A Really Awesome Mess (12 page)

Tina nodded some more. I’m sure some part of Justin wanted to wring her neck, but the outburst seemed to have taken a lot out of him. He was back to bonelessness. “I understand your feelings of frustration, Justin. I also understand that the structure of Heartland sometimes makes students acutely miss their independence.”

Chip snorted. “You could say that.”

The sarcastic remark only got Tina more into it. “So let’s explore this theme, guys. Really dig down deep into it. Emmy,
let’s just say you were trying to gain more control over what you eat here—”

I inhaled sharply. If Tina really found out about the food, a Staffie would start following me around at meals again. That simply couldn’t happen.

“—I’m not saying that you are,” Tina said in that reassuring voice. “But if you were, what would make you want to make better food choices at Heartland?”

I decided it couldn’t hurt to play along a little bit. “Well for one thing, I would tailor the calories to the individual. For someone my size, it should only be around fifteen hundred, not the two or three thousand I’m expected to eat every day here.” I doubled what I normally shot for because adults always seemed to want to shove way too much food down kids’ throats.

“Again, hypothetically, what if I could arrange that? Would you feel less inclined to ask others to eat your food?”

I nodded. “Sure, I guess so. Hypothetically.”

“Great!” Tina exclaimed. “Consider it done!”

I wasn’t sure if she was for real or what, but if she was, I was golden. Reduced food meant I’d only need one person to clear the excess on my plate, not five. I didn’t like asking for help or being in the hole any favors. Mohammed had told us a million times how back in Sierra Leone, they were always starving and he would probably never feel full because of that, so there would be no indebtedness when he was my only garbage disposal. He
wanted my food and I wanted it gone. It would be a mutual favor.

“Now let’s move on to escape plans,” Tina said, focusing her attention on Diana. “What would make a student dislike Heartland so much that they’d try to run away and put their lives at risk, not to mention the level they’ve achieved here?”

This was such a silly question, we all had to laugh. There were a million and one reasons to hate Assland.

“No Wi-Fi on our computers!” Justin called out. Chip high-fived him, and it was official: My crush on Justin, which had been hanging on by a thread since he’d turned kind of surly, was officially over. I’d had it up to here with guys who only cared about naked pictures of girls but not the girls in the pictures.

“No hookups allowed!” Chip shouted.

“No family here,” Mohammed piped in.

“Not enough bacon and pork chops!” Diana said, cackling and oinking away, leaving Jenny looking more pained than usual.

“Nothing to do,” I added quietly. “Nothing fun, I mean.” The most fun thing I’d done since I got here was go off campus to 7-Eleven with Brittany to celebrate my being up for level two. The change hadn’t been approved yet because my Contemporary American Family teacher said I hadn’t been sharing enough. I had until the end of next week to show I trusted everyone enough to participate more in class. If I did, I’d be moving up, and the best thing about that would be getting to talk to Joss.

As promised, she’d e-mailed me little dispatches from home
every day, keeping me in the loop about all the gossip at school. I wrote her back old-fashioned letters almost as regularly, which the staff then scanned into the office computer and e-mailed back to her. Joss obviously wasn’t getting any of the dirt about Assland since what I wrote was reviewed for inappropriate content. I couldn’t wait to tell her the real scoop.

“The rules around Internet access and relationships aren’t something I have control over,” Tina said. “But family, food, and fun? I might be able to do something about those. Let’s get even more specific, okay?”

“I need to be able to talk to my family more often,” Mohammed said. “Make sure the ones I have left aren’t getting killed or anything.”

Tina nodded. “Well, we have Family Weekend coming up at the end of the month, where you’ll all get to spend quality time with your loved ones. And though I really doubt your family has been killed”—she nodded at Mohammed—“I’ll talk to your individual therapist about having more contact with your mom and dad until then. How’s that?”

Mohammed didn’t look happy at about it all. In fact, he looked like he was about to go postal.

