Suicide Notes

“Ten little soldier boys went out to dine; One choked his little self
and then there were nine. Nine little soldier boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little soldier boys climbing up to heaven; One fell down and
then there were seven. Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little
soldier boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little soldier
boys on a cellar door; One fell in and then there were four.”
 
 
She stopped. “It goes on until they’re all dead,” she said, spreading
butter on a piece of toast. “But right now we still have four.”
“What happens to the other four?” Bone asked her.
Sadie took a bite of toast and grinned. “We’ll have to see,” she said.
“You guys are sick.”
It was Juliet. She was sitting a few seats away, her eggs and bacon
getting cold on her plate. She hadn’t touched them. She was looking at us,
and all of a sudden she started to cry.

---

“Why do you have to be so horrible?” she said.
Sadie put her toast down and wiped her mouth on her napkin before
answering her. “Maybe because that’s how we deal with it,” she told Juliet.
Juliet shook her head. “You’re all just afraid,” she said. “You’re afraid
you’re going to end up like Alice.”
“I’m not,” I said before I even realized it. Everyone looked at me. “I’m
not going to turn out like Alice,” I repeated.
“You already are like her,” Juliet said. She was staring at my hands,
which were resting on the table. Actually, she was staring at my wrists,
which were still bandaged. “You just don’t know it yet.”
I put my hands in my lap. “What I know is that nothing was going to
stop Alice from being crazy,” I said.
“And what’s going to stop you?” Juliet asked me.
To tell the truth, I was getting a little creeped out by Juliet. At first I
thought she was just delusional. You know, with the whole Sex and
Violence thing, and her crush on Bone. But now I think there’s something
even more wrong with her. It’s like she thinks she can see inside people.
She just comes out with this weird stuff, and you can tell she really believes
it.
Well, she’s wrong about me. She can stare all she wants, but she’s never
going to see inside me, because there’s nothing in there. Everyone could tell
that Alice was loony tunes. I’m not blaming her for that or anything, but she
was. I, on the other hand, pretty much just had one bad day and now
everyone is making me pay for it.
“Don’t listen to her,” Sadie said. “My guess is that she’s the next to go.”
She gave Juliet a look. “How’s it going to happen, Juliet?” she asked. “How
are you going to go?”
Juliet stood up and slammed her chair against the table. As she stormed
off, Sadie and Bone laughed. After a second, I did too.
“That chick is out there,” said Bone.
“Seriously,” Sadie agreed. “I wonder what she’s in here for. That whole
bulimia story was a crock.”
“She told me,” Bone said. “I guess she thought it might make me love
her or something if she shared.” He rolled his eyes.
“So?” Sadie said. “Out with it already. What’s little Miss Juliet’s curse?”
“She’s a junkie,” said Bone.

---

“Get out,” Sadie exclaimed.
Bone nodded. “No, she is. She was all into heroin and stuff. I guess she
ODed a couple of times.”
“Wow,” Sadie said. “I’m actually kind of impressed. I thought for sure
she’d be into something really girly, like cutting herself.” Then she looked
at me and said, “No offense.”
“I didn’t realize there was a ranking,” I said.
Sadie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“A ranking,” I said. “You know, what’s crazier than what.”
“Oh, sure there is,” Sadie said. She sat back in her chair. “First you have
your generic depressives. They’re a dime a dozen and usually really boring.
Then you’ve got the bulimics and the anorexics. They’re slightly more
interesting, although usually they’re just girls with nothing better to do.
Then you start getting into the good stuff: the arsonists, the schizophrenics,
the manic-depressives. You can never quite tell what those will do. And
then you’ve got the junkies. They’re completely tragic, because chances are
they’re just going to go right back on the stuff when they get out of here.”
“So junkies are at the top of the crazy chain,” I said.
Sadie shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Suicides are.”
I looked at her. “Why?”
“Anyone can be crazy,” she answered. “That’s usually just because
there’s something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a
whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to
want to just wipe yourself out?”
“Maybe that’s just about wiring, too,” I suggested.
“I guess sometimes,” Sadie agreed. “But sometimes it’s more than that.”
“I don’t know,” Bone said. “I don’t see anything so special about
wanting to kill yourself.” When we didn’t say anything, he looked up at us.
“Not that I’ve ever tried it. I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying that because you’ve never tried it,” Sadie said. She
was quiet for a minute, and her eyes got this faraway look in them, like she
was remembering something wonderful. “You don’t know what it feels
like,” she continued. “You don’t know what it’s like to make that decision
—to go from thinking about it to doing it. Most people can’t do it.”
“So you’re saying you should get first prize because you did it?” Bone
said. He laughed. “You’re crazy.”

---

Sadie looked at him. “That’s exactly what I am,” she said, then laughed.
“But I’ll have to share that prize with Jeff.”
She looked at me. “What?” I said.
“You win, too,” she said. “You tried to kill yourself, too.”
I knew everyone had been thinking that. I mean, how could they not,
what with the bandages and everything? But hearing Sadie say it out loud
was kind of a shock. I shook my head. “I just did something stupid.”
Sadie turned away. “Sure you did,” she said.
I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me or not. I sort of don’t think
she was. And I don’t think she wants to share her prize with me. She wants
to be Queen Whack-job around here. Or maybe she knows that I’m not like
her and the rest of them.
I’m not one of her ten little soldier boys.

