Today I want to stay put in the classroom because Mrs Gosk is reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aloud to the class, and I love it when Mrs Gosk reads. She has a whispery, thin voice, so all the kids must lean in and be absolutely silent in order to hear, which is great for Max. Noises distract him. If Joey Miller is banging his pencil on his desk or Danielle Ganner is tapping her feet on the floor like she does all the time, then Max can’t hear anything but the pencil or the feet. He can’t ignore sounds like the other kids can, but when Mrs Gosk reads, everyone must be perfectly quiet.
Mrs Gosk always chooses the best books and tells the best stories from her own life that somehow relate to the book. Charlie Bucket does something crazy and then Mrs Gosk tells us about a time when her son, Michael, did something crazy, and we all laugh our heads off. Even Max sometimes.
Max doesn’t like to laugh. Some people think it’s because he doesn’t think things are funny, but that is not true. Max doesn’t understand all funny things. Puns and knock-knock jokes make no sense to him, because they say one thing but mean another. When a word can mean a bunch of different things, he has a hard time understanding which meaning to choose. He doesn’t even understand why words have to mean different things depending on when you use them, and I don’t blame him. I don’t like it much, either.
But Max finds other things hilarious. Like when Mrs Gosk told us how Michael once sent twenty cheese pizzas and the bill to a schoolyard bully as a joke. When the police officer came to their house to scare Michael, Mrs Gosk told the police officer to ‘Take him away’ to teach her son a lesson. Everyone laughed at that story. Even Max. Because it made sense. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Mrs Gosk is also teaching us about World War II today, which Mrs Gosk says is not in the curriculum but should be. The kids love it, and Max especially loves it because he thinks about wars and battles and tanks and airplanes all the time. Sometimes it is the only thing that he thinks about for days. If school was only about war and battles and not math and writing, then Max would be the best student in the whole wide world.
Today Mrs Gosk is teaching us about Pearl Harbor. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Mrs Gosk said that the Americans were not ready for the sneak attack because they couldn’t imagine the Japanese attacking us from so far away.
‘America lacked imagination,’ she said.
If Max had been alive in 1941 things might have been different because he has an excellent imagination. I bet that Max would have imagined Admiral Yamamoto’s plan perfectly, with the midget submarines and the torpedoes with the wooden rudders and everything else. He could have warned the American soldiers about the plan because that is what Max is good at. Imagining things. He has a lot going on inside of him all the time so he doesn’t worry so much about what is going on outside him. That’s what people don’t understand.
That’s why it’s good for me to stick around Max whenever I can. Sometimes he doesn’t pay enough attention to the things around him. Last week he was about to get on the bus when a big gust of wind blew his report card right out of his hands and between bus 8 and bus 53. He ran out of line to get it, but he didn’t look both ways when he did, so I yelled, ‘Max Delaney! Stop!’
I use Max’s last name when I want to get his attention. I learned that from Mrs Gosk. It worked. Max stopped, which was good, because a car was passing by the school buses at that moment, which is illegal.
Graham said that I saved Max’s life. Graham is the third imaginary friend at the school right now, as far as I know, and she saw the whole thing. Graham is a girl but she has a boy’s name. She looks almost as human as I do, except her hair stands up like someone on the moon is pulling on each individual strand. It doesn’t move. It’s as solid as a rock. Graham heard me yell at Max and tell him to stop, and then after Max was back in line, she walked over to me and said, ‘Budo! You just saved Max’s life! He would’ve been squished by that car!’
But I told Graham that I saved my own life, because if Max ever died, I think I would die, too.
Right?
I think so. I’ve never known an imaginary friend whose human friend died before he disappeared. So I’m not sure.
But I think I would. Die, I mean. If Max died.
CHAPTER 5
‘Do you think I’m real?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ Max says. ‘Hand me that blue two-pronger.’
A two-pronger is a kind of Lego. Max has names for all the Lego pieces.
‘I can’t,’ I say.
Max looks at me. ‘Oh, yeah. I forgot.’
