E. in the beginning there was void, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of the water. so God said, “let there be light”, and there was light. and God saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness.
these words are spinning in your head and you let them, you open your eyes and remember that you are in the dark. you know that you probably shouldn't be scared because mommy told you that there aren't any monsters under your bed or in your closet, she told you that and mommies are never wrong about things, but you still feel scared-so-scared. you close and open your eyes and you cannot tell the difference.
you clutch your stuffed lion and tangle your feet in the covers, and you think about downstairs with pops and mommy, with the warm glowing light and the crackling TV. the last time you went downstairs past your bedtime pops got really angry at you though, saying lots of big words you don't understand, and you roll onto your stomach and press your face into leo the lion until you can't breathe and that thought disappears. you are still thinking about pops and mommy and how they are in the light and you are in the dark and you wonder whether there's a reason for that because there's always a reason.
and God called the light day and the dark he called night, and you wonder if that's when God painted the stars into the sky because you're not sure if it says that anywhere in the bible. you close your eyes and you still can't see a difference.
C#m. the freckles on your legs are like a map of the stars. you want to sit out here until it's dark and compare the two, but pops still doesn't let you stay up that long even though you're already five years old. you settle for taking out your crayons instead and you play connect-the-dots on your skin, except the dots aren't numbered so it's way more fun.
you draw a flower and a fish and a big scary dragon fighting a wizard, and you write your name up your left ankle. first there's two huge A and an R which are all kind of difficult to draw. then the letter O which is just a circle so it's easy, and then the N which is easy too but you drew the letters a bit too big so it stretches down onto your foot.
you rest your hands on the roof tiles until you notice how hot they are in the sun and you put your box of crayons into your lap because they're your birthday present from mommy and you don't want to ruin them, you've already worn down all the red shades in the three months you've had them. you're thinking about dragons and wizards and castles again until you remember that they aren't real, and what pops would say, that there's a reason God didn't make dragons and wizards, you forgot, there's a reason for everything. thinking about pops being angry makes you feel angry at yourself so you push your palms and forearms extra hard into the roof for even thinking about stupid things like those, you think to yourself that you're the stupidest kid in the world because all the things you like are fake and wrong. when your skin is all red and burnt you sit up straight and dangle your legs over the edge so you don't have to see the stupid things anymore, but your arms hurt and you want to cry except you're a big boy now and big boys don't cry. you look down onto the concrete below you and for a split second the idea of jumping down flashes inside your mind, maybe you'd break your leg like this one boy in your class and people would visit you in the hospital to bring you candy and presents even though it's not your birthday, and everyone would tell you how sad but glad and thankful they are and they'd really mean it because people always tell the truth if you've just had something bad happen to you.
maybe you'd crack your skull and die like what pops says is gonna happen if you keep sitting on the roof like that. you bite your lip to hold back the tears and you're not sure why you want to cry again. you go inside and scrub the crayon on your legs away with soap and paper towels so pops won't get mad when he comes home from work.
Ab. there's lemon cake for dessert at this funeral feast, the kind that's really just yellow cake mix with icing that tastes like sugary plastic rather than actual lemons slabbed on top. actually, it's the same kind of lemon cake that's been served at every single funeral feast you've been to. you hate that lemon cake so much and you hate wearing starched shirts with tight collars that rub your neck raw and you undo the top button and hope pops doesn't see from his spot at the table. you hate funeral feasts and funerals in general. this time they buried your dad's father's father, and you didn't even know his name until you saw his corpse all made up and dressed in a suit and starched collar shirt like yours and at least where he is now it won't ache his neck. pops told you that they put make up on dead people and sew their eyes and mouth shut so they won't look dead, but you don't really understand why you have to look at dead people in the first place. the day after your first funeral you decided that when you die, they're going to keep the casket closed so no one will have to see your body. they won't sew any parts of you shut because heaven seems kind of pointless if you can't use your eyes.
when you told this to mommy, she ruffled your hair and told you that when you die, your body stays in the coffin under the earth and your soul is the part that goes to heaven, but when you asked her how she knew that she didn't say anything.
