It's Kind of a Funny Story (24 page)

forty-one

“I only have a couple of questions for you,” Noelle says, walking up fast at seven o’clock as I sit in the chair that I’ve come to call my conference chair, since I meet with so many people in it. I wonder what else has happened in this chair—people have probably peed on it, licked it, drummed their heads against it, and writhed around in it spouting gibberish. That gives me comfort. It feels like a chair with some history.

I didn’t think Noelle was going to show up, so I almost didn’t come—but then I decided I didn’t want any regrets. I’m done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed. When I get out in the world, from now on, if I start to regret something, I’m going to remind myself that whatever I could have done, it won’t change the fact that I was in a psychiatric hospital. This, right here, is the biggest regret I could ever have. And it’s not so bad.

Noelle seems to be looking at me for comment. But I’m amazed at how she looks. New clothes: a pair of tight blue jeans cut down dangerously low and a sliver of white underwear sticking out above them. The underwear looks like it has pink stars on it—do girls’underwear really have pink stars?—and I almost stare, before my eyes are drawn by the soft curve of her stomach to her T-shirt, which is wrapped against her with some kind of mystical female force, reading I HATE BOYS.

How come girls are coming to me dressed all hot all of a sudden?

Above the shirt is her face, bordered by blond hair pulled back, and highlighted by her cuts.

“Uh . . . Why’d you wear that T-shirt?” I ask. “Is that a message to me?”

“No. I hate
boys,
not you. And this is one reason why: they’re so arrogant. Why is that?” She stands with her hands on her hips.

“Well …” I think. “Do you want like, a real, honest answer?” My brain is working better than it did before. It has bagels and soup and sugar and chicken in it. It’s firing almost like it used to.

“No, Craig, I want a big, dumb, fake answer.” Noelle rolls her eyes. I think her breasts roll in synch with them. Girls’breasts are so amazing.

“Wait, you didn’t ask a question!” I smirk. “One point for you.”

“We’re not playing the game, Craig. We were going to, but I’m too mad.”

“Okay, well, darn …” I start. “What were we talking about?”

“Why guys are so arrogant.”

“Right. Well, you know, we’re born into the world seeing that we’re just a little bit . . . We tend to have things a little bit easier than girls. And we tend to assume therefore that the world was built for us, and that we’re, you know, the culmination of everything that came before us. And then we get told that having a little bit of this attitude is called
balls,
and that
balls
are good, and we kind of take it from there.”

“Wow, you are honest,” she says, sitting down. “An honest asshole.”
Yes! She sat down!
“Who the hell was that girl?”

“A girl I know.”

“She’s pretty.” (It’s amazing how girls can say this and make it the most withering insult.) “Is she your girlfriend?”

“No. I don’t have a girlfriend. Never had a girlfriend.”

“So she was just a girl you were hooking up with in your room?”

“You saw, huh.”

“I saw everything: from out here to your roommate’s bed.”

“What, you were
following
me?”

“I’m not allowed?”

“Well, no—”

“You don’t
like
it?” She leans in. “You don’t like some poor little girl"—she throws on a Little Bo-Peep voice, fluffs her hair—"following big, manly Craig around the ward?”

“It’s not a ward, it’s a psych hospital.”
But yes, yes I do like you following me around; yes, that’s awesome.
“I can’t believe I didn’t notice you. …” I think of the flashes of time with Nia, if I ever glanced down the hall or checked behind me.

“You were in a state of excitement; that’s why.”

“Well. You want to know who she was?”

“No. I lost interest.”

“You did?”

“No!
Tell me!”

“Okay, okay, she was this girl I’ve known for a long time, and she came in here—”

“Just overcome with lust for you?”

“Yeah, sure, exactly; she came in overcome with lust and I took advantage of her.” I flick my hand. “No, what really happened is she came in here lonely and confused, I think, and thinking that she belonged in a place like this . . .”

“That was pretty funny when your roommate caught you. That kinda made the whole thing worthwhile.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You’re never going to be a good cheater. You’re going to be one of those guys who gets caught on the first try.”

“Is that good?”

“You
didn’t even
close the door. How’d you know the girl?”

“She was my best friend’s girlfriend since we were like thirteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Fifteen.”

“Me too.”

I look at her anew. There’s something about people who are the same age. It’s like you got piped out in the same shipment. You’ve got to stick together. Because deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.

“So you macked your best friend’s girlfriend?”

“No, they broke up.”

“When?”

“Uh, a few days ago.”

“She moves
fast!”

“I think,” I think out loud, “she’s just one of these girls who’s never really
not
had a boyfriend.”

“Sometimes we call those girls sluts. Do you think she had a boyfriend when she was eight?”

“Ew.”

“Maybe she was letting—”

“Stop!
Stop! I don’t want to hear it.”

“It happens.” Noelle looks at me.

I nod, and pause, and let that sink it. It does happen.

“Um . . . how are
y ou?”
I ask.

“You think you’re really smart, don’t you?”

I laugh.
“No.
That’s one of the reasons I came in here, actually. Thinking I was dumb.”

“Why would you think that? You’re in a smart school.”

“I wasn’t doing well there.”

“What were you getting?”

