o 3852bd5b2f216136 (5 page)

A joke, you assumed.

But no. She was moved. By the GESTURE. She said that friends don’t always think of perfect solutions, but they try, and that’s what counts. She said her mom has a support group — and what were YOU doing but trying to find her a supportive friend?

For a 13-year-old, Sunny is pretty amazing.

So you felt good about yourself after that, and you bravely called Alex. He wasn’t home. His mom said he’d gone off on his bike to Las Palmas.

Time to go. Ted’s outside. He has about a hundred of his friends in the car with him. In a moment, he will start blowing his horn, because he’ll want my car out of the driveway, so HE

can pull up and avoid the extra ten feet he’d have to walk to the kitchen door.

There it goes.

‘Bye.

In the Kitchen

Sunday Night,

Dazed and Confused,

With Two Pens

Because This Could Last a Lonnnnng Time

You are sitting in a war zone.

You just had to peel your journal from an unidentified sticky stain on the kitchen table. But considering that the REST of the table is blanketed with uneaten food that would take hours to clean, you have covered the stain with a plastic bag, in which there were once English muffins.

Two of the muffins lay swollen in a bowl full of water in the sink.

Ted is a slob. His friends are pigs. And none of them are around to yell at.

So, McCrae, you will do what you always do — try to ignore the mess and deal with it

tomorrow.

You have enough to deal with today.

You COULD have avoided it. When you left the house earlier, you COULD have just taken a long drive. Hung out at the mall. Gone to Sunny’s house.

But no.

Instead you decide to drive to Las Palmas.

Why? Because Alex is there, and you think he’ll be happy and thankful, like Sunny. And it feels so nice to be THANKED. You could get addicted to it.

So you find him, in that same spot by the bridge, and you carefully say hi and sit beside him.

He doesn’t say a thing. Just sits, looking at the creek, pulling grass.

You talk — Nice day. Cool breeze. Check out the turtle. And you ask questions — Did you have an okay time at the beach? Sunny’s a good person, isn’t she? Are you going to speak to me?

And his expression never changes once, just a total blank, until right in the middle of something

— some dumb, harmless question of yours — he pushes you.

With both hands, and hard.

“Can’t you ever shut up?” he shouts.

You stammer something, but you’re too shocked to make any sense.

Alex is furious. He tells you to get out of here. He calls you nasty names.

And then he’s sitting next to you, crying.

You ask if he’s okay, if he wants to talk. He’s so upset, he can’t even answer.

So you pat him reassuringly on the back. He doesn’t react at all, and you both just sit there.

Finally he says that he felt you were ignoring him at the beach. Like you brought Sunny along because you didn’t want to hang out with him alone. Which made him feel kind of like a charity case. And now you know. You DID hurt his feelings. You were a fool think he’d THANK you.

But in a way, you’re relieved, because you weren’t sure Alex HAD feelings anymore.

So you apologize, and Alex wipes his eyes, and you remember the time years ago when his gerbil died and you both buried it in the park not far from here.

And then Alex actually reminds you about that. HE was thinking about it too!

A Moment.

A real Ducky and Alex Moment.

The first one in what seems like years.

You want to put your arm around his shoulder, but you don’t. You might have if it were a few years ago, when you were younger and kids didn’t laugh at you for stuff like that. But in the distance you hear some loud shouting, and the last thing you need is for a pack of Cro Mags to find the two of you on a park bench, hugging.

So you ask him what’s on his mind.

And it’s as if the tears have washed away a layer of tough skin, because Alex starts talking in a familiar voice that you recall from the distance past, soft and slow, the way he used to talk when he was very serious.

He tells you he has trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. Sometimes his mom actually ahs to slap him, or drag him up. He’s always tired throughout the day. When he gets to school, he can’t keep his eyes open in class.

He tells you he has not done one homework assignment this year, and that his guidance

counselor is almost certain he’ll be left back, but he doesn’t care because tenth grade, eleventh, ninth, fourth — they’re all the same to him.

He says that he’s been on different medications for depression, and some of them work okay for awhile [sic], but he forgets to take them or they wear off or the doctor doesn’t refill the prescription.

