memoirs of an imaginary friend

also by matthew dicks
Something Missing
Unexpectedly, Milo
Matthew Dicks
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
NEW YORK
memoirs of an
imaginary friend
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and
events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s
imagination or are used fi ctitiously.
memoirs of an imaginary friend. Copyright © 2012
by Matthew Dicks. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www .stmartins  .com
ISBN 978- 1- 250- 00621- 9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02400-8 (e-book)
First Edition: August 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Clara

1
one
Here is what I know:
My name is Budo.
I have been alive for five years.
Five years is a very long time for someone like me to be alive.
Max gave me my name.
Max is the only human person who can see me.
Max’s parents call me an imaginary friend.
I love Max’s teacher, Mrs. Gosk.
I do not like Max’s other teacher, Mrs. Patterson.
I am not imaginary.

3
two
I am lucky as imaginary friends go. I have been alive for a lot longer
than most. I once knew an imaginary friend named Philippe. He was
the imaginary friend of one of Max’s classmates in preschool. He
lasted less than a week. One day he popped into the world, looking
pretty human except for his lack of ears (lots of imaginary friends
lack ears), and then a few days later, he was gone.
I’m also lucky that Max has a great imagination. I once knew an
imaginary friend named Chomp who was just a spot on the wall. Just
a fuzzy, black blob without any real shape at all. Chomp could talk
and sort of slide up and down the wall, but he was two- dimensional
like a piece of paper, so he could never pry himself off. He didn’t have
arms and legs like me. He didn’t even have a face.
Imaginary friends get their appearance from their human friend’s
imagination. Max is a very creative boy, and so I have two arms, two
legs, and a face. I’m not missing a single body part and that makes me
a rarity in the world of imaginary friends. Most imaginary friends are
missing something or other and some don’t even look human at all.
Like Chomp.
Too much imagination can be bad, though. I once met an imaginary friend named Pterodactyl whose eyes were stuck on the ends of
these two gangly, green antennas. His human friend probably thought
they looked cool, but poor Pterodactyl couldn’t focus on anything to
save his life. He told me that he constantly felt sick to his stomach and
was always tripping over his own feet, which were just fuzzy shadows
attached to his legs. His human friend was so obsessed with Pterodactyl’s head and those eyes that he had never bothered to think about
anything below Pterodactyl’s waist.
This is not unusual.
4  Matthew Dicks
I’m also lucky because I’m mobile. Lots of imaginary friends are
stuck to their human friends. Some have leashes around their necks.
Some are three inches tall and get stuffed into coat pockets. And some
are nothing more than a spot on the wall, like Chomp. But thanks to
Max, I can get around on my own. I can even leave Max behind if I
want.
But doing so too often might be hazardous to my health.
As long as Max believes in me, I exist. People like Max’s mother
and my friend Graham say that this is what makes me imaginary. But
it’s not true. I might need Max’s imagination to exist, but I have my
own thoughts, my own ideas, and my own life outside of him. I am
tied to Max the same way that an astronaut is tied to his spaceship by
hoses and wires. If the spaceship blows up and the astronaut dies, that
doesn’t mean that the astronaut was imaginary. It just means that his
life support was cut off.
Same for me and Max.
I need Max in order to survive, but I’m still my own person. I can
say and do as I please. Sometimes Max and I even get into arguments,
but nothing ever serious. Just stuffabout which TV show to watch or
which game to play. But it behoovesme (that’s a word that Mrs. Gosk
taught the class last week) to stick around Max whenever possible,
because I need Max to keep thinking about me. Keep believing in
me. I don’t want to end up out of sight, out of mind,which is something
Max’s mom sometimes says when Max’s dad forgets to call home
when he is going to be late. If I am gone too long, Max might stop
believing in me, and if that happens, then poof.
5
three
Max’s first- grade teacher once said that house fl ies live for about three
days. I wonder what the life span of an imaginary friend is? Probably
not much longer. I guess that makes me practically ancient.
Max imagined me when he was four years old, and just like that, I
popped into existence. When I was born, I only knew what Max knew.
