The Masochist Boy (3) She squeezed his hand again, and said: "You see?" He nodded, a little tiny nod. "Will you come back to school, Robby? I don’t want to ditch biology class but I won’t sit in it if you aren’t there. It’s not right." "I’m never going back to school," he said, eyes still closed. "I don’t want to live, Vivien. I want to die." "Why?" "I don’t know and it doesn’t bleeping matter. It’s nice out here, but this doesn’t matter. What matters is that when you go away it will hurt again." "What will hurt?" "Me." He turned to look at her, bewildered. "How can you not see it? Don’t you see how hateful I am? Don’t you see how twisted and-and disgusting-" "I like you," she said firmly, "and I think you’re a perfectly beautiful boy. When everyone else was laughing at me, you didn’t. That’s intelligence and that’s caring, and I think that under all that hate you really do care. And under all that anger you really are beautiful. Give it some time, Robby, and I’m sure you can make it beautiful." He paused for a moment, and then shook his head. "I’ll still have this pain," he said. "You’re wrong. There’s no point. It will still hurt." "A little," she nodded, "but if you try, if you try to make it beautiful, and maybe I can help you, you’ll feel better. You know, if you are taking those pills-you can work to make yourself happy, and then you won’t need them. I have faith in you." He blinked. "Why?" he said. She shrugged again, and then said: "You’re my friend." She smiled at him. He felt a little part of the pain melt, melt like ice in the sunlight. A little pang of doubt sprung up in his mind. He smiled, a tiny, cautious smile. She hugged him with that glad smile on her face, and she said: "Then I’ll see you in school tomorrow." "Maybe. Maybe only." She smiled. "Then I will, won’t I? I’ll be waiting. Maybe you can go to sleep out here. You’ll feel better. I have to go, ok? Oh, wait, I should give you my phone number if you want to call me. Here." She tore a piece of grass from the sidewalk and wrote, as neatly as she could, her number, and handed it to him. "Alright. Goodbye, Rob-I’ll see you tomorrow. By the way, do you ever take the bus?" "No," he answered, somewhat dazed. "Neither do I. So maybe I can talk to you after school…if you’re in the mood. Anyway-bye!" She gave his hand one last squeeze and got to her feet. She waved to him, still smiling like a ray of sunshine, and walked off to the other side of the block. He stared after her, stunned. Later he might think that G-d had sent an angel to protect him, to stop him from doing something regretful. On that day, though, he only stared, and eventually drifted off into a sleep more peaceful than he had had since he was a child. She had to be very careful, she knew. Very careful-very quiet. Not a sound. She tiptoed in through the backdoor, stepping only on the spots of the floor that she knew didn’t creak. Made it across the living room and the hall-to the steps-perfect-except the second one always creaked, and if she skipped it she’d make a thud, and her mother had the ears of a- "Ah-hah!" cried a triumphant voice from behind her. "Eeep!" cried Vivien, startled out of her wits. She swirled around. Her mother, glaring at her ferociously from her bushy eyebrows and work suit. "And just where have you been, young lady?" her mother said acidly. "Oh-oh, just now, I was kind of at the library," she stammered pathetically. "Studying for my biology quiz." She winced. Why oh why had she not been gifted with the talent of lying? Every other kid could lie to their parents. Why couldn’t she? It just wasn’t fair- "And why was I not informed of this leave of absence? You know it’s a family rule that you must always tell me where you are going and when you will be back!" "I forgot." "You haven’t forgotten in all the sixteen years I’ve raised you, not once, and now, out of the clear blue, you expect me to believe you forgot? Or perhaps, you don’t expect me to believe it, so you decided to lie to your own mother on top of it! Do you think I can’t tell you’re lying to me, Vivien? For shame! Where were you, young lady?" She sighed in exasperation. "I was at a friend’s house," she glared. Her mother slapped her wrist. "Don’t you speak to me that way! I’m not putting up with any of this backtalk, Vivien Llewelyn! Apologize." Vivien apologized. She felt like a two-year-old. She hated feeling like a two-year-old. "Now. Which friend’s house were you at?" "Robby’s. My friend from biology." "Robby Schultz?" her mother whispered. Vivien blinked. She’d never heard her mother whisper before. "Yes," she said. "Robby Schultz." Her mother sighed, and suddenly seemed immensely tired. "Vivien," she said slowly, "I need to talk to you about this. Come-sit on the couch with me." She took her hand and led her over to the perfect couch, the one that matched exactly so with the