Нед Виззини - It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Craig?”

“Very anxious,” I answer.

“The e-mail anxiety, and the failure talk . . . These are subjects you’ve brought up before. They’re very distressing to you.”

“I know. I’m sweating.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. And I haven’t been sweating for a while.”

“You’ve been away from your Tentacles.”

“Right. Not anymore. Now I get to go back and they’re all right there for me.”

“Do you remember what I asked you last time, about whether or not you’d found any Anchors in here?”

“Yes.”

She pauses. In order to ask a question, it is often possible for Dr. Minerva only to intimate that she might ask a question.

“I think I’ve found one,” I sigh.

“What’s that?”

“Can I get up and get it?”

“Absolutely.”

I leave the office and walk down the hall, where Bobby is leading a new recruit on his welcoming tour—a black guy with wild teeth and a stained blue sweatsuit.

“This is Craig,” Bobby says. “He’s real young, but he’s on the level. He does drawings.”

I shake the man’s hand. That’s right. I do drawings.

“Human Being,” the man says.

“That’s his name,” Bobby explains, rolling his eyes.

“Your name isn’t Craig; it’s Human Being too,” the man says.

I nod, break the handshake, and keep walking to my room. It’s literally like breaking away from a monster—the further I get from thinking about e-mail and Dr. Minerva and the fact that I’m going to have to leave here and go back to Executive Pre-Professional, the calmer I get. And the closer I get to the brain maps, to this little stupid thing I can do, the calmer I get.

I walk past Muqtada—he’s staring and trying to sleep—and take my art off the radiator cover. I cradle it in a stack past Bobby and Human Being—who’s now explaining how his real last name is Green and that’s what he needs, some green—back into the office.

“I kinda like it in here,” I say to Dr. Minerva.

“This room?”

“No, the hospital.”

“When you’re finished, you can volunteer.”

“I talked to the guitar guy Neil about that. I think I’ll try. I can get school credit!”

“Is that the reason you should volunteer, Craig—”

“No, no . . .” I shake my head. “I’m just joking.”

“Ah.” Dr. Minerva cuts her face into a wide smile. “So what do we have here?”

I plop them down on the table. There are two dozen now. No kind of crazy breakthroughs, just variations on a theme: pigs with brain maps that resemble St. Louis, my couple for Noelle joined by the sweeping bridge, a family of metropolises.

“Your artwork,” she says.

She leafs through them, going “Oh, my” at the particularly good ones. I constructed this stack last night—not just for Dr. Minerva, for anybody. The brain maps have a certain order. Ever since I’ve been doing them, they’ve been making it clear that they should be stacked for presentation.

“Craig, these are wonderful.”

“Thanks.” I sit down. We were both standing. I didn’t even notice.

“You started these because you used to do them when you were four?”

“Right. Well. Something like them.”

“And how do they make you feel?”

I look at the pile. “Awesome.”

She leans in. “Why?”

I have to think about that one, and when Dr. Minerva makes me think, I don’t get embarrassed and try to skip it. I look to the left and stroke my chin.

“Because I do them,” I say. “I do them and they’re done. It’s almost like, you know, peeing?”

“Yes . . .” Dr. Minerva nods. “Something you enjoy.”

“Right. I do it; it’s successful; it feels good; and I know it’s good. When I finish one of these up I feel like I’ve actually done something and like the rest of my day can be spent doing whatever, stupid crap, e-mail, phone calls, all the rest of it.”

“Craig, have you ever considered the fact that you might be an artist?”

“I have other stuff too,” I keep going. What’d she say? “First of all I was thinking about this perpetual candle, like a candle on the ground with another candle hanging upside-down over it, and as the first candle melts the wax is kept molten by some kind of hot containment unit and gets pumped up to the second candle and drips down like a stalactite-stalagmite thing, and then I was also thinking: what if you filled a shoe with whipped cream? Just a man’s shoe, filled with whipped cream? That’s pretty easy to do. And then you could keep going: a T-shirt filled with Jell-O, a hat full of applesauce . . . that’s art, right? That kind of stuff. What’d you say about artists?”

She chuckles. “You seem to enjoy what you’re doing here.”

“Yeah, well, duh, it’s not the most difficult thing in the world.”

“You’re not sweating now.”

“This is a good Anchor for me,” I say. I admit. I admit it. It’s a stupid thing to admit. It means that I’m not practical. But then again, I’m already in the loony bin; how practical am I going to get? I might have to give up on practical.

“That’s right, Craig. This can be your Anchor.” Dr. Minerva stares at me and doesn’t blink. I look at her face, the wall behind her, the door, the shades, the table, my hands on the table, the Brain Maps between us. I could do the one on the top a little better. I could try putting some wood grain in there with the streets. Knots of wood in people’s heads. That could work. “This can be my Anchor.” I nod. “But. . .”

“What, Craig?”

“What am I going to do about school? I can’t go to Executive Pre-Professional for art.”

“I’m going to throw a wild notion at you.” Dr. Minerva leans back, then forward. “Have you ever thought about going to a different school?”

I stare ahead.

I hadn’t. I honestly hadn’t.

Not once, not in my whole life, not since I started there. That’s my school. I worked harder to get in than I did for anything else, ever. I went there because, coming out of it, I’d be able to be President. Or a lawyer. Rich, that’s the point. Rich and successful.

And look where it got me. One stupid year—not even one, like three quarters of one—and here I am with not one, but two bracelets on my wrist, next to a shrink in a room adjacent to a hall where there’s a guy named Human Being walking around. If I keep doing this for three more years, where will I be? I’ll be a complete loser. And what if I keep on? What if I do okay, live with the depression, get into College, do College, go to Grad School, get the Job, get the Money, get Kids and a Wife and a Nice Car? What kind of crap will I be in then? I’ll be completely crazy.

I don’t want to be completely crazy. I don’t like being here that much. I like being a little crazy: enough to volunteer here, not enough to ever, ever, ever come back.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I have thought about it.”

“When? Just now?”

I smile. “Absolutely.”

“And what do you think?”

I clap my hands together and stand up. “I think I should call my parents and tell them that I want to transfer schools.”

“Visitor, Craig,” Smitty pokes his head into the dining room. I slide my chair back from the table, where I’m playing after-lunch poker with Jimmy and Noelle and Armelio. Jimmy doesn’t really have any idea how to play, but we deal him cards and he plays them face down and smiles and we give him more chips (we’re using scraps of paper; the buttons are locked up due to our recklessness) whenever he pockets his or chews them up.