I knew my colors and some of my numbers and the names for lots of
things like tables and micro wave ovens and aircraft carriers. My head
was filled with the things that a four- year- old boy would know. But
Max also imagined me much older than him. Probably a teenager.
Maybe even a little older. Or maybe I was just a boy with a grown- up’s
brain. It’s hard to tell. I’m not much taller than Max, but I’m definitely
different. I was more together than Max when I was born. I could make
sense of things that still confused him. I could see the answers to problems that Max could not. Maybe this is how all imaginary friends are
born. I don’t know.
Max doesn’t remember the day that I was born, so he can’t remember what he was thinking at the time. But since he imagined me as
older and more together, I have been able to learn much faster than
Max. I was able to concentrate and focus better on the day I was born
than Max is able to even today. On that first day I remember Max’s
mother was trying to teach him to count by even numbers, and he
just couldn’t get it. But I learned it right away. It made sense to me
because my brain was ready to learn even numbers. Max’s brain wasn’t.
At least that’s what I think.
Also, I don’t sleep, because Max didn’t imagine that I needed sleep.
So I have more time to learn. And I don’t spend all my time with
Max, so I’ve learned lots of things that Max has never seen or heard
before. After he goes to bed, I sit in the living room or the kitchen
6  Matthew Dicks
with Max’s parents. We watch tele vi sion or I just listen to them talk.
Sometimes I go places. I go to the gas station that never closes, because my favorite people in the world except for Max and his parents
and Mrs. Gosk are there. Or I go to Doogies hot- dog restaurant a
little ways down the road or to the police station or to the hospital
(except I don’t go to the hospital anymore because Oswald is there and
he scares me). And when we are in school, I sometimes go to the
teacher’s lounge or another classroom, and sometimes I even go to the
principal’s offi ce, just to listen to what’s going on. I am not smarter
than Max, but I know a lot more than him just because I am awake
more and go places that Max can’t. This is good. Sometimes I can help
Max when he doesn’t understand something so well.
Like last week Max couldn’t open a jar of jelly to make a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. “Budo!” he said. “I can’t open it.”
“Sure you can,” I said. “Turn it the other way. Lefty loosy. Righty
tighty.” That is something I hear Max’s mom say to herself sometimes
before she opens a jar. It worked. Max opened the jar. But he was so
excited that he dropped it on the tile floor, smashing it into a million
pieces.
The world can be so complicated for Max. Even when he gets
something right, it can still go wrong.
I live in a strange place in the world. I live in the space in between
people. I spend most of my time in the kid world with Max, but I also
spend a lot of time with adults like Max’s parents and teachers and my
friends at the gas station, except they can’t see me. Max’s mom would
call this straddling the fence.She says this to Max when he can’t make
up his mind about something, which happens a lot.
“Do you want the blue Popsicle or the yellow Popsicle?” she asks,
and Max just freezes. Freezes like a Popsicle. There are just too many
things for Max to think about when choosing.
Is red better than yellow?
Is green better than blue?
Which one is colder?
Which one will melt fastest?
What does green taste like?
What does red taste like?
Do different colors taste different?
I wish that Max’s mom would just make the choice for Max. She
memoirs of an imaginary friend  7
knows how hard it is for him. But when she makes him choose and he
can’t, I sometimes choose for him. I whisper, “Pick blue,” and then he
says, “I’ll take blue.” Then it’s done. No more straddling the fence.
That’s kind of how I live. I straddle the fence. I live in the yellow
and the blue world. I live with kids and I live with adults. I’m not
exactly a kid, but I’m not exactly an adult, either.
I’m yellow andblue.
I’m green.
I know my color combinations, too.

9
four
Max’s teacher is Mrs. Gosk. I like Mrs. Gosk a lot. Mrs. Gosk walks
around with a meter stick that she calls her meter- beater and threatens students in a fake British accent, but the kids know she’s just trying to make them laugh. Mrs. Gosk is very strict and insists that her
students work hard, but she would never hit a student. Still, she is a
tough lady. She makes them sit up straight and work on their assignments in silence, and when a child misbehaves, she says, “Shame!