handwoven curtains and the crocheted rug. For a moment they just sat there, her mother holding her hand, and the late afternoon light streaming in through the finished-wood-gloss windows. Even though it was October, it was still just beautiful outside. Her mother said hesitantly: "Vivien, sweetheart." "Yes, mother," she said automatically. "Vivien. You know your father and I want you to be happy here. You know we want you to adjust well to this new school." Her father, she thought dryly, probably had not given a moment’s thought to it. Ever since he lost his big-corporation job, he’d spent all day driving around town applying for jobs. He wasn’t ever home. He wasn’t anything more than a phrase tacked on before the ‘I’ part of the sentence. "You know we want you to make friends." "Fine," said Vivien. "Then let me." "I would," said her mother uneasily. "But, oh…but Vivien. This boy Robby…he’s no good." "How do you know that?" Vivien cried. "You haven’t met him!" "But I have, sweetie. In the-in the hospital." She froze. A silence. "You met him in the hospital?" she whispered. She hugged her knees to her chest. "Vivien," she began slowly. "Vivien, there are some people that just…they just can’t be helped. They’ve lost their sense of direction, they’ve lost their morals, they’ve lost everything that could have made them a good person. And then you are left only with the bad. This Robby is one of them; while I’m sure you may think he’s a perfectly nice boy, all he really is is a-a bad, bad influence. We had to pump the boy’s stomach in the hospital because he had overdosed on sleeping pills and heroin-heroin, Vivien, which means this boy is already in trouble with the law-and he was angry at us for saving him, Vivien. He had wanted to die." "I know," she mumbled miserably. "He told me that." "You see? The only thing you can ever get out of any kind of relationship with those sort of people is pain. He’s very, very sick, Vivien, mentally as well as physically. There’s something about him that’s just not right. Now, ask yourself: is this the type of person that it’s appropriate to be spending your time with? Heroin is a very dangerous thing, Vivien. He could be found dead at any minute, and if the police find him with heroin of any measurement he’ll be locked up until you’re thirty." She shook her head. "You don’t understand, Mom. He has a tough life. His mother doesn’t take care of him, I don’t know who his father is but he doesn’t live at home, and he gets beat up by the kids in school. Mom, it’s not his fault-and really, if you just talk to him, he’s…he’s nice. He’s my only friend. He’s depressed, but I don’t think he’s given up all hope yet, because I talked to him today, and he listened to me. He said he might even come back to school. Who knows? Maybe if I’m friends with him, I’ll be saving his life." "But ask yourself, sweetie. Is his life worth saving?" "What do you mean?" she cried, appalled. "I mean, sweetheart, that some people just live to be miserable. That’s all it is. Now, they can’t necessarily help it, but they might be better off dead." Vivien covered her face with her hands. "Don’t talk to me like this, Mother. Don’t talk to me." "Hush, hush, Vivien," soothed Mrs. Llewelyn, putting her arms around the girl and stroking her hair softly. "Listen, anyone will tell you that drug addicts are not people you want as friends. I know it’s hard. Sometimes, though, life just throws you lemons." "He’s not a lemon," sobbed Vivien. "He’s my friend, and you talk about him like he’s already dead!" "And he is, sweetheart, or at least, if I were you I would think of him that way. It’s better not to get involved with people like him, people headed down the road to self-destruction. There are better ways to spend your time." "You don’t understand," said Vivien bitterly. "You don’t understand anything, Mother." "I do, Vivien; I understand everything. You forget that I’m older than you, and know more about life than you. I’ve had more experience, and I know: in order to keep yourself on the road to success, you must not associate with people doomed to failure, especially people who are going to take you with them as they go, which is exactly what your father and I don’t want for you." Vivien said nothing. She seethed inside. "Is that alright now, Vivien?" "No, it’s not. But I don’t want to talk about this anymore." "Vivien, I don’t want you to be friends with a suicidal drug-addict. I don’t think I can make it any clearer than that!" "He’s got problems, but he’s still a kid just like anyone else, and a nice one at that! Would you rather me be friends with a nice, clean-cut girl who backstabs her friends and gossips in the hallways?" "Quite frankly, I would prefer that to a boy who is trying to end his existence, who gives himself shots of illegal substances with hypodermic needles and whose skin is three