He claims he’s not upset about his parents’ divorce anymore. He doesn’t care if either of them gets remarried.

He tells you he’s making his sister’s life miserable. She doesn’t even like to bring friends home because he weirds them out, just by being there. He’s also making his mom’s life miserable.

She doesn’t know what to do with him. Half the time she’s pleading, half the time she’s yelling.

THAT, he says, is about the only thing he cares about. That he’s annoying other people. He hates doing it, but he can’t help himself. Sometimes he feels like there’s another person inside him, someone he doesn’t know, someone who’s taking him over, making him do and say things he’d never think of normally.

And you’re just sitting there, stunned, not knowing what to say. You are thinking this is good in a way, good that Alex is being emotional, good that he’s letting it all out.

You try to tell him that, but you’re not sure he hears you. He’s in his own world, looking at the ground, and now he starts speaking even softer, in a tiny voice. He’s saying that he did not sleep at all last night. He was tired, he went to bed, his eyes closed, he felt himself drifting off, and then, bang, he was wide awake. He thought about his parents and how HE was the cause of the breakup, he thought about how he was sure his sister hated him, he thought about all the homework he hadn’t done. He thought and thought and thought and all the images from those thoughts were like a huge movie screen that slowly began curving around him and trapping him in the middle, and he would then get up and walk around the house but the darkness made him feel worse, so he’d turn on the TV but all he’d find were creepy old movies and stupid cheerful infomercials that reminded him how bad his life was, so he’d go back to bed and the thoughts would start up again — and soon he felt as if he were racing the sunrise, and then there it was, peeking in through the blinds and that was it, he was up for good, and he didn’t REALLY want to go to the beach but it was better than staying awake.

So he got dressed and ate breakfast and waited for you, thinking he could talk to you about the dream, but somehow he’d forgotten that Sunny was coming along, and when he realized it, he wanted to go back home but at that point he didn’t care enough to argue, because he was too weary, as if his entire body had been scraped and peeled.

What can you say to that except “Wow” and “Too bad” and “I’m sorry,” and you try to think of other things, but they all sound ridiculous, then you stop trying because Alex is ignoring you, and his voice is all choked up and he’s saying he CAN’T spend another night like that, he CAN’T

CAN’T CAN’T and if it ever starts to happen again he will just die.

And you KNOW people take pills to help them sleep, but you don’t want to suggest that, because his SHRINK’s [sic] job is to figure that stuff out.

So you ask if he’s still in therapy. And he says yeah, sort of, but he’s been skipping a lot of sessions lately. And that makes his mom angry, because she can barely afford Dr. Welsch to begin with, but Alex can’t help skipping because he’s bored to death with the sessions and they’re not helping anyway.

Which sure doesn’t sound promising to you, but you don’t dare to say that to Alex in his state.

Instead you just sit. Silently.

You toss a stone into the creek. Fish scatter, a duck noisily flaps its wings, and a sunning turtle draws in its head. As the ripples glide outward, the animals settle down until you can’t even tell a crisis occurred.

Alex is watching this too. Neither of you wants to move. Neither of you wants to talk.

And you stay like that for the rest of the afternoon.

In Which

School, Once Again,

Raises Its Ugly Head

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about — now I’m flunking English. Is this ironic, or what

— I’ve finally raised my math grades, but I’m failing the only subject I LIKE.

Did I KNOW I was supposed to read Julius Caesar? Did I KNOW an essay was due today?

Where was I when Ms. Turnbull gave out the assignment?

Probably in class, but writing in THIS!

I am in a FOUL mood.

Sunny noticed this. She asked me if something was wrong. She’s the only person who cares, I guess. I thanked her but I didn’t want to complain. She has enough on her mind. So I just told her I was flunking English, that’s all.

She thought that was funny. She said I’m starting to sound like HER. She guaranteed me that I’ll be cutting classes soon.

Great. And I’M supposed to be a good role model for HER.

I don’t know what is happening to me.

