Missing the Big Picture Page 7

  During the first part of my senior year in high school, I never took a lunch. Instead, I would spend it in the library studying or sometimes socializing with other people who had free periods then. I didn’t like the cafeteria and had no desire to go into the senior lounge. I remember I would come home from school starving.

  Just before school started after Christmas break, I remembered receiving this strange instant message when I was on America Online. The sender pretended to be from Chicago, and I kept telling him that I was at Colonie. Soon another peer at school helped me figure out that it was Carmine, Eric and Dan’s friend. I couldn’t understand why he would instant message me, and he even joked that I didn’t know who he was. I guess it must have been Eric and Dan trying to play some joke on me.

  Unfortunately, I enjoyed talking to Carmine and was desperate for a friend. When he wasn’t online, I would e-mail him—almost every day. He wouldn’t write back most times, but it became like having a blog, and for some reason I kept doing it. I knew that he would show Eric and Dan my e-mails and even occasionally post them in the senior lounge. I was always a quiet kid, so when I was talking about my classmates and sharing my different opinions, it sparked some curiosity.

  Eric, like he usually did, would always find something to cause drama. In the e-mails, I would make fun of Eric and Dan, which definitely came back to bite me. One time, when I was leaving school, I heard Eric and his friends throw a water bottle down the stairs and yell, “Stop e-mailing him!” Another time, I was leaving the school parking lot and noticed somebody tailgating me. In my rearview mirror, I saw that it was Dan and thought Eric probably put him up to something as retaliation for trash-talking Eric in the e-mails. I guess I was a pioneer in cyber bullying. I was curious to see how far Dan would follow me or if he would get out of his vehicle, so I drove down side streets with no agenda, just to see if he would follow. Of course he did, and the only time I lost him was when I went through a drive-through at KFC.

  In late January, I sent my daily e-mail to Carmine and he wrote back swearing and telling me to stop e-mailing him, saying he didn’t give a fuck about anything I had to say. I stopped e-mailing him for a while. Carmine was dating his first girlfriend at the time, so when he was mad at me, his girlfriend Theresa, who definitely had a snobbish attitude, would walk past me in the hallways and shoot me looks of disgust. Carmine’s life actually revolved around Theresa. He was seventeen and very late to start dating. Some of the other kids even thought that he was gay. He was nice and smart, and for a long time he was single, which some of the students at Colonie equated to being gay—gay as in wearing leather ass-less chaps in a pride parade. There was even a story that when Eric, Carmine, and some other friends scored fake IDs and went to Nite Moves, an all-female nude strip club in Colonie, Eric’s friend got a lap dance—after which, Carmine walked over and gave him another lap dance, too. It was just Carmine’s typical sense of humor, though.

  As the second half of my senior year approached, I got my guidance counselor to switch my schedule around. Some of my half-year courses, such as economics, were done, and I finally got a free period. I liked my second semester schedule because I was moved into a different physical education class, with which I was thrilled, and a new lunch period.

  Instead of going to the library for lunch, I started spending my lunch period in senior lounge. I sat with Randy, my friend from U.S. history, and his girlfriend, Michelle, on whom I had a crush. The senior lounge was adjacent to the cafeteria, and it was reserved for senior students to relax in and have lunch. It looked like a basement with video games and a television, but it felt like a big honor to go in there.

  Michelle was outgoing, intelligent, and funny, and she loved politics. That first day at lunch, I was able to make both of them laugh with stories of working at the Gap—walking in on people in the dressing room, when the mannequin I had to dress came undone, when the assistant store manager accused me of joking around and pretending to feel up another mannequin. I also noticed that with my new schedule, Eric was now in my government class and my physical education class. When I told my mother this, she replied, “I thought you said you had a good day.”

  As much as I loved having lunch with Randy and (especially) Michelle, Michelle soon decided to take sociology during that time period, so I started to just sit with Randy. Shortly after the semester began, I also noticed that Carmine and some of his friends had the same lunch as me. They sat at the table right in front me, with all the girls. One of Carmine’s closest friends was Claire, another senior at Colonie. Claire was very loud and opinionated. Zoey had run track with her and heard all of Claire’s wild sex stories on the bus rides homes. Apparently Claire liked college guys, especially Asian men. Even Randy knew how much Claire talked about sex, mentioning that she had “fucked three guys already.” Claire described herself as “a sexually liberated woman who likes to fuck.” I had a little crush on her, mainly because I was a senior and she had a reputation for being easy. I was seventeen and wanted to explore being sexually active. Basically, I was looking for a ho, not a housewife, and I knew Claire could fit that part.

  Just as lunch began one day, I thought I heard Claire ask me what I was doing Friday night. Even though my back was turned, I was convinced she was talking to me. So, I figured I would tell her that I liked her. The next day I got all dressed up, bought some cologne from the Gap, and geared up to ask her what she was doing over the weekend. I waited until lunch was over because I was too nervous to ask her with other people around. I ended up trying to run up to her, but I tripped and almost ran over her.

