Sadie shook her head. “You need a better system than that.”
“Maybe you ask,” I suggested.
“If you have to ask, the answer is probably no. Do you think your parents love you?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I answered. “I do. They may be a little whacked, but they love me.”
“Do they tell you they do?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “My mom more than my dad, but I think that’s usually how it goes.”
Sadie looked at me for a long time. “You’re lucky,” she said finally.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Am I lucky? Am I lucky that I didn’t die? Am I lucky that, compared to the other kids here, my life doesn’t seem so bad? Maybe I am, but I have to say, I don’t feel lucky. For one thing, I’m stuck in this pit. And just because your life isn’t as awful as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You can’t compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn’t work. What might look like the perfect life—or even an okay life—to you might not be so okay for the person living it.
God, this place is starting to rub off on me. I sound like Cat Poop. I wonder what he would think if I told him about Allie. He’d probably ask me if I’m in love with her.
Day 08
This is my one-week anniversary at Club Meds. Instead of a party, my big surprise was that my parents came to see me. Or they came because someone told them to, at least. Anyway, when I walked into Cat Poop’s office for what I thought was going to be my usual brain-picking session, there they were. At first I thought I was seeing things, or that two people who just happened to look like my parents were there for their own session and I was interrupting. But it was them. They were sitting on the couch.
When she saw me, my mother stood up and started to come toward me, but then stopped. I think maybe Cat Poop had told her not to make any sudden movements because they might scare me, like I’m a wild animal or something, because she kept looking at him and then at me. Finally she just said, “Hello, Jeff,” and sat down again next to my father.
I sat in the big chair across from the couch and didn’t say anything. I mean, really, what do you say to your parents when the last time they saw you, you were practically dead and they had to call the paramedics? It’s not exactly your typical “How was school today?” kind of thing. And it’s not like we’ve ever been into the whole sharing thing, anyway. We’re not huggers.
“Jeff, is there anything you would like to say to your parents?” Cat Poop said when we’d all been quiet for what seemed like a hundred years.
Is there anything I’d like to say to them? I thought. Yeah, there was. Why didn’t you just let me die?, for starters. Why’d you have to come home early from your stupid party? Why’d you have to put me in this place with a bunch of whack-jobs?
But what I actually said was, “What did you tell everyone?”
My mother rubbed her hands together. “We told Amanda that you were in the hospital,” she said. “We didn’t tell her why.”
“She’s thirteen, not four,” I said. “She must have asked.” I know my sister. She’s got to know everything about everyone. She can tell you which girl at school just got her period for the first time and who’s thinking about asking who to the dance. There was no way she hadn’t asked them what was going on.
My mom looked at my dad, who looked at the floor. “We told your sister you were having some… problems,” he said.
I laughed. I don’t know why it was funny to me that they hadn’t told Amanda the truth, but it was. And I knew they were lying about what they did tell her. They must have told her something else. I wondered what she thought was wrong with me. Cancer? A brain tumor? I couldn’t wait to find out.
“What about everybody else?” I asked my parents. “What did you tell my school?”
“We told them you were going to be out for a while,” my dad said. “That’s all.”
“Haven’t any of my friends called to find out what’s up?”
“Amanda has been letting them know that you’re sick,” said my mother.
“Sick,” I repeated. So that’s how they thought of me, as being sick. Poor little Jeff, sick and in the hospital while the doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with him. The idea of everyone feeling sorry for me made me angry.
“What about Allie?” I asked, surprising myself.
“She hasn’t called,” my mother said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Is there anything the two of you would like to say to Jeff?” Cat Poop asked my parents.
“We love you,” my mother said.
I nodded. Like I said before, Hallmark moments aren’t my style.
“And we want you to get better,” added my father. “So you can come home.”
I won’t bore you with the rest. There really isn’t much more, anyway. Basically, we all sat there for forty-five minutes not saying anything unless the doc made us. Then there was this awkward good-bye part where my mother broke the no-hugging rule and my father patted me on the back. Then they left. Cat Poop had me stay, and when he came back from showing my parents out he asked me how I felt things had gone.
“You could have warned me,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “Did you feel threatened by seeing them?”
“No,” I told him. “I just wasn’t expecting it, is all.”
“Were you embarrassed?”
“It’s not like the last time I saw them I was winning the national spelling bee or making the game-winning touchdown or anything,” I said.
“Who’s Allie?” he asked.
“What?” I said, pretending not to hear him, and kicking myself for saying her name. Of course he was going to jump on that.
“Allie,” he repeated. “You asked your parents if Allie had called to ask about you.”
“Oh, right. Allie. She’s a friend from school.”
“Tell me about her.”
I shrugged. “There’s not much to tell,” I said, hoping I sounded casual about it. “She’s just a girl I’ve been friends with for a while.”
“But it’s important for you to know that she cares what’s happened to you.” He said it like it was a fact, not a question.
I didn’t want to answer him. But he was waiting for me to say something.
“She and I were kind of going out,” I said finally. “God, you’re nosy. You’re worse than my sister.”
Cat Poop wrote something on his pad, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. I wondered how much time was left in our session and prayed it wasn’t much.
As if he could read my mind, he put his pen down. “That’s all for today,” he said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Oh, and your parents will be coming once a week from now on, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I got out of there as fast as I could, and I’ve been feeling weird the rest of the day. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because at first I thought getting out of this place would be a piece of cake. But I think I might have been wrong.
Day 09
Day 9 feels more like Year 100. The worst thing is, I think it’s starting to rub off on me. The crazy, I mean. Especially Sadie. I keep thinking about how she tried to kill herself.
That sounds so weird: “kill yourself.” It makes it sound like you tried to murder someone, only that someone is you. But killing someone is wrong, and I don’t think suicide is. It’s my life, right? I should be able to end it if I want to. I don’t think it’s a sin.
Everyone seems obsessed with it, though. I mean, think about it. We keep people alive on death row just so we can kill them later. We put prisoners on suicide watch so they can’t do themselves in before we get the chance to put them on trial. That doesn’t make any sense. Why is it okay to put someone to death, but it’s not okay for those people to do it themselves?