The Burn Journals (20 page)

There's too much to think about. Too much to think about, at night, here in this room.

A car comes down the street and the headlights show up on the wall across the room. The light moves down the wall toward my head and disappears again. I wonder where light goes when it's not here. I mean, I know that darkness is the absence of light, but where does the light go when it's not here? And how do you know if it'll ever come back?

I wake up and it's already ten-thirty. I can't believe I slept this late. I get up and walk across the hall to my parents' room. I can hear them downstairs making breakfast. Coffee cake. I love that. I love being able to smell breakfast when I wake up.

I unzip my Jobst garments and wiggle out of my gloves. I turn on the shower and sit on the toilet while I wait for the water to get warm. This scar on my left thigh is still so thick. I can't feel anything through it. It feels like the skin of that dead shark we found in Florida a couple of years ago, except that it's not cold and it doesn't smell as bad.

Actually, my thigh kind of looks like a shark took a bite out of me right there. I wonder if that's what I should say when people ask me about it.

Hey, kid, what happened to you?

Shark attack.

Oh shit. Where did that happen?

At home, in my bathroom.

I get into the shower. I like my parents' bathroom, it smells so much like them, with all the shell-shaped soaps and the Pert Plus shampoo. Smells like home.

They've also got one of those fancy showerheads that lets you adjust the water to different speeds to massage your neck. I suck the water into my mouth and spit it out again.

I get out of the shower. The whole room is completely filled with steam. I can't even see myself in the mirror. I write, I love you Mom and Dad, on the mirror with my finger.

I wrap a towel around my waist and walk out into their bedroom. I wonder if I should ask for a new bathrobe for Christmas.

I open the bedroom door and yell downstairs, “Hey, Mom! I'm ready!” Did that sound mean? I didn't mean it to sound that way.

She comes right up the stairs. I don't know what this is going to be like. We agreed that she'd help me with this, but it's not exactly her area of expertise.

I lie facedown on their bed and wait for her to get her act together. She gets the jar of Eucerin cream from the bathroom and sets it next to my leg. She says, “So, honey, what am I supposed to do?”

“Just put some cream on the back of my legs and rub it in.”

“Like this?” She dabs the tiniest little bit on my calf. It's cold. “Is that too cold?”

“No. It doesn't matter.”

“I can try and warm it up on my hands first.”

“No, it doesn't matter. I'm used to it.”

She rubs a little into my calf with the palm of her hand, like she's spreading suntan lotion.

“Not like that.”

“Like how, then?”

“Harder. It's supposed to be a massage.”

“Like this?” She uses her thumbs this time and pushes a little on my calf.

“Harder.” She tries again, but she's not really getting the point. “Mom, you can do it harder.”

“I know, but I don't want to hurt you.”

“You can't hurt me, Mom.”

“Okay.” I can tell she's getting frustrated, but I don't really know what to do about it. She's not doing it right.

“Mom, like this.” I show her how to hold her hands so her thumbs have a lot of strength. “It's supposed to be hard. Like that.”

She tries again, but she's still not getting it. I guess it doesn't really matter. At least I'm getting some cream on my skin, so it won't be dry.

When she's done with my legs and back, I sit up and ask her to get my clean Jobst garments from my room. She's never done this before either, and I think it's going to be harder than the cream.

She says, “What do you want me to do?”

“Just hold them so I can get my foot into it.” She sits down on the floor and holds the foot open. I just realized these are like the pajamas I used to wear with the feet. Except these don't have toes and they're skintight and they have zippers up the outside.

I get one foot in and pull the elastic up. Now the other foot. My skin is so sticky from the cream it's hard to get my feet in.

She says, “What do I do now?”

“Zip them up.” She tries to get ahold of the zipper, but because the foot's not on exactly right, it starts to twist. “You're getting the zipper turned.”

“Sorry.” She tries to smile.

“It's okay.” I guess it's understandable because she's never done this before, but she has no idea what she's doing.

Finally I'm dressed and I go downstairs to have some breakfast.

