down in the house every day and drops the pill in my palm and says to take the
goddamn thing
. I knock it back without water, without a fight. But today Dad left my room and I spit the
goddamn thing
out.
My parents have me on Ritalin. Mom says it calms my hyper-excitability and helps me to be the boy she wants me to be. I like the sound of being hyperexcitable. My mom, the pillhead, says it’s just a pill to help me get through the day.
Am I not the boy she wants me to be? And if so, how not? And if so, why not?
Dad says I’m normal now. Mom says I’m her little man. I say I’m something else altogether, because today is unlike any other day because today I’m Ritalin-free and completely hyperexcitable.
Dad disappeared again last night and didn’t come home until this morning. He blew through the front door, disheveled and reeking of chemicals, and administered me my morning pill, before locking himself away in his bathroom. Last night he definitely broke pattern. He didn’t eat dinner with me and watch a zombie movie and wait for me to fall asleep. Instead, he left as soon as I stopped banging on his office door and retreated to my bedroom.
I can’t imagine riding in a car with him this morning and engaging in bullshit conversation all the way to school, so I pull apage out of the Ballentine Barker Handbook and I, too, disappear without a note or goodbye or explanation of any kind.
I take the 55 back to school and embrace this new hyperexcitability, firing away inside me.
18
T he school bell rings, signaling the end of class and five minutes until the start of the next. I close my locker and navigate through the riptide of students in the hallway as shoulders and arms and elbows toss me about like a buoy in choppy speedboat waves. I have English next and need to be on time since Mr. Rembrandt missed class yesterday. I pass the front office, a room full of cubicles where Christian Brothers and secretaries poke about, answering ringing phones, filing away papers into metal cabinets, feeding stacks of paper through a fax machine, tapping away madly at keyboards. I wonder which one of them called Dad when I missed Algebra yesterday.
I exit through the front doors of Byron Hall, leaving the main building, and cut around the corner, passing the teachers’ parking lot, and reach the sidewalk that parallels the even hallway; similar to the one on the other side of the building that parallels the odd hallway. A freshly spray-painted football field and tennis courts wrapped in a chain-link fence border the faculty parking lot. The field and courts are empty. Old compact cars the color of coal and sand junk up the teachers’ lot.
I run my hand along the fence, smelling a toxic mix of the newly painted football field and freshly cut grass, when I see a man up ahead, walking toward me in long strides. He’s not a Brother, balding with brown hair in a crown around his head and blue-rimmed glasses and a long tan raincoat draped over his arm. The moment I see him, something shifts. I don’t know, something just shifts inside from bad to worse, tectonic plates. Stop touching thefence. Hands in pockets. Head down. Focus. Pick up my pace. Move faster. I don’t say shit to him—rule number two, yes, keep quiet, yes, shut the fuck up. Instead, I smile the kind of smile I give to cashiers after they give me my change. He does the opposite, sort of. No, he doesn’t smile, but he does wave at me in a funny kind of way. More like a salute. He raises his hand to his forehead, showcasing a deformed hand—stiff thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers, but missing his little finger, the pinky, altogether. Gone. My eyes drop to his other hand by his side and see the same deformity—the four normals and one invisible. He chops his salute at me, lowers his hand, and moves on in the other direction.
For reasons I don’t understand—maybe because of that tectonic shift—I just can’t help myself. I follow. There’s something
goddamn thing
. I knock it back without water, without a fight. But today Dad left my room and I spit the
goddamn thing
out.
My parents have me on Ritalin. Mom says it calms my hyper-excitability and helps me to be the boy she wants me to be. I like the sound of being hyperexcitable. My mom, the pillhead, says it’s just a pill to help me get through the day.
Am I not the boy she wants me to be? And if so, how not? And if so, why not?
Dad says I’m normal now. Mom says I’m her little man. I say I’m something else altogether, because today is unlike any other day because today I’m Ritalin-free and completely hyperexcitable.
Dad disappeared again last night and didn’t come home until this morning. He blew through the front door, disheveled and reeking of chemicals, and administered me my morning pill, before locking himself away in his bathroom. Last night he definitely broke pattern. He didn’t eat dinner with me and watch a zombie movie and wait for me to fall asleep. Instead, he left as soon as I stopped banging on his office door and retreated to my bedroom.
I can’t imagine riding in a car with him this morning and engaging in bullshit conversation all the way to school, so I pull apage out of the Ballentine Barker Handbook and I, too, disappear without a note or goodbye or explanation of any kind.
I take the 55 back to school and embrace this new hyperexcitability, firing away inside me.
18
T he school bell rings, signaling the end of class and five minutes until the start of the next. I close my locker and navigate through the riptide of students in the hallway as shoulders and arms and elbows toss me about like a buoy in choppy speedboat waves. I have English next and need to be on time since Mr. Rembrandt missed class yesterday. I pass the front office, a room full of cubicles where Christian Brothers and secretaries poke about, answering ringing phones, filing away papers into metal cabinets, feeding stacks of paper through a fax machine, tapping away madly at keyboards. I wonder which one of them called Dad when I missed Algebra yesterday.
I exit through the front doors of Byron Hall, leaving the main building, and cut around the corner, passing the teachers’ parking lot, and reach the sidewalk that parallels the even hallway; similar to the one on the other side of the building that parallels the odd hallway. A freshly spray-painted football field and tennis courts wrapped in a chain-link fence border the faculty parking lot. The field and courts are empty. Old compact cars the color of coal and sand junk up the teachers’ lot.
I run my hand along the fence, smelling a toxic mix of the newly painted football field and freshly cut grass, when I see a man up ahead, walking toward me in long strides. He’s not a Brother, balding with brown hair in a crown around his head and blue-rimmed glasses and a long tan raincoat draped over his arm. The moment I see him, something shifts. I don’t know, something just shifts inside from bad to worse, tectonic plates. Stop touching thefence. Hands in pockets. Head down. Focus. Pick up my pace. Move faster. I don’t say shit to him—rule number two, yes, keep quiet, yes, shut the fuck up. Instead, I smile the kind of smile I give to cashiers after they give me my change. He does the opposite, sort of. No, he doesn’t smile, but he does wave at me in a funny kind of way. More like a salute. He raises his hand to his forehead, showcasing a deformed hand—stiff thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers, but missing his little finger, the pinky, altogether. Gone. My eyes drop to his other hand by his side and see the same deformity—the four normals and one invisible. He chops his salute at me, lowers his hand, and moves on in the other direction.
For reasons I don’t understand—maybe because of that tectonic shift—I just can’t help myself. I follow. There’s something
Similar Books