shades of green! Even if he doesn’t die of heart failure, he’ll probably get AIDS from a dirty needle and I don’t want him passing any of it onto you!" "He’s a wonderful person, and if you took away the drugs you would see that!" "Don’t even bother," warned Mrs. Llewely, alarmed. "Please, Vivien, if there’s one lesson I’ve learned in all my years it’s this: You can’t change people. If you think you’re going to change this boy for the better you’ll find out in a year or two that you were sorely mistaken and will be even more hurt besides! Either way, an addiction is a lifelong problem. Don’t bother, Vivien, it isn’t worth the emotional trauma!" "How would you know?" shot back Vivien, pulling away. "How would you know! All my life I’ve only done what you told me to do, only talked to who you told me to talk to, only went to places that you told me to go. And look at me, Mom! I don’t have any friends besides Robby, all the teachers hate me, everyone else thinks I’m a goody goody, and I’m so stupid about things that I’m always doing something stupid and clumsy. So I got straight A’s! So what? I’m in a big new school where everybody hates me except for one boy, and that one boy you want me to treat as if he’s dead." She narrowed her eyes at her. "I should have known." "Vivien, I don’t want you talking to that boy. I definitely don’t want you going to his house!" She stormed out of the room. "Vivien, come back here!" her mother shouted, rising to her feet. "Young lady, you get yourself back down here this instant!" Vivien slammed the door to her room and fumed up at her walls. She was a goody two-shoes, wasn’t she? She looked at her room. Pink carpeting. She didn’t even like pink; her mother had gotten it for Penny when she had had this room. The entire theme of the room was pink. Her sister’s beanie babies on the dresser. Fuzzy pictures of bunny rabbits on the walls. None of it showed that it was Vivien’s room; none of it showed how she felt. She had seen Robby’s room. True, his bed was shoddy and there were cracks in the walls and his bedcovers were only old raggedy things his family had probably gotten from Salvation Army; but he still had the Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers posters on his walls, he still had the old poems he’d written taped to the ceiling (to the ceiling; she couldn’t get over it), he still had things that showed people that it was him. Why couldn’t she do that, too? She was too afraid, of course. He didn’t care what people thought; she did. She cared too much. She would hang something up and her mother would say how ugly it looked and then she would take it down again. Just like the rest of her life. She hated it. Why couldn’t she be the rebellious teen? Why couldn’t she play the part she wanted to so badly? Because she wasn’t cool enough? Because she hadn’t enough guts? Well, she would get guts. Maybe Robby would give her a few tips. Tips from a slave to chemicals. She didn’t care what her mother said; he was her friend. She had seen it that afternoon. He needed a friend; he needed a friend just as badly as she did, and she wasn’t going to abandon him at the drop of a hat. Otherwise she really would be alone. She had made up her mind. Satisfied, she picked up her school work, reflected that for the moment she’d gotten away scot-free with going somewhere and not telling her mother, and proceeded to finish her math. It was all a dream. He went to biology class the next day. He slid into his seat. The room swam before him. Everything blurred. She took his hand, squeezed it, smiled and said that he had come after all. He smiled back. He was not sure if he was right side up or upside down. It was going to be alright. It was going to be alright. She smiled. They found a way home from school that went through the park; so what if it was six blocks out of their way. Neither of them were in a rush to get home. For Rob, it completely threw off Tom and Will; Vivien told her mother she was staying after school late to work on her French. Her mother was elated, and as her French was better than her mother’s anyway it seemed a very good excuse. They didn’t live so far away, they discovered; four blocks to the right and six blocks straight ahead, or about twenty biking minutes. The park was about fifteen minutes from each of their houses-well out of the neighborhood, since of course you couldn’t put a park in the middle of a sleazy filth basket like the North and Center envelope. But that was fine with them; sometimes they did their homework together there. Sometimes Rob brought his notebook and wrote. Sometimes they just sat. It was a beautiful spot; soft green grass, oak trees and maple and sumac, and in the center of it all a circular lake with water that dazzled in the sun, and breezes of fresh air coming from the north that rejuvenated with each breathful. Rob