Session Seven

This past Sunday was St. Patrick’s Day.  The entire building was decorated in green shamrocks and the old people drank green lemonade and listened to Irish music.  I walked inside Mr. H’s room and stopped dead in my tracks.  Mr. H was lying in his bed as usual, but there was one major difference.

He had a giant plush leprechaun hat on his head.

Mr. H looked horrified.  My phone buzzed and I saw that he had a text already written for when I came in:

I snorted.

Christa wasn’t paying attention.  She was singing “Oh Danny Boy” while she decorated the room. She wanted Mr. H to have a fun holiday and said she would put green food coloring in his IV if she wouldn’t get fired!  Then out of nowhere she told me, “By the way, I read your blog.”

            Oh God, what did I write?  No one was supposed to read this thing, not even Mrs. Felton!  She laughed at the look on my face and said, “Mom told me.  Relax, she hasn’t read it.  But I thought it was wonderful.  Well, besides you calling me ‘know-it-all.’”  I was relieved.  She rung her arm around my neck and ruffled my hair.  “You’re doing a good thing, bud.  I’m proud of you.” Then she left.

            I walked over to Mr. H and took off the hat.  “Better?” I asked.  He sighed and nodded.  “Sorry about Christa.  She loves theme parties.  But I guess you’re not really into them, are you, sir?”

            BUZZ!

            Anymore.  Oh.  I could see we were getting to a rough topic, so I went and sat in my chair and took out the book.

            BUZZ!

            Well, I should have known this would happen.  Christa wasn’t exactly being subtle about it.  I said yes.  He stared at me.  I closed the book and told him that it was a school project, just giving him the general overview.  He typed again.

            Oh no.  I couldn’t let him read it!  I tried explaining that it isn’t very good, that I’m no writer, and it’s just like recording our conversations and stuff, but he was stubborn.  He looked from me to his iPad and back to me.

            I didn’t know someone so quiet could be so loud.

            I sighed and walked over to him.  The iPad was hooked onto the stand so I had to lean close to him.  I could hear how he breathed: slightly wheezy and slow. I knew he was watching me and not the screen.  I brought up the page and stood up quickly.  “There you go,” I said.  His forehead wrinkled and he pointed to the title “Involuntary Volunteer.”  I rubbed my neck awkwardly and said, “That was before I started coming here,” or something stupid like that.

            Mr. H read the page.  I waited for him to tell me that I am an ungrateful punk or deserve a bad grade for what I’ve written.  I stood there for a minute.  When he didn’t look up, I moved back to my seat.

            I sat there the entire time as he read my posts, waiting for some indication of anger or annoyance, but nothing came.  That freaked me out.  Finally Christa came in with a leprechaun cupcake for me.  I said, “I’m leaving, Mr. H,” but he didn’t look up.  I took my cupcake and left.

            A couple hours later I was on my computer re-reading my posts. God, I sounded whiny.  No wonder Mr. H. didn’t say goodbye.  But why should I care what some old guy thinks?  I didn’t know.  I mean, I did kind of like hanging out with him though, I guess.

            My phone beeped.  It was Mr. H!  He had never texted me outside of Shady Pines before.  I took a deep breath, clicked the button and read the text.

Session Six

            This week was the halfway point for us in Mrs. Felton’s class for our “involunteer” hours.  We only need 12 to get an A, I don’t know why people were complaining.  A lot of them have only have one hour logged!  What the crap have they been doing this whole time?  I guess they don’t have a mother to make them go every week.

            Not that I mind.  Like I said, I just wish I wasn’t being forced to do this, ya know?

            I asked her if I could ride my bike to Shady Pines instead of her driving me (it felt so nice outside!) and she looked at me like I had two heads.

            At least she let me roll the windows down.

            On the way she started talking about Jay getting accepted into the grad program at UF and that makes two out of three children with Master’s degrees, and speaking of which, Ethan, even though you’re only fourteen and can’t walk into a building alone, you should really start thinking about potential majors for when you go to college, as it’s never too early to get your life on track!