Shame! Let all the boys and girls know your name!” or “You will
get away with that nonsense when pigs fly, young man!” The other
teachers say Mrs. Gosk is old- fashioned, but the kids know that she is
tough because she loves them.
Max doesn’t like many people, but he likes Mrs. Gosk.
Last year, Max’s teacher was Mrs. Silbor. She was strict, too. She
made the kids work hard like Mrs. Gosk does. But you could tell that
she didn’t love the kids like Mrs. Gosk does, so no one in the class
worked as hard as they do this year. It’s strange how teachers can go
offto college for all those years to learn to become teachers, but some
of them never learn the easy stuff. Like making kids laugh. And making sure they know that you love them.
I do not like Mrs. Patterson. She’s not a real teacher. She’s a paraprofessional. This is someone who helps Mrs. Gosk take care of Max.
Max is different than other kids so he doesn’t spend the whole day
with Mrs. Gosk. Sometimes he works with Mrs. McGinn in the Learning Center, and sometimes he works on his speech with Mrs. Riner,
and sometimes he plays games with other kids in Mrs. Hume’s offi ce.
And sometimes he reads and does homework with Mrs. Patterson.
As far as I can tell, no one knows why Max is different from the
rest of the kids. Max’s father says that Max is just a late bloomer, but
10  Matthew Dicks
when he says that, Max’s mom gets so angry that she stops talking to
him for at least a day.
I don’t know why everyone thinks Max is so complicated. Max
just doesn’t like people in the same way other kids do. He likes people,
but it’s a different kind of liking. He likes people from far away. The
farther you stay away from Max, the more he will like you.
And Max doesn’t like to be touched. When someone touches Max,
the whole world gets bright and shivery. That’s how he described it to
me once.
I can’t touch Max, and Max can’t touch me. Maybe that’s why we
get along so well.
Also, Max doesn’t understand when people say one thing but mean
another. Like last week, Max was reading a book at recess and a fourth
grader came over and said, “Look at the little genius.” Max didn’t say
anything to the boy because he knew if he said something, the fourth
grader would stay there longer and keep bothering him. But I know
that Max was confused, because it sounded like the boy was saying
that Max was smart even though the boy was actually being mean. He
was being sarcastic, but Max doesn’t understand sarcasm. Max knew
the boy was being mean, but only because that boy is always mean to
Max. But he couldn’t understand why the boy would call him a genius, since being called a genius is usually a good thing.
People are confusing to Max, so it’s hard for him to be around them.
That’s why Max has to play games in Mrs. Hume’s office with kids
from the other classes. He thinks it’s a big waste of time. He hates
having to sit on the floor around the Monopoly board, because sitting
on the floor is not as comfortable as sitting in a chair. But Mrs. Hume
is trying to teach Max to play with other kids, to understand what
they mean when they sarcasm or joke around. Max just doesn’t understand. When Max’s mom and dad are fighting, Max’s mom says that
his dad can’t see the forest for the trees. That’s like Max except it’s
with the whole world. He can’t see the big things because of all the
little things that get in his way.
Today Mrs. Patterson is absent. When a teacher is absent, it usually
means that the teacher is sick or her child is sick or someone in her
family has died. Mrs. Patterson had someone in her family die once.
I know this because sometimes the other teachers will say nice things
to her like, “How are you holding up, dear?” and sometimes they
whisper to each other after she has left the room. But that was a long
memoirs of an imaginary friend  11
time ago. When Mrs. Patterson is absent, it usually means that it is
Friday.
There’s no substitute for Mrs. Patterson today so Max and I get to
stay with Mrs. Gosk all day which makes me happy. I don’t like Mrs.
Patterson. Max doesn’t like her, either, but he doesn’t like her in the
same way he doesn’t like most of his teachers. He doesn’t see what I
see because he’s too busy looking at the trees. But Mrs. Patterson is
different from Mrs. Gosk and Mrs. Riner and Mrs. McGinn. She
never smiles for real. She’s always thinking something different in her
head than what is on her face. I don’t think she likes Max, but she
pretends that she does, which is even scarier than just not liking him.
