Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (8 page)

Even though I think that Mrs Patterson is telling the truth, that she really believes that Max is smart and sweet, she is using that same baby talk that some people use to speak to Max about me. She sounds fake because she sounds like she is trying to be real instead of just being real.

I do not like Mrs Patterson one bit.

‘Where did you go with Mrs Patterson today?’ I ask.

‘I can’t tell you. I promised I would keep it a secret.’

‘But you’ve never kept a secret from me.’

Max grins. It’s not exactly a smile, but it is as close as Max gets to smiling. ‘No one has ever asked me to keep a secret before. This is my first.’

‘Is it a bad secret?’ I ask.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you do something bad? Or did Mrs Patterson do something bad?’

‘No.’

I think for a moment. ‘Were you helping someone?’

‘Kind of, but it’s a secret,’ Max says, and he grins again. His eyes get wide. ‘I can’t tell you anything else.’

‘You’re really not going to tell me?’ I ask.

‘No. It’s a secret. It’s my first secret.’

CHAPTER 13

Max did not go to school today. It is Halloween, and Max does not go to school on Halloween. The masks that the kids wear during their Halloween parties scare him. In kindergarten Max got stuck after seeing a boy named JP walk out of the bathroom wearing a Spiderman mask. It was the first time he got stuck at school and the teacher didn’t know what to do. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a teacher so scared.

Max’s mom and dad sent him to school on Halloween in first grade, hoping that he had grown out of it.
Grown out of it
means that his parents couldn’t figure out what to do, so they didn’t do anything except hope that things had changed because Max was taller and wearing bigger sneakers.

But as soon as the first kid put on a mask, Max got stuck again.

Last year he stayed home from school on Halloween, and he is doing the same today. Max’s dad took the day off, too, so they could spend the day together. He called his boss and said that he was sick. An adult doesn’t have to be sick to say that he is sick, but if a kid wants to stay home from school, he has to be sick.

Or afraid of Halloween masks.

We’re going to the pancake house on the Berlin Turnpike. Max likes the pancake house. It’s one of his four favorite restaurants. Max will eat at only four restaurants.

A List of Max’s Four Favorite Restaurants

1. International House of Pancakes.
   
2. Wendy’s (Max can’t eat at Burger King anymore because his father once told him a story about a customer eating a fish sandwich with a bone in it and now Max is worried that everything at his father’s Burger King will have a bone in it).
   
3. Max Burger (there are actually a bunch of Max restaurants, with names like Max Fish and Max Downtown, and Max thinks it’s great that they share his name. But Max’s parents brought him to Max Burger first, and now it’s the only one where he will eat).
   
4. The Corner Pug.
   

If Max goes to a new restaurant, he cannot eat. Sometimes he even gets stuck. It’s hard to explain why. To Max, the pancakes at the pancake house on the Berlin Turnpike are pancakes, but the pancakes at the diner across the street aren’t really pancakes. Even though they look the same and probably taste the same, they are a completely different food for Max. He would tell you that the pancakes across the street at the diner are pancakes, but not his pancakes.

Like I said, it’s hard to explain.

‘Do you want to try blueberries in your pancakes today?’ Max’s father asks.

‘No,’ Max says.

‘Okay,’ Max’s dad says. ‘Maybe next time.’

‘No.’

We sit quietly for a while, waiting for the food to come. Max’s dad flips through the menu even though he has already ordered his food. The waitress stuck the menus behind the syrup when Max and his dad were done ordering, but Max’s dad took one back out as soon as she left. I think he likes to have something to look at when he doesn’t know what to say.

Max has a staring contest with me. We do this a lot.

He wins the first game. I get distracted when a waitress drops a glass of orange juice on the floor.

‘Are you happy to have the day off from school?’ Max’s father asks just as we are beginning another staring contest. His father’s voice startles me and I blink.

Max wins again.

‘Yes,’ Max says.

‘Do you want to try trick-or-treating tonight?’

‘No.’

‘You wouldn’t have to wear a mask,’ Max’s dad says. ‘No costume at all if you don’t want.’

‘No.’

