Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (31 page)

This is why Oswald pushed open the door to the bald man’s room. John’s room. He had to push it open if he wanted to get in.

‘Can you open the door?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know,’ Oswald says. But I can see that he is looking at the door like it is a mountain.

‘It’ll be locked,’ I say, which is true. ‘Never mind.’

‘How would you normally get in?’ Oswald asks.

‘I can pass through doors.’

‘Pass through?’

I climb three steps to the front door of the house and then pass through. I actually pass through two doors. A screen door and a wooden door. Then I turn around and pass back through to the outside.

Oswald’s mouth is hanging open when I reappear on the other side. His eyes are gigantic.

‘You’re magic,’ he says.

‘No, you’re magic,’ I say. ‘I know lots of imaginary friends who can pass through doors. But I don’t know any imaginary friends who can touch the real world.’

‘Imaginary friends?’

I realize that I have said too much again.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m an imaginary friend.’ I pause for a moment, thinking about what to say next. Then I add, ‘So are you.’

‘I’m an imaginary friend?’ Oswald asks.

‘Yes. What did you think you were?’

‘A ghost,’ he says. ‘I thought you were a ghost, too. I thought you were going to steal John away from me.’

I laugh. ‘Nope. No ghosts here. What did you think Teeny was?’

‘A fairy,’ Oswald says.

I laugh again, but then I realize that this probably helped Teeny convince Oswald to help me.

‘I guess you’re half right about Teeny,’ I say. ‘She’s a fairy, but she is imaginary, too.’

‘Oh.’

‘You look upset,’ I say.

And he does. He is looking at his feet again and his arms are hanging by his side like wet noodles.

‘I don’t know which is better,’ Oswald says. ‘Imaginary or a ghost.’

‘What’s the difference?’ I ask.

‘If I am a ghost, that means I was alive once. If I’m imaginary, that means I was never alive.’

There is silence between us as we stare at one another. I don’t know what to say. Then I do.

‘I have an idea,’ I say.

I say this because I really do have an idea, but mostly because I want to change the subject.

‘Do you think you could press the doorbell?’

‘Where?’ Oswald asks, and I can tell by the question that he does not know what a doorbell is.

‘This little dot,’ I say, pointing at the button. ‘If you press it down, a bell will ring inside the house and Max’s parents will open the door. When they do, we can slip inside.’

‘I thought you could pass through the door?’ Oswald says.

‘Yes, I can. Sorry. I meant
you
could slip inside.’

‘Okay,’ Oswald says.

He says
okay
a lot, and I can’t help but think of Max every time he does. Max will be alone tonight, locked in Mrs Patterson’s basement, and the thought of that makes me feel sad and rotten.

I promised him that I would never leave. Now I am here with Oswald.

But tomorrow night Max will be sleeping in his own bed. I say these words in my head, and they make me feel a little better.

Oswald climbs the three steps to the landing. He reaches out to press the doorbell, but before he does, his entire body stiffens. The muscles in his arms and neck pop out. A vein in his forehead appears and throbs. The caterpillars above his eyes kiss again. He clenches his teeth. His hand shakes as he reaches out with his finger. It touches the button, and for a second, nothing happens. Then his hand shakes even more and I hear Oswald grunt. As he grunts, the button disappears under his finger and the bell rings.

‘You did it!’ I say, and even though I have seen him touch the real world before, I am still amazed.

Oswald nods. There are tiny beads of sweat on his forehead and he is trying to catch his breath. He looks like he just ran twenty miles.

I hear someone moving inside the house. We stand back so the door doesn’t knock Oswald off the stoop. The wooden door opens inward. Max’s mom steps into the doorway and peers out through the screen door. She cups her hands over her eyes. She looks back and forth, and now I can see that this was not a good idea.

I can see hope in her face.

She was thinking that this might be good news. She was thinking that it might be Max.

She opens the screen door and steps out onto the stoop beside Oswald. It is cold outside. The snow has stopped but I can see her breath in the freezing air. She wraps her arms around her body to stay warm. I nudge Oswald forward as Max’s mom says, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

‘Go inside,’ I say. ‘Wait for me.’

Oswald does as I say. I watch as Max’s mom calls out one more time, and then the hope disappears from her face.

