Madness

by Zac Brewer

  Joy had been in Kingsdale twice for suicide attempts. The first time she’d tried downing a fifth of vodka and a bottle of sleeping pills. The second time she’d swallowed everything in her parents’ medicine cabinet. I’d asked her once if she ever thought about trying again. She’d whispered to me, “Third time’s a charm.”

  We’d sit there in group, answer questions about ways we could deal with our emotions, and then it was origami time. Joy only ever made cranes. On her last day, she handed me the crane she’d just made and repeated her words: “Third time’s a charm.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by it. Not until I walked into the common area that afternoon and saw a buzz of doctors and nurses flitting about, shouting things. Joy was lying on her back on the white tile floor. Her large, dark eyes were open, but there was no spark of life in them. She was dead.

  She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look lost or lonely. She looked at peace. I envied her that. It was all I ever wanted. Peace.

  I could see blood on the tile, but nothing to indicate where it had come from. An orderly pushed me into my room and closed the door, standing in front of my small window and blocking my view. On my tiptoes, I managed to see Joy being placed on a stretcher and hurried away. Various staff members stood in front of the other patients’ doors as well. We were on lockdown.

  I slept heavy that night, but only because everyone was given a dose of something to keep the entire ward calm. When I awoke, I realized I was still holding the crane that Joy had given me. One of its tiny wings had a small bit of dried blood on the tip. I wondered if it was Joy’s or mine.

  The staff kept an even closer eye on all of us after that. Bedroom doors had to remain open. Trips to the bathroom were escorted. I didn’t say much about anything at first, but all I really wanted to do was ask how Joy had died. I kept to myself for about a week, before slowly acting as if I were becoming open to the idea of therapy. It was the only way out, after all. I kept the crane, though. It felt somehow symbolic. Of Joy’s triumph. Of my goal.

  I zoned out in the familiar comfort of my bed, and eventually I must have fallen asleep, though I hadn’t intended to. The one thing the meds did do was make me sleepy. Only I never dreamed. Or if I did have dreams, I didn’t recall them. When I opened my eyes, morning light filtered into my room through the sheer curtains. I’d slept for over twelve hours. My fingers were curled gently around the crane, cupping it in my hand without crushing it. Familiar sorrow washed over me. I’d woken up. Again.

  I sat up, knocking the bottle of pills to the floor as I swung my feet over the edge of the bed. After retrieving some thread and a thumbtack from my desk drawer, I hung the crane above my bed as a reminder. Once it was hung, I took a deep breath and headed for the door. I could already smell bacon and eggs, which meant that Mom was downstairs cooking and wouldn’t notice what I was doing.

  Behind me, the crane whispered its support. It knew I was making a new plan. One that would succeed. Just like Joy’s had.

  The hall seemed its normal length this morning, and I moved silently down it and past the stairs to my parents’ bedroom. Before stepping inside, I listened carefully to make sure that no one was upstairs with me. After determining I had the floor to myself, I moved as quietly as I could through their bedroom over that god-awful mauve carpeting and into the master bath. Above the sink was a medicine cabinet. Inside would be the answer to my problem—life being the problem, of course.

  I stepped in front of the sink, and the floor creaked slightly. Cursing inside my mind, I opened the cabinet, and my heart sank. A single bottle of some herbal headache medicine, a half-used tube of Bengay, and a box of Q-tips were the only things inside. Closing the mirror door, I searched the drawers of the cabinet below. Cotton balls, a hair dryer, a bottle of my mom’s favorite moisturizer—nothing that would aid me. It was as if the place had been cleaned out.

  No. No, that’s exactly what had happened. Can’t trust someone who’s made an attempt on their life with anything sharper than a Q-tip or a cotton ball, now can we?

  With a heavy sigh, I descended the stairs. This was going to be harder than I’d thought.

  My dad was probably already gone for the day, so it was just Mom and me. Or so I thought, until I rounded the arched door that led to the kitchen. Mom was at the stove, flipping bacon in a sizzling pan. Duckie was sitting at the counter. He was the same Duckie I had left behind—his eyes intensely green, his hair brown with blond highlights and spiked up in a faux-hawk. He was dressed in bright colors in that mismatched way that said he didn’t give a damn what anybody thought about him, so let ’em talk. He was the same Duckie. But I wasn’t the same Brooke. There was a huge space between us before he even noticed I’d entered the room. I put it there.

  He looked up at me in surprise, dropping a half-eaten triangle of buttered toast on his plate. His surprise quickly turned apologetic. “Hey, Brooke.”

  My mom shut down the stove and put the rest of the bacon on a plate. She turned around and smiled brightly at me, pretending that everything was normal. Probably in an effort to wish it that way. She’d always been like that. No matter how dark the skies got, she’d insist the sun was shining.

