“Craig, your principal can’t expel you for being in a psychiatric hospital.”
“Well, you know all my other problems.”
“What are those?”
“Hanging out with my friends all the time, getting depressed, not doing homework . . .”
“Uh-huh. Let’s hold off on that for a moment, Craig. I haven’t seen you since Friday. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to be here?”
I give her the rap. There’s much more to add to it now, about being on Six North. About Noelle and the eating and the not throwing up and the sleeping, where I’m one for two.
“What’s it like compared to Friday, Craig?”
“Better. Much, much better. But the question is, am I really better, or am I just lulled into a false sense of security by this fake environment? I mean, it’s not normal here.”
“Nowhere is normal, Craig.”
“I guess not. What’s been the news since I’ve been in here?”
“Someone tried to gas the Four Seasons in Manhattan.”
“Jeez!”
“I know.” Dr. Minerva smirks. Then she leans in. “Craig, there’s one thing you didn’t mention that your recreation director did. She said you’ve been doing art while you’ve been here.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s nothing, really. Just yesterday.”
“What is it like?”
“Well, remember how I told you last time that I liked to draw maps when I was a little kid? It sort of came from that.”
“How so?”
“When they gave me a pencil and paper in arts and crafts, I remembered—well, I didn’t remember, I was actually prompted by Noelle—”
“That’s the girl you met?”
“Right.”
“From the way you describe her I can see a real friendship developing.”
“Oh, forget a friendship. We are totally going to be going out when I leave, I think.”
“You think you’re ready for that, Craig?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right.” She takes a note. “So how did Noelle help you?”
“She suggested that I draw something from my childhood, and that made me remember the maps.”
“I see.”
“And I started drawing one, but then Ebony came over—”
“You’re on a first-name basis with all these people.”
“Of course.”
“Have you ever considered yourself good at making friends, Craig?”
“No.”
“But you can make friends here.”
“Right. Well, here is different.”
“How is it different?”
“It’s, I dunno . . . there’s no pressure.”
“No pressure to make friends?”
“No, no pressure to work hard.”
“As there is in the outside world.”
“Right.”
“Tremendous pressure out there. Your Tentacles.”
“Yeah.”
“Are there Tentacles in here, Craig?”
I stop and think. The way they run things on Six North has become clear to me: it’s all about keeping people occupied and passing the time. You wake up and you’ve immediately got a blood pressure gauge around your arm and somebody taking your pulse. Then it’s breakfast. Then you get your meds and then there’s a smoking break, and then maybe you have fifteen minutes to yourself before there’s some kind of activity. That leads to lunch which leads to more meds and more smoking and more activities, and then all of a sudden the day is over; it’s time for dinner, and everyone’s trading salt and desserts, and then it’s the 10 P.M. cigarette break and bedtime.
“No, there aren’t any Tentacles in here,” I say. “The opposite of a Tentacle is a simple task, something that’s placed before you and that you do without question. That’s what they have in here.”
“Right. Your only Tentacles in here are your phone calls, which are what got you so down just now.”
“Correct.”
Dr. Minerva takes notes. “Now, here’s an important question, Craig. Are there any Anchors in here?”
“Huh.”
“Anything you can hold on to.”
I think about it. If an Anchor is a constant, there are lots of those. There’s the constant lite FM, which occasionally borders on dangerously funky, coming out of the nurses’ station whether Smitty or Howard is behind it. There’s the constant schedule: the food coming and going, the meds being dished out, the announcements of Armelio. There’s the constant of Armelio himself, always ready to play cards. And Jimmy is always around going, “It’ll come to ya!”
“The people are Anchors,” I say.
“People don’t make good Anchors, though, Craig. They change. The people here are going to change. The patients are going to leave. You can’t rely on them.”
“When will they leave?”
“I can’t know that.”
“What about the staff?”
“They change too, just on a different time scale. People always come and go.”
“Noelle. She’s beautiful and smart and I really like her. She could be an Anchor.”
“You don’t want any of your Anchors being members of the opposite sex you’re attracted to,” Dr. Minerva says. “Relationships change even more than people. It’s like two people changing. It’s exponentially more volatile. Especially two teenagers.”
“But Romeo and Juliet were teenagers,” I point out.
“And what happened to Romeo and Juliet?”
“Oh,” I mumble. “Right.”
“And have we gone beyond that, Craig? Have we gone beyond thinking those thoughts?”
“Yes,” I nod.
“Because if you have those thoughts again you know you have to come back here.”
“I know. I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just . . . It would suck to kill myself. I’d hurt a lot of people and . . . it would suck.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Minerva leans across the table. “It would suck. And not just for other people. For you.”
“It’s not noble or anything,” I say. “Like this guy Muqtada who’s my roommate, he’s practically dead. He doesn’t do anything. He just lies in bed all day.”
“Right.”
“And I don’t want to ever be like him. I don’t want to live that way. And if I were dead, I’d basically be living that way.”
“Excellent, Craig.”
She stops. Like I say, the good shrinks know when to throw in a dramatic pause.
I tap my feet. The fluorescent lights hum.
“I want to pick back up on your Anchors,” Dr. Minerva says. “Can you think of anything else you’ve found in here that could occupy your time when you leave?”
I think. I know there’s something. It’s at the tip of my brain-tongue. But it won’t come.
“No.”
“Okay, not a problem. You’ve made a lot of progress today. There’s only one more thing we have to do: call your principal.”
“No!” I tell her, but she’s already at it, pulling out her cell phone, which is apparently allowed up here. “Yes, I’d like the number for Executive Pre-Professional High School in Manhattan.”
“You can’t you can’t you can’t,” I say, leaning across the table, grabbing at the phone. Luckily the blinds are drawn so no one can see in here; if they did they’d probably have me sedated. She gets up and walks to the door, points outside. Do I want security in here? I sit back down.
“Yes,” she says. “I need to speak with the principal. I’m returning a call of his to one of your students regarding a health and legal matter. I’m the mother.”
A pause.
“Great.” She cups the phone. “I’m being connected.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” I say.