Catch Me (Synacky)

Chapter Three: Zacky

There was something wrong with my roommate.

At therapy he had begrudgingly introduced himself as Jimmy. But everyone else called him Brian. I didn’t understand this, and the lights were too bright and were hurting my eyes, so I rocked and groaned.

I refused to eat supper, so they fed me through a tube. I cried.

And I rocked and groaned and recited prime numbers in my head all night. Brian/Jimmy was angry at first, but eventually he gave up telling me to shut up and covered his face with his pillow.

This place was frightening. I didn’t understand and I didn’t have a schedule I was accustomed to. The man who said his name was Mr. Todd had scolded me for writing on the walls. They took away my CD’s.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to write on the walls, I just thought… with numbers surrounding me, prime numbers, I’d feel safe. Prime numbers and Led Zeppelin guitar tabs. But I never got the chance to write the tabs.

I stopped rocking at 4:02 AM. Brian/Jimmy was asleep. I remembered when I was at my old school, we would talk about emotions. I don’t like those. They are confusing and I never know how to label what I’m feeling and I don’t ever know what to do with it. But I made myself stop and think. What was I feeling right now?

My stomach was all twisted up. My throat was sore. My cheeks were wet and my eyes were tired. My head hurt.

What could that be?

I clutched my pet and asked it what could be wrong with me. It didn’t reply, because my pet is inanimate.

Frustration. Fear, most definitely. Anger, maybe. What was the difference between anger and frustration?

Sadness. I did not like any of these feelings. I shoved them into a mental box and stored them away. I’d rather feel nothing at all than feel those things.

My fingers made chords on the bed in front of me. I splayed them out, A minor, B7, Cadd9. I ran through tabs as best I could, scales up and down and up and down and up and down again. I formed a pattern and imagined the sound it would have made on a real guitar, and eventually, that I lulled myself to sleep.

The time was 4:58 AM.

~*~

I chose not to cooperate for seven days. Seven is a nice number. One week gave myself time to think and process everything and observe. So I screamed when people came near me and rocked and groaned and recited prime numbers and thought of new riffs to make myself feel better. They woke us up at 7:00 so we could get ready to go to the separate school building next to us, but I kicked and screamed.

I got about 9.82 hours of sleep that week. Roughly. I was tired, and my calculations might have been off.

After that, though, I forced myself to comply. I woke up. I brushed my teeth. I put on my favorite shirts and pants. I followed the crowd of kids to a breakfast hall. I wanted to rock when they didn’t have Froot Loops, but Cheerios look very similar. And there aren’t any yellow Cheerios.

Brian/Jimmy tried to talk to me during that first week, but I screamed when he came close to me and rocked and groaned when he tried to speak.

But when my week was up, I spoke back to him.

“Good morning.” He said to me, smiling a small smile. I did not smile.

“Hello.” I replied.

I was sitting at a table and he was standing at my side. I knew he was going to sit with me. I had to remind myself not to rock and groan. Maybe this could be a good thing.

He sat down at my side. He had toast and an apple on his tray.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met properly. I’m Brian.” He held out a hand, and I looked at it. He had calluses on the pads of his fingers. I wondered if he played guitar too.

“I’m Zacky.” I introduced myself, dipping my spoon in my cereal, separating the pieces into groups of three.

“It’s nice to meet you, Zacky.” Brian said, still smiling, and then he was quiet. I appreciated that. I did not want to talk to him more than I had to.

Although I had to admit, I was curious about his condition. He had been so adamant about being Jimmy when we had therapy that first day. If he wasn’t Jimmy, then who was?

We ate in silence, and he said I could walk with him to school, if I didn’t want to be alone.

“I love your dog.” He said, pointing to my pet. “What breed is he?”

“It’s an inanimate object.” I replied. “It is a stuffed mutt.”

Because truly, I did not know the breed of my pet. It was just a brown dog pet. Nothing splendid about it, except that it was my only friend here and I found refuge in its softness.

At my words, Brian laughed. I felt hurt. He looked at me after a while.

“That wasn’t a mean laugh, you know.” He said, “I just like the way you talk. I should have known it wasn’t a real dog.” He winked at me. That was something I had never understood, so I pretended that I didn’t see it.

I inferred that Brian was around my age. He told me I could sit with him in all my classes. There were always men and women to watch over us in the halls and in the classrooms, to make sure nothing bad happened.

I did not know Brian, but I knew him more than everyone else here, so I stayed close to his side.

In my math class, the teacher began speaking about logarithms. Logarithms are easy, because it’s just solving for x. You have to rearrange a number to reach the xth power. It was simple enough. At my old school, we had paced learning. Teachers would work with us one on one, and we could go as fast or slow as we wanted.

Brian struggled. He tried to take notes, I saw him scrawl hastily, but his handwriting became sloppier and worse, and then he startled all of us by standing up and shouting, “I can’t do this!”

His voice had changed, he sounded… illiterate and young. I watched as tears filled Brian’s eyes, and he tore his paper in half.

Our teacher stepped forward, “Now, Brian-“

“I’m not Brian!” Brian(?) shouted, “I’m not, I’m not! I don’t understand this! I don’t understand anything!”

The boy broke down in tears, much to my amazement. What was wrong with him? Was he back to being Jimmy?

The teacher pondered for a while, “What’s your name?” she asked, and he sniffled.

“J-Johnny.”

“How old are you, Johnny?” the teacher’s voice was calm and soothing. She smiled at him encouragingly.

Brian/Johnny raised five fingers. “I’m almost six.”

What was happening? I was so confused, I didn’t understand. This boy, Johnny, spoke like a small child, sobbed like a baby, curled his fingers in his hair and tugged, a nervous habit.

But it was still Brian.

I buried my head in my arms. 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23.

I tried not to groan, but I still might have made some sort of small noise. This ordeal was too much for me to handle, I didn’t know what to do, how to process it.

The teacher touched my shoulder, and I pulled away, screaming.

29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53. Deep breaths. 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83.

I got to 587 before I decided I had calmed down. Johnny was working steadily again, left thumb in his mouth, right hand writing out the most basic of addition problems. Three apples plus four apples equals how many apples?

I finished my assignment before the rest of the class, but I didn’t want to stand up and turn it in. I didn’t like being here with all these people, and to have to stand up in front of them, even if it was only to turn in a paper, would make it even worse.

So instead, I looked out the window and imagined giant robots engaging in combat on the lawn outside.