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On Sunday, Michael turns around from the grilled cheese he’s preparing just in time to watch Jeremy blatantly, purposefully put his hand on the hot stove.
“Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” Michael splutters, racing across the kitchen and yanking Jeremy away. An ugly red burn blooms up on his hand, shiny and splotchy. “Jeremy!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers, a faraway look in his eyes. Michael just acts, doesn’t think, drags him over to the kitchen sink and sticks the burn under cold water. Jeremy winces but he doesn’t say anything.
“That… wasn’t an accident,” Michael says, and he’s kind of asking, but it’s also not really a question.
Jeremy’s haunted expression sends a pang through him. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
“Come on.” Michael turns off the water and leads Jeremy to the upstairs bathroom where he’s got some ointment and bandages. Jeremy moves like a zombie, only walking with Michael’s direction. Once in the bathroom, Michael walks Jeremy inside and has him sit on the closed toilet seat while he fishes around in the cabinet for supplies. “You gonna tell me what that was?”
Jeremy’s been staring down at his hand with mild interest. He shivers, curling in on himself a little bit. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.” Michael grabs a tube of antibiotic cream and dabs it onto the burn, avoiding looking up at Jeremy’s eyes. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop sa- you don’t have to be sorry,” Michael says, trying not to sound angry. Jeremy looks like a mess. “Can you just… can you just tell me why you burned yourself?” Jeremy doesn’t say anything. He watches on while Michael finishes with the ointment and wraps the burn in gauze. He takes his time, twining the bandages around Jeremy’s hand, trying to make them tight enough but not too tight. Trying to find the balance.
He sits back on his heels when he’s done, watching Jeremy for a reaction. Jeremy just looks down at his hand, face blank.
And then finally, just as Michael’s about to stand up, Jeremy says, “He wouldn’t stop talking. I just wanted him to stop talking.”
On Monday, Jeremy acts fine at lunch surrounded by their friends. Christine and Chloe keep arguing about some TV show they’ve been watching while Rich tries to engage Michael in a conversation about Overwatch.
No one asks about Jeremy’s hand, which is good.
What isn’t good is after lunch, Michael goes to the library to print out an assignment and he finds Jeremy bunched up on the floor next to the autobiographies.
“Hey,” he says quietly, like he’s trying not to startle a deer in the woods. “What’s going on, Jere?” Jeremy’s mumbling something but Michael can’t really make it out, even in the quiet of the library. “What?”
He leans closer, tilting his ear close to Jeremy’s mouth. “ Terrible. Ugly. Nerd. Pathetic. Slob. ” With a start, Michael realizes Jeremy has tears clouding his eyes.
The Squip is gone forever, Michael made sure of it. He was there at the play, he remembers. But… but the damn thing hangs around like a shadow, a ghost. And he doesn’t leave Jeremy alone.
“Hey,” Michael says softly, slowly reaching out and putting a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. He’s trying to find the line between confining Jeremy and comforting him. “Look at me.” Jeremy does, he lifts his eyes to meet Michael’s, and then whatever’s wrong with him seems to get worse.
Jeremy shakes like a leaf and tears his gaze away from Michael. “ Pathetic! Slob, loser, nerd.”
“Hey, no one talks about my best friend that way,” Michael says, giving Jeremy a fakey smile. Truth is, he’s horrified, sympathy twisting in his gut. “Jeremy, listen. You don’t have to look at me, just listen, okay? Can you point to where you’re seeing the Squip?”
Jeremy hugs his knees to his chest. “I c-can’t… see him, I just…” He points to his head. “ Stupid, stupid, stupid .”
“You’re not stupid,” Michael says automatically. “And you’re not ugly.”
“ Pathetic. Lame. Dumbass. ” He twitches his hands in his lap, and Michael looks down. With a sick jolt he realizes Jeremy’s ripped off his bandage and his hand looks gross and bloody.
“You’ve been picking at that?” he says, and it comes out harsher than he meant it. Jeremy winces. “I mean, it’s okay, come here,” Michael says, and he sticks an arm behind Jeremy’s back and helps him up. “We’re going to the nurse’s office.”