‘If I’m real, then why are you the only one who can see me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Max says, sounding irritated. ‘I think you’re real. Why do you keep asking me?’
It’s true. I ask him a lot. I do it on purpose, too. I’m not going to live for ever. I know that. But I’m going to live as long as Max believes in me. So if I force Max to keep insisting that I’m real, I think he will believe in me longer.
Of course, I know that by constantly asking him if I’m real, I might be putting in his head the idea that I am imaginary. It’s a risk. But so far, so good.
Mrs Hume once told Max’s mom that it’s ‘not uncommon for kids like Max to have imaginary friends, and they tend to persist longer than most imaginary friends’.
Persist. I like that word.
I persist.
Max’s parents are fighting again. Max can’t hear because he is playing video games in the basement and his parents are screaming at each other in whispers. They sound like people who have been yelling for so long that they have lost their voices, which is actually half true.
‘I don’t care what the fucking therapist thinks,’ Max’s dad says, his cheeks turning red as he whisper-yells. ‘He’s a normal kid … he’s just a late bloomer. He plays with toys. He plays sports. He has friends.’
Max’s dad is not correct. Max doesn’t have any friends other than me. The kids at school either like Max or hate Max or ignore Max, but none of them are his friend, and I don’t think he wants any of them to be his friend. Max is happiest when he is left alone. Even I bother him sometimes.
Even the kids at school who like Max treat him differently. Like Ella Barbara. She loves Max, but she loves him in the same way a kid loves a doll or a teddy bear. She calls him ‘my little Max’ and tries to carry his lunchbox to the cafeteria and zip up his coat before recess, even though she knows that Max can do those things for himself. Max hates Ella. He cringes every time she tries to help him or even touch him, but he can’t tell her to stop because it’s easier for Max to cringe and suffer than speak up. Mrs Silbor kept Ella and Max together when she sent them on to third grade because she thought that they were good for each other. That’s what she told Max’s mom at the parent–teacher conference. Max might be good for Ella, because she gets to play with him like he’s a doll, but Ella is most definitely not good for Max.
‘He is not a late bloomer and I wish you’d stop saying that,’ Max’s mom says in the tone she uses when she’s trying to stay calm but is having a hard time doing so. ‘I know it kills you to admit it, John, but that’s just the way it is. How could every expert we meet be wrong?’
‘That’s the problem,’ Max’s dad says, his forehead turning red and blotchy. ‘Not every expert agrees and you know it!’ When he speaks, it’s like he’s firing his words from a gun. ‘No one knows what is going on with Max. So how is my guess any worse than the opinions of a bunch of experts who can’t agree on a thing?’
‘The label isn’t important,’ Max’s mom says. ‘It doesn’t matter what is wrong with him. He needs help.’
‘I just don’t get it,’ Max’s dad says. ‘I played catch with him in the backyard last night. I’ve taken him camping. His grades are good. He doesn’t get in trouble at school. Why are we trying to fix the poor kid when there’s nothing wrong with him?’
Max’s mom starts to cry. She blinks and her eyes fill with tears. I hate w
hen she cries, and so does Max’s dad. I have never cried before, but it looks awful.
‘John, he doesn’t like to hug us. He can’t make eye contact with people. He flips out if I change the sheets on his bed or switch brands of toothpaste. He talks to himself constantly. These are not normal kid behaviors. I’m not saying he needs medication. I’m not saying that he won’t grow up and be normal. He just needs a professional who can help him deal with some of his issues. And I want to do it before I get pregnant again. While we can focus on just him.’
Max’s dad turns and leaves. He slams the screen door behind him on the way out. It goes whack-whack-whack before it stops moving. I used to think that when Max’s dad walked away from an argument, it meant that Max’s mom had won. I thought his dad was retreating like Max’s toy soldiers retreat. I thought he was surrendering. But even though he is the one who retreats, it doesn’t always mean that he has surrendered. He has retreated lots of times before, slamming that door and making it go whack-whack-whack, but then nothing changes. It’s like Max’s dad has pressed the pause button on the remote control. The argument is paused. But it is not over.
