It's Kind of a Funny Story

Johnny refuses to dance but bobs his head. The nursing students dance with one another and with Neil. Then it comes around to me. I hate dancing. I’ve never been good at it and I don’t mean that in the traditional scared teenager way: I’m really not good.

But a nursing student has both her hands out to me, and Noelle is across the room.

I put my bongos aside and try to think about what I’m doing as I do it. I know that you’re not supposed to think about dancing—what is that stupid expression, Sing like no one’s listening, dance like no one’s watching?—whatever. I want to dance like Bobby did, and I know the way to do that is to move my hips, so I focus there and think a lot. I don’t think about my arms. I don’t think about my legs. I don’t think about my head. I think about shaking my hips back and forth and then in and out and then in circles, and all of a sudden the nursing student is behind me—I had my eyes closed—and there’s another one in front of me, making a Craig Gilner sandwich, and I’m dancing as if I were one of those cool club guys with two chicks—heck, I have two chicks.

I hold out my hand to Noelle in a fit of confidence. She gets up and we go to the middle of the floor and shake our hips at each other, never touching, never talking, just smiling and keeping our eyes locked. I think she’s actually looking to me for tips, so I mouth to her: “Shake your hips!”

She does, her arms as out of place as my own, hanging at her sides with nowhere sexy to go. Where are you supposed to put your arms when you dance? It’s like the Universal Question. I guess you’re supposed to put them around someone.

When it’s Jimmy’s turn to dance, he gets up, throws down his washboard, and puts his finger over his lips at Neil. Neil stops playing. Jimmy does a pirouette over the unaccompanied wild percussion that we’ve built up and lands on his knee: “How sweet it is!”

thirty-eight

When Neil’s guitar is packed up he comes over.

“Good job with those drum fills.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen you before. What’s your name?”

“Craig.”

“You had good rhythm; you got people moving. Ah, I hope you don’t mind me asking this but . . . why are you here? You seem pretty, you know, good.”

“I have depression,” I say. “I had it really bad. I’m getting out in two days.”

“Great, wonderful, that’s great to hear. I have a lot of friends with that.” He nods at me. “Once you’re out, do you ever think you might consider . . . volunteering in a place like this?”

“Volunteering with what?”

“Well, do you play instruments?”

“No.”

“You probably could. You have a good musical sense.”

“Thanks. I do art.”

“What kind of art?”

I lead him out of the activity center past the nurses’ station and the phone, to my room, where Muqtada is in bed.

“Craig, I hear you all in music room,” he says.

“You should have come.”

Neil smiles at him: “Hello.”

“Hm.”

I pull my stack of my brain maps out for Neil. “I do these.” I give him a whole armful, maybe fifteen of the best of them by now. The one on top is a duo, a guy and girl with a bridge connecting the cities in their minds.

“These are cool,” Neil says. He flips through them. “Have you done these for a long time?”

“That depends,” I say. “Ten years or a couple days, depending on how you count it.”

“Can I have one?”

“I don’t know if I can give them away for free.”

“Ha! Listen, for real, here’s my card.” Neil pulls out a simple black-and-white business card that identifies him as a Guitar Therapist. “Whenever you’re out of here, and I’m sure it’ll be soon, give me a call and we can talk about volunteering, and—I’m serious—I might like to buy some of these. How old are you? You should be on the teen floor, right, but they’re renovating?”

“I’m young,” I say.

“I’m glad you came here and got the help you needed,” Neil says, and he shakes my hand in that way that people do in here to remind themselves that you’re the patient and they’re the doctor/volunteer/employee. They like you, and they genuinely want you to do better, but when they shake your hand you feel that distance, that slight disconnect because they know that you’re still broken somewhere, that you might snap at any moment.

Neil leaves the room and I spend the rest of the day drawing and playing cards with Armelio. Around one-thirty I call Mom, tell her about the sing-along and the card tournament and how I danced, and she affirms that I’m sounding better and that she heard from Dr. Mahmoud that Thursday is a solid day and she and Dad will be ready when it’s time to pick me up. Even though it’s only a few blocks back to my house, they have to pick me up in person.

In the late afternoon, while I’m playing spit with Armelio and getting crushed, Smitty pops in and tells me I have a visitor.

I know it’s not Mom or Dad or Sarah; they’re coming tomorrow for one last time, when Dad brings Blade II. I hope to God it isn’t Aaron or one of his friends.

It’s Nia.