Madness

by Zac Brewer

  DEDICATION

  To my husband, Paul,

  for always being that hand in the darkness

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If, as you are reading this book, you find yourself experiencing symptoms of depression or suicidal thoughts, please seek help. You are not alone. And you can recover.

  Below are but a few of the great many resources available to you.

  For more information on depression and how to get help, visit the Youth Resources page of the American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). There you’ll find information on finding the right care for yourself, how to recognize depression in others, and what you can do to help someone in crisis. www.aacap.org

  For further educational resources—as well as inspirational stories of recovery—visit To Write Love on Her Arms. TWLOHA is a nonprofit movement dedicated to finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. www.twloha.com

  The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline exists to provide immediate assistance to individuals in suicidal crisis by connecting them to the nearest available suicide prevention and mental health service provider through a toll-free number. 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

  If you are in immediate crisis, dial 911.

  The world is a better place with you in it.

  EPIGRAPH

  The course of true love never did run smooth.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

  —H. L. MENCKEN

  When love is not madness, it is not love.

  —PEDRO CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Zac Brewer

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  “It’s a different color for you.”

  My mom was speaking with the same overly chipper tone she’d been using since she’d picked me up a few hours ago. She was trying to come off as supportive, but it was really ringing through my ears as fake. It was all fake. My new hair color, our casual conversation, the fact that I’d been released from Kingsdale Hospital with a “not crazy” stamp of approval. And I knew a thing or two about fake. I’d faked my way through six weeks of treatment with all the right words to all the right people. I’d convinced them all that I was in full-on recovery mode after what happened six weeks ago. But it was a lie. I was just trying to get out of that place, away from those white, sterile walls, even though I had no idea what it would be like once I did.

  I only knew that I felt like a failure.

  Staring out the window as Mom barreled down I-75 in the direction of our home, I thought about how, in a way, my life had ended that night in Black River. This—whatever this was—wasn’t life. It was my afterlife.

  “Yeah,” I said. For seventeen years I’d had waves of strawberry-blond hair that hung to my waist. An hour ago, I’d had it dyed pink ombre. Part of me knew that I’d chosen that color to shove and poke at my mom’s overly supportive act. She’d never let me dye my hair before. It had been an ongoing argument between us since I was thirteen. After four years of arguments, what had changed that suddenly made a surprise trip to the salon okay? Did she think that giving in to this one thing would somehow take back the guilt she might have over what happened? Ridiculous. So I’d chosen the most off-kilter color I could think of. I didn’t even like pink. Or pastels.

  Mom’s phone buzzed as a text came through. To my annoyance, she picked it up with her right hand and continued steering with her left. I hated when she played with her phone while driving. It was so dangerous. People should never text and drive.

  The irony that I was concerned about her endangering my life hit me hard, like a slap across the cheek. What did it matter whether I’d drowned that night or smashed into a semitruck now because my mom refused to put her phone down while operating a vehicle? What made this so different from that?

  Because, I told myself, the river was my choice. This was hers. And at least I wouldn’t have taken anyone else down with me when I jumped into that water. It was just me. Just my ending. No one else’s.

  Mom said, “It’s Ronald, wanting to know if you’re up for seeing him this evening.”

  She and my dad were the only people on the planet who still called my best friend since kindergarten Ronald. Sure, it was his name. But ever since we watched that John Hughes movie Pretty in Pink together in sixth grade, he’d been Duckie to me. After a while he was Duckie to everyone. Just not my parents.

  “I don’t want to see anybody.” I slid down in my seat a little. It was embarrassing. I was embarrassed. Not for having attempted to take my life. But for having failed. “I’m not ready.”

  She paused, biting her bottom lip, forcing down words that she clearly wanted to say. She started typing on her phone with her thumb before she even spoke again to me. “Okay. I’ll tell him.” Her words were breathy and made me wonder what she was telling him exactly. My phone hadn’t yet been returned to me, or I would have asked him. Of course, if I’d had my phone, Duckie would’ve just texted me directly.

  She cleared her throat and said, “I think you should know, I’ve kept Ronald informed about your situation—”

  Situation. Right. That’s what it was. Just a situation. Nothing more.

  “—so he’s fully aware of your diagnosis and the treatment you’re undergoing. I just . . . I just thought it might be good to have a friend involved.”

  Involved? Or an extra pair of eyes on me?

  I’d thought about Duckie a lot since the doctors had given me a release date. I wondered what he thought about what I did, if he was mad at me for not telling him I wanted to die, why he hadn’t come to see me on visitors’ day. I was glad he hadn’t come. I didn’t want to have to smile at Duckie the way I smiled at my parents, the way I smiled at the doctors and nurses, the way I smiled all through the last few days of inpatient treatment. The truth was, I’d smiled my way out of the last six weeks at that damn hospital but hadn’t made any real progress. The truth was, I still wanted to die.

  But I wasn’t about to share that bit of information with anyone.