Max, by the way, is the only boy I have ever seen who makes toy soldiers retreat or surrender.
Every other boy makes them die instead.
I’m not sure if Max should see a therapist and, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what a therapist does. I know some things that they do, but not everything, and it’s the everything that makes me nervous. Max’s mom and dad are probably going to fight about this again and again, and even though neither one will ever say, ‘Okay, I give up!’ or ‘You win!’ or ‘You’re right,’ Max will eventually go to the therapist because, in the end, Max’s mom almost always wins.
I think Max’s dad is wrong about Max being a late bloomer. I spend most of the day with Max and I see how he is different from the other kids in his class. Max lives on the inside and the other kids live on the outside. That’s what makes him so different. Max doesn’t have an outside. Max is all inside.
I don’t want Max to see a therapist. Therapists are people who trick you into telling the truth. They can see inside your head and know exactly what you are thinking, and if Max is thinking about me when he’s talking to the therapist, the therapist will trick Max into talking about me. Then maybe he’ll convince Max to stop believing in me.
But I still feel bad for Max’s dad, even if Max’s mom is the one who’s crying now. Sometimes I wish I could tell Max’s mom to be nicer to Max’s dad. She is the boss of the house, but she’s also the boss of Max’s dad, and I don’t think it’s good for him. It makes him feel small and silly. Like when he wants to play poker with friends on a Wednesday night but he can’t just tell his friends that he will play. He has to ask Max’s mom if it’s okay for him to play, and he has to ask at the right time, when she is in a good mood, or he might not be able to play.
She might say, ‘I could really use you at home that night,’ or ‘Didn’t you play last week?’ Or, worse, she might just say, ‘Fine,’ which really means, ‘It is not fine and you know it and if you go, I am going to be mad at you for at least three days!’
It reminds me of how Max would have to ask permission to visit a friend, if Max ever wanted to play with anyone but me, which he doesn’t.
I don’t understand why he has to ask permission, but I really don’t understand why Max’s mom would want to make him ask permission. Wouldn’t it be better if Max’s dad just got to choose what he did?
It’s doubly worse because Max’s dad is a manager at Burger King. Max thinks that this is one of the best jobs in the world, and if I ate bacon double cheeseburgers and small fries, then I’d probably feel the same way. But in the adult world, a Burger King manager is not a good job at all, and Max’s dad knows it. You can tell by the way he doesn’t like to tell people about his job. He never asks people what their job is, and that’s the most popular adult question ever asked in the history of the world. When he has to tell someone what his job is, he looks at his feet and says, ‘I manage restaurants.’ Getting him to say the words Burger King is like trying to get Max to choose between chicken noodle and vegetable beef soup. He tries everything he can not to say those two words.
Max’s mom is a manager, too. She manages people at a place called Aetna, but I can’t figure out what they make at her job. Definitely not bacon double cheeseburgers. I went to her job once, to try to figure out what she did all day, but everyone just sits in front of computers in these tiny boxes without lids. Or they sit around tables in stuffy rooms and tap their feet and look at the clock while some old man or woman talks about stuff that nobody cares about.
But even though it’s boring and they don’t make bacon double cheeseburgers, you can tell that Max’s mom has a better job because the people in her building wear shirts and dresses and ties, and not uniforms. She never complains about people stealing or not showing up to work like Max’s dad does. And sometimes Max’s dad works at five in the morning, and sometimes he works all night long and comes home at five in the morning. It’s weird because even though Max’s dad’s job seems a lot harder, Max’s mom makes more money and adults think she has a much better job. She never looks at her feet when she tells people what she does.
I’m glad that Max didn’t hear them arguing this time. Sometimes he does. Sometimes they forget to whisper-shout and sometimes they fight in the car, where it doesn’t matter if you whisper-shout. When they fight, it makes Max feel sad.
‘They fight because of me,’ he said to me once. He was playing with Lego, which is when Max likes to talk about serious things the most. He doesn’t look at me. He just builds airplanes and forts and battleships and spaceships while he talks.
