Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (11 page)

Mr Eisner reminds me of Max’s principal. Mrs Palmer is in charge of the school and dresses in fancier clothing than most of the teachers, but I don’t think that she could actually teach kids if she had to take over a classroom.

Mr Eisner is the same. He wears a tie, and he takes the money from the customers and fills the Twinkie shelf like Dee, but you can tell that he has to think too much about what he is doing instead of just doing it.

Dee is not dead. I know this because the regulars like Pauley and Big Dan came in on Saturday night to ask about Dee. Actually, they would have come in anyway, since they are regulars, but even Big Dan hung around for a little while longer than normal, asking questions about Dee. Mr Eisner didn’t talk to them very much, so it was hard for them to hang around. Everything felt different. Not right.

Dee is in a place called I See You. I think it’s a place where they watch you carefully to make sure that you don’t die. Dorothy says it is not certain that Dee is going to
make it
, which I think means that she could die.

I wonder if she will come back to the gas station and if I will ever see her again.

I hope so. I feel like everyone is disappearing.

CHAPTER 17

I’m worried about Max. It’s Monday and we are back at school.

I think that Max’s mom has something planned for today. She is worried about Tommy Swinden, and I am afraid that she might make things worse. I’m hoping that Tommy Swinden got his revenge on Friday night and now Max is safe again. Max got Tommy in a lot of trouble with the knife even before he pooped on him, so maybe Tommy thinks that Max deserves more revenge. He probably does, but it will just be worse if Max’s mom gets involved.

Parents are like Max. They don’t know how to do things quietly.

Mrs Gosk is funny today. She wrote a story about what it’s like to be a Thanksgiving turkey and she is reading it to the class. She is walking around the room, making turkey sounds while she reads, and even Max is grinning. Not smiling, but almost. Mrs Gosk is scratching the ground with her foot and flapping her arms like wings. No one can take their eyes off of her.

Mrs Patterson arrives at the classroom door and motions to Max to join her. It takes her a moment to get Max’s attention because Mrs Gosk is so funny. I’m expecting to see Max frown, because Mrs Gosk is not finished with her story yet, but Max’s eyes get wide when he sees Mrs Patterson. He looks excited. I don’t understand.

I want to stay with Mrs Gosk and see what she will do next. Instead, I follow Max and Mrs Patterson down the hall in the direction of the Learning Center. Except when we get to the spot where we should turn left, Max and Mrs Patterson go straight on, and Max does not say a thing. This is even more surprising than Max wanting to leave Mrs Gosk because Max does not like change, and this is a definite change in the way that we go to the Learning Center. It’s a silly change, too, because it means we have to walk around the auditorium and by the gym, which makes the walk twice as long.

But then we stop at the same doors that I saw Max and Mrs Patterson enter through last week. We’re behind the auditorium now, in a hallway that doesn’t have classrooms or offices, but Mrs Patterson still looks left and right before she opens the door. Then she places her hand on Max’s back to nudge him outside. Max is walking out the door on his own, but Mrs Patterson wants Max to move faster, and this makes me nervous. It’s like she needed him to pass through the doors quickly before someone saw him.

Something is not right.

I try to follow. But as Max walks down the cement path toward the parking lot, he turns and looks at me. I’m standing outside now, too. He looks at me and shakes his head back and forth. I know what this means. It means
No way, José.

He doesn’t want me to follow him. Then he waves me back with his hand.

He wants me to go back inside the school.

I almost always do what Max asks me to do, because that is sort of my job. He needs my help, and so I give it to him. There have been other times when he has asked to be alone, like when he’s reading a book or making a poop. Lots of times, in fact. But this time is different. I know it. Max is not supposed to be outside the school, and he is most definitely not supposed to be going out these side doors toward the parking lot.

Something is not right.

I go back inside like Max has told me to, but I stand against the wall beside the doors, so I can peek out. Max and Mrs Patterson are walking in the parking lot now, in the aisle between the parked cars. I think these are the teachers’ cars, since the kids can’t drive. They must be. Then I see Max and Mrs Patterson stop next to a small, blue car. Mrs Patterson looks around again. It’s the kind of looking around that someone does when they want to make sure no one is watching. Then she opens up the back door of the car and Max climbs in. Mrs Patterson looks around again before getting into the front seat. The side with the steering wheel. The side where the person who is driving sits.