and Vivien liked to sit closer to the lake; it was the most peaceful part of the entire park, and that was one of the reasons they came there. They were sitting there, doing their math homework and talking in between, when it first came up. It was towards the beginning of November; chilly outside, but as of yet, no sign of snow. They didn’t often have snow there. Actually, it was a very nice day outside; the sun was just setting over the lake, dying it in scarlet light that sparkled off the surface like a million diamonds. They had their books and notebooks spread out on the ground. Vivien had brought an extra sweater to keep herself warm, and was huddled together with her book in the sunlight; Rob was sprawled on his stomach by the lake’s edge, seemingly undisturbed by the cold, his book on one side and the notebook on the other. He felt good about coming out here. It was healthy, he thought, for him to go outside with another person and deal with a few of his responsibilities. Otherwise he avoided all three of these things. His brows knitted together. He said: "Viven-can you help me with forty-five? I don’t get it." She looked up, set her book down and came to kneel by him, her teeth chattering. "Oh, you weren’t here when she taught that. Here, you use distributive property-so. That’s right. Now multiply this by the reciprocal and divide by the denominator. There, you’ve got the hang of it." "Yes-yeah, I got it. Thirty-two, right?" "Mm-hmm." "Thanks. Sorry to keep bothering you like that." "Oh, no, it’s alright. At least I know something." He looked up suddenly, frowning. "What did you say?" She shook her head. "Nothing. Never mind." He did not look away. "Vivien-something wrong?" "No. It was a-a slip of the tongue. I didn’t mean it." "I find," he said quietly, "that when people say they don’t mean things it’s usually because they do." She hung her head. "Are you crying, Vivien?" he said, alarmed. He set down the pen. "Good grief, what’s wrong?" She covered her face with her hands and turned away. Then she shuddered; it was so cold outside. It was so cold outside. "Vivien…" "Just-listen-just leave me alone. I just wish you wouldn’t talk to me." "I said that once and you made me talk to you anyway, remember? You think I’m going to let you get away with violating your own advice?" "Why do you have to be so-so-so-" she threw up her hands uselessly. "I didn’t want you to hear it; it was an accident." "You are crying," he muttered. "Good grief." Then, aloud: "What happened, Vivien?" "It’s really stupid. You wouldn’t believe-I don’t even know why it’s bothering me, but it is. Every little thing is bothering me. I’m never really…really happy anymore, and I don’t know why." "I know what that’s like," he said darkly. "I feel like such a-I don’t know. I was walking in the hallway the other day-you know, carrying my books and everything-some one came up behind me-they knocked into me so everything went all over the place, and then they said ‘That’s what you get for being such a smart aleck,’ and walked off. And everyone else in the hallway was nodding with them-and then I was in French class, and we were split into groups. I was with these three other girls-we were trying to come up with an advertisement, I suggested something, she says-she says, ‘what do you know? All you ever do is study and try to make the rest of us who aren’t geeks look bad.’ " She buried her head in her hands, and sobbed. "And everyone else was nodding. Nodding. They all-they all hate my sorry guts." "Two things," said Rob. "First of all: they may not like you. That’s because they’re idiots who can’t stand people with actual brain quality. Second, you are not a sorry so-and-so." She looked up at him bitterly. "What are you talking about? Look at me. I don’t know anything. All I know are books and how to do what my mother says, and even that I don’t do well. Everyone hates me." "I don’t," he said reasonably, "and I hate everyone else." She laughed miserably. "So that’s the way it goes, huh? Everyone hates me, and the one person who doesn’t hate me hates everyone. What makes me so different from the rest of them?" He looked at her from under the purple bruises around his eyes, and said quietly: "If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be sitting out here. Can’t say that about any other damned human being alive, not even my mother." She blinked, surprised. "You’re nice," he said. "Of course everyone gives you a hard time. One nice person in a sea of rough punks." She tilted her head to one side. "What about you?" she asked curiously. He laughed. "Me?" he said. "I’m nowhere. I’m the druggy-no-good suicidal nutcase. I’m in a category all by myself. When I can, I just stand back and watch things happen; the only things I do are to myself. But it’s nice to know you."
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