It's Kind of a Funny Story

I don’t have any disease. I keep pacing. Depression isn’t a disease. It’s a pretext for being a prima donna. Everybody knows that. My friends know it; my principal knows it. The sweating has started again. I can feel the Cycling roaring up in my brain. I haven’t done anything right. What have I done, made a bunch of little pictures? That doesn’t count as anything. I’m finished. My principal just called me and I hung up on him and didn’t call back. I’m finished. I’m expelled. I’m finished.

The man is back in my stomach and I rush to my bathroom, but something about me won’t let it go. I hunch over the toilet moaning and hacking, but it won’t come so I wash my mouth out and get into bed.

“What happened?” Muqtada asks. “You never sleep during the day.”

“I’m in big trouble,” I say, and I lie there, getting up only to munch through lunch, until Dr. Minerva comes by at three o’clock and pokes her head into my room.

“Craig? I’m here to talk.”

thirty-four

“I’m really glad to see you.” We’re back in the room that Nurse Monica checks me out in. Dr. Minerva seems very familiar with it.

“I’m glad to see you, too. I’m glad to see you well,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s really been a roller coaster, I have to say.”

“An emotional roller coaster.”

“Yes.”

“Where is that roller coaster right now, Craig?”

“Down. Way down.”

“What’s got you down?”

“I got a phone call from my school principal.”

“And what did he want?”

“I don’t know. I hung up.”

“What do you think he wanted, Craig?”

“To expel me.”

“And why would he want to do that?”

“Hello? Because I’m here? Because I’m not in school?”

“Craig, your principal can’t expel you for being in a psychiatric hospital.”

“Well, you know all my other problems.”

“What are those?”

“Hanging out with my friends all the time, getting depressed, not doing homework . . .”

“Uh-huh. Let’s hold off on that for a moment, Craig. I haven’t seen you since Friday. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to be here?”

I give her the rap. There’s much more to add to it now, about being on Six North. About Noelle and the eating and the not throwing up and the sleeping, where I’m one for two.

“What’s it like compared to Friday, Craig?”

“Better. Much, much better. But the question is, am I really better, or am I just lulled into a false sense of security by this fake environment? I mean, it’s not normal here.”

“Nowhere is normal, Craig.”

“I guess not. What’s been the news since I’ve been in here?”

“Someone tried to gas the Four Seasons in Manhattan.”

“Jeez!”

“I know.” Dr. Minerva smirks. Then she leans in. “Craig, there’s one thing you didn’t mention that your recreation director did. She said you’ve been doing art while you’ve been here.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s nothing, really. Just yesterday.”

“What is it like?”

“Well, remember how I told you last time that I liked to draw maps when I was a little kid? It sort of came from that.”

“How so?”

“When they gave me a pencil and paper in arts and crafts, I remembered—well, I didn’t remember, I was actually prompted by Noelle—”

“That’s the girl you met?”

“Right.”

“From the way you describe her I can see a real friendship developing.”

“Oh, forget a friendship. We are totally going to be going out when I leave, I think.”

“You think you’re ready for that, Craig?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right.” She takes a note. “So how did Noelle help you?”

“She suggested that I draw something from my childhood, and that made me remember the maps.”

“I see.”

“And I started drawing one, but then Ebony came over—”

“You’re on a first-name basis with all these people.”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever considered yourself good at mak-ing friends, Craig?”

“No.”

“But you can make friends here.”

“Right. Well, here is different.”

“How is it different?”

“It’s, I dunno . . . there’s no pressure.”

“No pressure to make friends?”

“No, no pressure to work hard.”

“As there is in the outside world.”

“Right.”

“Tremendous pressure out there. Your Tentacles.”

“Yeah.”

“Are there Tentacles in here, Craig?”

I stop and think. The way they run things on Six North has become clear to me: it’s all about keeping people occupied and passing the time. You wake up and you’ve immediately got a blood pressure gauge around your arm and somebody taking your pulse. Then it’s breakfast. Then you get your meds and then there’s a smoking break, and then maybe you have fifteen minutes to yourself before there’s some kind of activity. That leads to lunch which leads to more meds and more smoking and more activities, and then all of a sudden the day is over; it’s time for dinner, and everyone’s trading salt and desserts, and then it’s the 10 P.M. cigarette break and bedtime.

“No, there aren’t any Tentacles in here,” I say. “The opposite of a Tentacle is a simple task, something that’s placed before you and that you do without question. That’s what they have in here.”

“Right. Your only Tentacles in here are your phone calls, which are what got you so down just now.”

“Correct.”

Dr. Minerva takes notes. “Now, here’s an important question, Craig. Are there any Anchors in here?”