CHAPTER 32

My suspension is over. It’s Monday of the last week of the school year. My last week of elementary school forever, come to think of it.

Gorby is on duty in the playground when Gale and I arrive. She walks with her hands clasped behind her back, like a landowner checking the property. She gives me a curt nod and turns away. She’s as sour and stale and last week as the lunch I find in my locker and hurriedly toss in the garbage.

Mr. Ackley welcomes me back to class and says he’s sorry I’m not doing the announcements anymore. They’re pretty dull now that Mrs. Gorby is doing them herself, he says.

I drop the attendance sheets off at the office. Miss Funn frowns at me like I am the worst person in the world.

The phone rings. I watch her pick up.

“Pendrell Elementary, howww…” she starts, then sees me watching her.

She flusters and hangs up in the middle of her sentence.

Poor Miss Funn.

The rest of the day is uneventful. Even boring. Who knew a school day could go like that?

It’s after school. Gale and I are playing Zomboy at my place. We’re in the abandoned warehouse at the edge of town and the undead are pouring off the freight elevator, dropping from the air ducts, and rising from the broken floorboards, lurching toward us.

“How do you make that jump-spin-shoot move again?” Gale asks, in mid-fight.

“You mean you forgot?”

“I get it confused with the one for my NBA game.”

I tell him the move. He makes it, nailing the undead geezer with the machete.

“By the way, thanks again,” I say.

“For what?”

“For everything. For last week. Coming to the island with my mom.”

“Oh, that. Forget about it.”

“I can’t. Any more than I can forget the spin-shoot move. It’s my yoga breathing. Watch. I put my hand on my stomach and —”

“Gus! Focus. We’re getting killed here!”

“Oh, right.”

I’m not totally different from the way I used to be. I’m still me. I recognize myself. I do the yoga breathing, but I sometimes find myself counting my breaths, so I’m calmer, but still a bit weird. Did I say sometimes? I mean often. I still forget appointments, but at least I remember my phone now. I see Mom’s reminder on the way to my locker.

MOM: Dr. Basinski 2:00

ME: Oh yeah

Is forgetting appointments as weird as all that? You forget appointments, don’t you? ’Course you do.

The doctor shakes my hand hard and narrows her eyes to stare at me.

“You look different, somehow,” she says.

“These are the jeans I usually wear.”

“Not the clothes. You look older. I notice you came to this appointment alone. That’s good.”

We sit down. Are we going to do more questions? Never, rarely, sometimes? Apparently not. She starts out by apologizing.

“What an ordeal you went through! Stress and fatigue can manifest themselves in many ways. And concussion on top of that. Oh my! You told me about a black dog you saw sometimes. I should have considered that the medication was not a perfect fit for you.”

I’m not taking the pills now. When I ask if I should start again, she says no. She’s been talking to Doc Sharon about me. They agree that the best plan is to keep talking and learning with me before considering different medications or therapies.

“Dr. Walden is intrigued by your hallucinations,” she says with a grim smile. “Bugs and guano — is that right? She sent me a draft of an article she’s writing. She references you, calling your attitude very mature, which I found — What are you laughing at?”

“Sorry. I was …”

“What?”

“I was thinking about a morning radio show, starring Bugs and Guano.” I change my voice to sound like a cool gritty DJ. “Tune into 97 FM — The PEST with Bugs and Guano. We start your day off stiiiinky! Or something like that. Sorry, doctor. Go on with what you were saying.”

“I was talking about your mature attitude, which may or may not be true. You haven’t changed as much as all that, Gus. Which …” She smiles suddenly, extravagantly, like the sun coming out. “… Which may be your strength.”

It’s the first smile I’ve ever seen on Dr. Basinski’s face. She should try it more often.

She comes back to my little black dog.

“You mean Buddy. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“So you have a name for your dog now?”

Her eyes gleam and she nods, like she’s saying, Go on.

“Buddy shows up when I’m feeling awful. He seems friendly. The name came to me.”

She nods again, tapping busily on her pad.

I’m alone on the elevator. I count even floors going down. Thirty-two, thirty, twenty-eight …

At fourteen, someone gets on, cradling an envelope like it’s a sick baby. They get off at ten.

Four, two, ground.

I practise yoga breathing on the westbound bus. Thirty-seven breaths later I get a text.

RUBY: Surprise for you

ME: Wh

My stop comes before I finish my text.

Ruby’s back from her lunch shift at the restaurant

when I get home. Her surprise is tickets for a comedy club on Granville Island.

“One of the cooks was giving them away,” she says. “It’s an all-ages show. You want to go?”

There are four tickets. Dad wants to go but has a late meeting. I walk down the hall and knock on Gale’s door. He takes a ticket. So that’s easy. Mom drives us all after dinner.