I think that Max’s dad sometimes gets sad talking to Max. I can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. The more they talk, the worse it gets. His shoulders slump. He sighs a lot. His chin sinks into his chest. I think that he thinks that Max’s one-word answers are all his fault. Like he is to blame for Max not wanting to talk. But Max doesn’t talk unless he has something to say, no matter who you are, so if you ask him only yes or no questions, you’re going to get only yes or no answers.

Max doesn’t know how to chat.

Actually, Max doesn’t want to know how to chat.

We sit in silence again. Max’s dad is looking at the menu.

An imaginary friend enters the restaurant. He’s walking behind a set of parents and a little girl with red hair and freckles. The imaginary friend actually looks a lot like me. He looks almost like a human person, except his skin is yellow. Not a little yellow. Yellow like someone painted him with the yellowiest yellow they could find. He’s also missing eyebrows, which is pretty common for imaginary friends. But otherwise he could pass for a human person, if anyone except for the little redhead and I could see him.

‘I’m going to check out the kitchen,’ I say to Max. ‘Make sure it’s clean.’

I do this a lot when I want to explore. Max likes it when I make sure places are clean.

Max nods. He’s drumming his fingers on the table in patterns.

I walk over to the yellow boy, who has taken a seat beside the girl. They are on the other side of the restaurant, and Max can’t see me from here.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I’m Budo. Would you like to talk?’

The yellow boy is so startled that he almost falls off the bench. I get this a lot.

‘You can see me?’ the yellow boy says.

He has a little girl’s voice, which is also common with imaginary friends. Kids never seem to imagine their imaginary friends with deep voices. I guess it’s just easier to imagine a voice like your own.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I can see you. I’m like you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

I don’t use the words
imaginary friend
because not every imaginary friend knows this name, and it scares some of them when they hear it for the first time.

‘Who are you talking to?’

This is the little girl. Maybe three or four years old. She has heard the yellow boy’s half of the conversation.

I see the panic in the yellow boy’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to say.

‘Tell her that you were talking to yourself,’ I say.

‘Sorry, Alexis. I was talking to myself.’

‘Can you get up and walk away?’ I ask. ‘Is that something you can do?’

‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ the yellow boy says to Alexis.

‘Okay,’ Alexis says.

‘Okay what?’ asks the woman sitting across from Alexis. Alexis’s mom, no doubt. The two look so much alike. Red hair and freckles times two.

‘Okay that Jo-Jo can go to the potty,’ Alexis says.

‘Oh,’ Alexis’s dad says. ‘Jo-Jo’s going to the potty. Huh?’

Jo-Jo’s dad is using the baby talk. I don’t like him already.

‘Follow me,’ I say, and I lead Jo-Jo through the kitchen, down a set of stairs, and into the basement.

I’ve explored this place before. With only four restaurants, and three that we go inside, it isn’t hard to cover them all. There is a walk-in freezer to my right and a stockroom to my left, though it’s not really a room. It’s just a space surrounded by a chain-link fence. The fence starts at the floor and goes to the ceiling. I pass through the door, which is also made from chain-link fence, and sit on one of the boxes on the other side.

‘Whoa!’ Jo-Jo says. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Can’t you pass through doors?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If you could, you would know,’ I say. ‘It’s okay.’

I pass back through the door and take a seat on a plastic pail in the corner by the stairs. Jo-Jo stands by the wire fence for a moment longer, staring at it. He reaches out to touch it, moving his hand slowly as if he’s afraid to be electrocuted. His hand stops at the chain-link. He doesn’t touch the fence. He doesn’t move the wire with his hand. His hand just stops. It’s not the fence that blocks him from entering. It’s the idea of the fence.

I’ve seen this before, too. It’s the same reason I don’t fall through the floor. When I walk, I don’t leave footprints because I’m not actually touching the ground. I’m touching the idea of the ground.

Some ideas, like floors, are too strong for imaginary friends to pass through. No one imagines an imaginary friend who slides through the floor and disappears. The idea of the floor is too strong in a little kid’s mind. It’s too permanent. Like walls.

Lucky for us.

‘Sit,’ I say, motioning to a barrel.

Jo-Jo does.

