Not As Crazy As I Seem (8 page)

"Okay, Devon. I get the idea."

Maybe he gets the idea, but my minute isn't over and I'm going to play this game exactly by the rules. "Shoot myself. Shoot myself. Shoot myself. Shoot myself..."

My sixty seconds are up. Dr. W. takes the card from me and puts the deck back in his desk. I guess he doesn't want to play this game anymore.

"We haven't talked much about your new school, Devon. How do you like it?"

"It's like regular school, only the kids are smarter."

"How are you doing making friends?"

"I don't know. How many am I supposed to have after a month?"

"There's no set number. Some people have lots of friends, others need just one good friend."

"I don't need friends."

"Do you
want
friends?"

"Yes ... no ... I don't think about it."

"Everybody needs friends. You know, studies show that people with friends are healthier and happier, and they..."

Here we go with another friends lecture. My father says it's a medical fact that people with lots of friends live longer. I can see the bumper sticker: Friends Help Friends Live Longer. The thing is, I don't care about living longer. Maybe when I'm ready to die I'll care about it, but not now.

"Friends can be very helpful to you, Devon."

"Okay, I've made a friend already. There's this girl I eat lunch with sometimes. I think she likes me."

"That's good. Is there a chance you might ask her out on a date?"

A date? Is he crazy? I don't think Tanya's going to jump from Alonzo to me. "We're not that kind of friends."

"What about boy friends?"

"Boyfriends?"

"Friends who are boys."

"Oh, yeah, I got a kid who's a friend, too. He asked me to do something with him last week during school." What he asked me to do was smoke weed with him, but I'm not going to mention that.

"That's nice. What's he like?"

"I don't know what he likes, the usual stuff, I guess."

"I mean, what
is
he like."

"Oh, he's got purple hair and he wears army boots and he's kind of skinny like me and he calls everybody a Nazi."

"Sounds like a lively boy. How did you meet him?"

"He just started talking to me one day after art. He
probably doesn't have any friends—that's why he came up to me."

"Maybe he has other friends and he just wanted to get to know you in particular."

"Actually, he's probably a loser like me. One loser can always tell another."

Dr. W. stares at me for a while and then stands up and goes to his file cabinet. He pulls out a notebook covered in plastic.

"I like to be clear with my clients as to what my goal is in these sessions, and with you, Devon, it's figuring out what makes you anxious, what compels you to do things ... eat a certain number of M&Ms, for instance. There could be a chemical imbalance in your brain, or perhaps you've developed a way of interacting with the world based on some experiences early in your childhood. Another possibility is that you have diminished self-esteem—you're not sure how you fit into social situations with people, and so you're always trying little tricks to make sure things go right for you. For now that's the possibility I want to address." He opens the book, and I see it isn't a real book at all. "These are motivational tapes. I'd like you to put them on your tape player as you walk to school, or listen to them in your bedroom. I think you'll find them pretty powerful."

I take the book and run my hand across the smooth, cold plastic. Sure, I can use motivation, but to do what?

The tapes
are
pretty powerful, just like Dr. W. said. What I especially like is that you don't really have to think at all. You just listen.

The first thing I'm learning is that I can do anything I want in life, if I just have enough self-esteem. The man on the tape says, "You, too, will be able to produce miracles." I guess he means getting rid of my tendencies—that would be a miracle.

I've already listened to cassette one, and it's made me hungry. So I go downstairs and help myself to a bowl of Jell-O and a blueberry muffin and a Kudos bar and four Hershey's Kisses and a big glass of Newman's Own Old-Fashioned Roadside Virgin Lemonade, which Mom buys just for me, so I'm allowed to drink it out of the carton. It tastes better than regular lemonade, and I like the name.

It's surprising how simple this self-esteem really is. I always thought you got it from making A's in class, being the star at sports, and other stuff like that. But the tape says that self-esteem isn't about achieving anything—it's what you think about yourself not achieving anything.

