Not As Crazy As I Seem (2 page)

Dad breaks open his roll, and crumbs go flying. He leaves them on the table. "My point, Devon, is I'm not the kind of expert who would know if that's actually true about taking out the space in our bodies. I just heard it on the radio. Now, what did you learn today?"

I look away, pretending he isn't talking to me, and scoop out the center of my mashed potatoes with my spoon. Then I pour milk in, exactly to the rim.

Mom swallows fast. "I read something from Thoreau this morning." She often tries to bail me out when Dad asks me a direct question. She knows he makes me nervous. "It was on my daily quote calendar at work. He wrote, 'I wish I could worship the parings of my nails.' "

I spread my fingers out to take a look. My nails are nicely rounded, just a sliver of white extending to the edge of my fingers. I might be able to get into worshiping them.

Dad shakes his head. "I admire Thoreau as much as the next person, but sometimes he went off the deep end, don't you think?"

Now Mom shakes her head. "I appreciate his sentiment. Thoreau is trying to see the specialness of life in even the most insignificant parts of it."

The table is silent for a minute. That's the way I like it. Except I know the conversation is heading back at me.

"So, Devon, what do you have to tell us tonight?"

I have nothing. I never have anything. So I make things up. "Did you know Hitler had a cat?" They look at me with their this-is-even-weirder-than-usual expressions. "It was a stray he took in ... in the bunker. He named her Muffin."

"Muffin?" Mom drinks some water from the huge mug Dad gave her for Christmas. It says "She Who Must Be Obeyed" around the middle.

"Muffin was the translation. In German it was something like
Das Muf-kin-izer.
"

Dad sips some water from his small glass. He doesn't like drinking water, but Mom says it's good for him and that coffee isn't. "I can't picture Hitler with a cat. A dog, maybe, like a schnauzer, but not a cat."

"He's kidding us, Frank." She opens her mouth in a perfect circle and inserts a piece of steak. "Aren't you, Devon?"

I shrug, leaving them wondering as usual, and stick my fork into the pile of peas on my plate. When I pull it out, there are five. I tilt the fork so that one falls off and then eat the rest. When I look up, they're watching. They probably saw me drop the one pea. I don't think it's so terrible, wanting to eat four peas instead of five. People do worse things every minute of the day, and who's staring at them?

I plunge my fork into the potatoes and shove a big clump into my mouth—they can't find anything strange about that! Then I lift my glass of water in two hands and gulp—one, two, three, four swallows.

Dad forks up a bunch of peas and eats them. "How did your first session go with Dr. Wasserman?"

I lick around the inside of my mouth until all the potatoes are gone. "Okay."

"What did you talk about?"

Mom puts down her mug of water. "You know you're not supposed to ask that, Frank. It's confidential."

"I
know
that the last doctor spent five months playing
Stratego and Battleship with Devon. I want to make sure this one's not doing the same thing."

Dad's wrong. I played Stratego and Connect Four with Dr. Castelli, not Battleship.

Mom liked my old shrink. He told her once that I was very well behaved and complimented her on raising me. I don't think he gave Dad any credit, and that's probably right since he never spent much time with me. Mom's the one who used to read to me every night. She played board games with me on the weekends and took me to museums. When we were out driving she would tell me about the divorces she was handling, and I always wondered if she'd divorce Dad someday. It's not that they have these terrible big fights or anything. It's just that they don't seem to fit together. Like, she's smarter than he is by a mile. And a lot more friendly. And nicer. I could go on and on.

Dad doesn't talk to me very much. I think he wanted a baseball-basketball-football-playing kid, since that's the type he was, growing up. After I got to be about eight, he stopped asking if I wanted to go out in the yard and have a catch. I never saw the point of catch. I never saw the point of sports, either. I told him that once, and he just shrugged and walked away.

Mom reaches for the pitcher of water and fills her mug. Dad says we should just hook up a hose to her. That's pretty funny—for him—but the thing is he says it about twice a day, so nobody laughs anymore.

"Therapy takes time, Frank. The doctor and Devon were establishing a relationship of trust with each other."

