Suicide Notes

Is there anything I’d like to say to them? I thought. Yeah, there was.
Why didn’t you just let me die?, for starters. Why’d you have to come home
early from your stupid party? Why’d you have to put me in this place with a
bunch of whack-jobs?
But what I actually said was, “What did you tell everyone?”
My mother rubbed her hands together. “We told Amanda that you were
in the hospital,” she said. “We didn’t tell her why.”
“She’s thirteen, not four,” I said. “She must have asked.” I know my
sister. She’s got to know everything about everyone. She can tell you which
girl at school just got her period for the first time and who’s thinking about

---

asking who to the dance. There was no way she hadn’t asked them what
was going on.
My mom looked at my dad, who looked at the floor. “We told your
sister you were having some . . . problems,” he said.
I laughed. I don’t know why it was funny to me that they hadn’t told
Amanda the truth, but it was. And I knew they were lying about what they
did tell her. They must have told her something else. I wondered what she
thought was wrong with me. Cancer? A brain tumor? I couldn’t wait to find
out.
“What about everybody else?” I asked my parents. “What did you tell
my school?”
“We told them you were going to be out for a while,” my dad said.
“That’s all.”
“Haven’t any of my friends called to find out what’s up?”
“Amanda has been letting them know that you’re sick,” said my mother.
“Sick,” I repeated. So that’s how they thought of me, as being sick. Poor
little Jeff, sick and in the hospital while the doctors try to figure out what’s
wrong with him. The idea of everyone feeling sorry for me made me angry.
“What about Allie?” I asked, surprising myself.
“She hasn’t called,” my mother said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Is there anything the two of you would like to say to Jeff?” Cat Poop
asked my parents.
“We love you,” my mother said.
I nodded. Like I said before, Hallmark moments aren’t my style.
“And we want you to get better,” added my father. “So you can come
home.”
I won’t bore you with the rest. There really isn’t much more, anyway.
Basically, we all sat there for forty-five minutes not saying anything unless
the doc made us. Then there was this awkward good-bye part where my
mother broke the no-hugging rule and my father patted me on the back.
Then they left. Cat Poop had me stay, and when he came back from
showing my parents out he asked me how I felt things had gone.
“You could have warned me,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “Did you feel threatened by seeing them?”
“No,” I told him. “I just wasn’t expecting it, is all.”

---

“Were you embarrassed?”
“It’s not like the last time I saw them I was winning the national spelling
bee or making the game-winning touchdown or anything,” I said.
“Who’s Allie?” he asked.
“What?” I said, pretending not to hear him, and kicking myself for
saying her name. Of course he was going to jump on that.
“Allie,” he repeated. “You asked your parents if Allie had called to ask
about you.”
“Oh, right. Allie. She’s a friend from school.”
“Tell me about her.”
I shrugged. “There’s not much to tell,” I said, hoping I sounded casual
about it. “She’s just a girl I’ve been friends with for a while.”
“But it’s important for you to know that she cares what’s happened to
you.” He said it like it was a fact, not a question.
I didn’t want to answer him. But he was waiting for me to say
something.
“She and I were kind of going out,” I said finally. “God, you’re nosy.
You’re worse than my sister.”
Cat Poop wrote something on his pad, but didn’t say anything. I
couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. I wondered how much time was
left in our session and prayed it wasn’t much.
As if he could read my mind, he put his pen down. “That’s all for
today,” he said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Oh, and your parents will be
coming once a week from now on, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I got out of there as fast as I could, and I’ve been feeling weird the rest
of the day. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because at first I thought
getting out of this place would be a piece of cake. But I think I might have
been wrong.