            By the time I got to Mr. H’s room I was not in a great mood.

            Christa noticed right away and asked what was wrong.  I shrugged, but being know-it-all Christa she said, “Mom’s being crazy again, isn’t she?”  How the frick does she know these things?  “Don’t worry.  Once you move out she’ll lighten up. A little.”

            “Oh good, only four more years.

            She left and I began reading again.  After about five minutes my phone went off.

            I guess one session without talking was enough.

            I looked at the text and froze.

            Wait . . . he said it was a good choice.  You can’t NOT like Harry Potter, it’s like physically impossible!  I glanced at his and he watched me expressionless.  I didn’t know what to say.  So I cleared my throat and said.  “You don’t like Harry Potter, sir?”  He shook his head slowly.  I ground my teeth a little.  “Okay, well, that’s fine, sir, would you like me to get you another—”

            DING!

            I didn’t understand.  Convince him why he hates it?  I guess he saw my confusion cuz a second later came this:

            The American Way.  Ha.  This was new.

            Sooo I just started listing reasons why I liked the series, like he said.  I didn’t really understand the point of the exercise, but man it felt good to talk about.  I got myself really hyped up (“nerd alert,” as Adam says) but I’m okay with it.  In a weird way it was kind of fun, I guess.

            And that’s how we spent the entire session.  Mr. H sat there and nodded along with me.  It was kind of cool to have an adult actually listen to me talk for once.

            I ran out of breath and we ran out of time.  Once I stopped talking I realized that it was probably rude to dominate the conversation like that and I apologized.  Mr. H smiled slightly and tapped away on the ipad.

            I grinned.

           Christa walked me out to the parking lot, asking what we were reading in there, because my voice was “very adamant.”  That is one word I’ve never been described as.  Huh.

Session Five

            Even though Mr. H. told me not to try so hard, this entire week I’ve been stressing about that book.  I felt like this was some Jedi mind trick or something, like he says I can choose, but I should actually choose what he wants me to choose.

            Can you tell this has been driving me crazy?

            I asked my friend Adam what his favorite book is, but he hates reading.  He’s more of a Jersey Shore kinda guy.  “Why don’t you just bring a movie or something for the old dude to watch and then you can chill and take a nap?  It’s not like he can tell on you or something.”

            “Yeah, really,” I said.

            I know I shouldn’t have cared so much about a stupid book.  I mean when my brother Jay took this class, he helped at a canned food drive once a week and you never saw him worrying about which brand of peas to bring.  I’m just weird, I guess.

            I’ve never been good at making decisions.  Usually I wait for someone to point me where to go.  But this time, after much deliberation, I finally said screw it and brought the book I wanted to read.

            “Good morning, sir,” I said after Christa left.  He looked at me expectantly as I sat down.  “Sir,” I asked kind of embarrassed, “have you ever read the Harry Potter books?”

            He shook his head.  I felt my inner nerd start to get really excited.

            “Okay, they are like the most awesome books ever.  They’ve got adventure and mystery and magic and everything!  My mom doesn’t like them—she thinks they’re stupid—and the later ones are better, but I’m gonna start with the first one so you can know what’s going on.” I realized I was rambling.  “Is that okay, sir?”

            He smiled and nodded.

            This was the first time since we started that I was able to read the entire session without him interrupting once.  I got really into it (don’t worry, I didn’t attempt a British accent), but I’m not sure if he was too.  We actually got about four chapters in when Christa walked in and said Mom was there to pick me up.  I couldn’t believe how fast the hour went.  Christa asked what we were reading, and when I told her she did a kind of laugh that made me feel self-conscious.  I know she didn’t mean anything by it, but still.  I said bye to Mr. H. and left.

            I was walking down the hall when I felt my phone vibrate.  I smiled.