Get Well Soon (4 page)

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Authors: Julie Halpern

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Depression & Mental Illness, #Love & Romance

BOOK: Get Well Soon
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Dear Tracy,
Hurray! Hurray! They’re going to give me my clothes back today! Now I can be a lunatic
in style
. I met with Dr. Asshole today, and he took me off PSI I and put me on Level 0. What that means is that now that I’m not threatening to kill myself, I can earn points by hitting people in the head with chairs and stealing pencils! Actually, I may lose points for that, but live and learn! The goal here is to obtain points by being a good girl, i.e.: doing what I’m told, making an obvious effort to fix what is supposedly
wrong with me, and getting along with others. When these points add up, I get onto higher levels, which allow me exciting new privileges, like going to the cafeteria to eat! Watching one half hour of TV per day! And if I’m extra good I may win up to $25,000 at Plinko! All Plinkos aside, it doesn’t sound very hard. It’s not like I’ll be throwing chairs or stealing pencils or anything bad like that. I hate getting in trouble.
Doc A-Hole said that most of the therapy I have to do here is group work, but I’ll meet with him about once a week. It’s so weird that they just hook me up with some random guy shrink and I’m expected to be OK with that. What if I don’t want to tell him anything? I’m starting to get a stomachache.
LATER
Tragedy strikes! I so was not thinking when I packed my clothes to come here. Why did my mom let me leave home without my red Converse All Stars? Now I’m stuck in a very chilly mental hospital forced to wear the shoes I had on when I got here—flip-flops—with socks! I recognize that some folks in the world think the whole socks and sandals bit is cool, but to me it equals white people with hemp hoodies listening to Phish and stinking up the hallways at school with patchouli. This is so not me. I would much rather have my comfy, worn-in, hole in the right toe, low-top red Converse All Stars. I noticed that Justin had black Chucks. I thought maybe if I had my Chucks here that we could bond over our choice in footwear, but nooooo. He’s
going to think I’m a dork and won’t ever look at me again, and I’ll become an old maid and live in this mental hospital for the rest of my life without getting a date. What if?
AFTERNOON
I just had my first group therapy session. The floor is divided into two groups, A and B. I don’t quite know how they choose which kid goes into which group, but I’m in B. Because you are dying to know, Justin is not in Group B. Tanya, however,
is
in Group B, which sucks because she is a royal bitch who gives me an “eat shit” look every time I glance her way. I’d try to look tough, but I don’t want her to kick my ass. I’ve never even been close to having my ass kicked, but I’d like to believe that if it ever happened I would have some sort of built-in kung fu abilities that would automatically activate. And there’s always our self-defense training from gym class: Always go for the eyes, nose, and throat. (I still think it’s totally ironic that while the girls were learning self-defense in gym class, the guys were in a different room learning wrestling.) Thankfully, Tanya spent most of Group staring at the floor, trying not to have to speak to anyone.
We had Group in the Day Room, where we actually got to sit in nonfarting chairs that were placed in a circle. Eugene led Group, and because it was my first time, everyone had to do a little introduction of themselves. Very Alcoholics Anonymous. It was about time someone actually told me something. Not that
anything anyone said was very informative. I had to go first, which I guess was good because then I could relax a little and hear what everyone else had to say.
“I’m Anna Bloom. I’m sixteen. I have a younger sister, Mara. I like to listen to music, mostly punk. I’m teaching myself to play the bass. The Cap’n Crunch here is pretty good.” That got some light chuckles. I thought I was finished, but Eugene looked at me to continue. “That’s it,” I said.
“And why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I guess because I stopped going to school.” And that’s when the tears started. Embarrassed, I didn’t want to say anything more. I simpered through the entire hour as I listened to everyone else’s stories.
Victor, a short African-American guy, seemed pretty funny, although he’s definitely a lot more city than I am (which probably isn’t saying much, as I am a card-carrying suburbanite). He said he was here “Because they didn’t like the fact that I was selling drugs in school. But I told them it was the only way to pay for my mom’s cancer treatment. They were soft on me and sent me here instead of jail.” I wonder who sells drugs at our school. I wonder if they would sell them to me.
Unfortunately, Phil/Shaggy is in my group. He has a lewd (funny word!) way of looking around at people that makes me want to wash my hands. Someone needs to hose this freak down ’cause the way he introduced himself was by saying, “I’m sure
glad we’re getting some more ladies on this floor.” I don’t care if guys never give me that kind of attention; I do NOT want it from the likes of him.
“And why are you here?” asked Eugene.
“Oh, you know, I got myself in a little trouble. You might say I was playing with fire.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“And you might say that he set some girl’s house on fire ’cause she wouldn’t go out with him,” explained Victor.
Matt O. (the soul without a pencil) sat next to me (and was rather ripe in the b.o. department). He’s a sweet-faced guy who has apparently been in this place for six months. Six months! I hope that’s not the norm. He never actually said how he got here in the first place. All he said was, “I’ve been here for six months, and now they’ve got me on a new plan that lets me eat whatever I want and go to the Quiet Room whenever I want. My doc says we needed to try something different.”
After six months, maybe it doesn’t matter why he’s here in the first place. It’s like, after you’re here for so long, whatever happened in real life probably floated away. For some of these people, that’s not such a bad thing. Take Colby (like the cheese), also a member of Group B. He’s a scrawny and shy kid who apparently has problems hearing voices. I mean, he doesn’t actually have problems hearing voices. He hears them fine. They just happen to be inside of his head. He claims they started jabbering after he began playing Dungeons and Dragons with his older
brother. What is the deal with people and role-playing games? You and I have played a little, Trace, and we know that there is nothing about it that would make you hear voices or kill people or channel the underworld. Plus, who blames Dungeons and Dragons for evildoing anymore? That’s so ’80s. Aren’t we supposed to blame violence on TV or video games? Colby does seem kind of peculiar, though, so who knows. Sean, a member of Group B with a nasty scum-stache (“nasty” may be substituted for “greasy” when discussing mustaches), said that he would lend Colby one of his rosaries to protect him. I have two things to say about that: 1. How is a rosary going to protect Colby from the wrath of a game? and 2.
One
of his rosaries? Sean’s story sounded exactly like the stereotypical rebel character in any teen movie (aside from the rosary deal): He was kicked out of school, sent to boarding school, escaped and ran away, got caught, and was sent here. He nervously gnawed on his fingers the whole time we had Group, and I swear I could see little droplets of blood.
As we rounded the circle, the last person to introduce himself was Bobby. In a way he reminded me of Mara. He said that he was only twelve years old, but he was here because he got into a lot of fights with his brother. When Eugene asked him to elaborate, Bobby said, “I hurt him.” That reminded me of one time when Mara and I were wrestling. She started to pull my hair, I pulled hers back, and then she kicked me in the face. I had a black eye for weeks which showed up in my 7th-grade yearbook picture. Fighting with siblings is normal. Everyone here looked
relatively normal to me or, at least, not crazy, which is more than I can say about myself. Nobody else cried at all. They probably think I’m a freak and should be locked up in a ward with Harold. I’m sure the socks and sandals didn’t help my case.
TUESDAY AFT
As I waited around in my room with nothing to do (I’m not bad enough to be punished somewhere, and I’m not good enough to be doing anything else), I decided to do some decorating. I’ve been saving the foil lids from my juices, and I used the sticky power of the wall covering to create a design on the wall. It looks kind of cool, and gives the wall a juicy fragrance. Until it molds, that is. Too bad I don’t have that hilarious ’N Sync poster that you and I fake autographed in grade school with “Anna, I’d like to be ’N Sync with you! Signed, Lance Bass.” That would spice this place up, although it would also mean I’d have to look at their deranged ’90s hairstyles.
 
