It's Kind of a Funny Story

“All right, all right.” Humble throws down his cards. “You guys have fun with your buttons.” He’s escorted out by Harold and the security guards, getting a resounding slap on the butt from the Professor. She still has one hand on her face, claiming that she’s bleeding, but when she removes her hand there isn’t any kind of mark. Joanie sits back down at her table.

“You all saw what happened. He attacked me,” the Professor says.

“Yeah yeah, we saw, Doomba,” says Armelio.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the Doomba; we all know you are.”

“What’s a Doomba?” I ask.

“If you asking, maybe you’re a Doomba, too!” Armelio looks mad. This is the first time I’ve seen it.

“Huh,” Johnny breathes.

“Craig ain’t no Doomba,” Bobby says. “He’s on the level.”

“Aren’t I the winner yet?” asks Ebony.

“How can you have so many buttons?” asks Armelio. “You’re not winning any hands!”

“It’s cuz I don’t over-bet,” Ebony says, leaning over, and a stream of buttons comes roaring out of her top.

“Whoops!”

They keep coming—a mountain spilling over the ante pile. She starts laughing and laughing, showing us her very neat and clean gums while she howls: “Ooooooh, I got you! I got alla you!”

“That’s it,” Armelio says, throwing down his cards. “Every Monday the card tournament always gets messed up! I quit!”

“Do you resign your position as President?” Bobby asks him.

“Forget you, buddy!”

My tongue hurts from so much biting. It might not have been a regulation game, but it definitely had as many emotional ups-and-downs as the poker on TV. I clean up with Bobby and Joanie. Tonight, when I get in bed, I’m too busy wondering about what a Doomba is, and when Ebony stuck the buttons in her breasts, and what that even feels like, and Noelle and the fact that I get to see her tomorrow, to do anything but sleep.

thirty-six

The next day Humble isn’t around for breakfast. I sit with Bobby and Johnny, collect my shirt, perfectly folded, and put it on the back of my chair. I drink the day’s first “Swee-Touch-Nee” tea and ask what they did with Humble.

“Oh, he’s happy. They went and gave him some serious drugs, probably.”

“Like what?”

“You know about drugs? Pills?”

“Sure. I’m a teenager.”

“Well, Humble is psychotic and depressed,” Bobby explains. “So he gets SSRIs, lithium, Xanax—”

“Vicodin,” Johnny says.

“Vicodin, Valium . . . he’s like the most heavily medicated guy in here.”

“So when they took him away they gave him all that stuff?”

“No, that’s what he gets normally. When they take him away they give him shots, I bet. Atavan.”

“I had that.”

“You did? That’ll knock you right out. Was it fun?”

“It was okay. I don’t want to be taking stuff like that all the time.”

“Huh. That’s the right attitude,” says Johnny. “We got a little sidetracked by drugs, me and Bobby.”

“Yeah, no kiddin’,” Bobby says. He shakes his head, looks up, chews, and folds his hands. “Sidetracked isn’t even the word. We were off the face of this planet. We were holed up twenty-four hours a day. I missed so many concerts.”

“I’m sorry—”

“—Santana, Zeppelin, what’s that later one with the junkie, Nirvana . . . I coulda seen Rush, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, everybody. All this back when it cost ten bucks to get in. And I was too much of a garbage-head to care.”

“What’s a garbage-head?”

“Somebody who does anything, whatever,” Bobby explains. “You give it to me, I’d do it. Just to see what it was like.”

Jeez. I’ll admit that it sounds a little sexy. I see the appeal. But maybe that’s why I’m in here, to meet guys who take the appeal away.

“Do you think Humble stages scenes so he can get drugs?” I’m spreading cream cheese on a bagel now. I started ordering bagels x2 for breakfast; they’re far and away the best option.

“That’s the kinda thing you just can’t speculate about,” Bobby says. “Oh, here comes your girl.”

She rushes in with a tray and sits down in a corner, drinks her juice, dips at her oatmeal. She glances over at me. I wave as lightly as I can, so people think maybe I have a spasmodic twitch. I haven’t seen her since Sunday; I don’t know what she did all of yesterday. I don’t know how she eats if she doesn’t leave her room. Same with Muqtada. Maybe they deliver food to her? There’s still so much I don’t know about this place.

“Huh, she is a cutie,” Johnny says.

“C’mon, man, don’t be saying that. She’s like thirteen,” Bobby says.

“So? He’s like thirteen.”

“I’m fifteen.”

“Well, let him say it, then,” Bobby says to Johnny. “Leave the thirteen-year-olds to the thirteen-year-olds.”

“I’m fifteen,” I interject.

“Craig, you should probably wait a few years, because sex at thirteen can mess you up.”

“I’m fifteen!”

“Huh, I was doing stuff when I was fifteen,” says Johnny.

“Yeah,” says Bobby. “With guys.”

Pause. If Ronny were here, he would say it out loud: “Pause.”

“Huh. This food sucks.” Johnny pushes his waf fles aside. “Kid,” he says. “Just do this for me. If you get with her, freak her a little bit. You know what I mean?”

“Stop it,” Bobby looks at Johnny. “You got a daughter that age.”