‘No they don’t,’ I said. ‘They fight because they’re grown-ups. Grown-ups like to argue.’
‘No. They only argue about me.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Last night they argued about what show to watch on the television.’
I had been hoping that Max’s dad would win so we could watch the crime show, but he lost and we had to watch some stupid singing show.
‘That was not an argument,’ Max said. ‘That was a disagreement. There’s a difference.’
These were Mrs Gosk’s words. Mrs Gosk says that it’s okay to disagree but that doesn’t mean you are allowed to argue. ‘I can stomach a disagreement,’ she likes to say to the class. ‘But I can’t stand to listen to an argument in my presence.’
‘They only argue because they don’t know what’s best for you,’ I said. ‘They’re trying to figure out what is right.’
Max looked at me for a minute. He looked mad for a second, and then his face changed. It got softer and he looked sad. ‘When other people try to make me feel better by twisting words, it only makes me feel worse. When you do it, it makes me feel worst of all.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s okay.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not sorry for what I said, because it’s true. Your parents really are trying to figure out what is right. I meant that I’m sorry that your parents argue about you, even if it’s only because they love you.’
‘Oh,’ Max said and he smiled. It wasn’t an actual smile, because Max never really smiles. But his eyes opened a little wider and he tilted his head a tiny bit to the right. That’s Max’s version of a smile. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and I knew that it was a real thanks.
CHAPTER 6
Max is in the bathroom stall. He is making a poop, which Max does not like to do outside the home. He almost never makes a poop in a public restroom. But it’s 1.15 and there are still two hours of school left and he couldn’t hold it anymore. He always tries to poop before going to bed every night, and if he can’t, he tries again in the morning before he leaves for school. He actually pooped this morning right after breakfast, so this is a bonus poop.
Max hates bonus poops. Max hates all surprises.
Whenever he poops at school, Max tries to use the handicapped ba
throom near the nurse’s office so he can be alone, but today the janitor was cleaning puke off the floor because when a kid says that he’s going to be sick, the nurse always sends him to that bathroom.
When Max has to use the regular bathroom, I stand outside the door and warn him if someone is coming. He doesn’t like to have anyone in the bathroom when he is pooping, including me. But he doesn’t like even more to be surprised, so I am allowed to come in, but only if it’s an emergency.
An emergency means that someone is coming to use the bathroom.
When I tell him that someone is coming, Max lifts his feet up off the floor so no one can see him and waits until the bathroom is empty again before he finishes pooping. If he is lucky, the person never even knows that Max is on the toilet, unless the person has to poop, too, and knocks on the door to the stall. Then Max puts his feet back on the floor and waits until the person leaves.
One of Max’s problems with pooping is that it takes him a long time, even when he is sitting on his own toilet at home. He has been in the bathroom for ten minutes already and he is probably not close to being finished. It’s possible that he hasn’t even started. He could still be carefully arranging his pants on top of his sneakers so they don’t touch the floor.
That’s when I see trouble come walking down the hallway. Tommy Swinden has just left his classroom at the far end of the hall and is heading in my direction. As he walks, he swipes the maps of the thirteen colonies off the bulletin board outside Mrs Vera’s class. He laughs and kicks the papers across the floor. Tommy Swinden is in fifth grade and he does not like Max.
He has never liked Max.
But now he doesn’t like Max even more. Three months ago, Tommy Swinden took his Swiss Army knife to school to show it off to his friends. Tommy was standing at the edge of the woods, whittling a stick to show the other boys how sharp his knife was, and Max saw the knife and told the teacher. But Max doesn’t know how to be quiet about these kinds of things. He ran up to Mrs Davis and shouted, ‘Tommy Swinden has a knife! A knife!’ A whole bunch of kids heard Max, and a few of the little kids screamed and ran in the direction of Tommy, which scared them even more. Tommy Swinden got in a lot of trouble. He was kicked out of school for a week, kicked off the bus for the rest of the school year, and had to go to these after-school classes to learn about being a good person.