“Ninety-threes.”

Oh.” Noelle nods.

“Yeah.” I fold my arms. “I think
you’re
really smart.
You
probably get good grades.”

“Not really.” She puts her chin in her palms like someone in a painting. “You’re not very good at giving compliments.”

“What?”

“I’m
smart!
C’mon.” “You’re attractive, too!” I say. “Does that work?

You’re attractive! Did I say that already? I said it the other day, right?”

“Attractive? Craig, real estate is attractive. Houses.”

“Sorry, you’re beautiful. What about that?” I can’t believe I’m saying it. We’ll both be out of here in two days; that’s why I’m saying it. No regrets.

“Beautiful’s all
right.
There are better ones.”

“Okay, okay, cool.” I crack my neck—

“Ewwww. “
“What?”

“Don’t do that. Especially when you’re about to compliment me.”

“Fine, okay. What are better words than beautiful?”

She puts on a Southern accent: “’Go-geous.’”

“Okay, okay, you’re gorgeous.”

“That sounds terrible. Do it my way: go-geous.”

I do it.

“You can’t even do a Southern accent? Oh my gosh, are you even from America?”

“Gimme a break! I’m from
here!”

“Brooklyn?

“Yeah.”

“This neighborhood?”

“Yeah.”

“I have friends here.”

“We should meet up sometime.”

“You’re so terrible. Try some more compliments.”

“Okay.” I dig down deep. I got nothing. “Um . . .”

“You don’t know any more?”

“I’m not good at words.”

“See, this is why the math nerds don’t get girls.”

“Who said I was a math nerd? I told you my grades suck.”

“You might be one of those nerds who’s not
smart.
Those are the worst kind.”

“Listen,” I stop her. “I’m really glad you’re here talking with me, and I’ve met a lot of people in here.”

“Uh-oh,” she says. “Is this the part where it gets all serious?”

“Yes,” I say. And when I say it, the way that I say it, I see that she understands that I’m serious about being serious. I can be serious now. I’ve been through some serious shit and I can be serious like somebody older.

“I like you a lot,” I start. No regrets. “Because you’re funny and smart and because you seem to like me. I know that’s not a good reason, but I can’t help it; if a girl likes me I tend to like her back.”

She doesn’t say anything. I dip my head at her. “Um, do you want to say anything?”

“No. No! This is fine. Keep going.”

“Well, okay, I’ve been thinking about how to put this. I like you for all this stuff but I also kind of like you for the cuts on your face—”

“Oh no, are you a fetishist?”

“What?”

“Are you like a blood fetishist? There was one of them in here before. He wanted to make me like his Queen of the Night or something.”

“No! It’s nothing like that. It’s like this: when people have problems, you know … I come in here and I see that people from all over have problems. I mean, the people that I’ve made friends with are pretty much a bunch of lowlifes, old drug addicts, people who can’t hold jobs; but then every few days, someone new comes in who looks like he just got out of a business meeting.”

Noelle nods. She’s seen them too: the scruffy youngish guy who came in today with a pile of books as if it were a reading retreat. The guy who came in yesterday in a suit and told me in the most practical way that he heard voices and they were a real pain in the ass; they didn’t say anything scary but they were always saying the stupidest stuff while he was in trial.

“And not only in here: all over. My friends are all calling me up now: this one’s depressed, that one’s depressed. I look at what the doctors hand out, and there are studies that show like, one fifth of Americans suffer from a mental illness, and suicide is the number-two killer among teenagers and all this crap … I mean
everybody’s
messed up.”

“What’s your point?”

“We
wear
our problems differently. Like I didn’t talk and stopped eating and threw up all the time—”

“You threw up?”

“Yeah. Bad. And I stopped sleeping. And when I started doing that, my parents noticed and my friends noticed, sort of—they kinda made fun of me—but I could go through the world without really letting on what was wrong. Until I came here. Now it’s like: something is wrong. Or was wrong, because it feels like it’s getting better.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“You’re out there about your problems,” I say. “You put them on your face.”

She stops, puts her hand in her hair.

“I cut my face because too many—too many people
wanted
something from me,” she tries to explain. “There was so much pressure, it was—”

“Something to live up to?”

“Exactly.”

“People told you you were hot and then all of a sudden they treated you different?”

“Right.”

“How?”

She sighs. “You have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can’t
trust
anyone anymore, because they’re all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how it was before …”

She pulls her face into one of those faces that could be laughing or crying—they use so many of the same muscles—and leans forward.

“And I didn’t want to be part of it,” she says. “I didn’t want to be part of that world.”

I grab her leaning into me, feel for the first time the soft dimple of her body. “Me neither.”

She puts her arms around me and we hold each other like that from our two chairs, like a house constructed over them, and I don’t move my hands at all and neither does she.

“I didn’t want to play the smart game,” I tell her. “And you didn’t want to play the pretty game.”

“The pretty game’s worse,” she whispers. “Nobody wants to
use
you for being smart.”

“People wanted to use you?”

“Someone did. Someone who shouldn’t.”

I stop.

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“Should I not touch you?”

“No, no, you didn’t do anything. It’s okay. But… yeah. It happened. And I lied before.”