‘I’m Budo. Sorry to scare you.’

‘It’s okay. You just look so real.’

‘I know,’ I say.

I have frightened lots of imaginary friends when they realize that I am talking to them because I look so real. You can usually tell that someone is an imaginary friend by their yellow skin or missing eyebrows.

Most of the time, they don’t look a human person at all.

But I do. That’s why I can be a little scary. I look real.

‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’ Jo-Jo says.

‘What do you already know?’ I ask. ‘Let’s start with that, and then I’ll fill in the missing pieces that I know.’ This is the best way to talk to an imaginary friend for the first time.

‘Okay,’ Jo-Jo says. ‘But what should I tell?’

‘How long have you been alive?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. A little while.’

‘More than a few days?’ I ask.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘More than a few weeks?’

Jo-Jo thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Probably a few weeks then. Has anyone told you what you are?’

‘Mom says that I’m Alexis’s imaginary friend. She doesn’t say that to Alexis, but I heard her say it to Dad.’

I smile. Lots of imaginary friends think of their human’s parents as their parents, too.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘So you know, then. You’re an imaginary friend. The only people who can see you are Alexis and other imaginary friends.’

‘Is that what you are, too?’

‘Yes.’

Jo-Jo leans closer to me. ‘Does that mean we aren’t real?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It just means that we are a different kind of real. It’s a kind of real that adults don’t understand, so they just assume that we’re imaginary.’

‘How come you can walk through fences and I can’t?’

‘We can do what our human friends imagined us to do. My friend imagined that I look like this and can walk though doors. Alexis imagined that your skin is yellow and you cannot walk through doors.’

‘Oh.’

It’s the kind of
Oh
that says, ‘You just explained a gigantic thing to me.’

‘Do you really use the bathroom?’ I ask.

‘No. I just tell Alexis that if I want to look around a little.’

‘I wish I had thought of that.’

‘Do any imaginary friends use the bathroom?’ he asks.

I laugh. ‘None that I’ve ever met.’

‘Oh.’

‘You should probably get back to Alexis, now,’ I say, thinking that Max is probably wondering where I am as well.

‘Oh. Okay. Will I see you again?’

‘Probably not. Where do you live?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘In the green house.’

‘You should try to find out your address, in case you ever get lost. Especially because you can’t pass through doors.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asks. He looks worried. He should be.

‘You have to be careful that you don’t get left behind. Make sure that you climb into the car as soon as the door is opened. Otherwise they could drive away without you.’

‘But Alexis wouldn’t do that.’

‘Alexis is a little kid,’ I say. ‘She’s not the boss. Her parents are the bosses, and they don’t think that you are real. So you have to take care of yourself. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ he says, but he sounds so small when he speaks. ‘I wish I could see you again.’

‘Max and I come here a lot. Maybe I’ll see you here again. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ It sounds almost like a wish.

I stand. I’m ready to get back to Max. But Jo-Jo is still sitting on the pail.

‘Budo,’ he asks. ‘Where are my parents?’

‘Huh?’

‘My parents,’ he says. ‘Alexis has parents but I don’t. Alexis says they’re my parents, too, but they can’t see me or hear me. Where are my parents? The ones who can see me?’

‘We don’t have parents,’ I tell him. I want to say something better, but there is nothing better. He looks sad when I say this, and I understand, because it makes me sad, too. ‘That’s why you have to take care of yourself,’ I say.

‘Okay,’ he says, but he still doesn’t stand. He sits on the pail, staring at his feet.

‘We have to go now. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Finally he stands. ‘I’ll miss you, Budo.’

‘Me too.’

Max begins screaming at exactly 9.28 p.m. I know this because I am watching the clock, waiting for 9.30 when Max’s mom and dad will change the channel to my favorite show of the week.

I don’t know why he is screaming, but I know that it is not normal. He hasn’t woken up from a nightmare or seen a spider. This is not a normal scream. I know that he’s probably going to get stuck no matter how fast his parents run up the stairs.

Then I hear it.

Three bangs coming from the front of the house. Hitting the house. There might have been a bang right before Max started screaming, too. The television was on a commercial, and commercials are loud.