  I’d learned early on during my stay in Kingsdale that their staff had pretty amazing bullshit detectors. If you tried to make light of things too soon, they only probed deeper, through the veil of your lies, to find the truth. I’d kept my mouth shut for the first week and observed. Then, slowly, I’d begun to act as if I were opening up, then growing hopeful, then regretful that I had thrown myself in the river. Eventually I convinced them that I was ready to face the world and wanted to change. I guess their bullshit detectors were off with me. I just wanted to be alone again so I could finish what I started. I just wanted to be free. Of the hospital. Of the pain. Of my life.

  Dark stuff, maybe. But that didn’t make it any less true.

  My mom cleared her throat. It was as if she were attempting small talk with a stranger. Maybe she was. “Do you
want anything from Starbucks?”

  “Can we go home now, please?” I flicked the buckle on my backpack back and forth, not meeting her eyes.

  She seemed relieved at my response. Maybe she wanted the tension in the car to evaporate and knew that going home would shorten our time alone together. Maybe I was way off base and she was glad I was engaging in conversation with her—brief as it was. I didn’t feel compelled to ask, and I was tired of analyzing. I just wanted to get the initial steps of my return home over with already.

  As we climbed a hill, I could make out Black River in the distance. I couldn’t see the stone bridge, not from here, but it was there.

  Instantly, I was transported back in time. I was seven years old. My dad was teaching me how to swim. As my head went under, I gulped in water, flailing my arms. I surfaced again, choking, and my dad pulled me out onto the deck of the pool. He looked so disappointed, so annoyed that I hadn’t done it right the first time. He said, “There’s no reason to panic, Brooke. It’s impossible to drown yourself.”

  But Dad had been wrong. With enough Tylenol PM, it was easy enough. In fact, if the old man who’d pulled me from the water hadn’t seen me jump, I wouldn’t be sitting in my mom’s SUV now, still hurting with a pain that I couldn’t explain or ease or wish away. I’d be gone. Somewhere better, maybe. Maybe nowhere at all. Just not here.

  I reached inside my backpack and pulled out the prescription bottle with my name on it. The rattling of the pills inside briefly caught my mom’s attention. She bit her bottom lip. I ignored her. The pills were white, with a black stripe and a green stripe wrapped around them. The doctors had called them antidepressants. They’d said that it might take several tries to find the right medication, the right dose. I was pretty sure they were full of shit. But I’d taken the pills at Kingsdale. Mostly because they watched me take them every day. I wondered if my parents would take over watching me from now on.

  As I dropped the bottle back inside my bag, I looked at the three pink lines that marked my left arm. I hadn’t been trying to reach my veins, to slash my wrists, to die in such a bloody way. It wasn’t suicide then. Not yet. That was months before the night on the bridge. I’d just wanted to feel . . . something. Anything. Even if that thing was pain.

  Of course, I was a total coward and couldn’t get up the guts to do that right the first time, either. I’d downed some of Dad’s scotch and tossed a couple of Mom’s Vicodin and dulled the pain that I was longing to feel. Pretty stupid of me in hindsight. Made the whole thing pointless. Not that the experience had held much point anyway.

  Word of advice: skin isn’t easy to cut into. Not even with a brand-new box cutter. Not even when you apply a lot of pressure. I managed a few scratches at first. It stung, even through the dulling assistance of pills and booze. So I reached for one of my dad’s chef’s knives and resorted to sawing at my skin with its razor-sharp edge, pressing hard into my flesh until crimson bloomed. There wasn’t a lot of blood, despite all my hard work and determination. And in the end I was left with three small scars on my arm—scars I explained away to anyone who asked as a clumsy accident tripping into tools in the garage. No one pushed the issue after I explained. Not even Duckie.

  The cuts had healed relatively quickly and had already begun to fade. But even if they faded entirely with time, they would always be there in my memory. Scars don’t ever disappear—not really.

  Mom turned the wheel, and we moved onto a familiar road. Two more turns and we were approaching our house. My stomach shrank painfully inside of me. I had hoped never to see this place again. I had planned everything so well. I’d thought I had, anyway. But I hadn’t planned on some nosy old man being out digging for night crawlers. I hadn’t planned on a stranger intervening in the moment I’d been dreaming of, counting on for months.

  We pulled into the driveway and “The Sound of Silence” by Disturbed came on over the radio. Mom killed the engine, cutting off the melancholy tune. For a moment, I didn’t move. I didn’t feel sad or angry. I really didn’t feel anything at all—apart from the determination to finish what I’d started at Black River. I was going to get it right the moment an opportunity presented itself. And no one—not my parents, not Duckie, not some stupid old man—was going to stop me.

  With a deep breath, I opened the car door. After I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, I followed Mom up the front walk. The flowers out front had bloomed while I was in treatment. Shades of red, orange, and yellow greeted me as I made my way to the door with my backpack slung over my shoulder and suitcase in my hand. Their colors reminded me of flames.

