“That depends who you ask,” said Amanda. “The popular theory is mono, although I’ve also heard that you have cancer, hepatitis, and maybe a brain tumor. Oh, and for about a day and a half you’d run away because mom and dad caught you doing drugs.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Does anyone know the real reason?”
“If they do, they didn’t hear it from me,” she told me. “I’m sticking with mono.”
Then I asked her the one question I was really interested in hearing the answer to. “Have you seen Allie around?”
“Yeah,” Amanda said. But there was something in her voice that sounded weird, as if she really didn’t want to talk about it. So of course I made her.
It turns out Amanda saw Allie at lunch about a week after I came to the hospital. She thought Allie would want to know that I was okay, even if she couldn’t tell her exactly what had happened, so she went over to her and started talking.
“But all she did was kind of nod,” Amanda said. “She was sitting with this guy, and it was like she didn’t really want to talk to me.”
I told Amanda that we’d had a fight about something, but that it wasn’t a big deal and Allie would get over it. I know Amanda didn’t buy it, but for once she let it go. Like I said, she’s pretty cool. Not that I’d ever let her know that. I have to keep her in line somehow or she’ll think she’s the boss of everything.
“Anyway, you’ve got to get out of here soon,” said Amanda. “They’re driving me nuts.”
I knew she meant my mother and father. I could just imagine what they were like to live with now. I’m surprised they hadn’t installed security cameras in Amanda’s room. And now her Kool-Aid hair made even more sense. Knowing Amanda, she’d done it just to make them worry.
“Sorry about that,” I said. And I really was. I mean, it’s not Amanda’s fault that I’m in here.
“I can handle it,” she assured me.
We just sat there for a minute, like we’d run out of things to say. But it wasn’t awkward or weird. It was kind of nice. Amanda was treating me the way she always does, not like I’d done something crazy. Then Cat Poop opened the door and my parents came in. I don’t know what he said to them, but they were all smiling again, like circus clowns. I wanted to hand them some balloons.
“We’ll see you next week,” my mother said. She looked like she was going to hug me again, but I moved so that Cat Poop was between us and just said, “Okay. See you then.”
No one else tried to hug me, although I know Amanda would have if my parents hadn’t been there, and that would have been okay. They all said good-bye and left. I’m sure they were as happy to get out as I would have been if I was leaving with them.
It made me think of Mrs. Christensen. Mrs. Christensen is about seventeen million years old. She’s a friend of my grandmother’s, and she lives in a home now because her entire family is dead. Every Christmas we have to go visit her. We take her a fruitcake and some presents, like slippers and chocolate and whatever. We spend about an hour with her, and it’s the longest hour in the history of time. The home smells like old people, and even though they put up all of these decorations, it’s still depressing. Mrs. Christensen always acts like we’re her real family, but we aren’t, and I can’t wait to get out of there.
I bet that’s how my parents and Amanda feel. I know I would if one of them was in here. I’d just want to get it over with and leave the fruitcake.
Day 16
Before my parents left yesterday they gave me a care package from my grandmother. Actually, they left it with Cat Poop, and he gave it to me today. They probably had to run it by the drug-sniffing dogs or something to make sure there was nothing in it I’m not supposed to have. Like my grandma would have stuck packets of heroin in there. Or porn.
Anyway, she sent me chocolate chip cookies, some peanut butter fudge, and a dollar. She always puts a dollar in when she sends me or my sister something—cards, letters, whatever. It must be an old lady thing to do. My dad says she always gave him and his brother a dollar when she wrote to them, too, until they had kids of their own. Now she sends us the dollars. I guess she figures my dad doesn’t need them.
I shared the cookies and fudge with everyone else, but only because I knew that otherwise I’d just eat it all and then feel sick. Besides, we had movie night tonight. They let us watch a DVD of a movie about this guy who spent every summer living with grizzly bears in Alaska. It’s a true story. Every year he hiked into the wilderness and followed the bears around until fall came and they went into hibernation. Until one year when a bear ate him.
You’d think it would be all sad, someone being eaten by a bear. The thing is, though, this guy really loved those bears. He loved everything about them, even when they did stuff that looked totally mean, like fight over food or kill a rival bear’s cubs. It was like they were his family, and he forgave them for their bear behavior because he knew they couldn’t help it. I think he probably even would have forgiven the bear that ate him.
They interviewed a lot of people in the movie, and most of them said they just couldn’t understand why this guy would want to spend so much time with bears. Some of them thought he believed he was a bear because he couldn’t handle who he really was. I think they’re wrong. I think he just loved being with the bears because they didn’t make him feel bad.
I mean, sure, this guy was a little nuts. You’d have to be to spend your whole life following bears around. But I get it, too. When he was with the bears, they didn’t care that he was kind of weird, or that he’d gotten into trouble for drinking too much and using drugs (which apparently he did a lot of). They didn’t ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he felt, or why he did what he did. They just let him be who he was.
I guess if you think about it, it was kind of a strange movie for them to let us watch. But I think that a lot of us in here could relate to it. Juliet started to cry when they talked about how rangers shot the bear that ate the guy and then cut it open to make sure he was really inside. Personally, I think they killed the bear because they were afraid of it. That’s what people do, kill the things they’re afraid of.
Here’s what I think. One, people should figure out that if they go around bothering bears, chances are they’re going to end up bear snacks. Second, people suck.
There I go again, jumping from fudge to bears. I swear, sometimes it feels like there’s this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me. One minute I’m sitting around eating chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I’m thinking about bears.
Like I said, though, I think a lot of us relate to those bears. We’re in here because someone—our parents, our doctors, the people who supposedly love us—are afraid of us. We’re in the Whack-job Zoo so that everyone can look at us without getting close enough to get hurt. Man, that’s messed up.
I wonder what Cat Poop would do if next time he starts nosing around in my brain, I just bite him?
Day 17
Alert the media: Martha spoke to me today.
I was sitting with her on the couch, reading, and out of nowhere she put her hand on my wrist and said, “Frex.”
I was so shocked that I stopped reading and just looked at her. She touched my wrist again. “Frex,” she said, like she was telling me the name of something.