---

Day 09
Day 9 feels more like Year 100. The worst thing is, I think it’s starting to
rub off on me. The crazy, I mean. Especially Sadie. I keep thinking about
how she tried to kill herself.
That sounds so weird: “kill yourself.” It makes it sound like you tried to
murder someone, only that someone is you. But killing someone is wrong,
and I don’t think suicide is. It’s my life, right? I should be able to end it if I
want to. I don’t think it’s a sin.
Everyone seems obsessed with it, though. I mean, think about it. We
keep people alive on death row just so we can kill them later. We put
prisoners on suicide watch so they can’t do themselves in before we get the
chance to put them on trial. That doesn’t make any sense. Why is it okay to
put someone to death, but it’s not okay for those people to do it themselves?
I’ll tell you what I think. I think it pisses people off when you kill
yourself because it takes away their chance to control your life, even a little
bit. They don’t like it when you end things the way you want to and don’t
wait for the way it’s “supposed” to happen. What if suicide is the way it’s
supposed to happen? Do they ever think of that?
I know I’m ranting. It’s just that I’m tired of being cooped up in here
and having people tell me to talk about my feelings. Like today in group.
Cat Poop made us split into pairs and do this stupid exercise where for five
minutes one of us had to watch the other one act out what we were feeling.
We weren’t allowed to say anything; we could only use our bodies and our
facial expressions. For five minutes. Then we had to switch and give the
other person the chance to let it all out.
Unfortunately, I had to partner with Juliet. She tried to hook up with
Bone, like she always does, but Cat Poop asked Bone to pair with Alice. I’d
like to have paired up with Sadie, but she got added to the Bone-Alice
group because there’s an odd number of us. The operative word being odd.
Anyway, Juliet seemed as thrilled about the whole thing as I was,
looking at me the way she would if the last sandwich on the plate was olive

---

loaf and marshmallow and she had no choice but to take it or starve to
death.
“Why don’t you go first?” I suggested, and she was totally happy to do
it. Big shock. The girl lives to have people pay attention to her. Seriously,
I’ve never met anyone so obsessed with herself.
I sat in a chair and watched while she stood there for a while, I guess
thinking about how she was feeling or getting in the mood or whatever.
Then she held her hands up like she was holding on to the bars of a cage.
She had this sad look on her face, staring at me but not looking at me, if you
know what I mean. And she just stood like that for a couple of minutes.
It reminded me of one time when my parents took me to the zoo when I
was maybe four or five. I wanted to see the bears, so we went over there
and stood with a bunch of other people looking at them. They were brown
bears, I remember that, some kind of grizzlies. Everyone was pointing and
talking, and the bears were walking around playing with these big plastic
balls or sitting in the pool and doing what bears do. All except one. He was
sitting in the grass, just looking at the crowd of people. Only he wasn’t
really looking at us, he was looking past us, as if he was trying to see
something way off in the distance. I remember how sad he looked, and I
remember starting to cry. My parents thought I was afraid, and took me
away, but that wasn’t it. I was sad. I was sad for that poor bear having to sit
in that pen while a bunch of stupid people looked at him and he had to
pretend he was someplace else.
That’s how Juliet looked, like she could see where she wanted to be but
couldn’t get there because she was trapped inside something. After a while
she put one hand out through the invisible bars, like she was trying to give
something to someone. She held it in her palm, like a present. I wanted to
reach out and take it, but I remembered that we were just supposed to
watch, so I didn’t. Instead, I watched her eyes. They were fixed on
something behind me. I turned my head to see what it was and saw Bone
standing with his back to us. He was watching Alice and didn’t see Juliet
reaching for him.
I totally don’t feel sorry for her now. Bone? How pathetic is that, being
so in love with someone who isn’t even interested in you? Juliet told us that
she’s here because she has an eating disorder. I don’t know about that. I
mean, she’s not exactly skinny. I asked Sadie if she’s ever heard Juliet

---

yakking up dinner in the bathroom, and she said she hasn’t. So we think
maybe Juliet’s got a bunch of other problems she just hasn’t told us about.
Yet. I’m sure she will. But really I don’t care. If it turns out being in love
with Bone is her big problem, I’m going to be really pissed off. What a
waste of time.
A minute after I caught Juliet staring at Bone, Cat Poop called out for us
to switch, and Juliet sat down without saying anything. I got up and just
stood there, not knowing what to do. I felt incredibly stupid. I knew Juliet
was waiting for me to do something, but nothing was coming to me. I kept
seeing her face, then the bear’s face, and then the two faces together, like
Juliet was wearing a bear mask or the bear was wearing a Juliet mask.
Then I realized that I couldn’t think of anything to do because I really
didn’t know what I was feeling. All week, I’ve just been not thinking much
about it. Even when I’m talking about it, I’m not really thinking about it.
I’m just saying stuff because someone wants me to. I feel like one of the
characters in the movie Sadie and I watched the other night, where I’m
playing this part but the words that come out of me belong to someone else
because the sound is turned off and what I’m saying can’t be heard.
That’s when I got mad. Mad at my parents for finding me. Mad at
myself for not doing it right. Mad at Cat Poop for making me do stupid
exercises like standing in front of Juliet looking like an idiot.
So I was just standing there with Juliet watching, and inside of me all of
this stuff was whirling around and around like a tornado. But on the outside
I was frozen. I couldn’t move. So I stood there for the five minutes until Cat
Poop told us to stop.
Then it got worse. We had to get together with our partner and talk
about what we saw when we looked at each other. I told Juliet that I saw
someone who felt trapped, which was a no-brainer. She was all excited, and
I knew it wasn’t because I’d understood what she was saying, but because
she thought she was such a great actress. She kept asking, “Did you like
how I” did this and that. I told her she was great, because I figured if I could
keep her talking about herself we might never get to talking about me.
I did pretty well, too. When Cat Poop announced that we only had two
minutes left, we hadn’t said a word about me. I thought I was going to get
out of it, only then Juliet looked at me and said, really quick, “You’re hiding
something.”

