God I hate hospitals, with their searing white floors and how the whole damn things smell like rubbing alcohol and sick people.

I had to get stitches in both my hands, which were so cut up from the glass they were more of a meaty pulp. I had to stay the night because they wanted me to talk with some shrink. To hell I was. I knew there was no way I was ever going to talk to some guy who thought I was crazy, but I decided I would humor them. I got my own cot and everything, it even had curtains around it for "privacy," and there was this tiny window through which all you could see was the brick wall of another building. I hadn't talked since the morning in the garage, I just sat on my cot, staring up at the ceiling for what felt like a billion hours. I thought days passed, but it was probably only a couple of hours. Mom stayed by my side for a while, but she had to go and get things ready for Allie's funeral, so I was mostly left alone. The shrink would come check on me every now and then, and boy was he a phony. He was one of those guys that liked to hear the sound of their own voice. He just blabbed and blabbed about how he "understands my pain," which was total bull. He had no damn idea what I was feeling— no damn idea. But mostly there was quiet for hours, and I would think about things. Well, it was more like trying extremely hard and failing to not think about things. I kept thinking how they all left Allie when he died, how they left me alone with Allie, and how maybe they were all phonies for leaving him. But mostly I felt this intense numbness; everything felt fake and fuzzy. It was just this damn crumby feeling, and my mind was rubbed raw over and over with the same thought: I wish I was the one dead on that bed. It just hurt too much to think.

Allie was such a damn smart kid, I only ever did mediocre in school. I got A's and B's and the occasional C, but I was no Allie. Boy was he smart. And funny, too— he could make anyone laugh. I would give anything to trade places with him.

While I was deep in these suffocating thoughts, the curtain dividing me from the bed next to mine moved, revealing a woman who was as old as dirt. Her face was so wrinkly you could barely see her eyes. She kind of stared at me with this creepy ass smile on her face. My heart started beating real fast and I started thinking about how maybe she was one of those perverts kids were always talking about at school. I hated old people; they were so depressing. Everything about them was painful, especially watching them trying to do normal everyday stuff like moving.

"What are you in for?" asked the old woman, eyes crazed. I didn't answer; I didn't even look at her. I just stared straight ahead, my arms crossed.

"Not talking, eh? How old are you boy?" I was 13, but there was no way I was going to tell her that. Let me tell you something, being a teenager is the crumbiest thing that can happen to a guy— I mean hormones fuckin' suck.

She kind of stared at me blankly and then she just started talking my damn ear off. She told me about her dead husband about her 2 cats, which I now know are named Jack and Steve, then she asked me a question that really got to me:

"Where do you think the ducks go during the winter, huh kid?"

Eventually they wheeled her away in her cot because she had to get surgery on her hip something. As she was being pushed out the door, she turned to me and said, "I'll see you on the other side." When she was gone I kept thinking about those damned ducks. I don't even know why I cared, but I needed to know those ducks were safe in the winter. I'm pretty sure the old woman was crazy, but at the same time she was different than other adults I'd met. She seemed, I don't know, to see me as more than an immature kid. Although, the whole conversation was one sided, so how the hell would I know?