WEEK 3

James says I should take that last part out.
You better be sorry, he says
when he throws this journal into my chest
looking mad and disappointed.
A look they must give tests on
at Probation Officer University.
This is not a joke, Timothy.
They’ll throw you in juvie so fast
your head will spin.
I mouth the words when he says them.
He doesn’t like that.
But he needs new words.
He won’t like it that I wrote that, either.
Oh, well.
Hey, James?
Suck it.

When Levi was born my dad was still here.
Nine months ago.
Feels like nine years.
Dad’s heart was beating in the same room as mine.
His lungs filled with the same air as mine.
His stomach filled with the same pizza as mine.
We had pepperoni that night
when Levi was born.
We high-fived our root beers.
Dad told the waitress,
I have two boys now. How about that?
And she gave us ice cream
for free.
And it was the best night.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
Then the phone rang in the pitch-dark night
and José’s mom answered because I was at their house.
Dad was at the hospital with Mom and Levi.
José’s mom came to wake me up
but I was already awake.
And she drove me to the hospital
and she told me Levi was sick
and the doctors didn’t know what it was
and it was bad
real bad
and they wanted me there
in case he died
so I could say good-bye
and none of it made sense
because Levi was a brand-new baby
and nothing happens to brand-new babies
because they are new and haven’t hurt anyone yet.
And Dad still had pizza in his stomach
and so did I
from earlier that night
when everything was OK.
P.S. Levi did not die.
Not any time they told us he would.
And there were a lot of times.

James.
Mrs. B.
I know you’re reading, so listen up.
I’m thinking you guys don’t know anything
about anything.
No offense.
But if you’re going to understand what I’m
talking about
in this dumb journal
I’m going to need to explain some things
to your dumb faces.
No offense.
There are just so many things you have to understand
before you can really understand.
Understand?
So I can tell you about that day
that stealing day
but you’re never going to know
what was going on in my head
because I don’t know what was going on in my head
all I do know is what was going on in my life.

Lesson One: trach.
You say it like trake
in case you didn’t know.
It’s a plastic tube
in Levi’s neck.
Well, in a hole in Levi’s neck,
a hole the doctor put there
so Levi can breathe.
The tube protects the hole
but it lets in a lot of germs
like a superhighway to his lungs,
so that’s no good.
But breathing is good.
Kind of a lame trade-off, if you ask me.
I guess the trach is like a plastic nostril
in Levi’s neck.
It has all the gross stuff that nostrils have:
slippery boogers
and slime
and gunk
and when he sneezes, these snot bullets shoot out.
So, yeah. It’s a plastic nostril in your neck.
But it doesn’t look like a nostril. Just a tube.
It saved Levi’s life
and changed everyone else’s.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like
to breathe through your neck
instead of your face.
How does food taste
if you can’t smell it?
Do your sinuses still hurt
when you’re sick?
Does it tickle when you cough
out of the tube?
Does it feel weird when you swallow?
It must.
Because Levi chokes a lot.
When he chokes we use the suction machine
and it is so loud
like a jackhammer drinking a Slurpee.
It sucks all of the gunk out of the tube in his neck
so Levi can breathe easy again.
He always looks so relieved.
I wonder how that feels?

José came over today.
He called me a felon
and laughed his head off.
He wanted me to come with him.
Cam’s paintball party.
My answer:
What part of house arrest don’t you understand,
dummy?
I told him I was getting a tracking device on my ankle
and if I leave the house
it will blow my whole leg off.
Even messier than paintball.
He believed me
so I laughed my head off.