A. it's the night after your seventh birthday, and so far this birthday has been by far the worst. not that any of your birthdays hadn't gone horrible in some way, because every year something goes wrong, mommy doesn't have time to bake you a cake or sometimes even buy you a present, or pops has one of his bad days again and doesn't give you anything or even let you order what you want at waffle house. this year, mommy had to drive him to the hospital even though he isn't really sick, and when you asked mommy about it she just told you that you're still too young to understand. you curl into a ball on the bed and clutch the presents you got this year, a new big box of crayons from mommy and the two books auntie brenda got you, even though you didn't ask for books and you don't even like to read but you still had to say thank you because that's the rule when you get a present. maybe you'll draw your favorite pictures in sunset orange and atomic tangerine into the margins tomorrow.
the numbers on the alarm clock glow electric lime in the dark, but you can't read what time it is. you only know that it's late, way past your bedtime, and you want to crawl into mommy's bed but the dark outside your bed is big and scary and cold and your blankets are warm and safe, so you just hug your presents tighter even though they're hard and kind of poke your chest. you pull the duvet over your head and wrap yourself into a bundle, and you're thiiiiis close to falling asleep when the door opens. for a second when the someone first sits on your bed you think it's mommy, but then the light switch is flipped and you hear a voice. “hey little bro. you still up?”
you poke your head out the blankets and jonah is sitting next to you, and you don't even bother putting on your glasses before you rise up on your knees and wrap your arms around him. he smells like cigarette smoke and coffee and the leather of his jacket is wet and also his stubble kind of chafes against your cheek but you don't even care.
“where've you been?” “here and there”, he says, “been a while, i know.” he unzips his backpack and pulls a paper bag out of it, “figured i should bring you some stuff from the real world. your birthday's sometime soon, right?”
“was yesterday,” you say, and you have to squint to see everything in the bag, there's chocolate bars, jawbreakers, all the good candy mommy never buys for you, a small remote controlled car, superhero comics and even more crayons for your collection, and you grin and stash the bag away in the space between your bed and the wall. “how long are you staying?”
jonah pulls off his jacket and lays back onto the mattress. “not long,” he says, “got another freight train to catch in a few days. texas bound,” he adds, and you don't really know anything about texas except that it's really big and really really far away from here.
you pull a face. “you need to stay here. for a while.”
“can't. old man doesn't want me to stick around the house, he'd probably kill me.” he pauses and reaches over to flick the light back off. “wanna come with me?”
you curl back into your blanket and think about it for a second, about mommy and the teachers at school and how they'd probably think you'd been kidnapped and how you would be in the paper and on TV because everyone cares, and how they'd worry for no reason because you're only on an adventure with jonah and alright and you get to see all the big places in the real world like lake erie and san diego and the golf coast. you nod so hard it feels like your head is going to fall off until you realize that jonah can't see, so you say “yes” and push your pillow into your chest and you decide that you were wrong because this is the best birthday ever.
“cool. saturday, six in the morning we're leaving, deal?”
“deal.”
“don't tell mom 'bout this, she'd go raving mad, something like that.”
you nod and then there's a small pause before you say “thank you”.
“what're you thanking me for?”
“nothing.”
E. jonah keeps his word. you hop a freight train and the next time you wake up you're in houston. you see the glowing billboards downtown and watch underground rap battles in abandoned warehouses. you sleep in motels that smell like mold or tucked away under jonah's jacket and a thin blanket in the parking spaces of malls while he stays up to make sure no one steals you away.
you hop a freight train and the next time you wake up you're in florida. you pet a dolphin at seaworld and go to disney world for the first time in your life and you're not sure if they were right when they called it the happiest place in the world because everything there is fake and running away with jonah is the most real thing you've ever done. you sit outside of your crummy motel room and listen to the bed creaks when jonah brings back girls or boys he picked up downtown.
you hop a freight train and the next time you wake up you're in pittsburgh. you hold jonah's jaw open when he pierces his own tongue with a sewing needle dabbed in vodka in the men's bathroom of a cheap diner and jonah chats up a trucker to take you two with him. you fall asleep in the passenger seat and the next time you wake up you're in new york.
you look at the statue of liberty from up close and spit into the hudson river, you walk up all the stairs in the empire state building and jonah takes you to the times square and broadway and soho (“don't let go of my hand, kid, for fuck's sake don't fucking let go of my hand”). you see the graffiti in the bronx and suddenly everything you and your crayons have ever done is meaningless and fake.
