8/29/16

POV Justin

Twenty-something years into life, the options for my weekend recreation have dwindled down from that which was available during high school.  The mall gets boring, staying in gets redundant, and lately me and my friends Pete, Lauren and Jack have been mixing it up a bit to bring some excitement into our lives.  Last weekend we took the red line all the way from Howard to 95th.  Pete and Lauren sat on one side of the train car, me and Jack another, and we took turns giving each other dirty looks that should be unbearable to those that aren’t aware of the fire that burns in our souls 99.9% of the time just to have a good time by tricking bystanders that there is a civil war going on between us and our ambiguous ways. 

My sister’s ex best friend, who our circle of friends now despises because she cheated on Jack with her grammar school flame, lives in a nursing home because she went to the mental hospital twice, relapsed twice, and was denied by her parents because they gave up on her the first time around, in her sophomore year.  Her mom BS’ed the doctor into believing that if she was around her triggers it would happen again.  So now she lives in a nursing home.  We hate her.  Some of us hate her because it is something to do.  Some of us hate her because we feel like we are the ones that put her there.  Some of us hate her because the fire that burns in our souls knows no other reality than to deny that which we don’t understand (this is what some of the other kids at school have told me that they think).  Some of us, including me, think we don’t understand her because she is evil, and we are victims to the unexplainable circumstances that led Sara to where she is today. 

The staff at the nursing home doesn’t say anything when we stroll through the lobby to enter the place.  Some of the residents look at us like we are ghosts.  Some of them ask us who we want to see.  We tell them we are just looking to hang out, to have a good time, and they let us pass, without further interrogation.  Sometimes we see Sara in the “little theater,” which is next to the lobby, watching a movie.  The other night she was in the back row so that she could see the lobby, and Lauren walked past the entrance of the theater just to see her reaction.

Usually we go up to her floor, numero dos, sit in the chairs to watch the flat screen tv on the wall.  Sometimes Sara walks in the dayroom past us, to go to the med line, without noticing that we are there.   I wonder if she knows that we are there sometimes, because all of the residents do.  They don’t say anything.  The nurses and CNA’s don’t say anything either. 

Every time we walk in, we have to pass the head honcho, Jake Westman’s, office.  His door is never open, it’s always closed.  I have this theory that he was Hitler in a past life, because my older sister wrote a creative nonfiction story about Hitler sitting in his office contently, habitually, writing and doing other busy work, while psychically looking into the minds of all his loyal Nazi followers, and all of the Jews and other people he thought were freaks.  He was superhuman, after all.  She also wrote that Anne Frank’s death wish was to see Hitler before she died so that he could apologize, although the apology would clash against the action of her dying.  My sister wrote that she wanted it anyway, just to figure out what heaven would be like before she got there, if she got there.

The third time we walked in, not uninvited or invited, we caught him walking out of his office, shutting the door, and barking orders to the two women that sat behind the semi-oval front desk.  We stood in the corner of the lobby, hoping that no one would notice.  The times the staff and residents don’t, we get this vibe that we are among evil, safe from it, and part of it, all at the same time.  It is one of the most amazing feelings ever, and that’s why we keep on coming back.  It’s like a burglar ransacking a house in front of you and smiling.  It’s like standing in the middle of a room full of terrorists, and being the only one that could read the language of the sign posted on the wall that states the solution to all of the problems in the world.

My older brother knows we do this.  The whole community college where all four of us go do.  He and his friends wanted to do the same thing, because they hate Sara too, but they are chicken shit, so they asked me what they could still do to be part of the festivities.  I told him to walk in, claim to be a tourist on vacation, and ask for directions to the intersection of “Sara and Smith” (her last name is Smith), just as a joke, just to see the expression on the staffs’ faces.  He wanted to know how she was doing, because they used to be best friends, and he didn’t know any other way.  The night after the night that he and his friends did it, he told me that the staff did nothing but give their best poker faces, and tell them there is no such intersection. 

“She’s their little princess,” he said to me.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because they wouldn’t tell,” he responded.

“Tell what?”  I asked.

“That they knew you sent me.”

The last time we went, we went all the way.  We went into her room.  We had harmless intentions, but things got out of hand, so it was our last and final time.  We just wanted to check out the room, so we marched in, single file line, past Sara’s bed, to the west wall.  We checked the place out for a few minutes; her comforter was a different color than her roommates’ maroon covers.  There was a ton of crap and books on her dresser.  Her nightstand to the side of her bed had a small, bright yellow radio/alarm clock with bright red numbers telling the time.  A tv was connected to the wall above her bed.  She had two roommates, one to her left, one diagonally across the room.  Another roommate’s bed was past the arched entryway that led into another room.  After sitting in the day room a few times outside of Sara’s room and listening to the CNAs call out her roommates’ names, I have learned that they are Louis, Nicole, and Carol.  Carol gets flustered easily; I can see it in her walk.  Louis is very skinny and talks to herself while in the med line.  Nicole looks about Sara’s age, but I bet they aren’t friends, because Sara is a bitch, and Nicole seems a bit unfriendly.  Nicole has the deepest of black hair; it is curly and usually pulled back.  Something strikes me odd about Nicole.  Whenever we see her walk out of the room, past Sara’s bed, her neck snaps from the back to the front, like she is looking at Sara in bed, and then brings the image into the day room in the moment it takes for her glance to look from one way to another.

Anyways, we were in her room.  Princess Sara’s room.  We saw her in the theater, and “She’s All That” was playing, so we were sure that we’d have a few minutes to look around, but then we heard the click of the door unlocking, so we ran behind one of the roommate’s curtains.  We found a safe spot, against the wall, so that she wouldn’t see our feet from under the curtains.  Pete and Lauren faced the door, me and Jack faced the roommate’s nightstand.  I held my breath as we waited for the next moment she would leave, to walk to the bathroom or the dayroom, so we could leave.  In the middle of our dangerous situation, I saw Nicole’s space for the first time.  A picture of her and a young boy in a picture frame was on the corner of her nightstand, and a Celtic cross on the other corner.  Ripped out pages of coloring books were taped to the wall, illustrated with crayons and markers. 

Just as I expelled my breath because I couldn’t hold it anymore, I heard a conversation going on from Sara’s space in the room.  I peeked over the pulled curtain.  A blonde-haired girl I saw Sara walking with sometimes outside of the nursing home, around Evanston, was facing her, and they were talking.  I could see Sara’s face as she listened to the girl and every so often mutter something.  They seemed acquainted but there was a hint of awkwardness there. 

“I need my CTA circuit breaker pass,” Sara said.  “The one I have now expires soon.”

“You could just take the bus, and go and get it yourself,” the blonde girl said.

We stood and listened, waiting for the chance to get out of the room, while the conversation revolved around this topic for a while.  The girl seemed to repeat herself a lot, while Sara listened 65% of the time.  Finally, they both left, and we were able to leave the room, leave the floor, leave the building, and leave the neighborhood.

We haven’t been back since.  That was too close of a call.  This Saturday we are planning on wreaking havoc on the basketball courts of my uncle’s alley.  There’s nothing better to do.