A Really Awesome Mess (20 page)

“How different can the treatment really be?” Diana barked, but Emmy continued.

“And more importantly from your perspective, they’re gonna cut me off from all the snacks. So Willy can have half of what he’s getting now or he can have nothing.”

“Well shit,” Diana said. She folded her arms.

“And that’s another problem,” Emmy said. “It’s getting out of control. I’ll be surprised if the custodial staff doesn’t start wondering why the Dumpster smells like livestock.”

“It’s actually your whole wing,” I said. “When the wind is right you can smell Willy’s crap all the way across the quad.”

“Not all the way across,” Tracy said as he sat down and handed his potato to Diana.

“So you just tell them you’re not puking, but you’re using lots of laxatives, and—” Diana began.

“I am
not
taking the blame for pigshit!” Emmy said just as Jenny and Chip reached the table.

“Shut the hell up, will you?” Jenny said. “Hey,” Diana said. “You guys seem to arrive together to a lot of meals these days. Are you like,
together
?”

“Well, we were together in the potato line,” Chip said, smiling, but Jenny actually started blushing.

“Whoa, somebody’s got a tell,” Tracy said. “See, Jenny, my boy Chip here, I’ve trained him well. He can lie all casual now. Of course, he’s an addict, so he’s got practice. But still, the boy is good. See, let’s try it.” He went into a falsetto mom voice. “Chip? What are you doing on the computer, honey?”

“Just looking at porn, Mom,” Chip said, and Tracy cracked up.

“See, that’s excellent. Because if he says he’s doing research for school, that’s just an obvious lie. But why would you admit to porn? He’ll at least be able to hide the World of Warcraft window before Mom gets to the room.”

“Are you gonna game when you get out?” Emmy asked, all serious.

“Well,” Chip said. “I honestly have no idea. One day at a time, you know? I’m not gonna game today. Tomorrow’s gonna have to take care of itself.”

Diana did a little robot dance in her seat. “I am a recovery-bot three thousand,” she said. “One day at a time. Easy does it. I will now recite the Serenity Prayer. I owe you an amends. I have achieved balance and wholeness.”

“Shut up, Diana,” Jenny said. “You shouldn’t make fun of stuff that’s making people better.”

“But then what will I make fun of? Oh yeah, just the fact that you guys are totally a couple.”

Jenny blushed again and clenched her fist. “Bring it, Fern,” Diana said.

I turned to Emmy. “Fern?”

“
Charlotte’s Web
?” Emmy said to me. “Have you ever read a book in your life?”

“Now, ladies, let’s not do anything that’s gonna knock us back a level or two,” Tracy said. “Jenny, let’s work on your lying skills. Really, this is a crucial life skill, and I gotta say I’m a little worried about sending you all out into the world so unprepared. So Jenny, are you and Chip a couple?”

Jenny looked straight at Tracy. “We’ve made out a couple times. I mean, it’s not like we have long meaningful talks or anything. Obviously.”

“Ideal girlfriend!” I said, and went up for the high five from Tracy, who did not leave me hanging. We really were making progress around here!

Emmy punched me in the arm. “Pig. No, you know what, that’s unfair to Willy. Now wait, I’m confused. So, was that the lie?”

This time it was Chip who was blushing.

“Just be careful, kids. Don’t want to wind up in Sexual Reactivity group with Justin and the other pervs. Then you might not get to leave,” Diana said.

“Why the hell is everybody talking about leaving?” I say. “I mean. You’re not like, all on level six yet or anything. Are you?”

“Well, I’m not,” Emmy said. “Level two.”

And nobody else said anything.

“Wait. Really?”

“Well, I’m only on five,” Jenny said. “But I’m going to have a big breakthrough in therapy this week. And then level six. And then once the ’rents get here, I’m out.”

“Wait. So. Wait. So people are leaving on Family Weekend?”

“People leave after every Family Weekend,” Tracy said. “It’s like an audition or something. You jump through the hoops right when Mom and Dad are here, they let you leave with them. And if you don’t, it’s back to the dorms. We were all here before you and Emmy. Didn’t it occur to you that we might leave before you, too?”

“I guess … um. Like Diana says, I’m stupid. But at least I don’t smell like pigshit.”