“Hello, Max, my boy!” Mrs. Gosk says as we walk into the classroom. Max doesn’t like when Mrs. Gosk calls him “my boy” because
he is not her boy. He has a mother already. But he won’t ask Mrs. Gosk
to stop calling him “my boy” because asking her to stop would be
harder than listening to Mrs. Gosk say “my boy” every day.
Max would rather say nothing to everyone than something to one
person.
But even though Max doesn’t understand why Mrs. Gosk calls him
“my boy” he knows that she loves him. He knows that Mrs. Gosk is
not being mean. Just confusing.
I wish I could tell Mrs. Gosk not to call Max “my boy,” but Mrs.
Gosk can’t see or hear me and there’s nothing I can do to make her
see or hear me. Imaginary friends can’t touch or move things in the
human world. So I can’t open a jelly jar or pick up a pencil or type on
a keyboard. Otherwise I would write a note asking Mrs. Gosk not to
call Max “my boy.”
I can bump up against the real world, but I can’t actually touch it.
Even so, I am lucky because when Max first imagined me, he imagined that I could pass through things like doors and windows even
when they are closed. I think it’s because he was afraid that if his parents closed his bedroom door at night I might get stuck outside the
room, and Max doesn’t like to fall sleep unless I’m sitting in the chair
next to his bed. This means that I can go anywhere by walking
through the doors and windows, but never through walls or floors. I
can’t pass through walls and floors because Max didn’t imagine me that
way. That would’ve been too strange for even Max to think about.
There are other imaginary friends who can walk through doors
and windows like me, and some who can even walk through walls,
12  Matthew Dicks
but most can’t walk through anything and get stuck in places for a
long time. That’s what happened to Puppy, a talking dog who got
stuck in the janitor’s closet overnight a couple of weeks ago. It was a
scary night for his human friend, a kindergartener named Piper, because she had no idea where Puppy was.
But it was even scarier for Puppy, because getting locked in a closet
is how imaginary friends sometimes disappear forever. A boy or girl
accidentally (or sometimes, accidentally on purpose) locks an imaginary
friend in a closet or a cabinet or basement and then poof!Out of sight,
out of mind. The end of the imaginary friend.
Being able to pass through doors can be a lifesaver.
Today I want to stay put in the classroom because Mrs. Gosk is
reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryaloud to the class, and I love
it when Mrs. Gosk reads. She has a whispery, thin voice, so all the
kids must lean in and be absolutely silent in order to hear, which is
great for Max. Noises distract him. If Joey Miller is banging his pencil on his desk or Danielle Ganner is tapping her feet on the floor like
she does all the time, then Max can’t hear anything but the pencil or
the feet. He can’t ignore sounds like the other kids can, but when
Mrs. Gosk reads, everyone must be perfectly quiet.
Mrs. Gosk always chooses the best books and tells the best stories
from her own life that somehow relate to the book. Charlie Bucket
does something crazy and then Mrs. Gosk tells us about a time when
her son, Michael, did something crazy, and we all laugh our heads
off. Even Max sometimes.
Max doesn’t like to laugh. Some people think it’s because he doesn’t
think things are funny, but that is not true. Max doesn’t understand all
funny things. Puns and knock- knock jokes make no sense to him, because they say one thing but mean another. When a word can mean a
bunch of different things, he has a hard time understanding which
meaning to choose. He doesn’t even understand why words have to
mean different things depending on when you use them, and I don’t
blame him. I don’t like it much, either.
But Max finds other things hilarious. Like when Mrs. Gosk told us
how Michael once sent twenty cheese pizzas and the bill to a school-
yard bully as a joke. When the police offi cer came to their house to
scare Michael, Mrs. Gosk told the police offi cer to “take him away”
to teach her son a lesson. Everyone laughed at that story. Even Max.
Because it made sense. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end.
memoirs of an imaginary friend  13
Mrs. Gosk is also teaching us about World War II today, which she
says is not in the curriculum but should be. The kids love it, and Max
especially loves it because he thinks about wars and battles and tanks
and airplanes all the time. Sometimes it is the only thing that he
thinks about for days. If school was only about war and battles and not
math and writing, then Max would be the best student in the whole
wide world.
