I'd seen a movie a few years ago about kids in a psych ward, I think it was called "Manic". It was pretty good. It was all I had to go on for what his psych ward experiences might have been like.
Craig walked into the common room or group room that had white walls and white floors and a couch kind of floating in the middle of the room, a table off to the side. Seemed like a normal enough room, but there was the locked door that buzzed people in and out and the window was protected by a little cage. There were the staff people who wore staff shirts and had a key ring attached by those retractable leashes like some people had for dogs. Craig was very aware that in this situation he wasn't one of the people with the keys.
He looked around at the other patients. The girl with the dark lipstick and charcoal eye shadow and cut marks up and down both arms, crisscrossed slashes. Like Ellie, he thought. He saw the boy with the shaggy light brown hair and dull expression. The boy with the crew cut and the quick temper. He thought he wasn't like these people, he wasn't like them. Why did he have to be here?
I shrugged. Maybe. But that movie was probably set in California. If you went by the movies 90 of everything that ever happened happened in L.A. Was it the same in Toronto? I didn't see why not, why it couldn't be.
The blond with the pale blue eyes as large as eggs shoved him lightly, just one shoulder, throwing him off balance.
"What's your problem, huh, Manning?" the kid said, and Craig figured he probably outweighed him by 100 pounds.
"Nothing," Craig said, trying not to get angry. This kid had it out for him, kept making snide comments, kept going for his weaknesses like some trained pit bull. Craig had tried to avoid him but hadn't been too successful, it wasn't that big of a place.
"Huh?" the kid said, and Craig noticed how fat his face was, how odd the pale blue color of his eyes was. And the kid shoved him again but harder.
"Leave me alone!" Craig said, and shoved back, just like he had shoved his father outside the restaurant. Despite his weight it knocked the kid off balance and Craig smiled, but he came back swinging.
Ah, I didn't know. Writing like this was making me tired, a funny kind of tired I'd never been before. It was like some furnace was burning somewhere inside of me. And I guess Kwan was right, Craig wasn't real anymore.
The feeling of bruises healing was familiar. It brought back his worst memories. The appearance of a black eye and bloody lip was not familiar, and gave his face a foreign appearance. He looked in the mirror at himself and whispered, "who are you?"
He'd lost whatever paltry privileges he'd accumulated, he'd had to go to extra counseling sessions and anger management. He didn't even bother to tell them that the other kid started it. They saw what they wanted to see. What they wanted to see was that he was sick and violent and out of control. Maybe they were right.
I smiled. I kind of liked that. Kind of. But I thought about Craig again, thought about all I could imagine based on the little I knew and I felt kind of bad for him. Shit. He was beaten, his parents died, he was mentally ill, his girlfriend had an abortion. Did anything go right for him?
It occurred to me that there was another side, a more positive side I'd sort of ignored. But what was positive in his life? Moving in with Joey, that had been positive. Dating Manny again? I didn't quite know how positive that was. Music. That seemed to be a positive thing.
Author's Note: Hi, just a quick author's note. I'm aware that I used "pounds" for weight instead of kilograms or whatever the metric thing is, and I'm pretty sure they use metric in Canada...so it kind of busts the illusion if you happen to use the metric system. Sorry. So let's say he outweighed him by 50 kilograms, maybe.