“He’s not lying,” Tracy said. “No offense, ladies, but I can definitely get a whiff of that porcine funk drifting off you.”

“Great,” Emmy said. “What the hell are we going to do about this pig?”

We debated the fate of Little Willy for a while. Emmy said that the pig was going to have to go, and Diana said Emmy just hated the pig because of her body image issues. Diana offered to take the pig full time until Family Weekend, Emmy said great, and Jenny said no way. And then Chip said this: “Um, Jenny, Diana. If you get to go home after Family Weekend, who’s taking the pig?”

Nobody said anything for a full thirty seconds. “Well!” I finally said. “Guess it’s not just Justin who’s stupid! Guess there’s plenty of stupid to go around!”

Everybody glared at me and left the table. Little Willy’s fate was left unresolved.

But I wasn’t really worried about the pig. Mostly because I didn’t have to live with it. What I was worried about was me. I was only on level two. There was no way I was going to be able to go home after Family Weekend. I mean, the only things that had felt good and fun since I’d been here were the things I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I didn’t feel like anything was changed or resolved.

Except this: I’d made some friends. I didn’t have to feel like the craziest one in the room all the time like I did at my old school, but more than that … I liked these people. I like actually looked forward to spending time with them. So who was the genius who’d made it so we’d have to separate so quickly?

I was feeling pretty good about stuff for a while, but as soon as I got back to my room after dinner, I started spiraling into the depths I knew too well. All of a sudden it just felt like I was never going to ever have any fun again. It pissed me off. I opened a book and tried to read for a minute (I did actually read, no matter what Emmy thought. Just because I didn’t read a stupid book about a girl and her pet pig and a spider who died. Okay, I saw the movie.
I just forgot she was Fern), but I couldn’t think of anything. I wanted to smash something. Or someone.

Which was when Tracy walked through the door.

“Whoa, J, where’d that black cloud come from?” he said. “The one that’s on top of you, I mean.”

“The only thing black and on top of me is your mom,” I said, and Tracy laughed.

“Okay. Good. So you’re not completely gone.”

This did get a smile out of me. “Yeah, well, I may not be great at lying, but I can crack a joke that’ll get my ass kicked.”

We didn’t have anything to say after that. I mean, I kind of wanted to say, yeah, I was really scared of you at first, and I hated you for a while, but now I don’t want you to leave. But you didn’t say that to another guy. It sounded weak—like you needed somebody else, and guys weren’t supposed to be like that, or if we were, we were only supposed to show that side of us to girls, and then we could pretend we were just faking it so we could get in their pants.

“So,” I said after a couple of minutes. “Level six. How’s it feel?”

“I don’t know. I mean. Good. But not, like, I’m totally fixed.”

“You gonna … like go back to regular school and stuff?”

“Not the one where I conned everybody with my fake drug business. Not really welcome there. But yeah, I’ll be headed back to school. Not to be a little bitch, but I’m a little scared of that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna have to try not to lie my way through it. I haven’t done that since … like, as long as I can remember.”

“Well, I’m a scared little bitch, too. I can already feel myself slipping down, and there’s a serious chance my dad might just blow off Family Weekend like he’s blown off most important things in my life, which would probably send me slipping down even more, and it’s like … I won’t have anybody here anymore.”

“Maybe you should take the pig. Then you’ll have somebody.”

“Maybe
you
should take the pig.”

“I can’t believe you told a kid named Mohammed to take a pig. That’s haraam! Unclean, man.”

“Yeah, but you’re not Mohammed.”

There was a pause while he considered this. “Yeah, I’m not. I’m still not taking that nasty pig, though.”

But somebody was going to have to. When we arrived at breakfast a couple of days later, we found a haggard-looking Diana staring at a plate full of bacon.

“I gotta say, I’m a little surprised you’re taking care of a pig and eating bacon,” I said.

“That porky little shit kept me up all night,” Diana said. “He was, like, rooting around and stuff, and when I got up, I saw that he ate freaking
everything
. I mean, stuff I didn’t think mammals could eat. And then finally at, like, four in the morning he crawled into bed with me. And I thought he was going to cuddle or something, but instead he just took a big crap at my feet. So
this is my revenge. I managed not to kill him with my bare hands, but I am gonna eat his cousins and enjoy it,” she said, defiantly chomping a bacon strip.

