“I don’t know,” I said. “It was just the first thing that came to me.”
It’s true, too. I am afraid of heights. I don’t even like going up in elevators past about six floors.
“What about that fear makes it the one thing you want to get rid of?” Cat Poop asked me.
I had to think about that for a while. Finally I said, “I guess because it keeps me from doing things I’d like to do.”
He asked me what kinds of things, and I told him I’ve always wanted to try skydiving, or maybe even bungee jumping. “But I’m afraid of heights,” I said. “So I can’t.”
“What is it about heights that you’re afraid of?” he asked me.
What a dumb question. Falling, of course. I’m afraid of falling. That’s probably why I dream about it a lot. Actually, what I said to the doc was that I’m afraid that suddenly I’ll have this uncontrollable urge to climb up on the railing of the bridge or run to the edge of the cliff or whatever and just throw myself off before anyone can stop me.
Cat Poop wrote something on his pad, which by now we all know means I’ve said something he thinks is interesting. This time I asked him why he thought my answer was worth writing down. Since it’s my life he’s dissecting, I figured I had the right to know.
“Why do you think you have this urge to jump?” he said, instead of answering my question.
“I guess because sometimes it’s nice to lose control,” I said after I’d thought about it. “I feel like I’m always trying to keep control of my life. Sometimes I’d like to be able to just let go and fall.”
“Even if it means you might get hurt?” he said.
“I don’t think about that,” I answered. “I just think about the falling, with no parachute or net or anything to catch me. I just think about falling, and it scares me.”
“How about falling in love?” he said. “Are you afraid of that?”
What, is love like the topic of the month around here or something? It sure didn’t take him long to get back to that subject. “I’m only fifteen,” I said.
“A lot of people fall in love for the first time around your age,” said Cat Poop.
“Why do you want to know?” I said. “Do you have a daughter you want to introduce me to or something?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“What if you did?” I asked him. “Would you want her to date a guy like me?”
“That’s impossible to answer,” Cat Poop said. “I don’t have a daughter, so I don’t know how I would feel about her dating anyone. It’s purely hypothetical.”
“Well, purely hypothetically,” I said. “Would you want her to date someone like me? Someone who’d been in a place like this?”
Cat Poop scribbled something on his pad. “Are you afraid people won’t want to date you because you’ve been in here?” he asked me.
“I asked you first,” I said.
We stared at each other for a while. I guess we were having another game of Psycho Chicken. Anyway, Cat Poop blinked first this time. “I would want my daughter to date the person who made her the happiest,” he said.
“Even if that person was crazy?” I said. “Even if that person was like me?”
“If I remember correctly, you’ve spent a great deal of time telling me you aren’t crazy,” Cat Poop reminded me.
“I’m being hypothetical,” I said. “So, would you?”
He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said.
I laughed. “I didn’t think so,” I told him.
“Now answer my question,” Cat Poop said. “Are you afraid that no one will want to be with you if they know you’ve spent time here?”
“I don’t care what people think,” I told him.
“How about what you think?” he said.
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” I answered. “Let me get back to you.”
“How about Allie?” Cat Poop said. “Do you think she’ll still want to be friends with you?”
I didn’t know how to answer that one. Allie always said that we’d be best friends no matter what. Was that still true?
“You’d have to ask her,” I said.
He let me go after a few more minutes, and he didn’t bring up love again, which is really a relief, because I’m getting tired of that subject.
Getting back to the original question, the one about what I would change about myself, it’s not really my fear of heights that I’d change. I mean, it’s not like that’s keeping me from achieving my life’s dream of being a tightrope walker or anything. I think it’s funny that old Cat Poop got all excited about it, because really it was just something to say.
The truth is, I’d like to have a tail. Seriously. Not a dog tail or a pig tail or anything like that. I want a monkey tail. A long one that I could use to pick stuff up with and hang by. I think that would be completely cool.
Day 32
“What’s playing tonight on Nuthouse TV?” I asked Sadie.
As usual, we were in the lounge. Everyone else had gone to bed, even though it wasn’t all that late, and except for Moonie, we had the place to ourselves. It reminded me of how sometimes Allie and I stay up late watching movies. Well, how we used to.
Sadie flipped through the channels. “Um, we have a vampire movie, a documentary on whales, or the Home Shopping Network.”
“Definitely the Home Shopping Network,” I said.
Sadie settled on that channel. The host, a woman with big red hair and an even bigger smile, was showing off some ugly jewelry. She was holding up a ring with a giant fake diamond in it.
“And for only twenty-nine ninety-nine you can have this genuine artificial piece of crap that everyone will know isn’t real,” I said.
“No fair,” said Sadie. “You’re supposed to make up something completely different than what it really is.”
“That is completely different than what she’s really saying,” I argued. “She wants us to think that buying that ring will make our lives perfect.”
“Maybe it would,” Sadie suggested.
“Right,” I said, snorting.
“No, really,” Sadie said. “Maybe someone out there has been wanting a ring like that their whole life. Now they can get it for twenty-nine ninety-nine.”
“Plus shipping and handling,” I said. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “I’m probably just premenstrual or something. It just kind of makes me sad to look at that ring and think that somewhere there’s this person who has to have it. And I really wish that ring would make that person’s life better.”
“Did you take all your meds today?” I asked her.
Sadie turned the TV off. “Let’s just talk,” she said.
“About what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Sadie. “Me. You. Us. Anything.”
“I know what this is about,” I said. “Cat Poop got into your brain. He’s turned you into Therapy Girl.”
“Bite me,” Sadie said, slapping my leg. “Nobody talks around here,” she said. “We all pretend to, but we never really do.” She pointed to the television. “We’re like the people in there,” she said, like the TV was an apartment house or something. “We open our mouths, but nothing really comes out.”
I’d never heard her talk like this, and to tell the truth, it was a little freaky. I mean, I could always count on Sadie to be sarcastic and funny. Now she was going all Oprah on me.
“Come on,” Sadie said. “Tell me a secret.”