Cracked (11 page)

It’s a pretty plain room, as rooms go. Baby blue carpeting, cream walls with nothing on them, and two windows with the blinds down. There are no lamps or sofas. Just one round coffee table in the center with plastic orange chairs surrounding it. My mother would call the room cold. She knows all about cold.

However, there are six other kids in the room, four girls and two guys. After I sit down there are two empty seats, one right next to me. As nonchalantly as I can, I check everyone out. We really are all dressed in the same sweatsuit and slippers.

Directly across from me is this beautiful girl with blond curly hair and humongous, captivating brown eyes. Before I can look away, she mouths, “Hi,” to me. And like in the movies, I look to my right and left to see if someone else is saying hi back to her. I look at her, and she’s smirking with her eyebrows raised. She mouths, “Hi,” again.

Just then the doctor or psychiatrist, or whatever she is, sits down next to me. I stare at her, you know, to see if she looks like she’ll be nice. She seems pretty standard. A little on the dorky side, even. Brown curly hair, glasses, no makeup, button-up sweater, long brown skirt, and sneakers. I’m guessing she’s in her forties.

“Okay, loverlies, let’s get this party started,” she says with enthusiasm.

No one else seems to find her use of “loverlies” or the fact that she called this circle of suicidal teenagers a party, odd.

“Victor’s joining us today. Welcome, Victor. I’m Lisa, and I’m the therapist running this group.”

I nod my head as my hello. I’m not saying anything. That seems to be fine with her and with the rest of the group.

Lisa starts right in. “Okay, Lacey, yesterday you were sharing about your mom, and how you feel invisible when she’s with her new boyfriend. How about you start us off this morning?”

The girl to my left pulls a rubber band off of her wrist and shakes back her long blond hair; she twists it into one of those sloppy ponytails all the popular girls at my school wear. Then she kicks her slippers off and pulls her bare feet up onto the chair, wrapping her arms around her legs, and takes a few really dramatic breaths. It’s like she’s warming up for a big performance or something.

“Yeah, it pretty much makes me sick, I swear. She acts like I don’t exist when he’s around. I could be shot between the eyes, and she wouldn’t notice. I mean, my mother doesn’t even really know this guy, and besides, he’s a fat slob. Sorry, Brian,” Lacey says.

She’s obviously apologizing to the fat guy across from me. He’s huge.

“S’okay.” Brian shrugs.

Therapist Lisa says, “Now, Brian, why do you think it’s okay for Lacey to use the words ‘fat slob’?”

He shifts in his chair. “Well, I really don’t care. She wasn’t calling
me
that, even though I’m sure every person in this circle thinks I am a fat slob. But she wasn’t talking about me.
It wouldn’t matter anyway . . . been called it a freakin’ million times. Don’t care,” he says. And he shrugs again.

“I’m sorry, Brian. That was ice cold, ice cold . . . like iceberg cold. I make
myself
sick sometimes, I swear,” Lacey says. She scrunches her face in obvious embarrassment before she puts her head down onto her knees.

The circle is quiet for almost twenty seconds. Therapist Lisa lets the silence in. For not wanting to say a word, I’m finding this silence rather uncomfortable. I shift in my chair and the curly-haired girl catches my eye again. She yawns dramatically, and I give her a tiny smile. I don’t want any of these kids thinking I’m making light of their situations. That’s the last thing I need. Then Brian talks again.

“You all think I like weighing four hundred and seven pounds? ’Cause I don’t. You think I like my face? ’Cause I don’t. And I really don’t like that both of my parents are whales. So’s my sister. You should see us all get out of our van. People stare. Little kids point.
I
make myself sick too, Lacey.”

I study Brian and feel pretty sorry for him. He’s a heavy guy. As in, I’m kind of shocked they even had his size sweatsuit here. And even if he dropped two hundred pounds, he’d still have tiny eyes that are set way too close together, a big nose, and messed up teeth. I’m observing, not judging. I’d
never
want to make him feel bad about himself; I just don’t
have it in me. Another observation? He’s clearly in a lot of pain right now.

Therapist Lisa weighs in. “Is that why you tried to end your life, Brian?”