---

I thought she was accusing me of taking something, so I said, “No, I’m
not.”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “There’s something inside you that you don’t
want anyone to see.”
And then time was up and group was over. Juliet immediately ran over
to see what Bone was doing, and I just sat there. Sadie came and sat next to
me.
“How was mime time with Juliet?” she asked me.
“Lame,” I said, trying not to think about what Juliet had said to me.
Sadie snorted. “Want to play cards?”
“Do we have to talk about how we feel?”
“Hell no,” said Sadie. “In fact, if you say one word about what’s going
on in there, I’m finding another poker buddy.”
That’s what I need more of: people who just leave me alone.

---

Day 10
I couldn’t sleep again tonight. I don’t know why. I’m pretty used to
functioning without the little blue pill now, and it wasn’t like I was having
bad dreams or anything. I just couldn’t sleep. So I went into the lounge,
thinking I might finally write Allie that letter after all or maybe help Nurse
Moon with her crossword. But Sadie was in there, sitting on the couch and
reading a magazine.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked her.
“Did you know that only about half of the eggs that get fertilized ever
actually turn into babies?” she said, putting down the magazine. “And out
of those, only about eighty percent are actually born. The rest get
miscarried.” She counted on her fingers. “That means out of a hundred
fertilized eggs, only forty are ever born.”
“Those aren’t the best odds,” I said.
“And that doesn’t include the ones who are born with defects,” Sadie
added. “That’s something like another ten, so ultimately we only have about
a thirty percent chance of coming out with no defects.”
“I guess it depends what you consider a defect,” I told her.
She nodded. “If you look at it that way, there’s like a zero chance of
being born normal. But think about it: Right from the start the odds are
against you. It’s kind of amazing that any of us ever get here at all.”
“Sort of makes you feel even worse about trying to kill yourself, doesn’t
it?” I said.
Sadie shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” she said. “But
yeah, I guess it does in a way.”
“Are you sorry you tried?” I asked her.
She looked out the window. It was snowing. Not hard, just a few flakes.
If I’d been at home I would have been hoping for it to turn into a blizzard so
that school would be canceled. But when you’re locked up, blizzards don’t
mean much.
“I don’t know if I’m sorry or not,” Sadie said. “If I hadn’t tried, I’d
probably still be sitting around in my bedroom being miserable and writing

---

bad poems.”
“I don’t think most people would consider that a good deal,” I said.
“Maybe not,” she told me. “What about you, are you sorry you . . . did
what you did?”
“I’m sorry they stopped me,” I told her.
“What’s so bad about your life?” she said. “From what you’ve told me
about your family, they don’t sound so bad.”
“They’re not,” I admitted. “They aren’t the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“I am,” I said. “I’m the problem.”
“And what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m just complicated.”
Sadie rolled her eyes at me. “Everyone thinks they’re complicated,” she
said. “But actually there are only a couple of things you can have wrong
with you. Which one did you get? Low self-esteem? Fear of failure? A
martyr complex? Trust me, after three shrinks and a couple of visits to this
place, I’m an expert on all of them.”
I was surprised to hear her say that. I didn’t know she’d been in the
hospital before. “I thought this was your first time here,” I said.
“Second,” she said. “The first time it didn’t take, so they sent me back.
But we’re not talking about me; we’re talking about you. So talk.”
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Let’s watch some TV.”
I turned the set on and flipped around. Finally I settled on the Lifetime
channel, which is always guaranteed to have on some completely idiotic
movie about a girl with anorexia, or a woman who gets amnesia and forgets
she has an evil twin, or maybe even a family who hires a really creepy
babysitter who ends up stalking them. And sometimes you hit the jackpot
and end up with a movie that has all of those things in it. And believe me, a
movie about an anorexic twin with amnesia who hires a psychotic
babysitter is not to be missed.
“Want to play the dialogue game?” I asked Sadie.
“You’re on,” she said, and I turned the sound off.
We sat and watched the movie for a few minutes until we had the main
characters figured out. One was a teenage girl, and the other was an older
woman who seemed to be the girl’s mother. They were in a diner, eating
greasy burgers and arguing about something.