Justin was squinting at Mohammed. “Dude, I thought you said you watched your dad die when you were four!”

Mohammed roared back. “Don’t you ever mention my father again!”

“You mean the fake dead one or the real alive one?” Chip asked calmly.

“Boys!” Tina yelled, standing up. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand. Can you think of a wholesome activity you’d like to do together as a group?”

We all sat there and stared at our fingernails, our feet, the wall. Wholesome was not what any of us wanted. It was Diana who finally broke the silence.

“I want to go here,” she said, shoving the crumpled-up state fair brochure at Tina. It was covered with pictures of cows and funnel cakes and Ferris wheels.

Tina read it and smiled. “I think we can make this happen. I’ll even chaperone. If everyone stays off academic probation and has no angry outbursts this week, that is. So let’s say Friday, shall we?”

“Yesssssss!” Diana said.

“This was quite a group today, kids,” Tina said, nodding at each of us. “I’ll keep my part of the deal if you keep yours. Work together as a team, okay? I’m really looking forward to our field trip.”

“Me too,” Diana agreed.

“Why you so hopped up about a cheesy fair anyhow, Diana?” Chip asked.

“Because Joey Chestnut is gonna be there!” she said.

I had no clue who he was. “Who?”

“Joey Chestnut! The hot dog eating champ!” she explained.

“Why in hell would you care about him?” Justin wanted to know.

“Because he’s hot. And because if I can’t get any in here, at least I can eat a ton of wieners at the fair. Like, get really porked, you know?”

Diana kept laughing until Jenny handed her a note. Diana read it out loud: “ ‘It’s okay to use some variation of the word pig as sexual innuendo. Pigs are very passionate, you know.’ ”

SO IT HAD COME TO THIS. I WAS ON MY BEST BEHAVIOR SO I COULD
go to a fair. Carnies, fried food, and livestock. Oh yeah, and a hot dog eating contest. Awesome.

The worst part was that I was actually kind of excited about it. Which I recognized made it the first thing I’d been excited about in a long time. Which meant that as a therapeutic technique, it was kind of working. Which pissed me off.

Not that I was happy or anything. It was more like I was walking around and everything was gray, and the idea of the stupid fair was the one spot of color.

“So what conclusions can you draw from this?” Max asked me in my one-on-one.

“I guess that if you bore the crap out of people for long enough,
then anything, no matter how crappy, will seem like a relief.”

Max smiled. “You are a stubborn kid, you know that?”

“I have been told this in the past, yes. But why do you say that now?”

“Because you are so determined to be pissed off that you can’t even enjoy a victory. You were in a bad place, a really low place, and you might not be out of it yet, but it has gotten marginally better. And you can’t even enjoy it or even admit that it happened. You think it’s a trick, but it’s not. I mean, this is pretty much what we have to offer people with your diagnosis. Not that you’re never going to have low patches, but just that you can hang on to the knowledge that they won’t last forever. Isn’t that good?”

I thought about this for a minute. “I guess. I don’t know. I think it would be better if I never had to feel so awful.”

“And it would be better if I didn’t have to test my blood every day and inject insulin,” Max said. “Type one diabetes. But that’s not the hand I got dealt. I got the hand with a lot of needles in it. And you got the depressive hand.”

“Well, this hand sucks.”

“No question. But nobody’s life is perfect. Why do you think it’s so hard for you to accept the imperfections in yours?”

I thought about this for a minute. “Because,” I said. Not much of an answer, but it was all I had.

Max tapped his iPad. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said. “We’re gonna do some work figuring out your core issue.”

“Awesome,” I said in a flat voice. “What’s that?”

“It’s a deep-seated belief you have that is messing up how you see the world.”

“Great. Something else to look forward to,” I said.

The prospect of digging into my deep-seated beliefs made the idea of having one night of relief at the fair that much more enticing. I was just about beside myself with excitement about an event I would have mocked mercilessly six months ago. Okay, six days ago.

