Suicide Notes

can be anything—a physical thing you wish you had or didn’t have, a talent
you’d like to have, anything. But you only get one.
That was the question we talked about in group today. You’d think that
we all would have picked something to do with why we’re here. But mostly
we didn’t. Juliet said she wished she could play the cello, because she’d like
to be able to make people feel the way she does when she hears someone
play. Sadie said she wished she could talk to dead people. Rankin said he
wished he could throw a perfect spiral pass. And I said I wished I wasn’t
afraid of heights.
Later, in my one-on-one, Cat Poop asked me if I’d noticed anything
different about what I’d said compared to what everyone else said. I thought
for a minute but couldn’t come up with anything.
“You were the only one who said you wanted to get rid of something,”
he told me. “Everyone else wanted to add something to themselves, but you
wanted to give something up. Why did you say you’d like to get rid of your
fear of heights?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was just the first thing that came to me.”
It’s true, too. I am afraid of heights. I don’t even like going up in
elevators past about six floors.
“What about that fear makes it the one thing you want to get rid of?”
Cat Poop asked me.
I had to think about that for a while. Finally I said, “I guess because it
keeps me from doing things I’d like to do.”
He asked me what kinds of things, and I told him I’ve always wanted to
try skydiving, or maybe even bungee jumping. “But I’m afraid of heights,”
I said. “So I can’t.”
“What is it about heights that you’re afraid of?” he asked me.
What a dumb question. Falling, of course. I’m afraid of falling. That’s
probably why I dream about it a lot. Actually, what I said to the doc was
that I’m afraid that suddenly I’ll have this uncontrollable urge to climb up

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on the railing of the bridge or run to the edge of the cliff or whatever and
just throw myself off before anyone can stop me.
Cat Poop wrote something on his pad, which by now we all know
means I’ve said something he thinks is interesting. This time I asked him
why he thought my answer was worth writing down. Since it’s my life he’s
dissecting, I figured I had the right to know.
“Why do you think you have this urge to jump?” he said, instead of
answering my question.
“I guess because sometimes it’s nice to lose control,” I said after I’d
thought about it. “I feel like I’m always trying to keep control of my life.
Sometimes I’d like to be able to just let go and fall.”
“Even if it means you might get hurt?” he said.
“I don’t think about that,” I answered. “I just think about the falling,
with no parachute or net or anything to catch me. I just think about falling,
and it scares me.”
“How about falling in love?” he said. “Are you afraid of that?”
What, is love like the topic of the month around here or something? It
sure didn’t take him long to get back to that subject. “I’m only fifteen,” I
said.
“A lot of people fall in love for the first time around your age,” said Cat
Poop.
“Why do you want to know?” I said. “Do you have a daughter you want
to introduce me to or something?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“What if you did?” I asked him. “Would you want her to date a guy like
me?”
“That’s impossible to answer,” Cat Poop said. “I don’t have a daughter,
so I don’t know how I would feel about her dating anyone. It’s purely
hypothetical.”
“Well, purely hypothetically,” I said. “Would you want her to date
someone like me? Someone who’d been in a place like this?”
Cat Poop scribbled something on his pad. “Are you afraid people won’t
want to date you because you’ve been in here?” he asked me.
“I asked you first,” I said.
We stared at each other for a while. I guess we were having another
game of Psycho Chicken. Anyway, Cat Poop blinked first this time. “I

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would want my daughter to date the person who made her the happiest,” he
said.
“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.

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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.”

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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