---

“I’ll take the mother,” Sadie said. “Alison, I know you’re keeping
something from me,” she said in what was supposed to be a motherly voice.
Alison is Allie’s real name, and for a second I wondered if Sadie had
picked it on purpose. But there’s no way she could know about her. It was
just a freaky coincidence.
“What makes you think I’m hiding something?” I said, trying to sound
like an annoyed teenage girl.
“I found your diary,” said Sadie. “And I read it.”
“How could you!” I said.
“I had to, Alison,” Sadie continued. “And I’m glad I did. How else
would I have known about . . .”
“About what?” I demanded. “What do you know about?”
“About Chris,” said Sadie. “That’s right, I know about Chris.”
“I was going to tell you,” I said.
Sadie shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in you, Alison. How could
you not tell me? I’m your mother. If you’re seeing a boy, you should talk to
me about it.”
“Chris isn’t a boy,” I said, surprised to hear the words come out of my
mouth.
Sadie turned and looked at me. “What?” she said.
“Chris isn’t a boy,” I repeated. “Chris is . . . a girl.”
Sadie cracked up. “I didn’t see that one coming,” she said in her real
voice. “Good twist. I thought she was just going to be knocked up.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t go wrong with a teenage lesbian story line,” I
said. “Had enough?”
Sadie nodded. “I think we’ve worn this one out. Besides, I’m kind of
tired. I’m going to bed. What about you?”
“I’m going to stay up for a while,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
After Sadie left I just sat there looking at the television screen. The
sound was still off. In the movie, the girl and the woman had gotten into a
car and were driving somewhere. They were still arguing. I watched their
mouths moving without any sound coming out. And the more I watched
them, the more I thought that that’s exactly how most people are. They
move their mouths, but nothing important comes out. They just talk and talk
and talk.

---

That’s what Cat Poop wants me to do: talk. But like I keep telling him,
there’s nothing to say.

---

Day 11
Oh, man, was today weird—the freak show to end all freak shows. It started
at breakfast. Today was pancake day, which we have once a week, and
everyone was pretty stoked. It’s totally queer to get excited about pancakes,
I know, but compared to oatmeal and dry scrambled eggs, pancakes are a
big deal.
There was sausage, too. That’s what started it, the sausage. See, we were
all eating, minding our own business and getting lost in the whole syrup
sugar-rush thing, when all of a sudden Alice picked up a sausage and started
waving it around. She looked like she was conducting an orchestra, moving
that sausage up and down to some music only she could hear. The Sausage
Symphony in Nut-job Flat, I guess.
Then she started talking. “This little piggy burned up,” she said. “This
little piggy burned up. This little piggy went wee-wee-wee, all the way
home.” Then she laughed, a weird little laugh that sounded like she was
strangling.
Juliet was sitting next to her, and she tried to put her arm around Alice
and calm her down. But Alice yelled, “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch the
little piggy! I’ll burn you up!” Then she giggled some more.
I’m telling you, it was totally bizarre. By that point the nurses had come
out, and they were trying to calm Alice down. But the more they touched
her, the more she yelled. She just kept yelling, “This little piggy burned up!
Wee-wee-wee! Wee-wee-wee!”
The rest of us just sat there and watched. I mean, what else are you
going to do? She was totally losing it right in front of us. “Wee-wee-wee!
Wee-wee-wee!” And she really did sound like a pig, like she was on fire
and squealing in pain.
The nurses finally had to call one of the orderlies to come help them. He
pinned Alice’s hands behind her back, but she kept right on screaming
“Wee-wee-wee!” Only now she was sort of crying-laughing, like she’d
completely lost her mind. They dragged her out of the room. Her hair was

