The Silver Linings Playbook - By Matthew Quick Page 0,17

say, but when I get to the family-room closet and go through the box of videos, it's not there. I turn around and see that my mother has followed me down into the family room. She is in her nightgown. She is biting her nails. "Where is it?"

"We gave it to - "

"Don't lie to me!"

"We must have misplaced it, but it's sure to turn up sooner or later."

"Misplaced it? It's irreplaceable!" It's just a videocassette, but I can't help feeling angry, which I realize is one of my problems. "How could you lose it when you know how important it is to me? How?"

"Calm down, Pat." My mother raises her palms so they are both in front of her chest and then takes a careful step toward me, as if she is trying to sneak up on a rabid dog. "Relax, Pat. Just relax."

But I can feel myself getting more and more angry, so before I say or do anything dumb, I remember that I am close to being sent back to the bad place, where Nikki will never find me. I storm past my mother, go down into the basement, and do five hundred sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000. When I finish, I am still angry, so I ride the stationary bike for forty-five minutes and then do shots of water until I feel hydrated enough to attempt five hundred push-ups. Only when my pecs feel like they are filled with molten lava do I deem myself calm enough to sleep.

When I go upstairs, all is quiet and no light is leaking out from under my parents' bedroom door, so I grab my framed picture of Nikki, take her upstairs to the attic, turn off the ventilation fan, slip into my sleeping bag, set up Nikki next to my head, kiss her good night - and then begin to sweat away some more pounds.

I haven't been up in the attic since the last time Kenny G visited me. I am afraid he will come back, but I also feel sort of fat. I close my eyes, hum a single note, silently count to ten over and over again, and the next morning I wake up unscathed.
Chapter 12
Failing Like Dimmesdale Did

Maybe Puritans were simply dumber than modern people, but I cannot believe how long it took those seventeenth-century Bostonians to figure out that their spiritual leader knocked up the local hussy. I had the mystery solved in chapter eight, when Hester turns to Dimmesdale and says, "Speak thou for me!" I know we were assigned Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter back in high school, and if I had known the book was filled with so much sex and espionage, I might have read it when I was sixteen. God, I can't wait to ask Nikki if she hypes up the racy stuff in her class, because I know teenagers would actually read the book if she did.

I didn't care much for Dimmesdale, because he had such a great woman and he denied himself a life with her. Now, I understand that it would not have been easy for him to explain how he knocked up another man's teenage wife, especially since he was a man of the cloth, but if there's one theme Hawthorne hammers home, it's that time heals all wounds, which Dimmesdale learns, but too late. Plus, I'm thinking God would have wanted Pearl to have had a father, and probably counted Dimmesdale's disregard for his daughter as a greater sin than having sex with another man's wife.

Now, I sympathize with Chillingworth - a lot. I mean, he sends his young bride over to the New World, trying to give her a better life, and she ends up pregnant by another man, which is the ultimate slap in the face, right? But he was so old and nasty and really had no business marrying a young girl anyway. When he began to psychologically torture Dimmesdale, giving him all those strange roots and herbs, Chillingworth reminded me of Dr. Timbers and his staff. I realized then that Chillingworth was not ever going to practice being kind, so I gave up hope for him.

But I absolutely loved Hester, because she believed in silver linings. Even when that nasty throng of bearded men in hats and fat women were against her, saying she should be branded on the forehead even, she stuck to her guns and sewed and helped people when she could and tried her best to raise her