And though I really wanted the fair, I wanted it less than Diana. Who had just decided she was the general of our little army of freaks. So Tuesday at dinner, I got this from her:

“Justin. History test tomorrow. Have you studied?”

“Have you heard of anhedonia?” I shot back.

“Is that a vocabulary word for your history test?”

“No, it’s something that those of us with depression experience, and it’s—”

“If it’s not on the test, I don’t give a shit right now. You need to get a C to stay off probation, and—Emmy. Nobody buys that ‘spit the chewed food into the napkin while pretending to wipe your mouth’ gag. Cut it out. Just eat. You’re a freaking skeleton already, and I’m pretty sure if you blow away in one of these high prairie winds, I’m not gonna get to see Joey Chestnut. So eat up.”

Mohammed gave a heavy sigh.

“You got something to say, Sri Lanka?”

Mohammed put down his fork. “Sierra Leone, idiot.”

“Whatever. I’m never going to either place.”

Mohammed gave Diana a serious look. The kind that, for a guy, would have a serious beating at the end of it. “I just … you know. The whole idea of an
eating
contest. It’s obscene. In my country there are people
starving
, and here you’ve got so much abundance—”

“I know, right?” Diana said. “Like you, for example, have an extra parent we’ve never heard about before! So wasteful!”

“I—” Mohammed began.

“He’s right, though,” Emmy chimed in as she sawed a cherry tomato into eight identical pieces. “Look at all the obesity in our country.”

Mohammed nodded. “Right. And you’ve got so much that you’re willing to make
a game
out of it, and I’m supposed to behave so you can go watch this obscene spectacle that, frankly, makes me sick.”

Chip put his burger down. “That is
it
! That is just it. Shut the hell up, Tracy.”

Everybody looked at Chip like he was insane. Well, I mean, more insane than we’d previously thought.

And I guess I should say, everybody but me looked at Chip that way. I shot him a look that attempted to communicate this: “Shut up. We agreed we were going to save this ill-gotten information for a time when it was really necessary, and I’m pretty
sure it’s not necessary right now, and by the way I have to share a room with this dude.”

“Who’s Tracy?” Diana asked.

Chip put on a sports announcer voice and gestured at Mohammed. “Tracy Jefferson, ladies and gentlemen! Hailing from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, he’s the son of two physicians, and until recently attended prestigious Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, the alma mater of former US Senators Robert and Ted Kennedy!”

There was a moment of silence. Everyone just stared at Mohammed/Tracy, who was doing his deep breathing, trying-not-to-snap thing. And then Diana started to laugh. It began as these kinds of snorts coming out of her nose, and then it erupted into what I can only describe as guffaws.

“Tracy! I was scared of a … a boy named Tracy!”

Emmy snorted, too, and this set me off. Pretty soon everybody was laughing, and even though I was looking at Mohammed—sorry, Tracy—and seeing that he was about to do something that was totally going to wreck our chances of going to the fair and I really should have stopped and tried to hustle him away from the table, I couldn’t move. I was laughing too hard. And it felt great. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed until my stomach hurt, and right then it was killing me.

And then Tracy’s rage face suddenly broke, and he was
laughing, too. “Man, I got you bitches good!” he said between laughs. “The civil war in Sierra Leone ended … in 2002.”

This caused another round of hysterical laughter, and when Tracy came up for air he said, “So easy to scare you bitches … my mom wouldn’t let me try out for lacrosse because it’s … too violent! You racist assholes are scared of anybody black!”

I was now actually crying from laughing so hard. I mean, yeah, I’d known that my supposedly African roommate was actually a rich kid from Michigan since Chip hacked into the school records on his netbook, but still, knowing that scary, rage-filled Mohammed from Sierra Leone was actually a mama’s boy who wasn’t allowed to play lacrosse and who’d just been messing with us for weeks was just really funny. I mean, he got us. He totally got us.