All you need to do is think good thoughts about yourself. The way you do that is by getting rid of all the bad thoughts other people are putting into your head about you. The tapes even give you magic words to do this—"Cancel Cancel." When somebody calls me crazy or looks at me like I'm weird, I'm supposed to think to myself:
No matter what you say or do to me, I'm still a good person.
Then I'm to say, "Cancel Cancel," which erases the negative thoughts.

I wonder about that. Why isn't one Cancel enough? And if two Cancels are good, why aren't three better? I bet four would be perfect for me.

***

When Mom comes home from work, she stops by my room and sticks her head in the door. She's holding her large leather briefcase, which means she has work to do tonight.

"How did your session go today, Devon?"

"It went."

She gives me her irritated look.

"It went okay. Dr. Wasserman gave me some motivational tapes, and I've been listening to them. They're pretty powerful."

"What are the tapes supposed to motivate you to do?"

That's what I was wondering. Mom thinks like me sometimes. Or maybe I think like her.

"Get self-esteem. The doc thinks I don't have enough of it."

"Well, I'm glad you're enjoying going to him. Your father should be home soon, and then we'll have dinner."

With that she closes my door, leaving me wondering how she could think I enjoy going to a shrink.

The difficult thing with self-esteem is keeping other people from interfering with it. For instance, when Ms. Hite in English asked this kid Carl to define
antebellum,
he said "beautiful aunt." I thought he was making a joke and laughed. Nobody else did. Everybody looked at me. I felt terrible for laughing at him, especially since he looks kind of like an ostrich. I'm not making fun of him, really—I'm just describing how he looks. Anyway, Ms. Hite gave me the most surprised expression I've ever seen on a teacher. How does she know me well enough to be surprised about something I did? It's only been five weeks. Maybe I'm one of those thoughtless kids who laughs at other people all the time.

Then in gym class Coach got so mad at me for showing up without my Baker shorts and T-shirt again that he threw a ratty old uniform at me and told me to put it on. It looked like it had been worn by a thousand kids who'd forgotten their gym clothes over the years. I picked up the shirt and shorts, and they smelled like ammonia. I walked to the locker room as if I was going to change into them, then just kept going to the nurse's office. I told Mrs. Cahill I felt sick, and she let me lie down on her couch. The room smelled like Bactine. I fell asleep.

After a day like that I need a hit of self-esteem. So I put away my schoolbooks and lock myself in the bathroom with the tapes. Then I strip down to nothing for the Nude Mirror Exercise. With the sink in the way, I can only see the top half of myself, which is good because I don't think I'm ready to try self-esteem on the bottom half of me yet.

I start at the top of my head. How can anyone be born with red hair? It's unnatural. God, I look like a flamer!
Cancel Cancel.
"Okay," I say out loud, because that's what the tape tells me to do. "I'd look pretty lame without any hair at all, wouldn't I? And it is curly—girls like curly hair. There, two positive things about my hair."

With that taken care of, I move on to the other parts of my face. "Ears, I'm sorry you're so small—no, I'm not sorry. I love small ears. They're better than big ears any day. Eyes, I shouldn't wish you were blue. You look great muddy brown or whatever color you are. And crooked teeth, well, obviously you're why I never smile and people think I'm depressed all the time. But that's okay because I
am
pretty depressed most of the time. Ears, eyes, teeth—I love you all!"

I lean over the sink, and even though the tape doesn't
say to do this, I figure I deserve a quick kiss on the lips for being so lovable. Actually, now that I think about it, the lips are the only place you can kiss yourself in a mirror. That's kind of cool.

Tanya and I have gotten our lunch routine down. I talked to her a few times in English before Alonzo showed up for class, and now she comes out on the back steps to eat with me every Monday and Friday. The other days she has clubs or other stuff to do.

Today's Friday, and she's three minutes late. I open my lunch bag and see the four plastic bags—carrots, wafers, M&Ms, and sandwich. I reach in for the wafers—I even open the bag—then put them back. I've never started eating before she came, so if I do this time maybe she won't come. She could be sick, or in trouble. She could have gotten back together with Alonzo. Or maybe I disrespected her again and didn't know it. There's an awful lot to think about with a girl.