Today Mrs. Gosk is teaching us about Pearl Harbor. The Japa nese
bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Mrs. Gosk said that the
Americans were not ready for the sneak attack because they couldn’t
imagine the Japa nese attacking us from so far away.
“America lacked imagination,” she said.
If Max had been alive in 1941, things might have been different
because he has an excellent imagination. I bet that Max would have
imagined Admiral Yamamoto’s plan perfectly, with the midget submarines and the torpedoes with the wooden rudders and everything
else. He could have warned the American soldiers about the plan
because that is what Max is good at. Imagining things. He has a lot
going on inside of him all the time so he doesn’t worry so much
about what is going on outside him. That’s what people don’t understand.
That’s why it’s good for me to stick around Max whenever I can.
Sometimes he doesn’t pay enough attention to the things around him.
Last week he was about to get on the bus when a big gust of wind
blew his report card right out of his hands and between bus 8 and bus
53. He ran out of line to get it, but he didn’t look both ways, so I
yelled, “Max Delaney! Stop!”
I use Max’s last name when I want to get his attention. I learned
that from Mrs. Gosk. It worked. Max stopped, which was good, because a car was passing by the school buses at that moment, which is
illegal.
Graham said that I saved Max’s life. Graham is the third imaginary
friend at the school right now, as far as I know, and she saw the whole
thing. Graham is a girl but she has a boy’s name. She looks almost as
human as I do, except her hair stands up like someone on the moon
is pulling on each individual strand. It doesn’t move. It’s as solid as a
rock. Graham heard me yell at Max and tell him to stop, and then
after Max was back in line, she walked over to me and said, “Budo!
You just saved Max’s life! He would’ve been squished by that car!”
14  Matthew Dicks
But I told Graham that I saved my own life, because if Max ever died,
I think I would die, too.
Right?
I think so. I’ve never known an imaginary friend whose human
friend died before he disappeared. So I’m not sure.
But I think I would. Die, I mean. If Max died.
15
five
“Do you think I’m real?” I ask.
“Yes,” Max says. “Hand me that blue two- pronger.”
A two- pronger is a kind of LEGO. Max has names for all the
LEGO pieces.
“I can’t,” I say.
Max looks at me. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
“If I’m real, then why are you the only one who can see me?”
“I don’t know,” Max says, sounding irritated. “I think you’re real.
Why do you keep asking me?”
It’s true. I ask him a lot. I do it on purpose, too. I’m not going to
live forever. I know that. But I’m going to live as long as Max believes
in me. So if I force Max to keep insisting that I’m real, I think he will
believe in me longer.
Of course, I know that by constantly asking him if I’m real, I
might be putting the idea that I am imaginary in his head. It’s a risk.
But so far, so good.
Mrs. Hume once told Max’s mom that it’s “not uncommon for
kids like Max to have imaginary friends, and they tend to persist longer than most imaginary friends.”
Persist.I like that word.
I persist.
Max’s parents are fighting again. Max can’t hear because he is playing
video games in the basement and his parents are screaming at each
other in whispers. They sound like people who have been yelling for
so long that they have lost their voices, which is actually half true.
“I don’t care what the goddamn therapist thinks,” Max’s dad says,
his cheeks turning red as he whisper- yells. “He’s a normal kid . . . 
16  Matthew Dicks
he’s just a late bloomer. He plays with toys. He plays sports. He has
friends.”
Max’s dad is not correct. Max doesn’t have any friends other than
me. The kids at school either like Max or hate Max or ignore Max,
but none of them are his friend, and I don’t think he wants any of them
to be his friend. Max is happiest when he is left alone. Even I bother
him sometimes.
The kids at school who like Max treat him differently, too. Like
Ella Barbara. She loves Max, but she loves him in the same way a kid
loves a doll or a teddy bear. She calls him “my little Max,” and tries
to carry his lunchbox to the cafeteria and zip up his coat before recess,
even though she knows that Max can do those things for himself.
