Only Child(51)

That was the first time, and the second time happened later when Mimi came in the house and said, “Hey, honey, look what I picked up for you,” and she was holding up my backpack from school. “You’ve been wanting to read your books in your book baggie, haven’t you? Well, here they are! And Miss Russell gave me some work for us to do at home. Do you want to sit down and get started with me?” Mimi gave me a big smile, and I got mad at her. I didn’t even want to read the books from my book baggie anymore, only the Magic Tree House books.

“No!” I yelled at her. “I don’t want to do stupid homework!” Mad tears that were hot and the tight feeling in my whole body, and BAM! Zach Taylor Hulk was back. I kicked the backpack after Mimi put it down in the hallway and one of my slippers came flying off and hit Mimi on the leg, and Mimi made a face like it hurt. I didn’t say sorry, I just ran upstairs.

I slammed my bedroom door hard and I wanted it to be loud, but it wasn’t, and it popped back open and that made me even more mad, so I slammed it again, and this time it stayed closed. But my poster over my bed from school when I was class president for the day fell down on one side from the loud BANG! the door made. It was a stupid poster anyway, so I ripped it all the way off the wall and crumpled it up and threw it across the room.

All my trucks were standing there all mixed up, and that really started to bother me all of a sudden, so I jumped off the bed and kicked them all. Kicking stuff made the tight feeling get better, so I kept kicking and kicking.

“Zach, honey, can I come in?” Mimi said from outside my door.

I stood right in the middle of my room and looked at all the mess with the trucks everywhere. “No!” I called through the door.

“All right,” said Mimi’s voice. “Just…honey? Don’t break anything in there, OK? Mimi doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

I didn’t say anything back, and I heard Mimi walk away, back down the stairs.

I walked through the bathroom, in Andy’s room, and in the hideout. I switched on Buzz, and his light wasn’t very bright anymore. Next time I had to remember to bring new batteries in for him, because the old ones were almost empty. At first I thought I wanted to read, but my hands were still shaking too much from the mad feeling. I moved Buzz’s light circle over the wall with the feelings pages instead, and I thought about how all the pages were the same size, and that wasn’t really right, because not all the feelings were the same size.

Right now, mad was huge. Much bigger than the other feelings. It should be on a huge piece of paper, maybe even the whole wall, one whole wall of green. And the other feelings should be on a different wall.

Except sad should still be on the same wall as mad.

“I think now I know why you are making a sad face in the picture,” I said to Andy. “I think it’s because when the mad feeling goes away, a sad feeling always starts, right? It’s like a pattern. Mad, sad, mad, sad.”

I put Buzz down on the sleeping bag, and that made the closet almost all the way dark. I took all the feelings pages down and put them on the other wall next to me, except mad and sad, and I put those next to each other in the middle of the wall, green and gray, under the picture of me and Andy. Then I picked Buzz back up and stared at the two feelings and at the picture.

“I acted bad today and made Mommy upset. And Mimi,” I told Andy.

I noticed the three words I was thinking about: mad, sad, bad. Those rhyme. I pointed the light circle at the green page and said, “Mad.” Then I pointed it at the gray page and said, “Sad.” I said, “Bad,” and first I looked at Andy in the picture, but then also at me. “Bad.”

“I didn’t see that, that you were making a sad face on the beach. I didn’t notice it.” My throat got a lump in it when I said that to Andy and when I thought about his face. Maybe then he was feeling like me now, sad, but nobody knew that. And now he wasn’t alive anymore, but when he was alive, everyone only noticed the mad feelings and not the sad feelings.

Buzz’s light started to go on and off by itself, and that means the batteries were almost all the way dead, so I grabbed Buzz and came out of the hideout to get new batteries from downstairs. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard Mommy and Mimi talking. Mommy sounded upset, so I sat down on the stairs to listen.

“He just needs so much right now,” Mommy said. “The bed-wetting and this acting out…He gets so upset, and I can’t figure out how to get him back down from it. It’s like Andy all over again.” That was me she was talking about, how I was acting bad. Like Andy. I was starting to be like him. Or like me and him together.

“I just can’t…deal with him. I just can’t do it, Mom. I wish I could, but I don’t know how right now. How can I be there for him when I can’t even…deal?” Mommy’s words came out together with big cries, “I don’t know how.”

“I think all you can do is try your best. I’m a bit relieved, to be honest. That he’s finally showing some emotion. The way he was before…the way he didn’t cry at all after…Andy…That scared me,” Mimi said.

“But that’s just it. I’m tired of doing my best. You know, I want to get to act out like Zach. I want to kick and scream. I want to get to be mad at the world. But I have to keep it together. It’s all on me, as always. Jim gets to leave. He gets to disappear, business as usual. He’s not interested in dealing with the Ranalezes. And the one thing I asked him to figure out, the one thing, to get Zach to go back to school, not even that…” Mommy was talking very loud now.