‘Who is it?’ Max’s dad says. He is standing in the kitchen now. Oswald is standing beside him.

‘No one,’ Max’s mom says. Her words sound like boulders. She can barely pick them up to say them.

‘Who the fuck rings a person’s doorbell at ten at night and then runs away?’ Max’s dad says.

‘Maybe it was a mistake,’ Max’s mom says. She sounds far away even though she is standing right beside me.

‘Fuck that,’ Max’s dad says. ‘No one makes that kind of mistake and then disappears.’

Max’s mom starts to cry. She would have cried anyway, I think, but the word
disappears
hits her like one of those boulders. Her tears pour out.

Max’s dad knows it. He knows what he has done.

‘Honey, I’m sorry.’

He puts his arms around her and pulls her back from the doorway, letting the screen door close behind him. No whack-whack-whack this time. They stand in the kitchen, holding each other, as Max’s mom cries and cries and cries. She cries harder than I have ever heard a person cry before.

The door to Max’s bedroom is closed, so I tell Oswald to sleep on the couch in the living room. He is so long that his feet hang off the end of the couch. They dangle in the air like two enormous fishing poles.

‘Are you comfortable?’ I ask.

‘When someone is sleeping in the bed next to John, I have to sleep on the floor. This is better than the floor.’

‘Good. Sleep tight, then.’

‘Wait,’ Oswald says. ‘Are you going to sleep now?’

I don’t want to tell Oswald that I don’t sleep. I think it will just make him ask more questions. So I say yes. ‘I’ll just sleep in this chair. I do it a lot.’

‘Before I go to sleep, I always talk to John.’

‘You do? What do you tell him?’

‘I tell him about my day,’ Oswald says. ‘What I did. Who I saw. I can’t wait to tell him about all the things I saw today.’

‘Do you want to tell me about your day?’

‘No,’ Oswald says. ‘You already know about my day. You were with me.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Then do you want to tell me something else?’

‘No, I want you to tell me about your friend.’

‘Max?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ Oswald says. ‘Tell me about Max. I never had a friend who could walk and talk.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I will tell you about Max.’

I start with the easy stuff. I talk about what Max looks like and what he likes to eat. I tell him about the Lego and the army men and the video games. I explain how Max is different than other kids because he can get stuck and he lives mostly on the inside.

Then I tell the stories. I tell the story about Max’s first Halloween party in kindergarten and his bonus poops and his fight with Tommy Swinden in the boys’ bathroom and the rock that Tommy Swinden threw through Max’s bedroom window last week. I talk about how Max’s mom makes Max try new things and how Max’s dad likes to use the word
normal
a lot. I tell him about the games of catch in the backyard and the way I help Max choose between a red or green shirt when he can’t decide.

And I tell him about Mrs Gosk. I tell him about how she is almost perfect except when she calls Max
my boy
but that is close enough to perfect to make her perfect.

I do not talk about Mrs Patterson. I’m afraid that if I do, Oswald might be too afraid to help me tomorrow.

Oswald does not ask any questions. Twice I think he has fallen asleep. I stop talking and he lifts his head, looks at me, and says, ‘What?’

‘Do you know what I like best about Max?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t know Max.’

‘The thing I like best about Max is that he is brave.’

‘What did he do that was brave?’

‘It’s not one thing,’ I say. ‘It’s everything. Max is not like any other person in the whole world. Kids make fun of him because he is different. His mom tries to change him into a different boy and his dad tries to treat him like he is someone else. Even his teachers treat him differently, and not always nicely. Even Mrs Gosk. She is perfect but she still treats Max differently. No one treats him like a regular boy, but everyone wants him to be regular instead of himself. With all that, Max still gets out of bed every morning and goes to school and the park and even the bus stop.’

‘That’s brave?’ Oswald asks.

‘That’s the bravest,’ I say. ‘I am the oldest, smartest imaginary friend I have ever met. It is easy for me to go out and meet other imaginary friends because they all look up to me. They ask me questions and want to be like me. When they are not beating me up.’

I smile at Oswald.

He does not smile back.

‘But you have to be the bravest person in the world to go out every day being yourself when no one likes who you are. I could never be as brave as Max.’

