He could lose himself in drawing. He could walk again, drawing it, seeing it, making his fingers make the lines that made his legs work. Hours could go by and he wouldn't know it.
Marco seemed okay, if a little weepy over Dylan. Dylan had dumped him, broke his heart, wanting to see other people. Marco told him in his tearful way, after asking all the requisite questions about him first. How are you? How is therapy going? The drawings look good, they look real good, Jimmy.
Craig, though. Craig seemed a little off. He was talking a lot. Jimmy could barely keep up as he jumped from one topic to the next. He noticed how he had started bouncing his legs up and down, like all the energy had nowhere to go.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked one afternoon, watching Craig's legs bounce almost violently as he sat in the wheelchair, watching him do little wheelies around his room. Listening to the words, a flood of them, about everything. Ashley. Music. Joey. School. His dad. He couldn't remember him ever mentioning his dad before.
"Nothing. I'm fine. Totally fine," Craig said, glancing at him quick and then looking away. Jimmy shrugged. He didn't have the resources to deal with Marco's broken heart or Craig's…issues. So he listened to the flood of words and tried to keep up. He let Marco hug him, feeling the shaking start of the tears. He drew his drawings, doodled his doodles, getting lost in the world he could create on paper.
Through it all he wished for Spinner. The one person he longed to see. The one person who might be able to understand the guilt, the piece that had to be owned in all of this. That person wouldn't come.
The doctors, the nurses, the therapists, they all agreed that he could go home soon. He felt the swelling feeling of blood filling his heart at that. Home. He could be more normal there, less a freak of a violent act that had changed everything, all of their lives but especially his, forever. He couldn't wait to tell his dad.
Craig had come over again, without Marco. Jimmy glanced at the clock. School wasn't even out yet.
"What are you doing here?" Jimmy said, looking up from his drawings.
"Visiting," he said, rocking back in the wheelchair, gripping the wheels and rolling himself forward.
"Yes, I can see that. School isn't out yet,"
"Yeah. I skipped,"
Jimmy raised an eyebrow and said nothing, listened as Craig outlined the latest problem. Ashley's dad was having a wedding and Joey was painting his house and they had nowhere to go. Jimmy sighed, wishing he had such problems. Squinting at Craig, and even sitting still he seemed to be going at one hundred miles per hour.
Craig left, Marco arrived. Marco's presence was so different from Craig's, the way Marco would look into his eyes and examine all the latest drawings and ask all the questions about how things were going. When Marco left his dad arrived, his suit neatly pressed.
"Jimmy," his dad said, and he could hear him straining to be cheerful.
"Dad, they say I can go home soon," Jimmy didn't want to cringe at the hopeful tone in his voice, but he'd had enough of this rehab center, the pressed meals, the water pitchers, the T.V. remote that hung from a wire on the bedrails. He wanted to go home.
His dad looked down, looked guilty, caught off guard.
"Uh, really? Well, that's great, son. Just great," The words were paper thin. His dad didn't think that it was great. Not at all.