The Genius of Little Things (27 page)

“Fired. Not working here. As of tomorrow. I begged the administration to let you finish today’s shift. We’re seriously short-handed.”

She took off her wire-rimmed glasses, folded them, and rubbed her eyes. She looked very tired. She shook her head and smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. “Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. Why’d you have to do it?”

“I wanted the job.”

“Yes. Of course.” She uttered a sigh/laugh.

“I’m sorry.”

“No sorrier than I am.”

I had nothing to say in my defense. But I did share one thing that had been bothering me. Right after Milagro Sanchez died, I hypothesized that she had tried to kill herself, that it was a self-suffocation. She had been caught with a cache of pills. It seemed plausible. I put that in my report. But the following night, a new resident had been put in Milagro’s old bed. Her name was Flora. The roommate, Edna Brown, was awake during my first round. I hadn’t made much small talk with her while Milagro was alive, mostly because every time I spoke louder than a whisper, she told me to shut up. When I asked Edna how she was getting along with her new roommate, she said Flora talked too much and she might just have to kill her, too. She said
too
.

I realize I miss a lot of sarcastic humor. But I thought this was something Mrs. Platt should know. I told her, with strong suggestion that Edna Brown may have murdered Milagro Sanchez. If she had murdered Milagro, or assisted Milagro in killing herself, Flora could be in danger.

Mrs. Platt thanked me for the information, as if I had merely handed her the nightly bed check status.

“Oh, one more thing.” She opened a drawer of a filing cabinet and pulled out Milagro’s box. She handed it to me. “I think she would want you to have it. She had no next of kin. If you don’t want it, we’ll throw it out.”

When I was clocking out, Courtney approached and said, “nice knowing ya,” as if it hadn’t been nice knowing me.

Back at Carl and Janet’s, I put Milagro’s box next to my own Box o’ Crap.

TWENTY-SIX

My grades hovered precariously in the low-A range. I should have received a B on my biology II test, but Mr. Proudfoot ignored the two etymology questions I answered incorrectly, and gave me a 97. I was fairly certain he overlooked my sloppiness because he was happy with my science fair proposal and was counting on me to raise the profile of Firebird High—and him, by extension—if not save the bees. With extra credit projects and perfect scores on my finals I could still pull down a 4.0 for the semester. Less than perfect grades would be fine for UNLV. Not so much for Caltech or any of the other schools on my fall back list.

I wasn’t working anymore, and Janet forbade me from looking for a job. But my plate was still full. I had my nursing class in the evening. It wasn’t needed now that I had been fired by Colonial Gardens. But I had paid for the course. I couldn’t get my money back.

Plus, I still had to apply to my fall back schools. Most of the deadlines for general admission were January 1. This meant about a dozen essays to write within two weeks. On the upside, I had over 200 pages of essay slush from my Caltech attempts. Surely some of that could be used.

With all that going on, I didn’t have time to get adequate sleep. And, frankly, I had become slightly addicted to my DIY speed regimen. Going cold turkey would send me into a spiral of sluggishness and headaches. Or worse. Without any way to contact Kel, I had no connection for real speed. So I maintained my regimen of over-the-counter cold medicine, Ritalin, Chinese herbs, and sometimes B vitamins. When I got the balance and timing right, the substances made me confident, capable, and focused. Other times they made me uptight and paranoid and scattered, like a headless chicken handling a nuclear warhead. That’s an example of a metaphor using incongruous imagery. I know this concept now because I used it poorly in an English lit essay, for which I earned a B plus.

Here’s an example of the twitchy Tyler. In the Creative Soul class, we played “the shakes,” where one person starts shaking a part of his or her body and “throws” his affliction to another member of the class. That person mimics the first shake and gradually moves it to another part of his body and changes it to a different type of movement. But we were not supposed to adopt all of the movements. I had zoned out for that part of the instruction. When a girl named Bree “threw” her head bob to me, I incorporated her bob and the shakes of everyone who came before her. I was a head bobbing, leg quivering, arm punching, hip thrusting psycho. I added a dog’s bark. Sound was not part of the exercise.

 Ms. Gurzy stopped me after class and asked if I was all right.

“Fine!” I said, and sped out of the room.

The Caltech letter didn’t help matters.

On December 16th I received a thin envelope with a Pasadena return address. Thin envelopes didn’t carry letters beginning with “congratulations.” I put the letter, unopened, in my Box o’ Crap. The letter sat there like a stink bomb. On Tuesday I opened the envelope.

Dear Tyler,

We regret to inform you… blah, blah, blah,
SCHEIZEN, SCHEIZEN
you thought you would ever be admitted here? HA! Good luck in finding another educational bride, blah, blah, blah, SO FARK OFF LOSER. AND YOUR BIOLOGY TEACHER WAS A
SCHEIZEN
STUDENT.

Sincerely,

Caltech admissions

I’m paraphrasing.

I didn’t put the letter back in my box. It went into the trash, but only after I had ripped it into tiny pieces and scattered them on Carl and Janet’s patio. As I screamed and tore the letter, Mr. Hansen’s scowling head peeked out of their upstairs window. I suppose he was worried that one of the pieces would blow over the fence and ruin the value of his house.

Mr. Proudfoot was not sympathetic to my Caltech rejection. In fact he said it was probably for the best. He finally filled me in on the Caltech drug scandal in the 80s. He said there was a group of students who started a meth lab in their dorm. From his description it wasn’t clear whether they were simply experimenting, or whether they were so stressed out and overworked that they had to take the stuff to keep up. The students ended up selling meth to some of the janitors, who became hooked on it. Mr. Proudfoot was still coy about whether he was involved. “Let’s just say I was acquainted with one of the perps,” he said.