jonah blows a good deal of his savings on greyhound bus tickets and the next time you wake up you're in chicago. you sit on jonah's shoulders when he takes you to see a punk band in a shabby club and afterwards the musicians laugh and touch your hair when you tell them how this was the coolest thing you have ever seen and you feel unstoppable like a giant tornado, no, a giant fucking tornado, and you should probably feel bad for thinking a dirty word like that but you really don't.
you walk along the shore of lake michigan the day after and you take your shoes off and dip your feet in, and when you look across the lake from a certain point all you can see is water. they call this lake one of the great lakes of america, and you're most certainly sure that they were right when they named them great lakes because this one alone is the greatest and realest thing you've ever seen.
you hop a freight train and the next time you wake up you're in omaha, only a few miles from home, and you catch one last bus and the adventure is over.
C#m. mom starts crying when you show up at the doorstop with jonah, the kind of crying that's all messy and gross with snot everywhere, and she hugs you and doesn't let go for over a minute. she shoves you into the kitchen and tells you that she missed you so much and she was so worried that you'd gone missing, and she shows you the article in the newspaper asking for any sightings of you to be reported to the police so you'll be back at home and safe soon. you almost want to feel sorry for mom right then because she's still crying when she heats up leftovers for you, but all you can do is grin, because that's your face right there and mom wanted you to come home and so many strangers wanted you to come home and you get that tornado feeling in the pit of your stomach again.
jonah doesn't stick around for long after that, obviously, but the next time he comes back it's the middle of summer and he takes you with him again.
you see california and las vegas over the summer and new mexico during thanksgiving break. you go to seattle and canada over christmas and you don't even miss being home and getting presents. you see atlanta and new orleans and detroit and boston and portland and so many other places that you can't even count them, and by the time that you're ten years old you feel like you've been pretty much everywhere. jonah starts teaching you things, how to make a fire without matches or a lighter, how to fight dirty and how to jump out of a second story window without breaking your face. how to steal food and booze and how to run up a wall even though your legs are still way too short for that. he tells you all about how to land with girls and guys, and how to steal the money from their purses and wallets while they're not looking. how to hotwire a car and how to get weed for cheap. “don't tell you heard it from me,” he'd say when he finishes one of his lectures, and you'd nod until your head is buzzing.
you always get kind of sad when you have to stop having adventures and go back to school, but once you're back at home mom orders your favorite pizza, the one with lots of gooey cheese and pepperoni and bakes you chocolate chip cookies and tells you how much she's missed you and how much she loves you. sometimes you're not sure whether the actual adventure or the coming home is your favorite part.
you're scared of the old man now though, more scared than you ever were of anything if you're going to be honest. you barely see him around anymore, but every time he comes to visit from the clinic he just seems to have gotten even angrier, you're starting to wonder whether that place even does him any good since no one ever bothered to tell you why he's there in the first place.
you're pretty sure it's the old man's fault too when jonah leaves for good.
Ab. you are exactly eleven years old and “fuck” is rapidly becoming your favorite word. you're supposed to be downstairs right now because mom baked you a cake and you're pretty sure she got you the art supplies you asked for too. instead, you're sitting on the toilet lid with your legs folded beneath you. it's been exactly one year now since you last saw jonah and he hasn't even sent a postcard or anything to tell you that he's okay. the bus he left on was canada bound, you've only been to canada once and it's not the sort of place where you'd just get lost and die. you think about canada and jonah and the old man and how much he hates both of you and how much you hate him back, because he says you're a fucking failure even if mom says he doesn't really mean that but you know he does, and you look at your freckles and you're thinking about connect-the-dots again. you bite your lip and you wish the old man dead. the old man's razor is always sharp and you can almost see how sharp it is when you take it in your hand. mom always tells you you shouldn't touch it, what the fuck, you're old enough to know how to handle a stupid razor. you've seen this on TV once or twice and they always have the same excuses, “i cut myself shaving”, “i have a mean cat”, or “i fell down the stairs”. no, fuck that, you'd want people to know what happened if they ask, and they'd better feel fucking horrible when you answer. you look down onto the freckles on your legs again and all you see is a complete uneven mess. if you tried to connect the dots all you'd get would be a dirty ugly cluster.
you don't really understand how it's supposed to work. do you just make a cut and then you feel a little less like shit? you might as well try it out for yourself.
you connect the dots, carefully, and wow. oh. wow. you're actually a little less angry now. you exhale and drop the razor on the floor. wow, it works. you stand up to look at yourself in the floor length mirror and smile, just a little smile, as if you'd just been told a secret and you want to pass it on but you can't. that's what you feel like, like this is an awesome new secret except no one actually told it to you, you just came up with it by yourself. there's a ribbon of dark brick red blood flowing along your ankle and you swipe it with a finger and lick it up. almost tastes like candy.
you connect the dots again, and again, and at the end you bandage your cuts and go downstairs. you feel like more than a tornado, you feel fucking saintlike and you try to remember what the guy from the bible you were named after ever did or if he ever even became a saint. you're pretty sure you're better than him already.
nobody asks about your cuts and you feel like shit again.
