Words on Bathroom Walls

Bad neighbors are terrible. But when they share not only your refrigerator, but also your brain... well, that's much worse. Thanks to his schizophrenia, Adam has recently put too many characters in his brain. Oh, some of them are good enough. Rebecca, whom Adam describes as "The Dalai Lama meets Coachella," tends to be, like, totally encouraging. The bodyguard (who appears with a couple of henchmen) is "temporary, but loyal." But then there's Joaquin, who walks around in a bathrobe and whispers obscene comments in Adam's ear, just like "a horny best friend from an '80s movie." And, hiding in the shadows, Adam hears another, much darker voice: he incites fears, encourages violence, flirts with destruction. This last voice pushed Adam's special kind of madness into the big, wide world. Frightened by the darkness of the voice and the swirling blackness that it brought, Adam knocked over a beaker of acid on the hand of his science partner in chemistry class. And this could not but attract attention. Therefore, Adam returned to school not as a student, but as a walking manifestation of mental illness. The bullying became so serious, and the voices in Adam's head became so loud, that his mom and her boyfriend, Paul, took him out of public school and sent him to St. Agatha's private Catholic School. He was told that this school was his "last chance". A chance to get a high school diploma, a chance to go to culinary school, a chance to become the five-star chef he dreams of becoming.