“I wanted to die because I was sick of being stared at, and laughed at, called horrible names. Sick of no one in school ever seeing me. Me, not the weight—me. I was sick of my parents filling every cabinet, fridge shelf, and freezer—we have two freezers—with food. Tons and tons and tons of food. I couldn’t get away from it. I was sick of me and how I look. That’s why I wanted to end my life.”

“How do you feel now? Right now?” Lisa asks him.

“Hungry,” he says with a smile.

That gets a laugh from the circle. Even I smile. Brian’s whole face changes when he smiles. He looks genuinely happy when he smiles, and not so broken.

Lacey waves her hand; she has something to say. “I see you, Brian. Not the weight. I see
you
, I swear. Wanna know what I see?”

He nods.

She puts her feet back on the floor and leans forward a bit. “Well, I’ve only been in here with you for three days, but this place is sort of intense, so we probably get to know more about one another in one day than kids at school would get to
know about us in, like, a hundred years, right?” She pulls up her sleeves and smiles. “The Brian I see is funny. And I don’t mean funny-looking, I swear. I mean, you are seriously funny. You make us laugh every day. I see the Brian who really loves his mom and dad, but wants them to stop making it so hard for him to lose weight. I see the Brian who has really pretty green eyes that twinkle when he smiles. I see the Brian who is going to get out of here and tell his parents where to shove their bad food, and the Brian who’s going to live for, like, forever. I swear.”

Lisa tells Lacey that what she did was very brave, and thanks her for being so honest with Brian. Brian is openly crying and the kid on the other side of him hands him a box of tissues. That’s when I notice that there are boxes of tissues on the table in the middle of the circle. Like, five boxes. I swear.

THEY HAVE TO RESTITCH MY EXIT WOUND. THAT’S
real fun. After my X-ray and the news that my stupid wrist is broken in two places, they try to put me back in the ER to wait for my cast. But I kinda throw a fit, like a two-year-old with a dirty diaper. I don’t want to go back there. It’s too loud. Too crazy.

The doctor throws her hands up and shakes her head. As she jogs away, she yells over her shoulder to the new dude wheeling my bed around, “Just take him back up. I’ll send Carl up there when I can.”

The new dude says to me, “I don’t blame you. This place
is wild. There was a bad car accident, that’s why Dr. Pearse just gave in like that. She’s usually a lot feistier. You lucked out.”

On the elevator ride back up, I laugh out loud to myself. I actually
want
to go back to the psych ward, with the psychos. Funny.

Ellie’s there when the doors slide open, with her arms crossed. “Causing trouble, William?” She smiles.

I smirk.

Ellie chuckles. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She excuses the orderly and wheels my bed down the hall. “I’m gone for a few hours and you fall apart on me.”

“What can I say? Trouble follows me.”

I see that my room is empty, so I ask Ellie if my mom has called. Or my pop. I don’t know why I care, or why it feels like a kick in the nuts when they haven’t. I’m allowed to call them on the fourth day, though. Which I guess Ellie thinks will make me feel better, but doesn’t. I’m not calling them.

I ask her to close my curtain; I want nothing to do with
Dick
toria. Like that? That’s his new name. I can’t believe the dick left me on the floor.

Well, I can kinda believe it, but I still hate his rich guts.

I stare at the sun out the window as Dr. Carl puts the cast on my arm. The guy is a man of few words, and I’m thankful, because his breath stinks. Then I’m casted and alone again.

A snack arrives, and I have trouble not smiling like a clown. It’s a blueberry muffin, chocolate pudding, and Sprite. It’s food. Food that’s delivered on a tray. And I love every bite.

With my good arm I scrape every single bit of pudding out of the plastic container. Then I start thinking about my dad for some reason. All I know is his name. Steve Gallagher. I don’t know what he looks like, how tall he is, what kind of car he drives. Heck, I don’t even know what he does for a living. All I know is that he wanted me gone before I was born.
Get rid of it,
was what he wrote on the postcard. I should’ve used the stupid computers in school to look him up online. I could’ve gotten an address or phone number. Something. Maybe I can get online here. Maybe it’ll be easy to find him.

I roll my eyes.

He probably won’t want anything to do with me. He might not even know I exist. Knowing my stupid mother, she didn’t even tell him she had me.