A. the old man gets you a scholarship at st. joseph's academy. the best school in the state, they say, and you're really sure they're wrong with that one. it's your first day of middle school and you already want to burn the fucking place down.
she's sitting alone at lunch and the first thing you notice about her is that she's got red hair and freckles like you, not burnt orange hair like yours but rather apricot, you can barely even tell it's red. her t-shirt is one of those ugly carnation pink things with an airbrushed dolphin on it and she's wearing a skirt, but not one of those skirts that make girls' legs look good. she's dressed exactly like a little girl or like one of those social rejects that probably got bullied to hell and back for their whole life and mom always tells you to not make fun of them because it's not their fault they look this stupid, and for a moment you're so sure that this has got to be a motherfucking joke.
“hey.” “hello. are you new here?” even her voice sounds like a little girl's. you focus on scratching the scabs under your sleeves to keep yourself from laughing, no way she's not a huge practical joke. “i just started middle school,” she continues and you're so sure her voice is fake except it doesn't sound fake in the least, “my name is nelly.” she shoves her bangs out of her eyes so you can see her face and you're a little surprised that she's actually kind of pretty. you look at her binder on the table, lisa frank rainbow cat, her full name is helena, actually kind of a pretty name. “i'm aaron.”
helena reaches for your sketchbook on the table, the sketchbook you carry everywhere, and now her stubby fingers are all over the pages, “you do art? so cool”, and you kind of want to laugh at that except the joke isn't funny in the least. she starts with the earlier sketches from fifth grade or so when your memories were still clear, “is this new york?” she goes through all your clear urban scenery drawings guessing each city and she gets every single one right until the point when your memories got too fuzzy so new york merged with hollywood merged with atlanta, and she closes the book and scoots it back over to you.
“you know, i do art too.” you raise a brow. “i mostly do anime”, and she giggles.
you're not sure if you want to make fun of this girl behind her back or kiss her right on the lips.
E. you stop drawing the cityscapes from your memories and start drawing real things over the next few years.
you sketch the old man drinking coffee over breakfast while he isn't looking and he looks more tired and dead with every drawing, you draw mom sitting on the couch going through her drug counseling notes and you draw the neighbors from your room's window and your teachers at the whiteboard when class is boring again. you sketch the old man when he says that he's got a job in IT, that he thinks he's getting his life together now, and on the day of your fourteenth birthday you draw the debris in the backyard after the old man spilled the contents of the whole liquor cabinet onto the lawn and stomped down all the bottles. at some point, you buy pastel chalk with your extra money and sketch yourself in the foggy mirror when you get out of the shower and put in your contacts, white and piggy pink skin with burnt sienna freckles sprinkled on it, pink sherbet brick burn from running up walls on your chest, salmon road rash on your knees from falling and ugly violet red welts of fresh scars scattered across most of your arms and legs. you stopped hiding them a few months after you met helena. you'll let people stare if they fucking want to. they still don't ask. you sketch what you remember of your childhood, playing connect-the-dots with crayons and not with blades, disney world and graffiti and motel rooms.
you sell most of your pictures in downtown omaha to afford more art supplies and weed, only five dollars for every sketch but it all adds up. you take requests too, sometimes.