Future Cars from the Past Update: Either whoever owns the cars has moved them while I wasn’t looking and then put them back in the same spots, or the cars have not moved. Mysterioso.
PRE-DINNER
Dear Tracy,
By some amazing stroke of luck, I have skipped Level I and am now a rockin’ Level 2 girl. Apparently all of my crying during
Group gave me a butt-load of bonus points, so now I can go down to the cafeteria to eat! Which means two things: I may find something I want to eat besides Cap’n Crunch, and I hopefully get to see Justin! I’ll report back after dinner.
POST-DINNER
Dinner was kind of cool. Since Jolene was released today and Tanya was on Restriction, I was the only girl on the floor allowed to go down to the cafeteria. Normally, boys and girls are taken on two separate elevator trips to prevent touch-age, but lazy-ass Eugene decided I wasn’t trouble enough for a second trip.
There I was in an elevator full of boys, and for the first time in my life I felt kind of attractive (even with the socks and sandals). When Eugene wasn’t looking, boys would actually sneak smiles at me! Victor, the reformed drug dealer, was standing next to me, and I swear he kept touching his arm to mine on purpose. Kinky.
Once we got into the cafeteria we were allowed to talk to each other. It made everyone else seem a lot more normal, so hopefully I seemed like more than a pale, dumpy, crying girl with dark circles under her eyes wearing flip-flops with socks. The cafeteria was just like any cafeteria, except that instead of jocks at one table and Goths at another, there were drooly old people at one table and people talking to themselves at another. They must be on other floors, thank god, because they were
creepy. Is that mean? I guess even in the world of crazy there’s a coolness scale.
Since Matt O. has been here the longest and we are in Group together, I asked him what was good in the cafeteria. “Nothing,” he answered with a small smile. It was a predictable TV show moment. Justin was a couple of people behind me in line, and I glanced back at him a few times while everyone talked. He was pretty quiet, but he smiled enough that he looked like a friendly guy. He ordered a hamburger, Tater Tots, and red Jell-O. (I have to question the Jell-O choice. It seems so hospital cliché. The only time I’ll ever eat Jell-O is if I have puked and I can’t stomach anything else.) I had a little nervous stomachache, but I didn’t want to seem odd, so I ordered a cheeseburger and Tater Tots and took a fruit punch that was in the same type of tin-lid cup as the OJ. Then I was worried that I looked like a pig for ordering so much food. Like they were thinking, “No wonder she looks like that. Look at all that shit she eats.” But I couldn’t eat most of it anyway. I usually do most of my eating alone. Unless I’m put back in my room again, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an option here.
Since there were less than ten of us (due to all of the people that remained upstairs on Restriction), we all sat at the same table. It was the kind that has individual circle seats attached, ensuring that everyone has their own equal amount of butt space. The cafeteria was far better lit than our floor upstairs. It made me feel more awake than I’ve felt in days. I was getting tired of
being so mopey. Those guys were talking to me and laughing, and they didn’t make any references to all of my crying and carrying on from the past few days. It was almost like our school lunches of yore.
Bobby sat on one side of me, and Victor sat on the other side. Matt O. was across from me, with Justin on his left side. They seemed to be friends, despite the nasty “pencil incident.” They included me in their conversation, so I felt brave enough to ask, “Why do they call you ‘Matt O.’?”
“Matt’s such a common name that every few weeks or so a new Matt comes in. It gets too confusing, so they added the O. from my last name. They never bother to take it away when there isn’t another Matt here.”
“Hmmm. Sounds kind of rock star-ish.” I smiled.
“Yeah, like Madonna,” Bobby chided.
Everyone laughed like this was the funniest thing in the world. Bobby’s so cute and young, like a cuddly team mascot.
There weren’t any dinner convos about the real world; we mostly talked about stuff going on inside the hospital. Kind of weird. They
did
cue me in on a bunch of rules and tricks of the mental hospital trade. Following is a selection of the weirdest:
 