  When I was little, she taught me to watch the sky fade from day to night. According to my mom, the first star to appear was a lucky one. And if you saw it, you could make a wish on it. She even taught me what to say to make my wish come true. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.” None of my wishes ever came true. As I took the seat next to Duckie at the counter, I wondered if any of hers did.

  She set the plate in front of me and said, “I heard you moving around upstairs. Looking for anything in particular?”

  Damn creaky floor. I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could manage. “Just pain meds. I have a monster headache. Probably the stress of going back to school.”

  “We have some herbal headache medicine.”

  I noticed. “Herbs won’t help me.”

  She sighed and straightened her shoulders as she looked at me. I knew this version of my mother. It was the face of the disciplinarian—a face she rarely wore. “Well, then I suggest you try closing your eyes and relaxing. All medication but Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol, and the like have been removed, just like the doctors told us. The liquor cabinet has been emptied, and anything sharp—including kitchen knives—have been hidden and locked away.”

  “What if I want to cut up veggies for a salad? That’s going to seriously screw with my vitamin intake.” Duckie suppressed a chuckle at my quip, but Mom’s sharp glance silenced him.

  “That’s not funny. It’s important, Brooke. We want to keep you safe, so there are rules you need to follow. For one”—she looked from me to Duckie—“straight to school and straight back. No stops along the way. Are you listening, Ronald?”

  Swallowing a mouthful of breakfast, he nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She placed a napkin beside my plate, as if this were any other day. But it wasn’t. And we all knew it. As she took my phone from her pocket and set it in front of me, she said, “And if you don’t answer right away when your father or I text or call you, we’ll come looking for you.”

  I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something pink and then remembered that it was my hair. Funny the things you can forget when you’re in the midst of getting seriously pissed off. “That’s insane. What is this? Alcatraz?”

  “This is serious.” She gave me one last this-is-the-end-of-this-conversation look and then turned to rinse off the breakfast pans.

  It was crazy. But when you’ve just been released from a mental hospital, people don’t put much stock in what you think is crazy or not.

  Duckie ate in silence for a bit, as if he was waiting for the storm to pass. Once Mom had finished cleaning up, she turned back to us and smiled cheerfully. “Now, I have to get the towels out of the dryer. You two enjoy catching up.”

  I didn’
t say anything in response. Not after she’d just told me I’d be under constant surveillance in my own home. Besides, there was a reason I’d told her yesterday that I didn’t want to see Duckie. It wasn’t because I was mad at him or anything. It was because I wanted to be alone. Because if anybody would be hurt by what I’d done, it would be Duckie, and I didn’t want to see that hurt in his eyes when I looked at him. I couldn’t deal with it, and she’d just flat-out ignored me. He was here now, eating breakfast in my kitchen, like today was any other day. I didn’t know what to say to him.

  But Duckie knew what to say. He always had. “I know you didn’t want to see me yet. But I had to pull a friendship card and show up anyway. Because I missed you. And if that makes me selfish and makes you hate me, then so be it. I just needed to see your face.”

  I stared at my plate, not hungry at all.

  “And your hair, apparently. Pink?” Duckie raised a sharp eyebrow. He knew me too well. “You hate pink.”

  I picked up the fork beside my plate and poked at the scrambled eggs. My throat felt dry, but I wasn’t sure why. “I wanted something completely different. Something absolutely not me.”

  “Me too. Which is why I’m switching to dating girls.” He paused, and I looked at him. After a moment, he waggled his eyebrows, cracking my stony exterior in the way that only Duckie could.

  I laughed—a false laugh, one that felt brittle and too forced to be believed—and shoved his shoulder gently. “You are ridiculous.”

  “And your best friend. So if you think you can get rid of me, you’re wrong. Just suck on that, lady.” His tone was joking, but a hint of no-nonsense lurked beneath. I didn’t want it to be there, that almost parental tone. I wanted Duckie to pretend with me for a little while that nothing had ever happened—that I hadn’t tried to take my own life. That the worst things in front of us were pop quizzes and unrequited crushes.

  Attempting to keep things light, I said, “That’s what he said.”

  “Now who’s being ridiculous?” He scooped up a forkful of eggs and smiled at me. There was no hesitation in his gaze, no expectation. Just that same adoring friendship that had always been there. “I-L-Y, Brooke.”

  We never said the actual words. We never told each other “I love you.” Something about the words themselves would make it feel icky and strange. But we’d been saying those letters to each other since the third grade.

  I smiled again, and this time I meant it. “I-L-Y too, Duckie.”

  Duckie chowed down on his food for a bit. I mostly moved mine around on my plate. Every once in a while, I’d jab a bit of scrambled egg and stick it in my mouth. I wasn’t hungry at all, but I also didn’t want to pass out from low blood sugar.