She is driving away with Max.

Except she’s not. The car isn’t moving. They are sitting in the car. Max is in the back seat. Mrs Patterson is in the front. Mrs Patterson is talking, I think, and Max keeps ducking his head down. Not to hide, but to look at something on the seat, I think. He looks busy. He is doing something.

A moment later Mrs Patterson steps out of the car and looks around again. She is making sure that no one is watching. I know it. I have been around too many people who do not know that I’m watching them to know when someone is being sneaky, and Mrs Patterson is being sneaky. Then she opens the door for Max and he steps out, too. Together, they walk back to the doors. Mrs Patterson uses a key to unlock the doors and they come back in again. I take a few steps down the hall, away from the doors, and I sit with my back against the wall so that Max will think that I have been here the whole time. Not watching.

I want him to think that I don’t know where he and Mrs Patterson went, and, more important, I want him to think I don’t care. I do not want him to suspect that I am worried, because the next time Mrs Patterson takes Max out to her car, I am going, too.

If Mrs Patterson takes him out to her car again (and I think she will), it won’t be the same as this time. I don’t know what it will be, but it will be more. It will be worse. I know it. Mrs Patterson wouldn’t break the rules for five minutes in her car with Max. Something else is going to happen.

I can’t explain it, but I’m more worried about Mrs Patterson than I am about Tommy Swinden now.

A lot more worried.

CHAPTER 18

We are sitting inside Dr Hogan’s office. Dr Hogan is smart. Max has been here for a long time and Dr Hogan has not tried to make him talk once. She has been sitting here, watching him play with these plastic and metal pieces that she called
newfangled thinker toys
. I could tell by the way she said it that
newfangled
isn’t really part of their name, but I don’t understand what it means.

I know what
new
means, but what’s a
fangled
?

Max loves these toys. Max’s mom would say that Max is
engaged
, which means that he has stopped paying attention to everything around him. Max gets engaged a lot, which is good because it means that he is happy, but it also means that he forgets everything else. When Max is engaged, it is like only one thing exists. Ever since he sat down on the carpet in front of the coffee table and started playing with these toys, I don’t think he’s looked up once.

Dr Hogan is smart enough to let Max play. Every now and then she asks a question, and so far all of her questions have only needed yes-or-no and one-word answers, so Max has been answering most of them.

That’s smart, too. If Dr Hogan had tried to get Max to just talk, without the thinker toys and the quiet time, he would have probably
clammed up
, which is what Mrs Hume says about Max when he won’t talk to her. But Max is slowly getting used to Dr Hogan and eventually he might be able to talk to her if she waits long enough. Especially if she doesn’t make him feel like she’s staring at him and recording everything that he says. Most of the time adults start out slow with Max but eventually they lose their patience and mess things up.

Dr Hogan is pretty. She’s younger than Max’s mom, I think, and she isn’t dressed too fancy. She is wearing a skirt and a T-shirt and sneakers, like she’s going for a walk in the park. This is smart, too, because she looks like just another girl. Not a real doctor.

Max is afraid of doctors.

Best of all, she hasn’t asked one single question about me. Not one. I was worried that she would be asking Max about me for the whole time, but instead, it seems like she’s more interested in Max’s favorite food (macaroni) and his favorite flavor of ice cream (vanilla) than his imaginary friend.

‘Do you like school?’ Dr Hogan asks.

Dr Hogan told Max that he could call her Ellen, but that is too weird for me. Max hasn’t had to say her name yet, so I don’t know what he has decided to do, but I bet he will call her Dr Hogan, too. If he can remember her name. If he was listening when she told him.

‘Kind of,’ Max says.

His tongue is sticking out of the corner of his mouth and he is squinting, staring at two pieces of thinker toys, trying to figure out how they go together.

‘What’s your favorite part of school?’