The Cro Mags think I’m a sissy bookworm. My teachers think I’m a slacker. My 8th-grade friends look up to me and I let them down. My 10th-grade friends feel betrayed.

I’M TRYING TO DO THE BEST I CAN, and my life gets worse every day.

I CAN’T TAKE THIS.

I need advice. I need to talk to someone.

But who?

Not Jay. He’ll just tell me I need a girlfriend.

Not Ted. He doesn’t have time for me. He’s too busy figuring out creative ways to destroy the house.

Mom and Dad are on the other side of the world. And Alex is halfway to Mars.

Maybe Dr. Welsch has an opening. Ha ha.

Anyway, enough of this. I have to study Julius.

“To be or not to be …”

Or is that another play?

Whatever.

Up in the Vista Hills

Overlooking the Valley

With a Full Stomach

And Feeling, for the First Time in Awhile [sic],

Like a Human Being

It is so dark and quiet up here. A little cool, but that’s all right. Below me, Palo City stretches out, and I can see lights flicking off as people go to bed.

The old telescope isn’t here anymore. It’s just four bolts in some cracked pavement now, next to the concrete block where I used to stand when I was a kid, and I’d look through and never be able to see much because of the smog and the fact that Dad never taught me how to FOCUS the thing.

Oh well.

It’s so nice to relax and thing of all this stuff.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Ducky.

You sure didn’t expect it. Not the way this day started. It could have been a total washout.

The pop quiz in math was bad enough. But the chem lab experiment was worse, only because the chemicals STANK, which gave you a splitting headache. Then came the read-aloud of J

Caesar in English class, and OF COURSE you were the bad guy, Brutus, and all the Cro Mags were snickering about THAT, after they got over their hilarious pantomime of friends, Romans, and countrymen “lending their ears” by ripping them off and howling in pain.

THEY ARE FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. HAVEN’T THEY GROWN OUT OF STUFF LIKE

THIS? (And you think you’re immature?)

Not only that, but Alex was absent today, and you can’t help but be worried.

So with all THAT on your mind, you were not too excited when Sunny asked you to go to the hospital AGAIN after school — but you had to say yes, because she said she needed help brining her mom home after some tests.

Then, when you arrived at the hospital, you found out that two members of Mrs. Winslow’s support group were there, and so was Mr. Winslow. So Sunny’s mom DIDN’T need the help, and you were just there because Sunny was nervous and SHE needed support.

At first you didn’t mind because you wanted to help. The support group people were really nice, and they assumed you were Sunny’s boyfriend and treated you like part of the family, and Mrs.

Winslow was very thankful, and you did hold her arm as she went from the bed to the

wheelchair, so you didn’t feel TOTALLY useless.

Afterward you were ready to go home and try to catch up on schoolwork, but Sunny asked you to drive her back to her house. She could have gone in her dad’s car, but no, she insisted. And you figured, hey, what are friends for? — and all the way back, Sunny DID NOT STOP

COMPLAINING. Her mom’s sickness was draining her, her dad was being crabby, her life was HORRIBLE and DEPRESSING and all she wanted to do was RUN AWAY.

So you joked with her and reassured her and told her she was great, but your heart wasn’t in it, because all you could think about were Alex’s problems and the Cro Mags and Jay and math class and Julius Caesar and Ghana and YOUR OWN DEPRESSING LIFE, but you told yourself

not to be selfish, and you listened to Sunny go on and on, being sarcastic and complaining about her poor, sick mom, and even though you didn’t mean to be rude, you said, “At least YOUR

mom is around.”

Major, major mistake.

Right away you wished you could take that back. You wished you could catch the words in midair, the way a frog uses its tongue to catch a fly.

And Sunny was staring at you, her mouth open, and you knew you had just blown it. Your best friendship in the world, flushed down the toilet.

Before you could say anything, Sunny was on your case. She reminded you that YOUR mom is healthy and she’s only away TEMPORARILY and how could you possibly compare the two —

and you fell all over yourself apologizing, making excuses, telling her you didn’t mean what you said, you just wanted her to be happy and enjoy life and stop feeling sorry for herself — STOP