“tell me about yourself,” you say to your subject. “so, you any have kids?” “what d'you do for a living?” “who's your favorite band?” you pull everyone's personality right out of them in the space of ten minutes, and then the picture is done and you ask for your pay.
you draw most of the strangers you meet at parties, the faces of all the girls and boys you kiss, or at least what you can remember of their faces since it's almost always too dark for them to make out your face and the other way around. you draw the heaving bra-clad breasts of girls when you have two fingers inside their panties and the faces boys make when your hand is down their pants. that's the pictures you keep stashed in a separate sketchbook under your mattress, not as something to whack off to but rather for future reference, that's what they should look like when you make them happy and if they don't you didn't do a good job. by the time you're about to turn sixteen, you already have a reputation with most of the public school kids, and you don't care if you hear anyone call you a manwhore or a greedy slut behind your back. at least they're talking about you, but when you tell this to helena she just shakes her head and sighs.
you draw helena a lot too, helena when you meet her in front of the school first thing in the morning, helena when she's asleep during class with her hair spread messy across her desk and that stupid lisa frank binder. you sketch helena's smile when she plays you her favorite music from her father's record collection, bob dylan and my bloody valentine and jeff buckley, and you sketch the grimace on her face when you show her glassjaw and deftones.
you sketch helena reading 1984 for class and helena rolling up her jeans to check on her road rash when she didn't make it up the wall like you did. you sketch helena exhaling smoke with a joint between her fingers and helena eating taco bell. helena blowing out birthday candles and helena crying over thanksgiving dinner. helena in her mountain meadow dress at the middle school graduation and helena in her purple pizzazz pajama pants first thing in the morning after you spent the night at her house. she never looks the same between two pictures but it's always the real helena.
you pin your favorite pictures of her onto your wall and mom asks if you two are dating more than once, but you always say no and wish you were lying.
you try to sketch jonah a few times but every time you do, it looks less like him and less and less real.
one time you buy spray paint in all shades of red and yellow you can find and you spray a giant mural of a fire right onto a house facade where everyone can see. it takes three or four nights but then it's finished and it's the most real thing you've ever seen. when you show helena, she just says “nice”, but you don't think she means it.
Ab. you finish rolling the joint and fumble for your lighter and helena says “i don't think we should smoke here” for what has to be the third time. she's sitting on the floor between two bales of straw with some spare pieces sticking to her hair and sweater and you kind of really wish that you'd remembered to bring your sketchbook. “my dad knows the lady who owns this barn, you know, she's really sweet and i don't think she'd want this.” for the third fucking time. “like she ever gonna find out about this.” you light up and pass it over to her, and she takes a drag. “still think it's wrong.” “you're still doing it.” she passes the joint over to you and you inhale it so deeply you feel like your lungs are gonna burst. you flick the lighter's switch on and off and suddenly your hand's moving a little too close to the straw bale behind your back, wow, how'd this happen, and suddenly there's fire.
“oops,” you say and it almost sounds genuinely like it was an accident, except you start giggling at the end. “told you,” helena says and her voice sounds a little distant so you're not sure if it's actually her or just your little conscience, like jiminy fucking cricket from the movie but in the shape of a cute girl. you flick the lighter again to shut her up except suddenly it's out of your hands and on the floors and another bale has caught fire, oops, how the fuck did that happen, and suddenly you remember being a kid and building brick towers just to kick them down, except this is far better than bricks because it's actually real.
“what the fuck are you doing?” helena asks, you're sure it's actually her this time, and you say “oops” once again, but this time it doesn't even begin to sound genuine. “it's cool, she's not ever gonna know it was us,” you say, and you take another drag and that makes it all better.
“yeah, maybe,” helena says, “but she still keeps the gas for her lawn mower in here.”
it takes a few seconds, fucking weed, before what she'd just said really kicks in, but then you realize what that means and you see the flames inching further along the bales and holy fuck this thing is gonna blow up, and you throw the joint down and grab helena's hand, “fuck, run run run run”.
and you run and you don't stop or fucking turn around until you're back on the road into town and thank the fucking lord nobody fucking saw you.
you wind up watching the cornfield and what's left of the barn burn down from the window in helena's room. she's still clutching your hand and you know you should probably feel bad about what the fuck you just did, but you still feel kind of proud of what you did, for doing something that's far more real than anything else you ever did. you stay like this until the fire starts to die down and helena leads you over to sit on her bed. your hand is still in hers, and she leans over and kisses you, not like any of the kisses you ever had but all gentle and soft and without any tongue at all. you immediately decide that it's the best kiss you've ever had.
“you know, aaron,” helena says, “i really really like you.”