‘I wish I had a Max,’ Oswald says. ‘I never even heard John talk.’

‘Maybe he will someday.’

‘Maybe,’ Oswald says, but I don’t think he believes it.

‘Can we go to sleep now?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ Oswald says, and he does not say another word. He falls asleep almost immediately.

I sit in a chair and watch him sleep. I try to imagine tomorrow. I make a list of all the things I need to do to save Max. I try to predict where my plan might go wrong. I think about what I will say to Max when the time comes.

This will be the most important part. I cannot save Max alone. I will need Oswald’s help, but, most of all, I will need Max.

I cannot save Max unless I can convince him to save himself.

CHAPTER 51

Mrs Gosk once read a story to the class about a boy named Pinocchio. The kids laughed when they heard that she was going to read the story to them. They thought it was for babies.

It is never a good idea to laugh at Mrs Gosk.

Once she started reading, the kids realized how wrong they were. They loved the story. They didn’t want her to stop reading. They wanted to hear more and more and more. But every day Mrs Gosk would stop at the most suspenseful moment in the book and make the kids wait until the next day to find out what happened next. They begged her to read more and she would say, ‘You can take charge of this classroom when pigs fly!’ This made them all so mad. Even Max. He loved the story, too. I think Mrs Gosk did this on purpose just to punish her students for laughing at her.

Never mess with Mrs Gosk.

Pinocchio was a puppet who was carved from a magical block of wood by a man named Geppetto. Even though he was supposed to be a puppet, Pinocchio was alive. He could move around on his own and talk and his nose even grew longer when he lied. But Pinocchio spent most of the time wishing that he could become a real boy.

I hated Pinocchio. I think I was the only one in the class who hated him. Pinocchio was alive, but that was not enough for him. He could walk and talk and touch things in the real world, but he spent the whole book wanting more.

Pinocchio didn’t know how lucky he was.

I started thinking about Pinocchio tonight because of what Oswald said about ghosts and imaginary friends. I think he was right. Being a ghost would be better. Ghosts were alive once. Imaginary friends are never alive in the real world.

If you are a ghost, you don’t stop existing if someone stops believing in you. Or forgets about you. Or finds someone better than you to take your place.

If I was a ghost, I could exist for ever.

I forgot about getting Oswald out of the house this morning. My first mistake of the day. Making a mistake before we even leave the house is not a good sign.

I think we will still be okay. Max’s mom goes for a run on most mornings, and Max’s dad usually leaves for work before the bus comes. Plus he sometimes goes outside to pick up the newspaper off the front lawn. Sometimes he just picks it up and brings it to work with him, but sometimes he brings it inside to read while he is eating breakfast. We just need someone to open the door once and Oswald will be able to get outside.

Max’s mom walks into the kitchen at 7.30. She is quiet. She is wearing her robe. Even though she just woke up, she still looks tired. She brews a pot of coffee and eats toast with jam. She is not my mother, but she is the closest thing to a mom that I will ever have, and I hate to see her so small and tired and sad. I try to picture her screaming with joy when she sees Max tonight. I try to erase the picture of her from right now, all tired and worn out, and replace it with my picture from the future. I will fix her. I will save Max and that will save her, too.

Max’s dad finally opens the door at 7.48 according to the clock on the microwave above the stove. He is still wearing sweat pants. I don’t think he is going to work. He looks tired. Even though Max’s mom and dad were hugging last night, I can tell that there is something wrong between them. Max’s dad does not talk to Max’s mom. He says, ‘Good morning,’ and nothing else. And she does not talk to him. It’s like an invisible wall is standing between them.

Max always gave them lots of reasons to fight, but I think that Max also gave them a reason to love each other. But now they are losing hope. They are starting to think that they might never see Max again. And without Max, there is nothing to hold them together. It’s almost like Max is still here, except now he is just a reminder of what they have lost.

I have a lot of saving to do today.

The bus stops at Max’s house at 7.55, but the bus will not stop at Max’s house today. We have to go to the Savoys’ house, and that means we will have to run as fast as we can. We cannot miss the bus because I am not sure if I can find the school on my own. I might be able to, but I do not pay enough attention to the streets when we drive. I might not.