You must not drop your pillow in Relaxation. Set it down gently, lie on the floor, and try to be lulled into boredom by the soothing sounds of James Taylor.
The easiest way to get points is to give an Appreciation at Community. That way you don’t get anyone mad, and you make yourself look good by saying nice things.
Smiling will get you into trouble because an adult will think you are either planning something against them or making fun of them. Hence, no one ever smiled back at me.
Never cross your arms because it may be construed as a confrontation or gang-related. (I’m one of the founders of the Socks and Sandals Gang. Watch your back!)
We go to “school” for a couple of hours each day. This is the best time to “mess around” because there are only two teachers and there are lots of little rooms that the kids are spread out in. I’m not sure if “mess around” meant goof off or something else. Seeing as I was the only female at the table, I didn’t want to ask.
 
The two most important rules, according to the boys:
 
No relationships. Meaning, no one is allowed to become boyfriend and girlfriend, or boyfriend and boyfriend, or girlfriend and girlfriend. This is because we are supposed to be working on our problems, not making new ones.
No touching. At all. No shaking hands, no touching shoulders, not even touching arms in the elevator.
 
At the dinner table, everyone looked stiff as they sat next to each other. I think it’s pretty cold not to be able to feel the warmth
and texture of another person’s skin, even if it’s not in a sexual way. Like when Mara leans her head on my shoulder on long car trips. I can’t imagine what it must be like for Matt O., who hasn’t had any human contact for six months. Trace, try walking down the halls at school without touching someone for an entire day. It makes you walk differently, doesn’t it? I feel stiffer already.
They also told me to, from now on, refer to Lakeland as Lake Shit. Sounds about right.

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