“me too,” and you kiss her again, you move one hand under her shirt and touch her breasts really carefully, as if they might break in your hands or anything. you keep kissing and both your shirts come off, one of your hands is under her skirt and in her panties, “that's nice,” and she helps you take your pants off and eventually you're both naked. you're even more careful when you push in, and she wraps her legs around you and kisses you again, “just like that,” and you really don't want to finish too quickly because this is the best thing ever and the thing you've whacked off to since you were in seventh grade, and now it's real and wait what no rewind the tape--
“you know, aaron,” helena says, “i really really like you.”
she says, “but it's getting late and i still have to finish my essay for lit class.”
“you should go home,” she says.
and you say “okay”. you don't try to kiss her again or even hug her goodbye. you pull on your jacket and you go home and whack off until your wrist aches and you feel like you won't be able to get hard again for the next month. you wipe your hand and dick on your bed sheet and go to sleep.
A. they fucking find out, of course. nothing on a large scale, obviously, the FBI never show up at your doorstep or anything, and even if they did, they wouldn't have any proof, but one morning you walk downstairs to get breakfast and mom says that she would like to talk to you about the barn. you don't have a fucking clue how she knew you did it, or at least you convince yourself that you don't, and you sit down and listen to her lecture. she tells you everything, about your graffiti and your drugs and all the girls you've hooked up with, she only mentions the girls so you hope she doesn't know about the boys but she probably does. she tells you everything as if you didn't know already that you did those, how could you not know, you were right there. you don't know what to say but you feel like you should say something (but you still don't say anything). mom takes a sip of her coffee and says that she's met a lot of people like you over her job, young people, smart people, who decided to do drugs and violate the law, and you want to say that you never decided to break any laws, you just want people to pay attention to you, that you wanted to be important, but that sounds really fucking stupid so you keep your mouth shut either way. mom says that she's been looking into options for treatment, that she's kind of scared of telling your father because he'd probably relapse if he ever found out. you bite your lip and nod, and you tell her to call in sick at school for you and you go back upstairs. you want to connect the dots more than anything but mom got rid of the fucking razor, guess she also knows where your scars come from now. you go back to bed and put the pillow over your head and you wait. helena doesn't visit you or even call to find out why you didn't show up for class and you want to die more than ever.
in the end, mom gets you a spot at the white rose residential treatment center. they say that it's the best mental institution in the area but you still want to commit arson against that place more than you've ever wanted before. mom made you sign the admission slip forcibly, but you figure it's still better than being shipped off to military school or whatever the old man would have thought of.
you spend the first two weeks or so in your room with the shades pulled down, the orderlies always pull them up when they come to bring breakfast and lunch but you pull them straight down again after they've left. at least they trust you enough to let you have a single room so you don't have to put up with any of the crazies here, or maybe you should say the other crazies since being here kind of means that you're crazy too.
mom comes to visit you at least twice a week and she still brings you her chocolate chip cookies like you're still the favorite child, very funny mom, but then you think about the last time you heard from jonah and then consider that there aren't really any other options for “favorite child”. you're not sure if you want to punch mom in the face because first she gets you shipped off to white rose but then she apparently still likes you enough to make you food. you eat everything she brings you though, because it's far better than the disgusting excuses for meals they serve here. mom always asks you how you like the white rose so far, though, and you really wish you could tell her to fuck off but she's still your mother after all. you want to tell her that you hate the place more than anything, you hate the shrinks and the orderlies and the other patients and art therapy and your room and group therapy and you even hate the fucking stupid name this place has and that that's more hate you've wasted on a single thing than you ever have before, but all that you say is that you guess it's alright.
the old man only comes to visit you once, the weekend before thanksgiving, and he doesn't bring you food, not like you were expecting anything, he doesn't even ask you how you are.
“i've never been more disappointed with you,” he says first thing, like every angry dad on TV ever, which is almost funny, if you pretend he's not your father and you don't have to deal with him, that is. “go ahead and do enough stupid things to get you locked up here, and you're not even trying to get better, do you have any idea how much this place is costing me, consider yourself lucky the mortgage's already paid out, do you even know how embarrassing it is to know your child's in a mental hospital, not like it's even a secret anymore,” and he slicks his hair back, his stupid red hair that's the main indicator he's actually your real father and not just some asshole mom got married to.