"Their
relationship
cost us two thousand dollars—that's outrageous."

Mom keeps eating her little mouthfuls. Dad taps his fingers on the table. It's the only nervous habit I've ever seen in him. They aren't looking at each other. It seems to me an odd way of arguing.

What I'd like is for Mom to throw a roll at him and Dad to toss a spoonful of potatoes at her, and then they'd splash each other with their water. That would be an interesting argument. I wouldn't even mind cleaning up the mess.

"How would you know therapy is outrageous? You've never tried it."

"Why would I try it? I don't need to pay somebody two thousand dollars and get nothing to show for it."

I agree with Dad—I have nothing to show for twenty sessions with Dr. Castelli except that I'm now an expert at Connect Four. I even went to the store looking for Connect Five, but they said the game doesn't exist. It's strange nobody has invented that yet. Maybe I'll do it.

I estimate that I agree with my father ten percent of the time and with my mother twenty-five percent. I think that's a pretty high total for a kid agreeing with his parents, but I don't know for sure.

Mom takes a bite of roll. "I'm just saying let's give it another try. A new therapist, a new school, a new town—let's give them all a try."

Dad nods. "Of course we're giving them a try. That's why we moved, isn't it?"

"Frank!"

What does he mean? I thought we came to Belford so Dad could expand his funeral business and Mom could find more people who want to get divorced. They said we
moved closer to the city for greater opportunities, and I thought they meant their own. "You mean we moved because of me?"

Mom eats some of her potatoes. "We moved for everyone's sake, Devon."

I stick my fork into my peas and come up with three. They're watching me again. My hand is starting to sweat. They keep staring. I'll show them. I close my eyes and eat the three stupid peas.

Later, in my room, I log onto the Net in order to have something to do besides think about myself. Dr. Castelli had five months and six days to figure out exactly why I am like I am and couldn't do it. That makes me wonder, could I be some new psychological phenomenon? I know I'm strange compared to normal kids, but could I be strange even within the whole world of strange people? That makes me feel really odd.

I call up google.com on the screen and search under "teenager," which I am, and "obsessive," which is the word Castelli used to describe how I kept my Connect Four chips in perfect piles of four before playing them. Two hundred and sixteen Web sites come up in .34 seconds. I like that google tells you how fast their search takes, but really, I wouldn't mind waiting a whole second. It's not like I have anything else to do in the two thirds of a second google saved me.

I click in and out of "personality disorder" and "depression" and "teen mental health" until I see a site saying, "What Is Generalized Anxiety?" Since Dr. Wasserman used that term at our first session today, I click on it and read: "Generalized anxiety is characterized by shakiness, muscle aches, soreness, restlessness, fatigue, and irritability. The sufferer is on edge and easily startled." That doesn't sound like me at all. I don't shake or ache that much. I'm not sore or irritable or easily startled. How could a shrink be so wrong?

I scroll down, clicking on every link, and come to "SocioPathways," by a kid named NOWAYNOTME. I like his name, so I keep reading:

"Controlling myself is not nearly as satisfying as controlling others."

I don't want to control others, but I do like controlling things, which is just as hard.

"I find humor in life by looking for people to laugh at."

I don't see the point of laughing at other people. Kids usually laugh at me, and they seem to have fun doing it, but I'm not into that.

"I like my personality flaws, because without them I'd have no personality at all."

NOWAYNOTME makes me wonder what my personality would be if I didn't have my "tendencies," as Mom puts it. If I weren't Devon the Anxious, Devon the Obsessive, Devon the Clean, what kind of Devon would I be? There wouldn't be much Devon left.

At least I'm not a sociopath, from what NOWAY says. Still, I click on "Chat" and register as Psychobabble, the user ID I always use. Then I enter the Sociopathic Chat Room.

"hi, just surfed in..."

JWGjr—"Welcome, Psychobabble, what brings you here?"

"i'm trying 2 figure out what i am."

JWGjr—"A noble effort. Perhaps figure out what you aren't and see what's left."

"i don't have that long i have 2 go 2 bed soon."

JWGjr—"Okay then try getting in touch with your inner sociopath."