"What's up?"

It's Tanya, and she's wearing a yellow jacket with black stripes on the arms, the colors of The Baker Academy.

"Nothing. I was just getting ready to eat."

She sits down next to me, on the left, where I always leave room for her.

"Isn't it hard eating with those gloves on?"

"Not really. I'm used to it, and these aren't very thick gloves."

She wiggles her fingers. "It's not even that cold today."

"I know, but I have this problem with my circulation. My blood's kind of thin, so it doesn't move around my body right, and my hands get really cold."

"Let me feel."

She puts her hands out in the air between us, waiting for me to take off my gloves.

"Well, they wouldn't feel cold to you. It's on the inside they feel cold, to me. So it wouldn't be any use you feeling them."

She stares at me. She has this way of staring that's kind of unnerving. "You don't want me to touch your hands?"

"No, it's not that. It's just that these gloves are really tight 'cause they're made for handball. So they're hard to get on and off."

She knows I'm making this up. She probably even knows that I know that she knows. Still, she isn't calling me a liar or anything.

"Well, maybe someday when you're not wearing your gloves I can feel your hand."

I haven't touched anybody's hand since I used to sit with Granddad when he was sick. His fingers were all twisted up from arthritis, and it was like holding a beer pretzel.

Tanya's hand isn't anything like his. Her fingers are
straight and long. Her nails are bright red. Her hands are as big as mine. I wonder what it would feel like to hold them.

She finishes her ice cream cone. "Food tastes better outside—you ever notice that?"

I never had, but I nod.

She folds up her ice cream wrapper and sticks it in her backpack. "You know what I hate? It's when you're telling something to somebody, and before you're even finished they say, 'Oh yeah, that's like...' and then they start telling
you
something. That's annoying."

I could see how that would be annoying, so I nod again. Tanya reaches up to her earring, which looks like a tiny cross, and starts playing with it.

"How come you never ask me to do anything?"

"Like what?"

"Like go to a movie."

"I don't go to movies."

"Why not?"

"It's kind of hard for me to sit still for two hours, you know. I get to thinking about stuff."

"Like what?"

Should I tell her this? I don't want to scare her away. She already knows I eat four of everything for lunch and that I won't take my gloves off. How many more weird things about me can she take knowing?

"I get kind of nervous, that's all."

"Nervous about what?"

This is getting hard. I give her an answer and she comes right back with another question. I don't even have time to think. I eat a wafer.

"Do you really want to know? Because you might think I'm crazy if I tell you."

"I don't mind crazy."

"Okay. Well, in a movie things happen between the actors—that's what most people are looking at. But me, I'll see something in the background, and I'll want to change it. Like inside a house, I'll see the shades on the windows. One of them will be halfway down and the other will be three-quarters down. I'll sit there the whole movie wanting somebody to make them both the same."

"How come?"

"I don't know. I get to thinking something bad's going to happen if they don't. Like maybe there's a dog in the movie. I just know he's going to get run over by a car, unless somebody makes the shades even."

Tanya stretches her legs on the steps, and it surprises me that they reach farther down than mine.

"But the movie has already been made. What's going to happen already happened. You can't change anything."

"Yeah, I know, that's why I don't go to movies."

She shrugs, and I can't tell if that means she understands or doesn't.

Still lifes.

What could be duller than drawing things that don't move? Why not call them "still deads"?

Why does the world go so slow? Why don't flowers grow a foot an hour and stars race across the sky and winds blow like a hurricane every day? Why does it take so long for things to freeze and melt? Why can't people leap
like cats instead of creeping along, one dumb foot at a time? I would have made things happen a lot more quickly, if I'd been in charge. God made things pretty boring. I think He created it for adults, not for kids.

I pull out my sketchpad and stare at the bowl of pears and apples and one green banana that Mrs. Cohen has arranged on her desk. I try to will something to happen with this fruit—maybe a worm crawling from the apple, or the banana magically peeling itself, or one of the pears exploding. Then I'd have something to draw.