Chapter 25

Michael Whyte’s Journal

November, two years ago

So I’m writing this on the 1st because it was a long night. Lots to say. Took Jim trick-or-treating yesterday. I don’t know how Eric and Isaac did it. But now they’re not here and Jim sure can’t do it alone. I guess I should have asked. Weird that they know things about Jim I don’t. I guess they handled a lot of the load and I never noticed. Now they’re gone and mom’s gone all at once and I have to deal with Jim by myself. Plus homework, and applications…

Sorry. I always ramble. So Jim did all right during the day. In the afternoon he spent a few hours stacking his blocks. He wanted to paint them again because the colors ‘weren’t right’ but I said no because he just painted them last week. He got mad and took a nap. What else…oh, he spent about an hour trying to stack marbles. I told him it wouldn’t work but I guess he has to figure that out for himself. I think he’s got it now. Marbles just don’t stack.

He had no headaches, and fell down only once. (This is before we went trick-or-treating.) And he had only one hallucinatory episode. Something about the sky being like quicksand and pulling him up. I think that’s it.

For Halloween Jim dressed up in a lab coat that he painted in bright colors. He wrote a bunch of numbers on the sleeves and called them equations. He got some protective goggles and put paintbrushes in the pockets. He says he’s going as someone named Kate. I think she’s his new imaginary friend. They are usually male, but whatever. And I just realized I’ll have to talk to him about girls and sex. Probably soon. What a productive journal entry.

Trick-or-treating. Jim had a rough time. We went a little early ‘cause, you know, the dark, but he wandered off somewhere even though I was carefully keeping an eye on him. How does he do that? I guess I got distracted taking a picture. It wasn’t even very dark and he wasn’t lost for very long, maybe ten minutes before I found him, but he was freaking out. All the other kids in their costumes and stuff made him have one of the worst episodes I have seen. He was so scared and confused that it took me a while to convince him that I was real. It was a good thing I didn’t dress up, because that would have made it worse.

I think we made a breakthrough though. He was there on the sidewalk, shaking and crying and literally afraid of his own shadow, and I saw the white line on the side of the road. It was bright and shiny, freshly painted. And I had a random idea and I was ready to try anything so I said to Jim, ‘look at that line. Try to imagine that all the real things are on one side of it, and all the imaginary things are on the other side.’ It took him a while to figure out what I was trying to say, and I still don’t know exactly what it was that I was trying to say, but anyway he caught hold of something in that weird little brain. He started following the line and pointing at everything like he was checking everything off on some list. I got some good pictures of this.

I’m not a psychologist or anything but I think maybe his subconscious just lacked some kind of spatial category for sorting Jim’s sensory input into ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ categories, or something. So just by visualizing a line he’s able to figure out what, out of the things he’s seeing, is just his imagination. Maybe. We’ll see if it lasts. It helped last night, although he was still really embarrassed because he had been so terrified of everything. And it made him miss Isaac and Eric a lot.

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I wonder if Jim needs special help. He doesn’t want it, and I don’t want him to go live somewhere else either, but if that’s really what is best for him…

We’ll see. Maybe this line thing will help. But beyond what’s best for Jim, I don’t know how long I can keep doing this either. It’s rough taking care of someone, especially someone like Jim. Worth it, though, I guess.

So. Tomorrow’s my birthday. Fun journal fact: I was supposed to be born on Halloween, like Jim Nightshade from Something Wicked This Way Comes . Then we would have been Jim and Jim. Sorry. I’m tired. Stayed up late with Jim after we got home because of course we went home early. Played games. Ate candy. Watched Buster Keaton. Man, Jim loves Buster Keaton. Well, so do I.

Anyway, tomorrow we’re going to see mom. It’s always rough seeing her now, but I feel like it’s our responsibility. She usually doesn’t recognize us, which is hard on Jim. Jim doesn’t really understand, no matter how much I explain it to him. He’s scared that he’s going to be like her and end up not recognizing me. I tell him that they have different conditions but…you know.

I just hope I can take care of Jim. He’s so talented. I’ve been showing his art around, just to check it out, and I’m getting offers for it. Like, money. Real money. He’s 12! If he can just figure out how to function in the world, like on a basic level, he’ll do all right. He’ll do more than all right. But I don’t want to mess it up. It’s so much responsibility. I pray about it like every night.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Got an analysis to finish and turn in. Guess I’ll cover the usual overambitious-birthday-life-plans tomorrow.

And I’ve been thinking, since Jim gets lonely, about maybe getting a dog. Maybe I’ll get him a birthday present for MY birthday.

It will have to be a really chill dog, though.