Michael Ford - Suicide Notes

Rankin didn’t look at me as he walked out of the room. He didn’t look at Moonie or Carl either. He rushed by them and down the hall. I looked at Nurse Moon, my heart pounding in my chest.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Who was screaming?”

“It’s Martha,” Moonie told me.

That scared me. “Is she all right?” I asked. “What happened? Is she hurt?” I started to go toward the door.

“Don’t you worry about her,” said Nurse Moon, holding up her hand so that I stopped. “She had a bad dream. That’s all.”

I nodded. I know all about dreams that make you want to scream. Then I remembered why Carl and Nurse Moon were in my room in the first place.

“We were just…” I began.

Moonie interrupted me. “Dr. Katzrupus will talk to you in the morning,” she said. “Good night.”

That was it. Good night. Like she was tucking me in. No yelling. No “ I’m very disappointed in you .” No nothing. And you know what? That was worse. If she’d yelled, or seemed disgusted, or even at all upset, I would have felt better. But she treated it like she didn’t care. Like it didn’t matter.

Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know anymore. Maybe Sadie is right and it’s just something guys do. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. I’d really rather not talk about it with Cat Poop, though. It’s exactly the kind of thing he writes about on his stupid pad.

When I finally fell asleep after Moonie left, I had the weirdest dream.

First we were in group—all of us, even the people who are gone now. Cat Poop asked us to go around the circle and say what we were most afraid of. Alice said she was afraid of being alone. Bone said he was afraid of cars, which seemed weird until I remembered the whole gas station thing. Juliet said she was afraid of teeth, which because she’s Juliet didn’t seem strange at all. Rankin said he was afraid of losing. Martha didn’t say anything.

Sadie said she wasn’t afraid of anything, and I believed her. In my dream it was like she had this force field around her that protected her from everything the rest of us have to watch out for. Then she looked at me and said, “Once you realize there’s nothing to be afraid of when you die, there’s nothing else to worry about.”

When it was my turn, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked around at the rest of the group and thought how messed up they all were. Then I looked at my wrists and realized that they were bleeding again. I pulled my sleeves down to cover them, but I could feel the blood soaking through, and I was afraid everyone was going to notice and start laughing at me.

When I woke up from the dream, I felt weird. I can’t really explain it. There was this knot in my stomach, the same kind I get when I wake up the morning of a big test I know I haven’t studied enough for. Then I remembered Rankin, and that I was going to have to talk to Cat Poop about what happened, and I knew why the knot was there.

I’ll never know what Sadie would have thought about my dream. I was going to tell her, but she…

No. Wait. I have to start at the beginning. If I don’t, I’m going to get everything mixed up, because right now it’s all swirling around in my brain. I can catch bits and pieces of it, but trying to see the whole picture at once is really hard. I don’t even know if I want to see it. If I see it, I might fall apart.

So yesterday morning, after the famous Jeff and Rankin Get Busted incident, I got dressed and walked down the hall to the lounge. (I did not take a shower, which is a little gross, but I don’t exactly have a great track record in that department lately.) Part of me expected everyone to be lined up, waiting to tell me how awful I was before they threw me out. But no one else was up. Instead, Goody was sitting at the desk, reading a file. I wondered if it was mine, and if she knew what had happened.

“Dr. Katzrupus is waiting for you in his office,” she said, answering that question.

I walked down the hall to Cat Poop’s door and knocked. He opened it and I walked into his office, not saying anything or even looking at him. I sat down in the chair across from his desk and waited for him to tell me I was leaving.

“Do you want to talk about what happened last night?” he said.

“Not really,” I told him. “But I’ll bet a million bucks that you do.”

He nodded. “Do you have anything to say about it?”

I shook my head.

“Let me ask you this,” said Cat Poop. “How did it happen?”

“What do you mean, how did it happen?”

“How did it happen?” he repeated. “I think it’s a pretty straightforward question.”

I kind of huffed at him. It was a stupid question, is what it was. I shrugged. “He came into my room, got into my bed, and tried to butt burgle me,” I said.

Cat Poop pushed his glasses up. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” I answered. “Trust me, if some guy tries to stick his junk in you, you know it.”

“I meant that you’re certain you didn’t encourage Rankin in any way.”

I had to think about that one. I mean, Rankin’s the one who’s started it every time we’ve done anything. But it’s not like he’s ever forced me to do it, and until last night I’ve never exactly told him not to do what he’s done. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have kept trying. But I didn’t want to tell Cat Poop that. It would just make me look like a victim, and he’d want to talk about it even more.

“Are you suggesting that I asked for it because I wore my sexy boxers?” I asked instead.

“I spoke to Rankin this morning,” said the doc. “He said that it was you who talked him into doing it.”

“What?” I said. “He said I started it?”

I couldn’t believe that Rankin had lied. Well, yes, I could. Still, I was pissed off. “It was not my idea,” I said, more to myself than to Cat Poop. “He’s the one who came to my room. He’s the one who’s a—”

I stopped myself from saying it. But I thought it. A fag. Rankin was the fag around here. Not me.

Cat Poop pushed his glasses up his nose again. I almost told him to knock it off. “Jeff, I have to tell you that this is a serious breach of hospital rules. You could be asked to leave the program.”

“Finally,” I muttered. “If I’d known that, I would have done it a long time ago.”

“Unless,” said the doc, “there’s some other reason for your behavior. Something that relates to your overall reason for being here.”

It took me a minute to understand what he was saying. When I did, I got mad. “Nice,” I said. “You’re trying to get me to talk by threatening to kick me out for something I didn’t do. Where’d they teach you that, shrink torture school?”

Cat Poop leaned forward. “All I’m asking you is if what you did with Rankin has any connection to why you hurt yourself,” he said.

“No,” I said instantly. “It has nothing to do with it. I mean, I fooled around with Sadie, too, and that didn’t mean…”

I stopped, realizing that I’d just made a huge mistake.

“You and Sadie—” Cat Poop started to say. His finger was already halfway to his nose.

“No,” I interrupted. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What exactly did you mean?” he asked.

I searched around in my head for some answer to give him, anything that could erase what I’d already said. But I knew I couldn’t. I’d gone too far.

“All right,” I said. “Yeah, I fooled around with Sadie. But I couldn’t.” I looked at my hands, which were in my lap. My fingers were wrestling with each other.

“Couldn’t what?”