Catch Me (Synacky)

Chapter Nine: Zacky

At therapy, I told Dr. Brooks I had put something in the book. He asked me to show him.

“Wow, Zacky, is that from this afternoon?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Thank you.” I said.

“For what?” he asked, then when I didn’t reply, he said, “Ah, yes. For what happened after lunch. You’re welcome. I told them to leave you both alone after that. You needed some time with your friend.” He didn’t bring up the incident with Johnny. Neither did I.

I had needed some time with my friend in the snow, however.

Dr. Brooks brought with him modeling clay. We spent the rest of our time shaping and creating things. I made a porcupine (which also looked like a sea urchin), and he made a pizza. The nice thing about modeling clay, is that what you create has 3 dimensions. And, unlike paper and markers, it’s easy to erase and make something new.

I set a small portion of the clay in front of my pet, which was sitting on the table. Dr. Brooks asked what it was making, and I said, “Oh, it’s inanimate. It can’t create anything.”

But I still left it some clay. Just in case.

I liked the feeling of the clay on my fingers. It was soft and mushy and cool to the touch. I pressed it against my cheek, to see what it felt like. It was not as wonderful as Brian’s hand, however.

“Are you enjoying your stay here, Zacky?” Dr. Brooks asked me, and I shrugged.

“Sometimes.” I said, and he left it at that.

I made a clay elephant and set it down in front of Dr. Brooks. He smiled, setting his clay prism down next to my elephant.

“I like Brian.” I said, “I like math. I like my hourglass and Rubix Cube. But that’s all.”

He nodded. “You don’t like anything else about living here?”

“The people are mean to me. The children and the aids, alike. They won’t let me have my guitar. Dad doesn’t visit me often. They don’t like us playing outside. The lights are too bright. It’s much too loud. I do not like anything else here.”

In fact, Dad had only visited me once. I did not miss him anymore. I had my period to miss him, and it had passed. When I spoke to him on the phone, I did not bring it up, and neither did he. He told me about the tree that grew outside of our house, and about the dog that belonged to the neighbor across the street. It had died.

The dog was named Shadowfax. I always liked that dog, it had a nice name. I read The Lord of the Rings when I was younger, and Shadowfax was the lord of all horses, and belonged to Gandalf. They named their dog after a horse.

The phone calls he made got shorter and shorter as time went on. He used to talk to me for thirty minutes. Now the average phone call lasted nine.

I did not express any of this to Dr. Brooks. I stayed silent until our session ended.

I ate supper with Jimmy. We spoke about the book I let him borrow. Jimmy is not nice, but he is a genius, and I enjoyed hearing his theories on the universe. We discussed dark matter, which is a tricky and confusing subject for both of us. How exactly does the universe continuously expand? We talked about theories on multiple universes, and even alternate universes, and why they could or could not exist. He separated his corn on his plate to demonstrate galaxies and his plate as the universe, but I disagreed, because the analogy wasn’t to scale. It did show, however, that the possibility of a fourth dimension was not to be overlooked.

When they gave Jimmy his medication, he was scolded for hiding it under his tongue. When they got angry with him, he spit it out on the floor, hissing. “I will not allow you to kill me. What you are doing is murder, and I won’t stand for it for one second.”

But he did swallow his pill, after they threatened to sedate him.

He staggered back to our room, hand on his head, and he lay down. I read my book on Reinhardt and he looked up at the ceiling, eyes unfocused and jaw slack.

“You know Brian wants to fuck you, right?”

I frowned, eyes ceasing to focus on the words in front of me.

Jimmy’s eyes were on me. Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could tell he knew I was listening.

“Yeah, he wants to screw ya. He thinks you’re one sexy piece of meat.” Jimmy laughed.

Slowly, I closed my book. “I-I don’t understand.” I replied.

“You don’t know what sex is? Ah, yeah, I should’ve expected that from you. Super nerdy, right? Totally sheltered. Or perhaps retarded, yeah?”

I did not reply. I wasn’t stupid or sheltered, I knew what he meant. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around Brian doing that to me. Why would he want that? I thought about totally disregarding Jimmy’s words altogether, but it occurred to me that if anyone knew something like that, it was him. He was inside Brian’s head all the time, anyways.

I pretended not to hear him. I pretended he never said anything, and shoved the whole conversation to the back of my head. It wasn’t relevant. It wasn’t important. Therefore, it wasn’t true.

But my mind wandered back to it. Did Brian view me as meat? I pictured that in my mind, a slab of raw steak sitting in my bed, going to see Dr. Brooks. I didn’t know how I resembled meat, and it hurt my feelings that Brian would look at me that way. Then I remembered when I had drawn my picture, he pointed out my eyes and mouth, so he must actually see me as Zacky. But perhaps he viewed me as something to be devoured, something for his disposal.

I did not like that.

I returned the thoughts to the back of my mind, and flipped to a new page in my notebook.

Differences between Brian, Johnny, and Jimmy:

-          Jimmy is mean. He has a lisp.

-          He squints very hard when he reads.

I drew a picture of a stick-man-Jimmy in a rectangle-with-legs bed reading a rhombus shaped book. My artistic abilities were lacking, I knew that full well. To add effect, I tried to draw the bedside table, with my liquid hourglass. It did not turn out well. I closed my book, and then I went to bed.