"i'm not sure i have an inner 1 of those."

JWGjr—"Everybody does."

"how would i get in touch with mine?"

JWGjr—"Think terrible thoughts. Imagine the worst thing you would do to someone if you could and not get caught."

"is that all?"

JWGjr—"No, this is important—you can't feel guilty about your thoughts. Get rid of guilt and there you will find your inner sociopath." "thnx JWGjr out."

I log off feeling pretty good about the Sociopathic Chat Room. It's not often on the Net you find someone as friendly and helpful as JWGjr on the first posting. I decide to follow his advice. I close my eyes and think of dismemberment—and not just arms and legs, either. I think of squeezing someone's eyes until they pop and sticking sharp objects down his throat. I try imagining doing these terrible things to people, but each time an actual face passes through my mind, I feel guilty and ashamed. I wouldn't make a very good sociopath, and I'm glad. The world already has too many of them.

I get nervous on first days—first anythings, in fact. There's always too much to figure out. Beginning school in January means I'm the only new kid. Everybody will be watching me.

Right now I'm watching them. I'm leaning on one of the huge columns outside of The Baker Academy pretending to be interested in the jagged outline of downtown Boston in the distance. I'm actually counting the kids going in the school. I don't know why I am—it's just something for my mind to do. But then as I count five and six and seven, it seems right that I should be the eighth kid going in, a multiple of four. Before I can reach the door a girl comes running up the steps and butts in front of me. So I go back to leaning and counting ... nine, ten, eleven. My chance comes up again, but this time two kids get there first.

This is getting weird. It's never mattered before what number I was going in a door. I should just go in. I can do it. All the other kids are. But it seems to me that I can use
all the luck in the world today, and that means using my lucky number. The 7:55 bell rings. Fourteen kids have gone in since I've started counting. I need one more. A tall girl comes up the steps—the tallest girl I've ever seen. I pretend I'm fixing something in my backpack so she won't think I'm staring, and she goes by me and inside. I follow her to the door. I pull out the tail of my T-shirt and stick my hand inside it to grab the handle. I yank open the door like that and then feel somebody behind me. I turn and see an older kid looking at my hand in my shirt holding the handle. He must think I'm crazy.

"I have a cut on my finger and didn't want to get blood all over the handle."

"Whatever." He shrugs and squeezes past me into the school. There's no one else coming. I have to go in, the seventeenth kid. This is not a good start.

In the rear of tenth-grade English, I'm sitting straight, my elbows on my desk and my hands folded, which is my best position for blocking out distracting thoughts. The teacher, Ms. Hite, is talking so fast about "The Raven" that there isn't time for me to think about anything else. I like that. Suddenly she slaps shut her poetry book. "All right, class, in the remaining thirty minutes I want you to write an essay: Why does the raven repeat, 'Nevermore'? Any questions?"

I have a question—am I supposed to do this assignment? She doesn't see my hand. I know this poem because it was my grandfather's favorite, and I read it to him probably fifty times. I could fake a pretty good answer. Still, I don't want to write the paper if I'm not supposed to.

"You may begin."

So I begin. I open the maroon and white The Baker Academy notebook that Mom bought for me and write, "Nevermore—What the Raven Means."

I scan the poem in my textbook." ...its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore." That means the man in the poem doesn't even understand the raven, so how are we supposed to? I start writing:

In the poem "The Raven," by the famous writer Edgar Allan Poe, the main character asks a question of the raven six times, and six times the bird says, "Nevermore.
"

The man wants to know if he'll be reunited with Lenore in Heaven—"Nevermore.
"

He wants to forget Lenore because thinking about her is driving him mad—"Nevermore.
"

He tells the raven to leave ("Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!")—"Nevermore.
"

I think the raven is like the part of a person's mind that keeps saying everything's going to be bad. No matter what the man asks, the raven says no. He will always suffer thinking of Lenore. He will never get her out of his mind.

The raven says "nevermore" because it is a word that means something won't ever happen, and it's hopeless to hope. Also, "nevermore" rhymes with Lenore, which is important. If the raven had said "nope" instead of "nevermore," nobody would think this poem was very good.