Right in the middle of my coffee cake, Mom calls from upstairs, “Brent?” Oh shit. Her voice sounds sharp, like it does when I'm in trouble.

What did I do? “Yeah.”

“Did you write that on the bathroom mirror?” Who else would have written it?

“Yeah.”

“That was so sweet, honey. That was so sweet.” She's crying. “Did you show Dad?”

“No.” Why would I show Dad? It was supposed to be a surprise.

“Honey? Don, come and look at what Brent wrote on the mirror.”

“Okay, I'm coming.” Dad runs up the stairs and I walk behind him.

Now he's standing in the bathroom, staring at the mirror. He's hugging Mom. He's crying.

“Brenner, that was so nice. Thank you.” He can't really get the words out.

Mom says, “It's so nice to have you home.” She's crying even harder.

“We love you so much, honey.”

“We love you so much.”

They're both hugging me, but I didn't want this. I wanted to do something nice, but I didn't want all those tears. God, that's the last time I do something like that.

After breakfast, Dad comes back into the kitchen and says, “Brenner, what do you want to do today?”

“I don't know.”

“Want to go outside?”

“Not really?”

“Want to go to a movie?”

That could be fun, except I don't want to see anyone. “No thanks.”

“Rent a video?”

Well, I could do that. I bet it wouldn't be that big of a deal to do that. “Sure.”

We get in the car and drive over.

“Do you want to go in, Brenner, or do you want to tell me what you want?”

“No, I'll go in.” I reach up and unstrap my face mask. It sort of suctions to my face and makes a popping sound when I take it off. Must be because it's so hot and I'm sweating a little out of my forehead. I open the car door and put my legs out. Shit, I wish I wasn't wearing shorts because now everybody can see my Jobst garments and the big zipper going up the side.

I'm stiff from being in the car. I stretch my back and get a couple of good cracks out of it. That's better. I stand up and get a head rush. I hope I don't pass out. No, I'm cool. I'm cool.

I'm glad I'm not wearing my face mask. I think people would stare at me if I was. This shouldn't be too big of a deal. Just walking into a video store, but God, I just thought of something—what if I see someone I know? That would be terrible. Then I'd have to talk to them.

They changed this place all around. The new releases used to be over there on the right, but now they're on the back wall. And now comedy is where classics were.

Don't see anyone I know.

Do I know that little kid? Oh. No, he's staring at my face. Don't look at me, kid. Don't look at me. Stop it. I move farther down the aisle. I can feel him looking at me, even though I can only see him out of the corner of my eye.

Stop it. Stop it. Okay, he's not going to stop. I've got to find a movie and get out of here. A comedy, definitely a comedy. How about
Kindergarten Cop,
with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“You ready, Brenner?”

“Yeah.”

“What'd you get?”

“Uh,
Kindergarten Cop.
It's a comedy.”

“What's it rated?”

“Oh, I don't know, PG, I think.”

“Okay. Let's go.”

Dad gives the guy the card and the money, and I stare at the carpet and my shoes. Hurry, hurry, hurry, let's get out of here. Let's get out of here before someone says something. Come on, come on, come on. Why is it taking so long?

Okay, here I go. I'm at the door. I'm outside. I'm back in the car. Thank God. I did it.

This really is the life. I sit in the chair and watch movies. Mom and Dad get me whatever I want. They wait on me like I'm the king of England and all I have to do is sit here and relax.

I should have a little bell that I can ring in case I need an ice cream sandwich or I need them to put in the next video. I'm just going to sit here all day and watch movies and no one is going to bother me.

All this time I didn't want to come home because I was so worried about how it would feel, and now I'm home and I don't want to leave. I don't want to go back to the hospital tomorrow.

Lying here in my bed feels so much the same. I feel like I'm lying here going to sleep back before everything went bad.