All this makes me want to throw up my muffin.

Speaking of puke, Dicktoria never comes back to eat.

AFTER GROUP ENDS, THE OTHERS WALK ACROSS THE
hall to what they call the common room. Lacey calls out to me as I start to head back to my room, “Hey, Victor, come hang out with us.”

I don’t know why I turn around and walk toward the room, but I do. It is really freaking me out that I do. Maybe I don’t actually want to spend the night sitting three feet away from Bull Mastrick, wishing I had the guts to take his stupid crutches and just beat him till he begged me to stop.

Walking in that room means I have to talk to these kids. Am I ready for that? Apparently I am, because I’m sitting on the sofa.

The common room looks like a hospital waiting room, just with couches instead of plastic chairs. It has a TV, shelves with boxes of games, and a table with chairs where the two guys go start playing cards. Three of the girls spread out on the sofas, and then there’s me on one by myself. The other girl with the long black hair and the sour look on her face sits in the corner, facing the window, and writes in a notebook. I guess it’s her journal or something.

One of the sofa girls asks me, “So, what did you do? Wait, let me guess: the car. You used the car, right?”

“No way, he’s pills. He’s definitely pills,” the blond, curly-haired girl says. She is seriously the hottest girl to ever talk to me.

I am solidly stunned that she even spoke to me at all. “Yeah, pills,” I say to her. I wonder how she knows this, but I’m afraid to ask her.

The not-Brian guy turns around from the card table and says, “Parents are real assholes, you get bullied at school, never been laid, got no friends. Am I right?”

“Pretty much,” I say, trying to figure out if they’re making fun of me or just showing off their creepy knowledge of suicide. Great, I can’t believe I just admitted to five strangers and the hottest girl alive that I’m a virgin. Genius.

Nurse Ellie peeks her head into the common room and announces that some snacks are ready next door. I’m glad she’s
back. Everyone jumps up and darts out, and Ellie comes in and tells me that once patients are up to it they eat everything in the dining room. That it is so much nicer to sit at a table and eat. Which I think I’ll agree with.

She says it helps build friendships, too. That, I can’t see happening.

Ellie walks me into the dining room and announces, “Bon appétit.” The dining room is a small room with one long rectangular table surrounded by eight plastic orange chairs. In the middle of the table sits a tray of blueberry muffins and another tray of bananas. A whole bunch of sodas and juices are scattered in between the trays. I take the empty seat next to Brian. The hot girl is all the way at the other end.

The table is set with a white tablecloth and a centerpiece of fresh flowers. I can see the hospital has attempted to make this feel like home, except they’ve clearly failed on some crucial points:

1. The tablecloth has faint stains.

2. The flowers are almost dead.

Despite the dirty tablecloth and crunchy flowers, everyone sitting around the table seems surprisingly normal.

Not me.
I
am stained and almost dead.

Most of the kids talk to each other and I just listen. I swallow a few bites of blueberry muffin, and I realize something. It is pretty cool to actually sit at a table with kids my age and not be asked to get up and leave.

Or be sucker punched in the back.

I WAKE WITH A START. AND I YELP. I JERKED MY
freaking leg. The room is still dark on Victor’s side and I wonder where the hell he’s been all day. Then I say out loud, “Who gives a shit?”

I’m trying to get comfortable when I notice a brown lunch bag sitting on my nightstand. It’s rolled up exactly like the two I found at the cemetery. I freak out a little bit and start looking around, half expecting someone to jump out of my closet or pull back the curtain. After a minute or so I’m pretty sure I’m alone. I unroll the bag. A plastic bottle of apple juice, a wrapped danish, another granola bar, and an orange. And another Post-it.

Enjoy, son.

The poem is from when I was a young dad.

—Frank, the caretaker

P.S. Your bike is safe.

So, it
was
the lawnmower guy. I didn’t think he ever saw me, though. And how did he find me here? I never said one word to the guy. It’s weird, but in a good way. I reach back into the bag and stuck to the bottom is an old newspaper clipping with a poem typed on it.

Just a Little Peace

Many children know pain

heartbreak

disappointment

at the hands

of those meant to love them

Many children lie in darkness