Cameron and the Girls (7 page)

This seems to scare my dad. “You have to have a shot right now,” he says.

And that is what happens. Dr. Simons leaves, and pretty soon the nurse comes in carrying a tray with a hypodermic needle resting on it. She has me roll up my sleeve, dabs my skin with alcohol, and then pierces it with the needle.

Cam, what are you going to do about this?

I watch the serum go into my arm, thinking this is what they do when they execute someone. I wince, but it isn't from the pain. I can hear The Girl pleading.

What's going on, Cam? It hurts.

“You're killing her,” I cry to the nurse.

Don't let them do this, Cam. Please.

“Hold on, young man,” the nurse says.

Please, Cam. I don't want to die. I love you.

I stand up, trying to pull away while The Girl's voice sounds like it's drifting into nothingness, but the nurse is already finished. She rubs at the spot again and then takes away her tray. I suddenly feel so flushed that I have to sit down. My head swarms with smoky clouds. I imagine special forces with machine guns, seeking out all the unwelcome guests in my head and killing them.

“That'll hold him,” the nurse says at the door.

“I want to go home,” I say.

 

But I don't get to go there yet.

I mostly sleep. The shot has gone straight to my brain and cut off everything. I can't feel sad or happy or mad or enlightened. Only tired. I wake up every couple of hours and try to make sense of the hospital room. But it is dark even though it is still day, and my eyes close to keep my wobbly head from falling over. I hear other voices in the room, the chiming of bells.

I don't dream. I don't dance through the halls with The Girl. I don't sneak out of the house and find my own place. There is no one with me.

When I wake up for good the next morning, I'm exhausted from all the sleep. At first I can't feel the ends of my arms. My hands seem to be floating above the blankets.

A nurse pads in on her velvety white shoes. She has copper hair, and a stethoscope has created a faint black ring around her neck. She pumps up my arm and then listens to the beating of my heart. I imagine she can tell that it's broken.

“Are you there?” I croak out words, but my throat is too relaxed from not talking, and I end up coughing.

“I'm here.” The nurse waits for more with the stethoscope dangling.

But she's not the one I want to hear from. “I'm hungry,” I finally say.

“He speaks,” the nurse says. Then she digs into her pocket and pulls out a saltine cracker. “Here.”

I grab it and spend a few seconds trying to tear apart the cellophane before I bite into the cracker. My mouth is immediately flooded with salt and I moan.

“I'll get you a menu,” she says, and is gone as silently as she showed up.

 

At home, there is a knock on my bedroom door. “Cam? It's Mom.” She's been in and out since I got back.

She opens the door and enters with a tray. Something steams from a bowl in the center of it. She sets it down on the table to let it cool.

“Now I want you to tell me the truth,” she says. “How long did you stop taking your medicine for?”

I shake my head.

“You don't want to talk?”

I shake it again.

Mom sighs and her shoulders sag. “I wish there was a way to get through to you.” She reaches out and pats my covers. “Cam, I know you've lived with it and so you understand, but I just want to tell you again.”

Everything she says makes my head hurt.

“This is very, very serious. You have an illness that you can't play around with. You have to treat it with respect. You respect it and it respects you. I know it scares you when it gets out of hand; you've told me that before. If you don't want to be afraid, there is one way that you can make the fear go away. And that's by taking your medicine the way you're supposed to. This is what happens if you don't take it. Do you understand that? Of course you do.”

I find my voice among the pile of debris in my mouth. “It's you who doesn't understand,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“It's not worth it to tell you. You just don't get it.”

“Try me,” she says.

I actually consider telling her everything, to start over fresh, but the look on her face tells me she can't take it.

“Please?” she says.

I turn from her. “Just go away,” I say.

N
o
school for me yet and it's like being grounded. I'm propped up on the couch with a blanket over me. The TV is on a twenty-four-hour news station. I've heard the same news about the Middle East for the past two hours. I reach for the remote, but it's as if my mom has new ears. She pops into the family room. “Is there something you need, sweetie?”

