Get Well Soon.
Like crazy is something you can sleep off.
But I know they were afraid and I get that. I’m not angry with them or anything.
I felt a nudge on my arm and looked down to see Maya staring up at me again.
“I’m fine,” I said quietly. She looked at me appraisingly and then turned back, clearly not convinced that I wasn’t lying.
The angels in the stained-glass window were still watching me, but I wasn’t paying attention.
Rebecca skipped ahead of me and turned back to smile in Maya’s direction.
—
After mass, all three hundred of us walked back across the lawn to our classes. Mine was religious theory, taught by Sister Catherine. It is the one class I don’t have with Dwight but do have with Maya. Sister Catherine is the youngest teacher at the school, but easily the toughest bride of Christ I’ve ever met. She’d probably bust out a ruler if she could, but when she’s angry about something, she wrinkles her forehead and her white-blond eyebrows practically disappear.
“Today,” she said, “I’m going to see how well you read your assignment.” She held up a red prayer book that had arrived in the mail about a month before school started. Part of our summer homework had been to read all the prayers, but Sister Catherine’s mouth was twisted in a maniacal grin. “I would like for you to write out the mysteries of the rosary, the Prayer of Saint Augustine, and Hail, Holy Queen from memory,” she said.
Everyone in the room groaned. It had not been part of the assignment to memorize the prayers, which is probably why Maya also had an irritated expression on her face. She tightened her lips and wrinkled her nose in distaste. Even a die-hard Catholic would probably not have the rosaries memorized, but if she’d known it was a challenge in advance, she would have memorized them all. I could just tell she was that kind of person.
“This isn’t for credit,” Sister Catherine added. “But if you write them all down correctly, you will have no religion homework for the rest of the year. You have one hour.” Her smile was victorious but mostly repulsive.
I’m actually really good at memorizing things. That’s one of the skills my little problem hasn’t taken away. Sometimes people with my condition have a rough time organizing their thoughts, but storing information has never been an issue for me. Over the summer, it took me maybe an hour to etch the whole thing onto the wall of my brain, so it took less than fifteen minutes to regurgitate it back onto paper. Maya raised an eyebrow in my direction when I finished way before anyone else, but she turned her head back to her own paper pretty quickly and, from the look of it, tried to make up something that sounded like a prayer she’d read.
I’m not usually into prayers, but there is a line in Hail, Holy Queen that I enjoyed.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.
It’s supposed to sound devastating. Banished children of Eve.
But it actually sounds whiny. Like getting in trouble with your dad so you go running to your mom.
To thee do we cry.
I dropped off my paper at the end of class and stepped out into the hall feeling relieved that I at least wouldn’t have religion homework to worry about. I watched Maya navigate her way through the crowd and smiled at the way she managed to avoid touching anyone. Her shiny brown hair reminded me of hot chocolate the way it seemed to flow over the top of her shoulders. I watched her a lot longer than I should have.
Rebecca was sitting on top of a row of lockers, holding her knees against her chest and smiling to herself. She had a goofy expression of longing on her face that bugged me for some reason.
—
Dwight and I eat lunch together every day. Not sure if it was a conscious choice on my part, but I don’t mind admitting that it is probably the best thing about him—having someone to eat lunch with. It’s really awkward eating alone or trying to find a place to eat when all the tables are full. That is one of those moments when you shouldn’t feel bad that no one is going out of their way to make room for you, but you kind of do anyway.
Maya eats with a few girls toward the back of the room. Far away from the überrich kids in the middle of the lunch tables. Today she looked over at me and I looked away, pretending that I hadn’t just been staring at her. It wasn’t convincing.
So anyway, Dwight and I sit together. Sometimes I talk, but mostly he does. I know more about him than I ever expected to know, actually. Like how he’s been an altar boy since middle school. And a vegan since he was nine because he saw a chicken beheaded on his great-aunt’s farm. And a Columbian Squire since his mom filled out the form and made him start going to meetings with his grandfather. If you don’t know, the Knights of Columbus is a Catholic organization made up of wrinkly old men and their sons who raise money for charities and sometimes political campaigns that focus on Catholic values, like having as many kids as humanly possible and not eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Ian and a lot of the guys in my classes were Squires. Dwight got roped into it early, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.
He doesn’t mind when I don’t talk, which is nice, especially when I see something weird and I’m trying to concentrate on not seeing it.
Like today, when the mobsters in pin-striped suits showed up in the cafeteria. I winced when the gunshots went off, but the drug held up nicely.
“Are you okay?” Dwight asked.
“Yeah, fine,” I told him. “Headache.”
I watched as the last mobster’s body fell to the ground, draining blood all over the clean linoleum floor. The mobsters had even twitched a little when they died, for cinematic effect. I looked into their pale dead faces for a second. They looked like extras from The Godfather. The mob boss stared directly at me before slipping out the door and vanishing into a sea of uniforms.
My hallucinations are a familiar cast of characters. I’ve seen the mobsters before, but this was the first time I’ve kept my seat when the guns went off.
Progress.
DOSAGE: 1 mg. Same dosage. Appears more antagonistic than in previous sessions.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
“So tell me about your father?”
Well, shit. That didn’t take long. Only four weeks in and we’ve already diagnosed the cause of all my problems. The epicenter of my delirium. The real reason I am the way I am.
My daddy done left me.
That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it? That I’m emotionally scarred because my dad didn’t want to stick around to be my dad? Or that I blame my disease on him? That would be easy.
You can’t blame a disease on someone. Even if I wanted to. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Do you really think I’m so much of a loser that I need someone to blame? Anyway, the disease is from my mom’s side.
My dad is just an asshole. This is an undeniable truth. He left when I was eight.
When he didn’t come home for dinner one night, my mom told me he wasn’t coming back. I remember how she’d looked when she said it. Like all the blood had been drained from her face. She didn’t cry. She just looked tired.
That’s why my dad is an asshole.
My mom was always tired. Every day she got home from work, she was exhausted. And he never tried to make it any easier for her. It’s better that he left because he couldn’t be what we needed anyway. No, not couldn’t. Wouldn’t.