Max doesn’t say anything for ten seconds, and then he says, ‘Lunch.’

‘Oh,’ Dr Hogan says. ‘Do you know why lunch is your favorite part of school?’

See how smart she is? She doesn’t ask Max why lunch is his favorite until she knows that he knows. If Max can’t explain why lunch is his favorite part of school, then he can just say no, and he doesn’t have to feel dumb for not knowing the answer. If Dr Hogan asks a question that makes Max feel dumb, she might never get him to talk.

‘No,’ Max says, and Dr Hogan doesn’t seem surprised one bit.

I’m not surprised either. But I think I know why Max likes lunch best. I think it is because it’s the part of the school day when he is left alone. No one bothers him, and no one tells him what to do. He sits at the end of the lunch table, all alone, reading his book and eating the same thing every day: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a granola bar, and an apple juice. The rest of the school day is unpredictable. You never know what might happen. Things are always changing, and teachers and kids are always surprising Max. But lunch is always the same.

This is only a guess. I don’t know why Max likes lunch the best, because I don’t think Max knows. Sometimes you can feel something but not know why you feel that way. Like the way I feel about Mrs Patterson. I knew I did not like her as soon as I met her, but I can’t explain why. I just knew. And now that she and Max have a secret, I like her even less.

‘Who is your best friend, Max?’ Dr Hogan asks.

Max says ‘Timothy’ because that is what Max always says when someone asks him who his best friend is, even though I know that I am his real best friend. But Max knows that if he says my name, people will ask him questions and tell him that I don’t exist. Timothy is a boy who spends time in the Learning Center when Max is there, and sometimes Timothy and Max work together. Max says that Timothy is his best friend because they don’t fight. Neither one likes working with other kids, so when their teachers make them work together, they try to find a way to work alone together.

Mrs Hume once told Max’s mom that it is sad that Max’s best friends are the kids who leave him alone, but Mrs Hume doesn’t understand that Max is happy when he is alone. Just because Mrs Hume and Max’s mom and most people are happiest when they are with their friends doesn’t mean that Max needs friends to be happy. Max doesn’t like other people, so he is happiest when people just leave him alone.

It’s like me with food. I don’t eat. I’ve never met an imaginary friend who eats. I was visiting the hospital one night, because the hospital never closes, and I was spending time with Susan, a lady who does not eat food with her mouth anymore. She has a straw that goes straight into her belly, and the nurses feed her pudding through the straw. Susan’s sisters were visiting, and when they were in the hallway outside Susan’s room, her fat sister said it was sad that Susan could not eat anymore because there is so much joy in food.

‘No there’s not!’ I said, but no one heard me.

But it’s true. I’m glad that I don’t eat, no matter what Susan’s fat sister says. Eating seems like a pain in the butt to me. Even if the food tastes good, you have to worry about having enough money to buy the food and cooking the food and not burning the food and eating the right amount without getting fat like Susan’s sister. Plus all the time it takes to cook the food and clean the dishes and cut the mango and peel the potatoes and ask the waiter for milk instead of cream. The dangers of choking on food or being allergic to certain foods. It all seems so complicated. I don’t care how good the food might taste. It wouldn’t be worth all the trouble. Maybe Susan feels this way, too, now that she eats with a belly straw, which seems a lot easier than cooking dinner every night. But even if she doesn’t feel this way, I still feel this way. If I was given a chance to eat food right now, I’d say no, because I wouldn’t want to get in the habit of eating food and starting all of that rigmarole, which is one of Mrs Gosk’s favorite words.

Even though I don’t eat, I’m still happy, even if there is so much joy in food. Because there is joy in not worrying about food, too. More joy, I think.

For Max, there’s joy in being alone. He’s not lonely. He just doesn’t like people very much. But he is happy.

‘What is your least favorite food?’ Dr Hogan asks.

Max stops for a moment, his hands sort of frozen in midair, and then he says, ‘Peas.’

I would have guessed zucchini. I bet he forgot about zucchini.

‘What’s your least favorite part of school?’ Dr Hogan asks.