I also learned a fact may have been helpful to have known sooner. Mr. Proudfoot attended Caltech, but only for two years, before he transferred to UNLV.

If I could have spewed steam from my ears, I would have.

“I told you I
went
to Caltech,” he said. “I didn’t say I graduated.” Clever use of semantics, Mr. Proudfoot.

The panic over being jobless, the disappointment of the Caltech rejection, and the stress of approaching finals caused the cheese to slide off my cracker. My English lit teacher would call that a whimsical euphemism. That phrase was a five-point question I missed on an exam. The correct term for what I experienced that week was
an acute, limited-time reactive disorder brought on by anxiety and/or depression.
Most non-medical people call it a nervous breakdown.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The day of my breakdown began no less auspiciously than any other. I was not working anymore, so I was able to get a normal night’s sleep. My morning routine went fine. I performed my final project in Creative Soul. I did a dramatic reading of some of my Caltech essay attempts while another guy in class played a didgeridoo behind me. It was weird enough for Ms. Gurzy to gush over it.

I had a stable, pleasant lunch with Rachel. Several students waved at me—they were still referring to me as condom man. This made Rachel blush. She was even prettier when she was embarrassed.

My American history exam was going well until I hit several questions regarding the 1960s, which was not supposed to be covered, unless I had taken a micro-nap when the teacher mentioned that. I figured I would receive a low A. That meant I would have to write an extra credit essay to prevent the possibility of a B for the semester. There would be no time to write such an essay.

All of this would have made it a half-
scheizen
day—good and bad, up and down—except for two things that sent the day into full-
scheizen
territory. First, I had badly spaced out my Ritalin, Sudafed and ginseng. This made me angry and twitchy, and it sent my paranoia spiking. Later in the day there was a legitimate reason for the paranoia.

 Between sixth and seventh periods, I saw Principal Nicks standing at an open locker—
my
open locker—with a pair of bolt cutters in his hand. A crowd had gathered. Principal Nicks turned and made a
come with me
hand gesture.

I had a hunch how Principal Nicks came to believe I was carrying illegal substances. The day before, during a game of catch in Creative Soul, I flung an air ball with such force that one girl reacted with an “ow.” Ms. Gurzy took me aside and asked how things were going in my life. I knew this was a diplomatic way of saying,
what the fark is wrong with you
? I informed her I was taking speed.

I know.
Dummkopf
.

In his office, Principal Nicks asked me to empty my pockets. I laid out three unused tissues, saline solution, Tums, ibuprofen, ginseng, aspirin and Sudafed. None of those things were reason to bust me. Then he found two Ritalin pills. Even they wouldn’t have been a problem if I had a prescription for them.

“Can you explain these?”

I couldn’t explain because I couldn’t talk. My mouth was moving but nothing came out but a thin wheeze. No amount of counting prime numbers or making grocery lists in my head would stop what was happening to my body. I tried using Zoe’s face buzz technique to open up my voice, but that made matters worse. The arm shake from the vocal technique turned into uncontrollable quivering. I collapsed on the floor. The last thing I heard was Principal Nicks. “You think this is funny?”

I awoke in room 3481 of Valley of Fire Medical Center. I was on some kind of drug that made me thick-tongued and pleasantly subdued. When I saw Carl sitting in a chair next to the bed, I assumed that I was hallucinating. Then he started speaking. He told me I would have to remain overnight for observation.

I considered apologizing for all the trouble I had caused, but Carl didn’t seem particularly bothered by the whole situation. And it took effort to form words and thoughts, so I let it go. Carl stayed around and watched junk TV shows with me. Occasionally he would say something like, “Rome went down better than this,” to indicate he thought the show was deplorable.

Around 8 p.m., a nurse came in with another pill, just in time, because I had begun to sweat and panic. Twenty minutes later, I returned to a gauzy dreaminess. A commercial for chicken came on, and the happy TV mother kept repeating, “CHICK-en, CHICK-en, CHICK-en,” as if her only goal in life were to annoy me with her insane buoyancy and that horrible C-K sound. But I wasn’t annoyed. Good stuff, that medication.

Around 9 p.m., Janet burst into the room. She regarded me with a curious lack of sympathy.

“You’re watching TV.” She said this in a tone that was relieved, disappointed and ticked off, all at once. Maybe she thought, after she had gone to the trouble to book a last minute flight, that I owed the courtesy of a serious infirmity.

“That man dancing used to be a congressman, because he’s fat, or maybe he’s an actor,” I said, dumbly.

Janet paced in a circle, her arms rigidly pointing to the floor. I thought for an instant she might start circling tighter and tighter, as if competing in ice dancing at the Olympics.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Carl said.

Janet stopped circling. “He’s in the hospital. How is this not a big deal? Did you know Tyler was a drug addict?”

Not serious drugs. Just over-the-counter drugs and someone else’s prescription. That was what I was going to say. But my mouth was slow.

“He’s hardly a drug addict,” Carl said.

“Ritalin! Where did he get that?”

“From a nice janitor at work who has arm tattoos,” I said.

“How lovely!” she said.

“No, the tattoos are kind of bizarre.

She cut me off. “Why does Levi have your phone? I tried calling.”

“Oh. Yeah. I gave it to him.”

Janet plopped onto a chair and scowled at Carl. “He can’t work at that nursing home anymore. Not at night, not any time.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve been fired.” My voice was light and whimsical, as if I had just said,
I have a pet rabbit.
For the record, I’ve never had a pet.

“Were you fired because of drugs?” Janet said.

“It was for a fake I.D.” I said. “Did you know I look like a 1980s Christian Slater? I haven’t seen his movies. Maybe there’s one on TV now.” I pawed the night stand for the remote, which remained out of reach.