Craig stared morosely at the T.V. screen. It was after school, after his first week back from the hospital. He could remember the weeks leading up to his diagnosis, the rush of energy he had felt, the inspiration, and how that had felt good before it became scary.
Everyone was out and that was fine. He wanted to be alone. In school he could feel the stares and hear the whispers, just below the surface of everything. Cautious glances came his way when he walked down the hall or into the cafeteria, and he could feel people being careful. He hated that, he always had. When his father had died everyone had acted in a similar way, talking to him like he was unpredictable. Maybe they were right. And teachers, he thought they might be even worse than the students. Some were nicey nice, smiling at him and talking in soft tones of voice. Others were doing their best to ignore him for the period or two that he had to spend in their classroom.
Could he blame them, really? How did he want them to act? How would he act if it was someone else? He shook his head, flipping uselessly through the channels. He wanted them to act like nothing was different.
And worse than that, worse than everything, was Ashley. There was this distance that she was denying but that he could feel. He saw her monitoring things, trying to gauge his mood, trying to tell if he took his medicine, trying to see if his actions and reactions were normal or if they were veering off, becoming manic.
He hated when everything was wrong. Jimmy was still in rehab. The meds he had to take weren't agreeing with him. They either made him feel sleepy and underwater or they didn't work. Ashley wouldn't treat him like she used to. He dreaded the things that were going to come out of her mouth. Joey was trying to act like everything was normal but there was this frantic edge to it, a canned quality to his laughter.
The only one who seemed to be honest and real about the whole thing was Angie. When he came home she told him how he had scared her and demanded to know what was wrong. He threw the remote onto the coffee table and settled for watching some movie with Nicolas Cage and a lot of car chases and explosions. Was that how he wanted everyone to act? Brutally honest like a seven year old? He laughed, a short and brutal laugh with no joy in it. Yeah. That's what he wanted. But people weren't like that. They didn't want to point out obvious things like how nervous they were now that he was mentally ill.
Mentally ill, he couldn't believe this. It seemed like monumental bad luck. And it was time consuming. There were trips to see the psychiatrist and medications to coordinate and girlfriends to placate and step-fathers to reassure that he was actually fine, that everything was okay now.
Why couldn't things be fine? So he had a brain with chemistry that was off. So if untreated it produced behavior that was unacceptable to society, so what? There was medication. It wasn't like he was a paranoid schizophrenic unable to control the voices in his head. It wasn't so bad, was it?
He thought he'd go see Jimmy, go visit someone with troubles greater than his own. At least he could walk. At least his disability wasn't one everyone could see. Maybe seeing Jimmy would cheer him up. Or maybe Jimmy would be able to understand.
He walked slowly into Jimmy's room, eyeing the blood pressure cuff that hung from the wall in its black plastic holder. Jimmy was fully dressed and lying above the sheets and blankets of his made bed. Craig knocked on the opened door and walked in.
"Hey, man," he said, pulling the wheelchair close to the bed and sitting in it. He rolled himself back and forth as he talked, liking the soothing movement.
"How was the hospital?" Jimmy said. Craig sighed and slumped down in the wheelchair.
"You know,"
"Yeah," Jimmy said, laughing, "I do,"