Max hates Ella. He cringes every time she tries to help him or even
touch him, but he can’t tell her to stop because it’s easier for Max to
cringe and suffer than speak up. Mrs. Silbor kept Ella and Max together when she sent them onto third grade because she thought that
they are good for each other. That’s what she told Max’s mom at the
parent- teacher conference. Max might be good for Ella, because she
gets to play with him like a doll, but Ella is most definitely not good
for Max.
“He is not a late bloomer and I wish you’d stop saying that,” Max’s
mom says to his dad in the tone she uses when she’s trying to stay
calm but is having a hard time doing so. “I know it kills you to admit
it, John, but that’s just the way it is. How could every expert we meet
be wrong?”
“That’s the problem,” Max’s dad says, his forehead turning red and
blotchy. “Not every expert agrees and you know it!” When he speaks,
it’s like he’s fi ring his words from a gun. “No one knows what is going
on with Max. So how is my guess any worse than a bunch of experts
who can’t agree on a thing?”
“The label isn’t important,” Max’s mom says. “It doesn’t matter
what is wrong with him. He needs help.”
“I just don’t get it,” Max’s dad says. “I played catch with him in the
backyard last night. I’ve taken him camping. His grades are good. He
doesn’t get in trouble at school. Why are we trying to fix the poor kid
when there’s nothing wrong with him?”
Max’s mom starts to cry. She blinks and her eyes fill with tears. I
hate when she cries, and so does Max’s dad. I have never cried before,
but it looks awful. “John, he doesn’t like to hug us. He can’t make eye
memoirs of an imaginary friend  17
contact with people. He fl ips out if I change the sheets on his bed or
switch brands of toothpaste. He talks to himself constantly. These are
not normal kid behaviors. I’m not saying he needs medication. I’m
not saying that he won’t grow up and be normal. He just needs a professional who can help him deal with some of his issues. And I want
to do it before I get pregnant again. While we can focus on just him.”
Max’s dad turns and leaves. He slams the screen door behind him
on the way out. It goes whack- whack- whackbefore it stops moving. I
used to think that when Max’s dad walked away from an argument,
it meant that Max’s mom had won. I thought his dad was retreating
like Max’s toy soldiers retreat. I thought he was surrendering. But
even though he is the one who retreats, it doesn’t always mean that he
has surrendered. He has retreated lots of times before, slamming that
door and making it go whack- whack- whack,but then nothing changes.
It’s like Max’s dad has pressed the Pause button on the remote control. The argument is paused. But it is not over.
Max is the only boy I have ever seen who makes toy soldiers retreat or surrender.
Every other boy makes them die instead.
I’m not sure if Max should see a therapist, and to be honest, I’m not
exactly sure what a therapist does. I know some things that they do,
but not everything, and it’s the everything that makes me ner vous.
Max’s mom and dad are probably going to fight about this again and
again, and even though neither one will ever say, “Okay, I give up!”
or “You win!” or “You’re right,” Max will eventually go to the therapist, because in the end, Max’s mom almost always wins.
I think Max’s dad is wrong about Max being a late bloomer. I
spend most of the day with Max and I see how he is different from
the other kids in his class. Max lives on the inside and the other kids
live on the outside. That’s what makes him so diff erent. Max doesn’t
have an outside. Max is all inside.
I don’t want Max to see a therapist. Therapists are people who
trick you into telling the truth. They can see inside your head and
know exactly what you are thinking, and if Max is thinking about
me when he’s talking to the therapist, then the therapist will trick
Max into talking about me. Then maybe he’ll convince Max to stop
believing in me.
But I still feel bad for Max’s dad, even if Max’s mom is the one
18  Matthew Dicks
who’s crying now. Sometimes I wish I could tell Max’s mom to be
nicer to Max’s dad. She is the boss of the house, but she’s also the boss
of Max’s dad, and I don’t think it’s good for him. It makes him feel
small and silly. Like when he wants to play poker with friends on a
Wednesday night but he can’t just tell his friends that he will play. He
has to ask Max’s mom if it’s okay for him to play, and he has to ask at
the right time, when she is in a good mood, or he might not be able
to play. She might say, “I could really use you at home that night” or
“Didn’t you play last week?”
