Michael Ford - Suicide Notes

I didn’t know if she was talking about my wrist, my cut, or nothing in particular. It was sort of like a scene in one of those sci-fi movies where a human and an alien are trying to communicate and neither really knows what the other is saying. Like the alien says “Frex,” and the human doesn’t know if it means “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you” or “I’ve laid an egg in your stomach and it’s about to hatch, so kiss your butt good-bye.”

Martha touched her chest again, where her heart is, and repeated herself a couple of times—“frex, frex, frex”—just like that. She said it almost like she was singing a song.

That’s when I got it. All of a sudden it made sense. She was talking about hurting. My scar and her heart. Whatever “frex” is to her, it means something that hurts. Who knows how she came up with that word. I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s her word, and now I know what it means.

That’s all that happened. There wasn’t any big emotional scene or anything. Martha didn’t all of a sudden tell me her life story and solve the mystery of why she doesn’t talk. But it was kind of cool anyway.

Later on I told Cat Poop what had happened. I thought he’d jump up and down and push his glasses up, but he just smiled and nodded.

“Did you already know?” I asked him, but he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself. She opened up to you.”

“Why should I feel proud?” I asked him. “I didn’t do anything. She’s the one who did the talking.”

“You let her know it was okay to tell you,” he said.

Whatever. I hate to rain on his parade, but I didn’t do anything. I’m not going to get all excited about her saying “frex.” I still don’t know why she would talk to me and not other people. But how weird is it that she made up that word? Frex. Hurt. I guess she was saying that her heart hurts because of what happened to her. I wonder if she’ll ever really be able to talk about it, or if she’s so inside herself that this is as good as it gets. Like Alice.

In other news, I forgot that Allie’s birthday was yesterday. Not that it’s really my fault. You don’t exactly keep track of the date so well around here. The days all kind of run into each other, like one big long one that never ends. But today I happened to look at the date on the newspaper at the nurses’ station and realized I’d missed Allie’s birthday. She turned sixteen. I’ll be sixteen this summer, so she’s got half a year on me. That never bothered her, though. She always called herself “the older woman.”

I wonder what she did for her birthday. Actually, I don’t wonder at all. I know what she did. She spent it with Burke. He’s her boyfriend. He probably took her to the movies or maybe out for pizza. I bet he bought her some stupid present she normally wouldn’t even like, and I bet she gushed over it like it was the best thing ever.

It makes me sick how she gets all stupid over him. She was never like that before. She never let a guy turn her into something she’s not. Then Burke came along and everything changed. Everything.

I don’t get how someone can become a different person overnight, but Allie did. It was like there was this whole other girl living inside of her, and one night that girl broke through and took over. One day we were doing everything together, and the next everything was over. She just threw it all away.

The worst part is, you know they’re not going to be together forever. I mean, come on, she’s fifteen. Okay, sixteen. Still. It’s not like they’re going to get married or anything. Even if they last a couple of years—which they won’t—she’ll go to one college and he’ll go to another, and pretty soon they’ll forget all about each other. That’s what always happens. That’s why teenage dating is so dumb, because it’s doomed to fail. You’d think people would have learned that by now, but I guess they haven’t. They go right on falling in love and thinking it’s going to survive high school. Allie and Burke, true love always.

Whatever.

Anyway, happy birthday, Allie. I hope it was a good one.

As Sadie says, “And then there were four.” Again.

Today in group Cat Poop announced that it was Bone’s last day in the program. When he said it, Juliet’s face kind of fell, but she didn’t say anything. I don’t think she’s been quite so excited about him since he made fun of Alice.

Good for Bone that he’s getting out, I guess. I know he’s a little scared about it, because he said so in group. I was really surprised that he said anything. I mean, we’ve talked some, but it’s not like he’s ever said very much about himself. But today he did.

It turns out his parents don’t want him to come home. They don’t think they can trust him not to get into trouble. As usual, he didn’t explain what kind of trouble he meant. But by now I’m used to not knowing anything about Bone, and I didn’t ask. Nobody did. I think we like that he’s our Mystery Man. It means we can make up whatever story we want about him.

Anyway, he’s going to stay with his older brother and his brother’s wife. They live in a little town somewhere in Arizona and own a gas station. Bone’s going to work at the gas station until he figures out what he wants to be when he grows up. That’s not what he’s afraid of, though. He’s afraid that people will find out about him being in a psychiatric hospital and think he’s some kind of criminal or something. He’s afraid they’ll tell their kids to stay away from him and cross the street when they see him. “Don’t talk to the crazy man, honey. He might bite you.”

Coming from someone covered in tattoos, this seemed a little strange. I mean, you can see tattoos. You can’t see crazy. If I was him, I’d be more worried about people thinking he was in a gang or something.

Later, after my session with Cat Poop, I went into the lounge. Bone was in there watching a talk show, one of those with a host so perky you want to slap her. The topic was people who wanted to make over their friends who they thought looked too weird.

One of the girls on the show wanted her sister to stop dressing like what she called a punk. She said people made fun of her when she went outside, and that people thought she was a Satan worshipper and stomped on kittens or something. The host kept frowning and shaking her head. Then they brought the girl out. She was totally Goth. Her hair was all black, and she had on pancake makeup and blood red lipstick. She was a little overweight, and she looked like Robert Smith from the Cure. I thought she was kind of cute.

As soon as she came out, the audience started booing, like she’d murdered her best friend or slept with her dad’s new wife. Then the host asked her why she dressed like she did, and she said, “Because I like to.” The audience booed again, and her sister screamed, “People think she’s a lesbian!” The Goth girl covered her face with her hands like she was all embarrassed.

Then they went to a commercial, and when they came back from telling us about how fresh we’d all feel if we used panty shields with wings, they’d done the makeovers. They hauled out all of these people whose friends thought they looked too strange, and now they all looked like they’d been trapped inside a J.Crew store for a night and come out different people.

They saved the Goth girl for last, and when they brought her out she was wearing this flowered dress and big dangly earrings and Mary Jane shoes. When her sister saw her, she started crying, and the audience gave her this standing ovation because she didn’t look freaky anymore. When she sat down, the host flashed this series of pictures of her, starting with her baby picture and going on up until high school. The audience oohed and aahed at how pretty she was as a little girl—all blonde curls and wide eyes. Then the last photo was of her all Gothed-out, and the audience hissed.