“No.”

“Anything I can bring you?”

My own life, I think, but I don't say it.

“You'll let me know?” She nods. She's really trying, I know, but she is more than annoying.

“Leave,” I say.

She actually smiles. “You know how I can tell when you're getting better? When you start acting like a teenager.”

I ignore her.

“Okay,” she whispers.

There is nothing to my life now. I rub at the spot where the nurse took away everything. Before that, even though I had the voices, I was at least feeling something. Now I can't feel anything. I try to force myself to laugh, but can't. To cry, but can't. I pinch the skin on the top of one hand, but don't care.

By the afternoon, I dress myself and walk aimlessly around the house. In every room I end up in, there is my mother pretending to clean. I imagine her as a hallucination, but it doesn't work. I chew on the inside of my cheek until I can taste blood. I notice that Mom smiles more now, seems happier. She is cleaning in a way I've never seen her do before. She even polishes the same table twice and then a third time. When she's through, she stands and looks at me, a drop of sweat trickling down her face.

“Just like the old days,” she says. “Remember before you went to school you used to follow me around the house?”

“No,” I say, although I do.

“You used to carry the spray bottle for me. You were my little helper. Then we'd sit down and watch
As the World Turns
together. You could tell me everything that was going on with all the characters.”

“I don't remember,” I lie. But I close my eyes and picture it. There is a TV tray in front of me, and every time I lean down to take a spoonful of soup, I jiggle the tray and it spills. Mom sits next to me with a roll of paper towels and reaches over every time, her eyes glued to the TV, and wipes up the spill.

I open my eyes again and Mom is staring. Her eyes glimmer with tears. “I wish I could help you,” she says.

“Then stay out of my business,” I grumble.

I can see this shocks her. I've closed the communication window that she has spent the day trying to open. Slammed it on her hand. “What have I done?” she asks.

“You killed my girlfriend,” I say.

“Oh, Cameron—”

“Don't ‘Oh, Cameron' me,” I shout. “I had her and now she's gone. And you're the one who took her away.”

Her mouth hangs open as she struggles to say something. “Cameron, this girl isn't real. Am I wrong about that? If I am, I would dearly love to meet her.”

“She doesn't want to meet you,” I say. “She doesn't even like you.”

“How can she make a judgment about me if we've never met?”

“Because I told her,” I blurt out. “I told her how mean and uncaring you are.”

Now Mom's face crumbles, and she fights to keep from falling apart. The tears ease their way down her cheeks. I watch one as it rolls along, like a raindrop on a window glass. I'm intrigued and step in closer to watch it.

“Why do you have to be this way?” Mom asks. “Why do you have to make me cry?”

I hear a crashing in my head, as if all my caged emotions are bumping off each other at once. Mad crashes into happy, and sad bounces off of guilty until they all lie in a big smoky heap in my mind.

“I haven't done anything wrong,” she wails, but I'm busy trying to snatch each of those words out of the air and throw them back at her. I manage to snag
done
and
wrong,
but the rest of them float up to the ceiling and out of my grasp.

 

I mourn in my bed as warm air blows gently from the vent. I reach under my pillow and pull up the doodles I did of The Girl. I touch them with my finger but don't feel anything back. I got mad at my mom, so at least I have one feeling, but I want something different. Love maybe? Why can't I have that? Isn't it normal for someone my age? I just know it's the meds that keep me from love.

There are layers in my head, and I can almost see them, like levels of sedimentary rock exposed on a cliff. Layers of fear and pain and Mom and Dad and Beth and The Professor and The Girl and a sinister layer right beneath her: The Other Guy. He seems way down in a place I've never gotten to. I liked how he talked to my mom, but I'm afraid I haven't heard all of him yet, and that makes me feel shaky. Thinking of these things, I can't sleep and roll around like a ball in the bed of a rambling pickup truck.

The heat whispers on and off all through the night. I start to worry, which is a good sign. I need to figure out a way to get my girlfriend back. Finally, at three in the morning, darkness covers my brain and lets me be for a few hours.

