Suicide Notes

“Even if that person was crazy?” I said. “Even if that person was like me?”

“If I remember correctly, you’ve spent a great deal of time telling me you aren’t crazy,” Cat Poop reminded me.

“I’m being hypothetical,” I said. “So, would you?”

He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said.

I laughed. “I didn’t think so,” I told him.

“Now answer my question,” Cat Poop said. “Are you afraid that no one will want to be with you if they know you’ve spent time here?”

“I don’t care what people think,” I told him.

“How about what you think?” he said.

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” I answered. “Let me get back to you.”

“How about Allie?” Cat Poop said. “Do you think she’ll still want to be friends with you?”

I didn’t know how to answer that one. Allie always said that we’d be best friends no matter what. Was that still true?

“You’d have to ask her,” I said.

He let me go after a few more minutes, and he didn’t bring up love again, which is really a relief, because I’m getting tired of that subject.

Getting back to the original question, the one about what I would change about myself, it’s not really my fear of heights that I’d change. I mean, it’s not like that’s keeping me from achieving my life’s dream of being a tightrope walker or anything. I think it’s funny that old Cat Poop got all excited about it, because really it was just something to say.

The truth is, I’d like to have a tail. Seriously. Not a dog tail or a pig tail or anything like that. I want a monkey tail. A long one that I could use to pick stuff up with and hang by. I think that would be completely cool.

Day 32

“What’s playing tonight on Nuthouse TV?” I asked Sadie.

As usual, we were in the lounge. Everyone else had gone to bed, even though it wasn’t all that late, and except for Moonie, we had the place to ourselves. It reminded me of how sometimes Allie and I stay up late watching movies. Well, how we used to.

Sadie flipped through the channels. “Um, we have a vampire movie, a documentary on whales, or the Home Shopping Network.”

“Definitely the Home Shopping Network,” I said.

Sadie settled on that channel. The host, a woman with big red hair and an even bigger smile, was showing off some ugly jewelry. She was holding up a ring with a giant fake diamond in it.

“And for only twenty-nine ninety-nine you can have this genuine artificial piece of crap that everyone will know isn’t real,” I said.

“No fair,” said Sadie. “You’re supposed to make up something completely different than what it really is.”

“That is completely different than what she’s really saying,” I argued. “She wants us to think that buying that ring will make our lives perfect.”

“Maybe it would,” Sadie suggested.

“Right,” I said, snorting.

“No, really,” Sadie said. “Maybe someone out there has been wanting a ring like that their whole life. Now they can get it for twenty-nine ninety-nine.”

“Plus shipping and handling,” I said. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “I’m probably just premenstrual or something. It just kind of makes me sad to look at that ring and think that somewhere there’s this person who has to have it. And I really wish that ring would make that person’s life better.”

“Did you take all your meds today?” I asked her.

Sadie turned the TV off. “Let’s just talk,” she said.

“About what?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Sadie. “Me. You. Us. Anything.”

“I know what this is about,” I said. “Cat Poop got into your brain. He’s turned you into Therapy Girl.”

“Bite me,” Sadie said, slapping my leg. “Nobody talks around here,” she said. “We all pretend to, but we never really do.” She pointed to the television. “We’re like the people in there,” she said, like the TV was an apartment house or something. “We open our mouths, but nothing really comes out.”

I’d never heard her talk like this, and to tell the truth, it was a little freaky. I mean, I could always count on Sadie to be sarcastic and funny. Now she was going all Oprah on me.

“Come on,” Sadie said. “Tell me a secret.”

“Now we’re telling secrets?” I said. “What’s next, Spin the Bottle?”

“Tell me a secret,” she said again, poking her finger into my thigh to punctuate each word.

“Ow!” I said. “Okay. Okay. You win. I’ll tell you a secret.” Then, before I knew it, I blurted out, “I fooled around with Rankin.”

I couldn’t believe I’d said it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. I’d actually been thinking about telling her something about me and Allie. But that’s what came out. Afterward, I sat there wishing I could disappear.

“You fooled around with Rankin?” she said.

I almost told her I was kidding. I knew she would believe me if I laughed hard enough to prove it to her. But I didn’t. I just nodded. I couldn’t say anything. I mean, I’d just told her the worst thing I’d ever done in my entire life.

And do you know what she did? She rolled her eyes.

“You call that a secret?” she said.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“Well, what do you mean you fooled around?”

“We…” I said, then stopped. “We just…” I almost told her about sucking Rankin’s dick. But I couldn’t. So I moved my hand up and down like I was, well, like I was doing what Rankin and I did. The first time.

“You guys jacked off together?” she guessed.

I nodded.

“Wow,” she said, and made her eyes really big. For a second I thought she was going to freak out on me, and I started to panic. Then she laughed. “Big news flash,” she said. “Guys whack off. Film at eleven.”

I didn’t know what to say. I thought she would at least be a little surprised. I know she thought me seeing Rankin playing with himself was nothing exciting, but this was different. Totally different. This was me and Rankin playing with each other. Here I was totally freaking out about what happened, and she was treating it like it was nothing. I almost felt like I should apologize for being so boring.

“I meant a secret about you,” Sadie said.

“That was about me!” I said.

“No,” said Sadie. “It was just something you did that you think people would be freaked out about if they knew. Trust me, everybody around here has done stuff way weirder than that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Remember Alice?” said Sadie.

Like I could ever forget. I nodded.

“She used to catch flies—and eat them. And last time I was here there was this guy named Benny. He liked to hide things up his butt. Trust me, what you and Rankin did was so not secret-worthy.”

I looked at her while she waited for me to respond. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s all I’ve got.” Which wasn’t true, but