“like you weren't in treatment for your f-- stupid alcohol addiction,” you say, don't swear in front of him, it'll just make him angrier, and he says “that's completely different,” says, “wasn't my fault that the stress got too huge and i took up drinking, it's your own fault for being here, your fault because you just had to go ahead and get yourself in trouble.” he's getting louder now and his fingers are tearing at the ugly pleather covering of his chair's arm rest. yours are digging into your arm, fuck, you wish you could play connect-the-dots right now, but you're not sure whether you'd rather use your arm or the old man's as a playing surface. too bad they filed your nails short and blunt just yesterday.
you remember the last time you were actually scared of him, when you were ten, and now you've started to understand the reasons why he's like this, but you keep talking either way
“you and mom were the ones who wanted me away, can't really say it's my own fault that i'm here.”
“not like we had much of a choice, couldn't let a f-- freaking criminally insane kid out in the open, could we.”
“yeah well, maybe you're the one who made me this way,” you say, and you stand up and spit right in his face. you want to do much more than just spit, you want to punch him and push him to the ground and kick his teeth in, criminally insane, you'll show him criminally insane. “fuck you, dad.”
the old man's head is a spray can of red paint and you're about ready to cover the walls in it but the orderlies are already at your sides and pull you backwards when you reach out to strike, and you want to fucking bite them in the arms and kick at their shins until they let you go and destroy the old man, but they're far stronger than you are and so all your flailing is useless.
they give you a sedative and then you're back in your room and you're getting a lecture from your shrink on how you need to control your anger against your father and how what you did was the wrong thing, but you're not sure whether you should believe it.
Am. you're almost happy when the nurse tells you that your lady friend's come to visit, but as soon helena actually walks in you just feel incredibly out of place, even if it's technically your room. she looks different now, you guess she's gotten taller, and her hair is shorter and she's wearing deeper colors, jungle green and mahogany and a plum scarf as opposed to the standard razzmatazz and tickle me pink . you hug her, but she doesn't hug back. “hey.” “hi.” … “i brought you some cupcakes. vanilla with strawberry icing.” “nice ... thanks.” … “this place doesn't seem too bad.” “'course it seems like that, you can just walk out and go home.” “sorry. didn't think that one through … i'm sorry that you've ended up here.” “it's okay … not your fault.” “yeah. guess it's not my fault.” … “yeah. i'm not missing anything while i'm in here, right?” “not really, no.” she laughs, but it sounds too fake for you to laugh along. it's quiet, suddenly, way too quiet, and you can hear the nurse chaperoning just outside the door, listening in so nothing's going to happen. it's a policy of the white rose, obviously, no visitors of the opposite sex allowed without staff supervision, but they don't trust you either way and you know it. “...you know, the real world got really boring without you.” “thanks... i guess?” … “you know, my dad's waiting to pick me up. i told him i wouldn't stay too long.” … “so, see you soon, then, i guess?” “yeah, see you.” helena stands up and you want to tell her to stop. you want to kiss her again, just kiss her, and you want to tell her how much you l-- lo-- okay, no, you feel stupid even thinking it, but you really do want to tell helena that you l-o-v-e her, except the words get stuck in your throat and you can't say a fucking thing. the door closes and she's gone and you bite your lip so hard it makes you scream. the nurse asks if you're alright in there, and you tell her to go away.
helena doesn't visit again. you keep the cupcakes in your room until they start to smell funny and fall apart and you have to throw them out, the moldy strawberry icing almost looks like a piece of modern art between all the other trash. speaking of art, you hate art therapy more than anything.
they don't even let you have a fucking no. 2 pencil or charcoal, that's how little they trust you, instead you have to use crayons just like the ones you had when you were a kid and you refuse to as much as touch them. the art therapist tells you no pressure, just start drawing when you finally feel ready, maybe draw whatever's on your mind or something from before you came to this place, and she looks through the sketchbooks you brought with you and compliments you on your art, but everything you've sketched just kind of feels fake now. fuck, the world outside of the hospital grounds seems really unreal, or maybe the world outside is the real thing and this place is unreal, fuck, that's kind of a scary thought.
