AFTER GROUP
I totally called it—Abby’s in my Group. She is royally bizarre. She sat opposite me in our Group circle wearing hospital PJs (so she must be on PSI I, unless she just likes wearing flimsy blue
clothing with drawstrings). She has a short brown feather cut and looks to be about thirteen, although I think she may be one of those older people who looks younger, due to the fact that she kept referring to her “boyfriend.” I don’t get it. How can some head case that sleeps in a toddler bed have a boyfriend and I don’t? Am I that date–mentally challenged?
Her story belongs on
Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
She filled up our whole Group meeting with her blathering on about why she was in the hospital and why she had seizures. It was rather mesmerizing. If we had to vote at the end as to whether we believed her story or not, I don’t think any of us would have a clue how to answer. Judge for yourself:
“So, yeah, my name is Abby, and, as you probably know, I have seizures sometimes.” She began her story in her thick Chicago accent. “The seizures just recently started to happen, though. The doctors say it’s not epilepsy, or anything they can give me medicine for, ya know?” She ended most of her sentences with question marks.
Eugene was leading Group today, and in his gurgly voice, he prodded Abby to continue. “And why do
you
think you have these seizures, Abby?” He asked the question as though he was bored and didn’t believe or care about anything she was saying.
“Well, my boyfriend, Angel, he’s, like, really smart and really into Stephen King. When we first met, I had never even seen a Stephen King movie, ’cause, you know, I get scared when it’s dark and I see scary things on the TV, but he said if I was gonna
be his girlfriend I sure better start watching ’em.” Abby was full of nervous energy and bounced her knees incessantly. “So every night, this was like two months ago, we watched a different Stephen King movie? We could afford it ’cause Angel’s stepmom works at the video store by us. We saw
The Shining
,
It
,
Christine.
His favorite is
Carrie
’cause he thinks she’s hot, but I don’t know why ’cause she’s all skinny and then gets that pig’s blood dumped all over her?” She quickly and dramatically reenacted the scene in her chair, first with the bucket being dumped on her head, then with Carrie’s eyes bugging and accusingly looking around the room. It was quite realistic.
“Angel starts saying how it would be cool if I had telekinetic powers, so I could, like, shut doors with my brain and shit? For my birthday he bought me this book on controlling minds and he made me practice, like, every day after school and then, like, every night watch
Carrie
?”
Eugene interrupted, “And where were your parents during all of this?”
“My parents are divorced, and my dad moved up to Sheboygan, Wisconsin? My ma works second shift, so she doesn’t get home until midnight. She’s never even met Angel.”
Eugene sighed and rolled his eyes in a “Well, there you go” way. “So, you’re practicing closing doors and watching
Christine
a lot—”
“
Carrie
, not
Christine. Christine
is about a car? Anyways, I start getting these terrible headaches from scrunching my mind up so
I can concentrate.” She squinted hard to demonstrate. “Angel said closing doors was too big to start, so then I tried pencils ’cause I thought they’d be easier? But my headaches just got worse and worse. One day, I was staring at this pencil that Angel gave me for Valentine’s Day that had all these hearts on it.” She held out a fake pencil and stared. “It was, like, forty-five minutes, when something in my head just popped, and the next thing I know I’m in some really foggy place. I’m calling out Angel’s name, and he ain’t answering. Then finally I snapped out of it, and I was in a hospital bed. My ma was there, and she told me I had a seizure. Like I said, they couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so I went home. Angel and me kept working on my telekinesis. But he told me something that happened, and he told me not to tell anyone?”
Long pause. “Would you like to tell us?” Eugene asked.
“I was afraid of pissing Angel off, but it started to scare me. I mean, I didn’t want to turn into Carrie, standing at the prom dripping with pig’s blood? See, Angel told me that when I was having the seizure, I started talking. Only—it wasn’t me. It was a deep, mean man voice that kept saying, ‘I have Abby. You will not get her back.’ Angel thinks it’s the devil and that through my strong telekinetic powers I have brought him to me.” She nodded her head at the circle of listeners.
“Would anyone like to comment on Abby’s story?” Eugene looked around the circle.
Most of us looked at our feet. What was there to say? It’s not like you can really give someone advice about these matters.
Then Tanya piped in, “As long as y’all don’t have a seizure when I’m trying to sleep, you can do whatever you want.” Always a charmer, that Tanya.
I was pretty much in shock about the whole thing. How was being in a mental hospital going to get the devil out of this girl? If he’s even in there in the first place. What if she uses her telekinetic powers to lock my side of the bathroom door so I can’t use the toilet? Are we going to have to get a priest in here and have some exorcism action? Is any of this for real? Believe it or not!