  Stepping inside the front door was like moving back in time. The floral paper covering the walls of the foyer seemed foreign to me, like something I’d once encountered in a dream. In fact, that’s what the entire experience felt like: a bad dream.

  I stared at the hands on the grandfather clock for a moment before moving deeper into the house. Time felt like it was dragging on, digging its claws in. My dad was sitting in his chair in the living room, reading the paper. When Mom spoke, her voice was more chipper than ever, bordering on shrill. “Look who’s home, dear!”

  Dad glanced up from his paper, but not at me. At the space between me and where Mom was standing. “Need help with your bags?”

  He looked older, somehow, even though I’d just seen him two weeks before on visitors’ day. The lines in his face seemed deeper. He slouched in his chair. I wondered if he was glad that I was home, but didn’t dare ask. Shaking my head, I said, “No. I can manage.”

  With a crinkle of newsprint, Dad went back to reading his paper without another word. I was more relieved than disappointed. Maybe this was his afterlife too. Just a blank haze of existence. An impending feeling of “get on with it already.” Nothing more.

  Mom shuffled her feet a little, wringing her hands as she stared at Dad. I didn’t know what she’d expected him to do, greet me with hugs and smiles, balloons and a Welcome Back banner? Frankly, I was glad I didn’t have to face a conversation with him about what I’d done. I was far more comfortable with his silence than I was with Mom’s false optimism. At least Dad was keeping it real. He was upset. And that was okay.

  I carried my bags upstairs—each step seemed to make them just a bit heavier. When I reached the top, I looked down the hall to my bedroom door. The hall felt longer than I remembered, and as I moved toward my room, it felt like the distance lengthened with every step I took. The motion felt strange, wrong. Uneven, somehow.

  I stretched out my hand and curled my fingers around the doorknob. Turning it slowly, I heard the click of the mechanism as it released. With a gentle push, my bedroom door swung open. My heart sank deep inside of me, down to that dark place I’d called normal for so long.

  The old man’s words whispered through my mind—the ones he’d spoken as he held me there on the riverbank after he’d pulled me from the frigid water, as the faint cry of approaching sirens grew. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  He was wrong. I wasn’t okay then, and I still wasn’t now. But I would be soon. Because now—more than ever—I was determined to die.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Holding my breath, I flipped on the light switch.

  Apart from how obvious it was that my parents had raided my room while I was inpatient to remove anything they deemed dangerous, pretty much everything was as I’d left it. I’d spent the day before my attempt cleaning so it would be nice when my parents saw it. Less work for them. With a glance, on the surface the room seemed put together and normal. But if you looked closer, underneath the bed, in the closet, you’d see the mess. It was a lie. And I was a liar.

  I set my suitcase beside my closed closet door and dropped my backpack on the floor next to it. I was trying not to get caught up in the waves of nostalgia and memories that washed over me once I was standing in my room. It was just a room, after all. Just a place to sleep. Nothing more. But then my eyes fell on the quilt that was s
o carefully smoothed out on my bed and my indifference dissolved into thin air. The quilt was old, hand sewn by my grandmother when she was only twelve years old. It was the first quilt that she’d ever made, and she’d created it under my great-grandmother’s careful watch. I knew because she’d told me tons of stories about learning how to quilt—always with a bit of a sad glint in her eye. She’d never had a daughter to teach, and I wasn’t exactly skilled with anything remotely crafty. As proven by the time I was ten and hot-glued the sleeve of the sweater I’d been wearing to my desk.

  It must have been disappointing to her, to have enjoyed a task so much with her mother but not be able to pass it on. I’d often wondered if that had been a regret she’d carried into death.

  The quilt was multicolored, but mostly purples and blues. The pattern was something she’d called a garden pattern. It looked like my bed was home to a hundred flowers. But not in an obnoxious, overly girly way. And even if it had been, I would have kept it on my bed.

  I retrieved the bottle of medication and a paper origami crane from my backpack before lying down on my bed and closing my eyes. The quilt was soft against my skin. Soft like Grandma had always felt. Almost fragile, the way that her mind had become when Alzheimer’s tightened its grip on her. She spent her last weeks in a hospital room. The final week they removed her feeding tube so that she’d starve to death. I never went to say good-bye. It was a decision that I still felt conflicted over.

  I set the bottle beside me on the bed and held up the paper crane, pinching one of its tiny, stark white wings between my fingers. In the hospital, as part of my group therapy, the doctors taught us ways to distract ourselves from suicidal thoughts. Origami was apparently supposed to be extremely calming and helpful in this endeavor, but looking at the crane only reminded me of Joy.

  She was in my therapy group. There were six of us, but Joy stood out. Mostly because she didn’t seem afraid of the doctors or counselors. She didn’t strike me as sad or alone, just determined to end herself. I admired that, even though I probably shouldn’t have.