On Tuesday, Jeremy doesn’t come to lunch. Michael texts him and doesn’t get a reply, so he excuses himself from Jake and Jenna and checks the library, then the nurse’s office. Nothing, and lunch is going to end eventually. He’s starting to get really worried when he almost trips over Jeremy, who’s sitting under a staircase on the left wing of the school.
“Hey,” Michael says, sinking down beside Jeremy. “This is where you’ve been?”
Jeremy nods, not breaking from his quiet mantra, “ Stupid. Pathetic. Terrible. Ugly .”
“You know he’s not telling the truth, right?” Michael says, his heart breaking. “None of those things are true, Jeremy. You’re smart and you’re nice and you’re awesome.”
“I w-wasn’t nice t-to you,” Jeremy says, not looking at Michael.
“But that was because of, you know…” Michael taps the side of his head. “And I forgive you, completely. I’m gonna stay here with you, okay? I just want you to feel--”
“No,” Jeremy says, and the amount of hate in his voice throws Michael off before it occurs to him that it’s probably all for Jeremy himself. And then he just feels even sadder. “You sh-shouldn’t stay here. I m-made the decision, I f-fucked up my life, I don’t need to fuck up yours, too.”
“Jeremy--”
“Everything about me sucks,” he says quietly, eyes drawing inward. “Everything about me sucks. Everything about me sucks.”
Michael shakes his head and rips his headphones off of his neck before jamming them over Jeremy’s ears. He grabs his iPod and blasts something by Styx, watching Jeremy’s face.
He’s too surprised to keep talking, but then after a second, Jeremy actually looks… calm. Michael leans in and enunciates, hoping Jeremy can read his lips. “Feel better?”
Jeremy considers, and then nods. “Better,” he says, a little too loudly.
But Jeremy can’t listen to music all the time.
On Wednesday, Jeremy goes to Michael’s after school to play video games and try not to think about the Squip. He’s not doing so well.
About an hour in he starts muttering to himself, the usual insults. “ Terrible. Pathetic. Ugly .”
“Why do you say that shit, anyway?” Michael says, carefully keeping his eyes on the screen.
Jeremy sounds confused. “The Squip,” he says. “You know that.”
“Yeah but like, why does he want you to just repeat the stuff?” Michael says. “I’m just wondering. Like exactly what’s going on in your head?”
Jeremy sighs. “He wants me to repeat after him,” he says. “And when I do he gets quieter.”
“I thought he was supposed to tear you down and then build you back up the way he wants you,” Michael muses. “That’s how Rich explained it. So how come he’s not building you up?”
Jeremy shrugs. “ Terrible ,” he says, like an afterthought, like it’s just occurred to him. “Um, I mean he’s technically supposed to be disabled. So whatever’s talking to me… I think it’s just inside my head. I don’t think it’s software.”
“But it’s because of the Squip.”
“Maybe.” Jeremy doesn’t seem to want to elaborate.
On Thursday, Jeremy doesn’t come to school. Michael texts him and again gets no response. During lunch, Michael gets in his car and drives to Jeremy’s house, trying to keep his mind from buzzing with scary possibilities.
He finds Jeremy upstairs in bed, still in his pajamas, with bags under his eyes. “Michael!” he says, voice thick with tears. Michael realizes with a pang that it’s been awhile since Jeremy’s looked that happy to see him. “Michaelmichaelmichael.”
“Yes, it is I,” he says, joking to keep from being scared or sad. “I brought you a bagel.” Jeremy grabs greedily at the bag in Michael’s hand and then pats the bed beside him. Michael sits down, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off Jeremy. “You’re not at school.”
Jeremy shudders even as he unwraps his bagel. “I couldn’t go,” he says, sounding small. “I just kept thinking about how there would be so many people and they all th-think I’m a slob and t-terrible and I couldn’t deal with it t-today.”
Michael opens his mouth to say that nobody thinks that, but he decides to let it slide. Jeremy might feel better if he’s not getting corrected every five seconds. “When we were little I thought your stutter was so cool,” Michael says instead. “Like all your words got their own drumroll. Like the world wasn’t ready to hear what you were gonna say.”