the art lady, you can't remember her name to save your life, she asks if that pretty girl in the pictures is your girlfriend, that she thinks she's seen her around your ward once, and you say you don't want to talk about it. instead, you pick up your stupid black crayon which is the closest thing to a decent pencil you're gonna get in here, and you finally start drawing. you draw helena, or at least you try to, but the crayon is the cheap brand that's kind of brittle and all your lines get messy, but at least it still looks like helena, at least kind of, but her nose seems a little off and her chin is too round and right, she's got a different haircut now. you try drawing her again, and again, but every time there's a little flaw or two in the finished product and you want to smash the crayon between your fist except your shrink says breaking shit isn't a solution for anything. so you get out your sketchbook and you use all the old sketches of helena for reference, but you still think there's something off about your new drawings, and the longer you look at the old ones, the more you think there's something off about them too. in the end, you stop drawing helena altogether, you move on to mom, she still visits every weekend so the memory is fresh, but there's still something off about her face when you draw it, so you stop drawing her as well. you go backwards through your memories, making out, the old man sobering up in reverse, cityscape, the whole world, jonah, but the further back you go the fuzzier everything seems and every single one of your sketches gets more and more distorted and less like the real thing.
you drop the black and draw the only thing that's still clear, the big clear thing behind all the fuzzy memories.
you grab all the crayons you can find: brick red, mahogany, red, scarlet, sunset orange, red orange, burnt orange, mango tango, neon carrot, macaroni and cheese, sunglow, goldenrod, canary, laser lemon and unmellow yellow, and you draw the fire.
it's the best thing you've ever seen, so you do it over and over, but it just gets messier, less like actual fire and more like a small kid's chicken scratch drawing. in the end, the only thing you see is a lot of straight lines scrawled next to each other on paper, and you give up. or you give in. to failing. to the fact that you need help.
whatever.
C#m. they were telling the truth for once when they said that it'd get better, because it actually does. it's not like you wake up one morning and feel completely alright, but maybe white rose isn't such a horrible place after all. you've started actually telling your shrink about your problems and it kind of really helps, and you start really talking to people too, you try to be nice to the orderlies and the kitchen staff even if the food is still fucking horrid, and you start talking to the other crazies, too. really, they don't seem all that crazy to you, even if they probably are, but you're crazy too so you probably don't have the right to judge. you meet this boy with big empty doll eyes who barely says anything, but when he does it's always the right thing, and this girl who's either the most exciting person in the world or just such a great liar that she could tell you how she hung the stars into the sky all by herself and you'd probably believe it, and you're not sure whether you should feel bad about envying either of them. you meet another boy, with freckles just like yours, and he seems completely normal and alright at first glance but you can't pretend that he's not clawing at the walls and screaming things in his sleep when the walls are thin and his room is right next to yours.
and you meet another girl, a girl named laura who reminds you way too much of helena despite not being like helena at all.
laura is gangly and wiry and her hair is stringy and black. she wears huge lumpy sweaters and long tattered skirts with chunky boots, and she looks like someone picked her straight out of the trash, or like a reclusive old lady at a funeral, as if she's trying to make herself as repulsive as possible. she's got scars on her arms that look almost just like yours, except when you ask her about them she'll pull her sleeves down past her knuckles and say that it doesn't matter anymore. in fact, she's kind of bitchy and overly defensive about everything you've ever asked her, and your shrink says that she doesn't really mean it but she probably does.
you're pretty sure that the only thing laura actually likes is art therapy. the only thing she ever does is paint black shapes onto colored canvases, and when you ask her what they're supposed to be, she tells you to fuck off, but then she shrugs her shoulders and says “birds,” and they don't look a thing like birds, they don't look like anything, but you just say “nice”.
the art lady, you still can't remember what her name was, she teaches you how to work with a paintbrush and acrylic paint, and once you figure the whole thing out the first thing you paint is birds. they actually look like birds, unlike laura's, and you paint two of them on one canvas, a pink sherbet bird on a black background and a black bird on a pink sherbet background. your birds actually look like birds, and when you're finished laura is the first person you show. she just shrugs, and you point at the black bird and say “this one's inspired by you”. “who's the other one?” she asks, and you bite your lip. “'s a secret.” laura says “it's okay, you don't have to tell me,” and she almost smiles a little. laura's smile is the only thing about her that's genuinely pretty, and you almost want to kiss her right then because she almost reminds you of helena, but she isn't.
B. you leave the white rose after a year and a half in total. laura doesn't come to say you goodbye and mom doesn't come to pick you up, either, but that's okay, you're okay, or at least much better.
the day after you return home, you spend what's left of your savings on a tattoo, nothing fancy, just a simple inscription on your ankle, “to hell and back”.
you stroke the bandage when you sit down at the bus stop and you feel like you're ready for everything now.