---

Day 13
One day later and we’re back to five. It’s like there’s a line of crazies
outside, and as one of us leaves they let in another one. Like at those
supposedly cool clubs where some idiot in sunglasses stands at the door
with a list while a bunch of posers beg him to let them in. But he only picks
the really beautiful people. In this case, I guess he’d be picking the
unbeautiful people.
Anyway, there are five of us again. Well, maybe four and a half.
I’ll explain. This morning at group there was a new person with us. A
girl. At first I thought she was, like, seven or eight, but it turns out she’s
twelve. She’s so small and skinny, though, that she looks like a little kid.
Her name is Martha. She sat in her chair hugging a stuffed rabbit. Her
arms were wrapped around its middle and her chin rested between its long,
floppy ears. She didn’t say a word the entire time. Cat Poop told us her
name, but that was about it.
I asked him about her later, though, during our session.
“Can’t she talk?”
“She can talk,” he said. “She just doesn’t at the moment.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“You know I can’t discuss her case with you,” Cat Poop said.
“Come on,” I prodded him. “How am I supposed to make her feel like
one of the family if I don’t know anything about her?”
“I notice you’ve been spending a lot of time with Sadie,” he said.
“What do you guys do, spy on us all the time?” I asked. “Or do the
nurses secretly film us? Does Nurse Goody have a camera hidden in her
hair?”
“Do you feel like we spy on you?” he countered.
This is another therapist trick, answering your question with a question,
so that you have to keep talking. I decided to throw it back at him, so I
asked, “Why, do you think I feel like you spy on us all the time?”
Cat Poop actually smiled a little when I did that. “You know we don’t,”
he said. “We keep an eye on you, but we don’t spy.”

---

“That’s big of you,” I said. “It’s not like there’s much we can do around
here, though.”
“You seem angry today,” he said, ignoring the fact that I was being a
smart-ass. “Are you angry?”
Once he asked, I realized that I was angry. I hadn’t really noticed, but I
was. And now I was even more angry because he’d realized it before I had.
“I’m fine,” I said.
We sat there for a while with neither of us saying anything. I figured I
could probably go the whole session that way, but Cat Poop had other ideas.
“Does Sadie remind you of someone?” he asked me. “Maybe a friend?”
I knew what he was getting at. He wanted to know about Allie. I could
have kicked myself for ever having mentioned her around him.
“She’s nothing like Allie,” I said, just to let him know I knew what he
was hinting around about.
“How is she different?” he said.
“Well, for one thing, Allie isn’t locked up in a psych ward,” I suggested.
“Is that the only difference?” asked Cat Poop.
“You think I’m in here because of Allie, don’t you?” I said.
“I think you’re in here because you hurt yourself,” he said.
“But you think I did it because of Allie.”
“Did you?”
“No,” I said.
“Are the two of you close?”
“Can’t we talk about my dysfunctional family dynamics?” I suggested.
“Or my fear of intimacy?”
“Is Allie your girlfriend?” he asked.
“Can we please stop talking about Allie?” I practically shouted. “Jesus,
can’t you just get over that?”
Cat Poop wrote something down on his stupid pad. I thought maybe
he’d finally given up on the Allie questions, but he wasn’t done yet.
“Have you and Allie been sexually intimate?”
Like that’s any of his business. I wanted to slap him. I hate to admit it,
but I’d actually almost started to think old Cat Poop wasn’t so bad. But as
soon as he asked me that, I knew he was a dirty old man. I mean, he’s only
like thirty-five or something, but that’s old enough to be a dirty old man.
The point is, he just wanted to hear about teenagers getting it on.

---

“What kind of pervert are you?” I asked him. “Can’t you just look at
some porn? Or do you like hearing people talk about their sex lives?”
He didn’t answer the question. I didn’t expect him to. I’d caught him,
and he was probably embarrassed. He should be. I mean, some stuff is just
private.
“How many times do I have to tell you that nothing is bothering me?” I
said.
“If nothing is bothering you, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to talk
about why you tried to kill yourself,” said Cat Poop. “Can you do that?”
“Sure,” I shot back. “If I wanted to I could. But I don’t want to. Not
with you.”
“Are you saying you’d like another therapist?” he asked me. “I can
arrange that if it would help.”
I almost told him to go ahead and do it. Then I thought about having to
answer the same stupid questions all over again. As annoying as he was
being right then, at least I had Cat Poop trained a little bit. If I got a new
therapist, I’d be starting all over again.
“No,” I said finally. “I don’t want a new one.”
“I’m honored,” said Cat Poop.
“But I’m not talking about Allie, or sex, or anything else that isn’t any
of your business,” I warned him. “Just so we’re clear on that.”
“Well, think about what you do want to talk about,” he told me. “We’ll
pick up tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait,” I said as I stood up. “Oh, and by the way, you need a
haircut.”
As I turned to leave, I saw him reach up and touch his hair. Score one