“Well, it’ll be fun to see how Jenny takes this,” Tracy said, gesturing at the plate of bacon.

“That’s what Chip said,” I said, and Diana mustered the energy to high-five me.

Fortunately, when Jenny and Emmy arrived, they were too preoccupied to notice that Diana was eating the equivalent of an entire pork belly.

“Guys, we’ve been talking all night,” Emmy said, and Tracy interrupted.

“Really?”

Emmy paused, looked at Jenny, and said, “Well, I did most of the talking.”

Jenny put up the
blah blah blah
hand signal, and everybody laughed except Emmy. “Whatever,” Emmy continued. “Anyway, we’ve made a decision. Little Willy really can’t live here.”

“Tell me about it,” Diana said.

“So we’ve gotta get him to safety.”

“Where’s safety?” I asked.

“There’s a farm refuge thirty miles from here. They take in farm animals and don’t slaughter them or anything.”

“Um, great. But how are we gonna get Willy somewhere thirty miles away? Might as well be a thousand.”

“Still undetermined, we’ve gotta brainstorm that—” Emmy
started to say but Diana interrupted her before she could go any further.

“We’re gonna break out!” she squealed.

We came up with a breakout plan involving laundry and food delivery trucks that sounded really cool when we brain-stormed it around the table and incredibly stupid almost immediately afterward.

What the hell were we going to do about this pig? It was making me sad. Nobody wanted him. I mean, yeah, he was a big pain in the ass who ate everything and shit everywhere, but he was just being a pig. He was born that way. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t fit in. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how.

I was still trying to think in my session with Max.

“You seem preoccupied,” Max said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m just trying to work out a problem,” I said.

“What’s that?” he said.

I really wanted to spill the beans because I wanted to talk this out, but one word out of me and Willy got the ax or whatever they use to kill pigs, and I became a social pariah. No thanks.

“I guess, I’m just … well, you know, I’ve made some friends here, and I was just thinking about how to help one of them.”

Max tapped his iPad. One day I swore I was gonna catch him playing Angry Birds on the damn thing. “Well, that’s nice,
Justin, but you know you can’t fix anybody else. Everybody’s on their own journey.”

“Well. Yeah. Sure. I guess I just feel bad for him. He’s a pain in the ass, and nobody wants him around. But he’s just … he’s got issues, you know?”

Max looked at me for a long time. “Yes, Justin,” he finally said. “I think I do. But why do you think nobody wants him around?”

Oh crap. He thought I was talking about me. Well, better than him guessing I was thinking about a pig. I decided to go with it.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? His dad ran eight hundred miles away from him. His mom got remarried and popped out a couple of replacement kids so she could have a family she wanted. And then there’s me.” I tried to make my voice crack a little bit on the last part, hoping if I faked a breakthrough I’d get to move up a level.

Max didn’t say anything for a full minute. “So. I don’t know about you, but I think you’ve just identified the kid’s core issue. Nobody wants him. Am I right?”

“Yeah,” I said. I had totally suckered this guy.

So why was I crying?

ONCE THE LAUNDRY TRUCK/FOOD DELIVERY PIGGY BREAKOUT
plan got nixed, we spent most of our free time brainstorming other dumb ideas. Every one of them came up short. For instance, for all her quirkiness and semi-cluelessness/coolness, it just wasn’t realistic to think Tina would drive us to the farm refuge herself if we confessed. In fact, she’d probably freak even more than the rest of the staff would because she was the one who took us to the fair and promised our parents we wouldn’t do anything inappropriate while we were there in the first place. And, stealing the Assland short bus just didn’t seem like a very bright idea. There was no way we could cover up the
Heartland Academy: A Caring Place
slogan painted on the side, so the cops would no doubt be chasing us before we even got on the highway. Besides, no matter
how great any breakout plan we thought up sounded in the caf, it meant a greater than one hundred percent chance that whoever was ferrying Little Willy to safety would not be leaving Assland this weekend with their parents. And I knew for a fact Tracy, Chip, Jenny, and even Diana really wanted to go home (especially now that Diana’s mom was supposedly working the steps in AA and SA, and they’d both be living with her nice grandma).