  A few days later in government class, which I shared with Claire, we were doing research in the library for our term papers. I chose to do mine on abortion, and I later did a class presentation on abortion. Many people wondered why, being male, I chose abortion from all the other controversial topics available. As I was sitting at a computer in the lab, which students mainly used look at their e-mails and instant message, Claire approached me. She was nervous, as if she was about to go to war in Iraq, and then she sat next to me and said, “Well, I’m sorry if you thought I liked you, but I have a boyfriend.” I was really embarrassed that this was happening in front of other students, so in an effort to redeem myself, I responded with, “That’s okay. Is there any way I can get a piece of your gum?” If that wasn’t enough, she then listed detailed reasons why I could never compare to her boyfriend, who was twenty, in college, and lived in an apartment alone. Luckily, at graduation, I was able to see Claire and her boyfriend together. Just by looks alone, I’m sure most teenage girls would rather date Larry King instead of this guy, who could have passed for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

  During one of the lunches in the senior lounge, I noticed that Eric skipped class and sat with Claire and Carmine. Eric, who always loved attention and making others laugh, pretended to be developmentally disabled and started hitting Carmine and invading Carmine’s space. Carmine defended himself by putting his hands over his face. The handful of seniors who were around Eric just started laughing hysterically, never realizing that his actions were cruel to disabled people or to Carmine.

  During one of the first lunches that I spent in the senior lounge, I noticed that I felt like I was conversing with Carmine—not in person, but through our minds. I could hear Carmine’s voice inside my head, commenting on what I was thinking. One day I was thinking about Claire, and I told this voice to move out of the way so I could get a better view of her. Carmine actually moved, and I noticed a big grin on his face. Another time he turned around when I thought something that was upsetting to him. However, I didn’t think anything of it at that time and just went on to my next class. I didn’t tell anyone or think it was the beginning of a mental health problem. I just pretended it didn’t happen.

  Just like most students do their senior year, I applied to several colleges: SUNY Geneseo, Syracuse University, SUNY Albany, and American University in Washington, D.C. Syracuse and American University we
re very expensive, though I did get a scholarship to Syracuse. My first choice was SUNY Geneseo; I toured the campus that summer before senior year and really liked it.

  Most high school seniors know that a big envelope from a college usually means an automatic acceptance, while a small envelope usually means a rejection letter. After school on March 14, 2001, I didn’t even have to pull into my driveway before I noticed that the mailbox couldn’t close because of a big envelope with “Geneseo” marked in the return address. I was so excited, I got out of the car without even putting the car into park. I ran to the mailbox and found out I had been accepted to Geneseo.

  Senior year was finally starting to look up for me: I was admitted into the “Harvard of the SUNY System” and had received a generous financial aid package to boot. At that time, I again e-mailed Carmine and told him of the news. I started laughing when I heard that Carmine had told his friends that he was proud of me, even though I had never talked to him in person before.

  One person who I knew didn’t like my e-mails was Carmine’s girlfriend, Theresa. Theresa was a year younger than Carmine, and the two met through their mutual friend Claire. Most of the seniors knew that Carmine and Theresa were having sex, thanks to the rumor mill, which was more crude and disrespectful than Star magazine. Eric thought of himself as ultramasculine, and he would brag that he lost his virginity in middle school. Even though it was never any of his concern, he expected his friends to be having sex, too.

  Theresa liked hanging out with Carmine—and Eric as well. Being able to go to all senior parties was a great privilege for a junior, even if it did mean that she would have to put out. Even though I never personally talked to Theresa, she would give me strange looks of disgust in the hall, as if I were a MRSA-infected prostitute asking her for a dollar to ride the bus. She would parade around the hallways at school with her Gap or American Eagle bags, thinking so highly of herself. Many students thought Theresa was really nice, but it’s easy to be nice to people who are just like you.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MIND GAMES BEGIN

  What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly—that is the first law of nature.

  —Voltaire

  The day after that I received my acceptance letter from SUNY Geneseo, I was changing in physical education class and heard a voice in my head again. This time, though, it was Eric. I was changing back into my regular clothes, and I had the lyrics to a song by The Cars in my mind. I heard Eric’s voice say, “You like The Cars.” I looked over thinking Eric had actually said it, but he was busy changing into his clothes as well. It was strange, but at that time, I just went back to class.

  The next time I saw Eric was the following day, in government class. Once again, my mind wasn’t clear. I felt that something was different, that I was sharing my thought process with Eric. It was like being alone in an empty house and thinking that somebody is there, but you can’t see anyone. I remember being nervous that our government teacher was going to collect our journals and that I didn’t even have a notebook. I then heard Eric’s voice say, “You don’t have a notebook.”

  A couple of days after I started hearing Eric’s voice inside my mind, Carmine started deleting my e-mails. He blocked my instant message name, making it impossible for me to communicate with him online. I was disappointed and confused. I was very lonely in high school and just looked forward to having a friend, really.

  A rational person would assume that if two teenagers communicated via the Internet, then they could actually speak in real life. But the big roadblock to me being friends with Carmine was Eric. Eric loved playing games. My mother used to tell me that she realized boys had the same drama as girls, so I should forget the stereotype that boys are simple creatures who just adjust their testicles from time to time.