It's hard to go to sleep when you're thinking about everything. I always had trouble going to sleep, even when I was a little kid. I couldn't stop thinking about the things I'd said during the day. All the stupid faces I'd made and the dumb jokes I'd made. And then when I got older, I started thinking about really bad stuff. I used to think about killing different people. Like one time, after my brother beat me up, I told my friends I was going to go down into his room in the middle of the night and kill him with this knife I kept under my bed. I really thought I was going to do it. I could picture it so easily. Slipping into his room. Putting the knife in his chest.

I also used to think about going down into the basement and opening up the furnace and pouring a whole bunch of gasoline in the furnace and then leaving, and when somebody turned on the furnace, the whole house would explode.

I'm glad I didn't do that. I'm glad I didn't do anything like that to anybody else. I only killed myself. That's one good thing.

Mom is driving back to the hospital. It's hard to think of things to talk about, so I turn on the radio and listen to music. Mom can never understand the lyrics to the music. She says she's a visual learner, but that's really no excuse for how bad she is at understanding them. For years she thought that song “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” was actually called “Shake Marilyn Monroe.”

I say, “Let's play a game.”

“Okay.”

“We'll put on the radio and the first one to guess the name of the song wins.”

“Okay, but you know I'm no good at this.”

“I know, but let's do it anyway.”

“Okay.”

I turn the channel until I find what sounds like an oldies station, just to give her a little advantage.

She should know this first one. Easily.

Ooh, I bet you're wonderin' how I knew

'bout your plans to make me blue.

She should know this. This is the song she sang at our school Christmas party when she and all her teacher friends dressed up in black trash bags and sunglasses and pretended they were raisins. God, that was so embarrassing. Why did she do that?

She says, “Wait, I know this. I know this.”

“Do you know it?”

I'm just about to lose my mind. Honey, honey. Yeah.

She says, “I do know it. Shoot, what is it?”

I say, “‘Heard It Through the Grapevine.'”

“Darn.”

We wait for the next song. Some other Motown-sounding thing.

People say I'm the life of the party

'cause I tell a joke or two.

She says, “I think I know this one. Is it ‘Tears of a Clown'?”

I say, “Wait. No. It's ‘Tracks of My Tears.'”

“Shoot. This isn't fair.”

“How is it not fair? This is all your music. It's practically the entire
Big Chill
sound track.”

She smiles. “I'll get the next one.”

“Yeah, right.”

What's this one? Some acoustic thing.

If I could save time in a bottle.

She says, “Jim Croce, ‘Time in a Bottle.' Yay, I got one.”

Shit, a song she actually knew.

She says, “I beat you. I beat you.” She's really rubbing
it in.

“Mom, just because you know the lyrics to one song in the entire world that I don't know doesn't mean you're some all-star lyricologist or something.”

She stops talking. I can tell I hurt her feelings. Fuck, why am I always being mean to my parents?

It's so depressing to be back at the hospital. Latroy is leaving. His mom and brother are here taking all his stuff out. I just lie in my bed and watch them. I wonder if I'll ever be discharged.

His mom takes down a picture he has on his bedside table of a girl that he used to go out with. I wonder where she is.

Mary, the nurse that got into a fight with Latroy that one time, comes in. She gives him a big hug and then tries to kiss him through his halo. She has a hard time figuring out how to get her head through the bars. She finally does and gives him a little kiss on the cheek.

Ben and I are going upstairs to the school together to do some work. He's the guy that broke his neck in the motorcycle accident.

Ben's gotten really good at the whole wheelchair thing. He can do a wheelie and hold it forever. I can do one too, but I'm not as good as he is.

We get in the elevator, press our button, and wait for the doors to close. Just as they start to close, one of the janitors runs down the hall, yelling, “Hold that elevator or I'll break your neck.”

I press the doors open button and he gets in.

“Thanks,” he says.

Ben looks up at the guy from his wheelchair and says, “You know, you should really watch what you say around here.”

The guy says, “What?”

“Watch what you say about breaking people's necks. It's a sensitive subject.”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“Whatever.”

Ben and I get off at the fourth floor and head for the classroom.

“That fucking guy. That fucking guy. I can't believe he said that to me. That fucking guy.”

Ben's really upset, but I sort of think he's overreacting.