M
y
mom makes me eat oatmeal the next morning. “It'll stick to your ribs,” she says. I eat it slowly, but leave a tiny mound like a molehill in the middle of the bowl.

“Am I going to school today?” I ask. I think about what I must face when I get there. Everyone knows now. News like mine travels fast.

“That depends on how you feel,” she says.

I must choose between another day with my mom or facing the music at school.

“I don't know,” I say.

She walks over and puts an arm around my shoulder. I can smell soap. “You don't have to go,” she says.

“I'll go,” I quickly say.

“But the bus has already come,” she says.

“You can take me.” And before she can say anything, I've bounded back up the stairs to my room.

 

Mom goes to the school office with me. We wait a few minutes for Mr. Rudy, the vice principal, who comes bustling in. He has buttoned his blazer wrong, and it hangs, bunched and lopsided, off his belly. Coffee has spilled on his white shirt, and I count four oblong brown droplets.

“Always a pleasure,” Mr. Rudy says.

I wonder briefly what could be the difference between Mr. Rudy's voice and the ones I hear in my head. He would fit in easily as a character in
Alice in Wonderland.

We squeeze into Mr. Rudy's office and sit opposite his desk. From the corner of my eye, I can see what's going on in the rest of the offices.

“First of all,” Mom says, “I need to inform you that Cameron has had another episode, and that's why he hasn't been at school. I called Mrs. Johnson earlier . . .”

“Yes, yes,” says Mr. Rudy. “I received that message.” He turns to me and speaks over the top of his steepled fingers. “I'm sorry to hear about your problem,” he says.

I shrug but stay quiet.

Mom sends her eyes to the ceiling. “You'll have to forgive him,” she says. Then she raises one eyebrow.

“Quit that,” I say.

But Mom misinterprets. “See what I mean?” she says in a whisper.

Mr. Rudy nods. “But before we continue, I do have a question.” This time he turns his whole body toward me and rests an elbow on the desk. “Do you happen to know where Nina Savage is?”

“Oh, Lord,” Mom says.

But Mr. Rudy puts a hand up to stop her. “Cameron?”

“She's not in class?” I say.

“No. And she hasn't been during the week you've been out. I was hoping you could shed some light on this mystery.”

“Maybe she's home.”

“No one answers the phone or the door at her residence.”

“Maybe they decided to go on vacation.”

“It's just that she was last seen with you,” says Mr. Rudy.

“Oh no,” says my mom, throwing herself back in her chair. “Cameron, if you know anything at all about this girl, you'd better start talking.”

“I don't,” I say. But I wonder.

 

 

Later, Mrs. Johnson escorts me to class. Mrs. Owens seems glad to see me, and Griffin is full of questions. As I sit down, I see that Nina's chair is vacant.

“Went loony, huh?” whispers Griffin. “Wish I would someday. They say it's cheaper than drugs. Is it cool, Cam? I mean, when you go off the deep end?”

I just stare at him until he turns away. But he'll bug me again soon, and I feel a burning frustration grow in my stomach. I throw up my hand and get up before Mrs. Owens calls on me. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, and I leave the room before she can grant me permission.

I veer away from the boys' and head down the hall. I feel a fierce determination. Nothing can get in my way. I think I see Mrs. Johnson standing in the hall, but I don't stop to confirm it. Instead, I power through the front door and out into the parking lot.

A few cars are parked there, but no one is around. I hurry across the lot and run to the other side of the street when I see a car coming. I figure out what I will say if someone tries to stop me from going farther.

Just try to stop me, I think. But no one does, and I move on to the little red house not far from the market.

I stand in front of it for a moment. I hear nothing and see only a black and white cat sitting, tail curled, on the front steps. I walk up the driveway and stand under the rotting carport. It smells wet and musty. I knock on the side door and wait. I knock again. “Nina?” I try the door, and the knob twists coolly in my fingers.