  For the rest of that week, every time I saw Eric, in both physical education and government classes, I thought that I could communicate telepathically with him. Sometimes when I didn’t even hear his voice, I was convinced that he was able to share my thoughts. I remember thinking over the weekend, What is going on? I still was too afraid to tell anybody.

  On that Monday, not only was I hearing Eric’s voice in my mind every time I saw him, I was now also hearing Carmine’s. While walking into sociology class, I heard Carmine’s voice once again in my mind. In reality, he wasn’t speaking—he was just walking the halls, and we made eye contact.

  Unfortunately, some people who hear voices claim that the voices tell them to commit harmful acts or talk them into having delusions of grandeur. When I heard Eric’s and Carmine’s voices, it was like I was having conversations with each of them. They weren’t commanding me or telling me to do strange things. High school gossip, girls, school, teachers, mutual friends—these were the only things that I heard the voices talking to me about. That is why I was so convinced that I was actually facilitating the communication. I was smart enough to know that talking telepathically and reading minds has never been scientifically proven, but I would never deny that I was talking to them through our minds. It just wasn’t in government or gym; any time I saw Eric in the halls, I would hear his voice in my head. I would call it the “range.” If either of them was in the hall at the same time as me or I saw them somewhere, immediately I would feel the white presence and know that Eric or Carmine had access to whatever I was thinking. The “white presence” was how I described what I would see in my mind each time I heard the voices.

  About one week after I began hearing Eric’s voice, I remember sitting in AP Chemistry class working on a lab project, when the white presence again came to me. I didn’t even know why I took AP Chemistry. At the end of my junior year, I wanted to get into the best college I could, and I thought taking an advanced-placement science class would give me a greater edge. I didn’t want to be a pharmacist or an engineer, and I didn’t even like chemistry; I was just torturing myself because I thought it was the right thing to do. The class had only thirteen students—twelve seniors and one junior—all of whom were extremely intelligent. There were only three boys in the class, and we were all spread out around these big tables, on which we would also do our experiments. AP Chemistry was my eighth-period class, and for ninth period I either had lab or a free period, depending on the day of the week.

  On this particular class day, we were doing lab work. About halfway into the class, I once again heard another voice in my mind. I knew it was a male voice, and I could hear it snickering and laughing. I had been thinking about some of the girls in the class and how I felt like I didn’t belong. Of the students, everyone had either an A or B average, and I was barely getting a C. Plus, many of the girls were gorgeous and seemed to excel at everything they did, and I was so socially awkward. Mr. Bean had more game with girls and better social skills than I did.

  I knew both of the other boys in the class, Tyler and Gary. We had all been in the same Boy Scout group in elementary school together. Tyler’s mother was the den mother, and I would go over to his house on Monday nights for scout meetings. We went to the same church, and our parents were friendly with one another. Tyler was definitely one of the popular kids at Colonie. He set his own legacy by being one of the few Caucasians on the basketball team. He was not only a jock but a scholar as well. He was very into rap music and liked to label himself as “ghetto.” He always wore a hat and jeans to class, like he was auditioning for a hip-hop video.

  After I began hearing laughter, I looked at Gary to see if his body language would convey that something was happening between us. But Gary was doing his work and staying focused and not looking at his lab partner’s boobs. Then I heard Tyler laugh, and I thought to myself, Oh, it’s Tyler I’m chatting with.

  Although we weren’t talking at all, I was convinced that we were. It was the same thing that was happening between Eric, Carmine, and me; now I also thought that Tyler was involved. On the way home, confused about what was go
ing on, I decided to buy something to distract myself from my new unbalanced mental health: an issue of Penthouse.

  I was always the shy, quiet kid who played by the rules, so buying pornography was an awkward experience. I stopped at a local convenience store, and amid the steady flow of customers, I grabbed the Penthouse and covered it up with a newspaper. I was waiting in a very long line, and the store employees decided to open a second line. “Sir, anything else other than the newspaper?” an employee yelled to me over a group of customers. I stepped out of the line and pretended to shop some more. When I was finally checking out, as the cashier was ringing up my purchase, an older female customer tried to reassure me that there was nothing wrong with Penthouse and that she, too, had bought pornography. When I was driving the twenty minutes home, because I went to a convenience store far away from my house to ensure that nobody would see me, I saw a classmate from Saint John’s stuck in traffic with me. He had another male passenger in his car and actually smiled at me and beeped his horn. Since I was waiting in traffic, I held the magazine up against the window so he could see it. He started laughing, and I drove away.

  As I was walking to homeroom the next day, I saw Tyler on the staircase. I had a song by Creed in my mind. As we passed each other, Tyler and I made eye contact. I heard Tyler’s voice in my mind say, “He is singing a Creed song.” I ran down the hall, frightened about what was happening.

  During my senior year, first period was math class and second period was government class. I heard Eric’s voice in my head saying, “So Tyler thinks that he can read your mind, too.” I responded to Eric’s voice by saying, “Well, I thought it was him.” Eric then told me that the entire senior class had heard about what was happening to me.