

“Are you sure? He’s got no one else to play with.”

“That’s right. My friends are all watching this stupid movie. You want to play spades? I’ll crush you in spades.”

“Muqtada,” I say. He’s still looking up at me, hands on his armrests, ready to spring. “Remember when you saved me from that girl?”

“Yes.”

“I’m trying to do the same thing for you now, to get you out of your room and save you. Please. Play with Armelio.”

He looks at me, then at the speakers.

“This I do for you, Craig. But only for you. And only because of music.”

“Great.” I pat his back. “Go easy on him, Armelio.”

“You know that’s not going to happen, buddy!”

I smile and walk down the hall, waving at them. As soon as I get to the corner, I run—I don’t have much time—but skid to a leisurely pace by Smitty and then, moving as slowly and calmly as I can, enter my room. Noelle picked up on what was happening: she’s already there, sitting on my bed, looking out the window.

“You’re very crafty,” she whispers. I shrug. “Come and sit. It’s a pretty view through your blinds.”

forty-nine

I sit down next to Noelle and it starts off right away, like it was destined to—though I don’t believe in destiny; I just believe in biology, and hotness, and wanting girls. There’s been so much hesitation in so many parts of my life that it’s shocking to not have any here, to just lean in and have this girl’s mouth open to mine, to be easing her down and touching her face and feeling the cuts there but understanding, not getting freaked out, just moving my hands down to her neck, which is clean and smooth, and her hitting my pillow and me next to her with my legs off the bed, still on the floor like I was sitting in class, like my lower half had no part in this. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

“You’re beautiful,” I stop and tell her.

“Shh, they’ll hear.”

She has her hand in my hair and that reminds me that my hands should be doing something—right now they’re just sort of touching her neck while I try and figure out what it is about her that’s so much more sexy than Nia. It’s her tongue, I think—it’s a whole different creature than Nia’s. Nia’s was small and flighty; Noelle’s is overwhelming—she slides it in and it almost fills me up. It’s like some deep dark part of her that I’ve gotten out, that no one else has access to. She presses it through my teeth and I keep my eyes open, although there’s nothing in the room but scattered moonlight to see her by. We press against each other as if we both had prizes at the back of our mouths and we could only get them out with the tips of our tongues.

It frickin’ rocks.

I put my hands on her white top and she doesn’t stop me, not at all, and there they are, right through the soft fabric—one on each side, that is so cool—my palms envelop them and then rise from them and then envelop again. I’m not really sure what to do with them. They’re bigger than Nia’s; they fill up my hands. Should I squeeze them? I try that. I look up. She’s nodding. I squeeze them again, the whole things, both at once, and move my mouth down her chin to her neck, kissing the underside of it where an Adam’s apple would be, only this is a real girl.

She moves her hips against me. Not her hips, her crotch—I mean, that is a crotch, right? Girls have crotches? Or do they have like a prettier name for them? Wow, how far is this going to go? She presses it—whatever it is—against my thigh. My feet have levitated somehow and now I’m horizontal on the bed next to her, with my hands squeezing her and my shoes—my Rockport shoes—clanking against each other.

She says nothing. Everything is touching.

“Do you want me to?” I ask.

She nods. Or maybe shakes her head. I don’t know. But I take two fingers of my right hand and put them through the soft seam in her top. Underneath is a bra, I’m pretty sure—something made of mesh that wraps around her. I twiddle my finger against it, not sure if she can feel it. Can you feel things through a bra?

She makes noises like someone about to sneeze. When I squeeze her breasts, she makes more; when I twiddle the side of the bra, she doesn’t make any. So I put my fingers in all the way through her shirt and feel up the dome of the bra—the highest point on her. An inch and a half above sea level.

“Hold on.” Noelle lifts her butt off the bed and inserts her hands, flat, palms-down, below herself. Now she’s got no hands. She wasn’t doing anything with them anyway, but it’s weird.

“Keep going,” she says.

“Okay,” I slide my fingers, still outside her bra, around her nipple. I decide to try something. I get the nipple right between the knuckles on my index and middle finger, and I squeeze.

You can’t get much of a squeeze on through a bra, but the noises are immediate.

“Unhh.”

“Um?” I look up.

“Mmmmmmn.”

Oh, this is awesome.

“Shh,” I whisper. “Smitty will come.”

“How much time do we have?” she asks.

“I don’t know. A little while.”

“You’re going to call me, right? When you’re out? And we’re going to hang out?”

“I want to go out with you,” I say. “I really do.”

“That’s what I mean. We will.” She smiles. “Where will I tell people I met you?”

“In the psych hospital. Then they won’t ask any questions.”

She giggles—yup, a real giggle. Now we’ve sort of lost the sexual nature of things. Can I get it back just by squeezing? It’s worth a shot.

“Mmmmmm.”

All right, cool, only now there’s one more voice that wants me to do one more thing. It’s the same voice that got me hooking up with Nia; it’s the voice of the lower half of me, but it feels truer now, and it knows it can’t get away with everything it wants to do, but it insists that we try something.

We need to test out that claim of Aaron’s.

My hand moves down Noelle’s body, down the seam of the frilly white shirt to the skirt, which has a slightly different grain to the fabric. I move down to its end, by her knees, shocked that I don’t get any resistance or hesitancy or punches in the face. I roll the skirt up—I’m really in danger of putting a hole through this bed at this point—and there I find underwear. Not underwear. Panties. Real panties!

Holy crap, I’m actually going to figure this out!

“Wow!”

Noelle gasps.

“It is like the inside of a cheek!”

“What?”

Noelle pushes me off her. The distended seam of the shirt is repositioned; the panties are jerked back in place; the skirt is down and the girl is up at the head of the bed, staring at me.

“What did you say about my cheeks?!”

“No, no, shhhhh,” I tell her. “Not your cheeks, um . . . your . . . your other cheeks.”

“My butt cheeks?” She pulls her hair over her real cheeks, holding it there, eyes wide and angry in the moonlight.

“No,” I whisper. Then sigh. “Let me explain. Do you want me to explain?”

“Yes!”

“All right, but this is like privileged boy information. I’m only telling you because we’re going to be hanging out when we get out of here.”

“Maybe we’re not even. What did you say about my cheeks?”

“No, listen, it doesn’t have anything to do with your cheeks and your cuts, all right?”

“What does it have to do with?”

I tell her.

When I’m done, there’s a terrible pregnant pause, a pause that could hold all the hatred and yelling and screaming in the world as well as the possibility of me getting discovered as having another girl in my room (how did I get two? Am I a “player”?) and having to stay here for another week, never talking to Noelle again, going back to the Cycling, to being unable to eat, to move, to wake up, ending up like Muqtada. Single moments contain the potential for complete failure, always. But they also contain potential for a pretty girl to say—

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

—and to put her own finger in her mouth to test it out.

I hug her.

“What?” she asks, mouth clogged. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t feel the same at all.”

I pull back. “You’re so cool.” I look at her. “How did you get so cool?”

“Please,” she says. “We should go. The movie’s almost over.”

I hug her one more time and pull her down to the bed. And in my mind, I rise up from the bed and look down on us, and look down at everybody else in this hospital who might have the good fortune of holding a pretty girl right now, and then at the entire Brooklyn block, and then the neighborhood, and then Brooklyn, and then New York City, and then the whole Tri-State Area, and then this little corner of America—with laser eyes I can see into every house—and then the whole country and the hemisphere and now the whole stupid world, everyone in every bed, couch, futon, chair, hammock, love seat, and tent, everyone kissing or touching each other . . . and I know that I’m the happiest of all of them.