China Knowles—Tuesday Morning—Gallbladder

I am China—the gallbladder, walking to school.

Stanzi is being weird. Beyond lab-coat weird.

As we walk, she wants to take that road. The one with the bush.

I tell her she knows I don’t ever walk down that road. She tells me it’s an easier way to Gustav’s house and she has to go that way.

“Anyway,” she says, “the man in the bush works during the day.”

I get angry too quickly about this statement. She pretends I haven’t seen the letters in her room. Like I don’t know how she got them. I feel like Stanzi isn’t my friend at all. What real friend would ignore all these signs I give her? What real friend wouldn’t ask about Irenic Brown and what happened, after reading all my poems about it? What real friend would make me walk down that road knowing all my secrets?

How to Know If Your Dangerous Bush Man Is Real

If the man hiding in the dark bush

gives you a letter

when you kiss him

then he is probably real.

If the man hiding in the dark bush

frightens you

when you just glimpse

the road

then he is most likely real.

When the man hiding in the dark bush

has become a friend

of your friend

and she defends him

as if he is normal

as if he is a simple character in the neighborhood

as if his kisses

are worth it

then he is certainly real.

When the man hiding in the dark bush

makes you wonder

if you couldn’t be more forgiving

then there is no doubt he is real.

Every town has shadows

where we hide mythical

beasts.

Mythical beasts.

I walk down the road with Stanzi, and I hear a strange sound. A muffled thwap-thwap-thwap.

Stanzi says, “Do you hear that?”

I say yes, I hear that.

I look at her and see what she’s always told me about. There are two of her. Clearly. She is split down the middle. Sliced in two. When I look, I see that one of her eyes is blue and one is brown. When I look harder, I see that one of her hands is trying to make the other hand wave good-bye to me. Half of her mouth wants to tell me the truth while the other half must lie.

I ask her why the helicopter is so quiet.

“Maybe because it’s invisible?” she answers.

As we get to Gustav’s backyard, I can tell she sees it. Her eyes light up. Gustav is standing on the grass, lifting a box above his head and shoving it inside. I can’t see the helicopter. I can still hear a faint thwap-thwap-thwap.

I ask Stanzi if today is the day she’s leaving us.

“Yes.”

I hug her and stand by myself on the sidewalk as she goes to Gustav.

My gallbladder cries because it is the only part anyone can see and it is the place where my tears decide to come out and it’s at this moment I know I must reappear.

I must come back.

If Stanzi isn’t here to protect me and Gustav is taking his genius elsewhere, I will be alone in a sea of number two pencils.

Right there on the sidewalk outside Gustav’s house, I turn myself right side in. I shake my hair into place. I take a deep breath and approach Stanzi, who is now helping Gustav load the helicopter.

“Who will read my poetry now that you’re gone?”

She says, “You’ll have to read it yourself.”

“Do you have an address?”

She looks at me and shrugs.

When Gustav goes inside to get more stuff, I ask, “Are you sure this is safe? Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure.”

“Has he ever flown a helicopter before?” I ask.

“Does it matter?” she answers.

I’m Stanzi’s friend and I know her secrets. A person doesn’t go through what Stanzi went through and turn out just fine except for the lab coat. I’m being a bad friend. I should call her parents now. Tell them everything that’s happening.

A man’s voice comes from behind me. “And who would believe your story about an invisible helicopter?”

When I turn and see the man in his trench coat, I sprint toward school.

When I get to school, I find Lansdale and she is shocked that I have become a girl again and not a digestive system on legs. She says, “I’m proud of you.”

And I’m proud of myself, too.

Two boys walk by and say, “Nice to see you again, China.”

A teacher gives me a sympathetic look as if he knows—as if he saw what everyone else saw on Facebook, and I’m suddenly like one of those popping toys you can get in a quarter machine at the supermarket—the kind you press concave until they slowly right themselves and pop up high into the air.

Lansdale Cruise looks on in horror as my insides swallow my outsides again, instantly. She looks a mix of disappointed and disgusted.

“Bummer.”

“Yeah,” I say, with a mouth full of myself.

“I guess some things can’t be helped.”

“I can be helped.”

“We’ll keep working on it,” Lansdale says.