Or worse, she might just say “Fine,” which really means, “It is not
fine and you know it and if you go, I am going to be mad at you for
at least three days!”
It reminds me of how Max would have to ask permission to visit a
friend, if Max ever wanted to play with anyone but me, which he
doesn’t.
I don’t understand why Max’s dad has to ask permission, but I
really don’t understand why Max’s mom would want to make him
ask permission. Wouldn’t it be better if Max’s dad just got to choose
what he did?
It’s doubly worse because Max’s dad is a manager at Burger King.
Max thinks that this is one of the best jobs in the world, and if I ate
bacon double cheeseburgers and small fries, then I’d probably feel the
same way. But in the adult world, a Burger King manager is not a
good job at all, and Max’s dad knows it. You can tell by the way he
doesn’t like to tell people about his job. He never asks people what
their job is, and that’s the most pop u lar adult question ever asked in
the history of the world. When he has to tell someone what his job is,
he looks at his feet and says, “I manage restaurants.” Getting him to
say the words “Burger King” is like trying to get Max to choose between chicken noodle and vegetable beef soup. He tries everything
he can not to say those two words.
Max’s mom is a manager, too. She manages people at a place called
Aetna, but I can’t figure out what they make at her job. Definitely not
bacon double cheeseburgers. I went to her job once, to try to figure
out what she did all day, but everyone just sits in front of computers
in these tiny boxes without lids. Or they sit around tables in stuffy
rooms and tap their feet and look at the clock while some old man or
woman talks about stuffthat nobody cares about.
But even though it’s boring and they don’t make bacon double
memoirs of an imaginary friend  19
cheeseburgers, you can tell that Max’s mom has a better job because
the people in her building wear shirts and dresses and ties and not
uniforms. She never complains about people stealing or not showing
up to work like Max’s dad does. And sometimes Max’s dad goes to
work at five o’clock in the morning and sometimes he works all night
long and comes home at fi ve in the morning. It’s weird because even
though Max’s dad’s job seems a lot harder, Max’s mom makes more
money and adults think she has a much better job. She never looks at
her feet when she tells people what she does.
I’m glad that Max didn’t hear them arguing this time. Sometimes
he does. Sometimes they forget to whisper- shout and sometimes they
fight in the car, where it doesn’t matter if you whisper- shout. When
they fight, it makes Max feel sad.
“They fight because of me,” he said to me once. He was playing
with LEGOs, which is when Max likes to talk about serious things
the most. He doesn’t look at me. He just builds airplanes and forts and
battleships and spaceships while he talks.
“No, they don’t,” I said. “They fight because they’re grown- ups.
Grown- ups like to argue.”
“No. They only argue about me.”
“No,” I said. “Last night they argued about what show to watch on
the tele vi sion.” I had been hoping that Max’s dad would win so we
could watch the crime show, but he lost and we had to watch some
stupid singing show.
“That was not an argument,” Max said. “That was a disagreement.
There’s a difference.”
These were Mrs. Gosk’s words. Mrs. Gosk says that it’s okay to
disagree but that doesn’t mean you are allowed to argue. “I can stomach a disagreement,” she likes to say to the class. “But I can’t stand to
listen to an argument in my presence.”
“They only argue because they don’t know what’s best for you,” I
said. “They’re trying to figure out what is right.”
Max looked at me for a minute. He looked mad for a second, and
then his face changed. It got softer and he looked sad. “When other
people try to make me feel better by twisting words, it only makes
me feel worse. When you do it, it makes me feel the worst.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not sorry for what I said, because it’s true. Your
20  Matthew Dicks
parents really are trying to figure out what is right. I meant that I’m
sorry that your parents argue about you, even if it’s only because they
love you.”
“Oh,” Max said, and he smiled. It wasn’t an actual smile, because
Max never really smiles. But his eyes opened a little wider and he
tilted his head a tiny bit to the right. That’s Max’s version of a smile.
“Thanks,” he said, and I knew that it was a real thanks.