---

all wild because she kept shaking her head from side to side. “All the way
home,” she was saying between squeals. “All the way home.”
The weirdest part was that after she was gone everyone else just went
back to their pancakes, like nothing had happened. I guess maybe it didn’t
seem like a big deal because they’re crazy too. Maybe this kind of thing
happens all the time. But not to me.
“What was that?” I asked Sadie, who was sitting across from me.
She shrugged. “Who knows,” she said. “She just snapped.”
“Just like that?” I said.
“Sure,” Sadie said, like she knew all about it. “The last time I was here,
a kid woke up one morning and thought he was Santa Claus. He came out
with this pillowcase full of stuff he’d taken from his room, and started
handing things out like it was Christmas morning.”
Next to her, Bone laughed. “That’s excellent,” he said.
“It’s weird,” I said, looking at Bone. It occurred to me today that I have
no idea why he’s here. I’d ask him, but I really don’t care. Besides, there’s
enough weird to go around as it is. He can keep his to himself.
“Whatever,” said Sadie. “Anyway, they’ll drug her up and she’ll forget
all about it.” She picked up a sausage and waggled it at me. “Wee-wee-
wee,” she said. “Wee-wee-wee.”
Bone cracked up. “Wee-wee-wee,” he said, joining in.
At first I thought it was kind of mean of them to make fun of Alice. But
it wasn’t like she was there to hear them. And, anyway, maybe that’s how
nutcases handle things like that. I wouldn’t know.
Only Juliet didn’t laugh. She just sat in her seat, picking at her pancakes.
She had a blank expression on her face, like she was trying really hard not
to think about anything at all.
Later on, in group, Cat Poop talked about what had happened.
“Is Alice all right?” Juliet asked him. It was a stupid question. Of course
she wasn’t all right. She was nuts. But Cat Poop knew what Juliet wanted to
hear, because he said, “She’ll be okay.”
Okay? How can she be okay? She set her mom’s boyfriend on fire after
he did who knows what to her, she’s in a mental hospital, and she thinks
she’s the piggy who went wee-wee-wee all the way home. That’s pretty
much the definition of not okay. I shook my head.
“Are you concerned about Alice, Jeff?” Cat Poop asked me.

---

That was a good question, I’ll give him that. I mean, Alice and I weren’t
friends or anything, but I did feel a little bad for her. After all, it’s not her
fault she’s nuts, right? She had a lot of bad stuff happen to her. But like I
said, we weren’t friends.
“I just want to make sure what she has isn’t contagious,” I told Cat
Poop.
He pushed his glasses up, so I knew he was annoyed at me. “I think you
know the answer to that,” he said.
“It’s a good question, though,” said Sadie. “What if Alice has some sort
of virus or something that went to her brain?”
I looked over at Sadie, wondering if she was being serious. She winked
at me.
“Alice doesn’t have a virus,” said Cat Poop.
“But there are viruses that can make your brain go all weird, right?”
Sadie asked him. “Like Mad Cow.”
He sighed. “Yes, there are,” he said. “But no one here has a virus.”
I gave a fake sneeze. “Uh-oh,” I said. “I think I’m coming down with
something.” Then I oinked. “I think it’s Mad Piggy!”
“Wee-wee-wee,” Bone said. Cat Poop looked at him. “Wee-wee-wee,”
Bone said again. “I think I’m coming down with something too.”
Then Sadie started. She fake sneezed and said, “Wee-wee-wee,” along
with Bone. The two of them were trying really hard not to crack up, and so
was I.
Then Juliet stood up. “Shut up!” she screamed at us. “Shut the hell up!”
We did shut up. She’s never yelled like that, and it took us by surprise.
Juliet glared at us, her hands clenched and her whole body shaking, like she
was trying to make our heads explode using the superpowers of her mind.
“Stop making fun of her,” she said, really softly. “Just stop. It’s not
funny.” Then she sat down again and looked at the floor.
Maybe she had a point. But come on. Someone yelling about being a
little piggy going wee-wee-wee all the way home is kind of funny when you
think about it. Sure, I feel bad for Alice, but that’s no reason to go all
serious. You’ve got to laugh at stuff.
Anyway, I’m not like Alice. I’m not like the rest of them either. So
excuse me if I get a little sarcastic about it when they do something nutty.

---

Day 12
Alice is gone. Bone told us this morning over breakfast.
“They shipped her out to Morning View,” he said between bites of
cereal. “I heard the nurses talking about it.”
“What’s Morning View?” I asked.
“It’s where they send all the nuts who are never going to get better,”
Bone told me. “She’s a lifer now. I guess she wee-wee-weed herself all the
way to a padded cell.”
“And then there were four,” said Sadie.
I looked at her. “What?”
“And then there were four,” she repeated. “You know, from the nursery
rhyme.”
She started to recite in a singsong voice.