Jeremy shakes his head, but the tiniest of smiles crops up on his face. And then he winces. “H-he doesn’t want me to t-talk to you.”
Michael’s expression sours. “Because I’m a loser?”
“No!” Jeremy says, rapidly shaking his head, the tinfoil around his bagel rustling as he moves. “B-because talking to you is the only th-thing that makes me feel kind of okay.”
“Oh,” Michael says. “And do you?”
“What?”
“Do you feel okay?”
Jeremy shakes his head. “Actually, I f-feel… terrible,” he says. “But you being here makes me feel a little less terrible.”
On Friday, Michael goes to Jeremy’s house before school, again with bagels. He knocks on the door and his best friend answers in his pajamas. “Oh,” he says. “I don’t think I can go to school today.”
“Can you try?” Michael says. “Because what I figured out is I think the Squip wants you to be alone. And I think if you’re at school with your friends, maybe it’ll be a little harder to listen to the Squip.” Jeremy looks apprehensive. “And… here.”
In addition to the bagel, Michael thrusts a composition notebook into Jeremy’s hands. Jeremy opens it, flipping through the first couple of pages. They’ve got messages and pictures drawn on them in blue ink, smiley faces and hearts and sunshines and little aliens. And every page says something like “You are loved,” “You are amazing,” “You are valuable,” “You are wonderful.”
“Every time that computer in your head gets too rowdy,” Michael says, “flip to a random page. Everything in that notebook is true.”
Jeremy doesn’t know what to say, so he throws his arms around Michael.
On Saturday, Michael and Jeremy go to Payless.
“I know you have a whole box of them back there,” Michael says, standing up straight and trying to intimidate the scary-looking salesperson. “Go get them for us.”
“Look, I’m not selling those anymore,” the salesperson says. “Not after everything that went down at that high school a few months back.”
“But you do have the box?” Jeremy says. He’s got Michael’s headphones around his neck, softly playing dad rock to quiet out the Squip’s taunts.
The salesperson chews his lip. “Look, guys, I got a little sister,” he says. “I don’t want these things getting around. I would’ve tossed ‘em except I’m afraid someone will find them.”
“Don’t worry,” Michael says. “If you just give them to us, we promise no one will ever take one. And I have, um… ninety bucks.” Jeremy turns to him and tries to shake his head but Michael ignores him. “What do you say?”
“Ninety bucks?” the salesperson says, scoffing. “Kid, there’s like 30 in there. These things usually go for five-hundred each .”
“It’s not like you’re ever going to sell one again,” Michael reminds him.
It’s true. The salesperson sighs, and then takes Michael’s money before going to the back of the store. After a minute, he comes out with a shoebox. “If anyone asks where you got these, it wasn’t me,” he says, and hands them the box.
“You d-didn’t need to spend all that money,” Jeremy says once they get back to Michael’s basement. “I thought we were just gonna make him give the pills to us.”
“Don’t worry about the money,” Michael says, sitting down cross-legged on the floor and indicating that Jeremy should do the same. “This is worth it.” He opens the box and spills the Squips out on the floor. It looks like less than 30, but they’ll live. “Alright, you first,” Michael says, and he hands Jeremy a hammer.
Jeremy’s right hand is still badly burned, so he holds the hammer with his left. He takes a deep breath, and then he smashes one of the pills on the floor, pulverizing it to powder and some tiny silvery fragments. Jeremy holds out the hammer to Michael, but he refuses it.
“You should do some more,” he says. “You need this more than I do.”
So Jeremy smashes another Squip, and then a third. Michael watches as the pinched expression on his face morphs into a small smile and then a full-blown grin as he destroys Squip after Squip. “Stupid!” Jeremy yells, swinging the hammer down. “Pathetic! Terrible!” Bang, bang. Michael almost intervenes, but then he realizes that Jeremy isn’t using the words to describe himself. “Terrible,” he says again, crushing a Squip beneath the hammer.
There’s no magic fix for Jeremy. There’s not really a cure or a treatment for PTSD via abusive supercomputer pill. There’s nothing guaranteed to make him feel better about himself or his life.
But they’ve still got 20 more Squips to smash.