  Duckie wiped his mouth on his napkin and spoke without looking at me. His tone was careful and quiet, as if he understood that I was much like an animal in the wild now—skittish and afraid. He said, “We don’t have to talk about it, okay? What happened. Not unless you want to. I just have to ask you one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Every muscle in my body tightened. I didn’t want to talk about what I’d failed to do, or why I’d tried to do it in the first place. I didn’t want to talk about the stupid pills I had to take now, or the fact that every smile I attempted resembled a lopsided painting hanging on the wall. Much like before the moment I jumped, I wanted it all to go away. Everything. Forever.

  But that was going to be so much harder since my parents had been appointed as my personal prison guards. Seriously, who locked away kitchen knives? Were the scissors hidden too? It’d be tough going, but they could work in a pinch.

  Like always, Duckie seemed to know when to toe the line and when to cross it. Switching gears, he said, “Are you gonna eat that bacon, or . . . ?”

  It was sweet the way he looked after me. The way he didn’t want to hurt me any more than I was already hurting. But we both knew that conversation was coming, and that it would be coming soon.

  Just not today, Duckie. Not today.

  I nudged him with my elbow again. “I thought you were watching your girlish figure.”

  Rolling his eyes, he stole my remaining slice of bacon and shook it at me in a chastising way. “Honey, you’ve been gone six weeks. That diet has passed. Back to bacon and real life. Speaking of real life . . . when are you coming back to school? Your mom seems to think you need a week at home first.”

  I took a sip of orange juice. I was hoping it would be sweet, but it tasted sour. Bitter, even. “I’m going back tomorrow.”

  “You should probably tell her that.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Why the rush?”

  I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could manage. “Like you said . . . back to bacon and real life.”

  “At times they are one and the same, my friend. One and the same.” A good, honest laugh escaped me. Duckie was so absurd. He had a way of making sense of the senseless and the exact opposite too. There was little wonder why we were friends.

  “It’s good to hear you laugh. Maybe the medication is working after all, eh?” My mom walked back into the room with the exact wrong thing to say. It was almost like feeling clouds roll in before a storm. My laughter stopped immediately, caught in my throat, almost choking me.

  If only.

  I wanted to tell her that depression doesn’t work that way. That just because you have a moment of laughter and smiles and fun doesn’t mean that you’re not depressed. But I didn’t say anything. Instead, I thought about scissors and X-Acto knives, and how accessible such things would be at school.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Whoever decided that teenagers should have to function and focus on math and grammar so early in the morning was clearly a sadist. My morning routine was brutal and took longer than I remembered, but after I showered, I dressed in two layered skirts that just barely reached my knee-high socks. I wore a baggy button-down shirt covered by a baggier cardigan sweater and fingerless gloves. The outfit was meant to cover my scars—which it did, quite successfully. The color palette was meant to blend in with the walls. Cream and various shades of gray. If I was lucky, no one at school would really notice me.

  Duckie pulled into the driveway at 6:45, but I heard him coming from at least a mile away. His car, the mishmashed antique pile of rust we affectionately referred to as the Beast, was a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle. Where it wasn’t rusted, it was yellow, and the interior had been covered in green faux fur that reminded me of the Muppet monsters. It had a radio, but it only got two stations on AM and would only play cassettes. The backseat was missing half its covering, so whenever anybody sat on that side, they were sitting on bare foam. The Beast also had two distinct smells: Fritos or whatever air freshener Duckie remembered to bring. It was a horrible car: it guzzled gas like a man stumbling out of the desert might guzzle water, and every time Duckie put it in park, it would backfire loudly.

  Naturally, it was Duckie’s prized possession, and we both loved it dearly.

  I opened the passenger-side door and slid into the Beast, relieved that Duckie had remembered some air freshener. He smiled at me as I closed the door and put on my seat belt. “You ready for this?”

  I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t lie to Duckie about that. I wasn’t ready to walk into a high school I’d thought I’d left forever. I shook my head at him and slid down some in my seat. Duckie didn’t say anything in response. He just looked at me all concerned and put the Beast in drive. We didn’t talk during our ten-minute commute. Mostly because I didn’t know what to say. I was relieved that Duckie didn’t say anything more either. I didn’t want to be caught up on the latest gossip or pretend that this was a normal day. I just wanted to get through it and get home. Like ripping a Band-Aid off.

  Duckie parked as close to the school as he could, which was very different from his usual spot. Normally, he’d park in the back of the lot so we could take our time getting to the building and facing all the crap that came with being in high school. When I threw a questioning glance his way, he said, “In c
ase you need a quick getaway.”

  His words lifted the corner of my mouth in a hint of a smile. So much for his pledge to bring me straight to school and straight home afterward. Duckie was probably the best friend that anyone could ask for. He got it. He got me. Without me having to say a word, he knew how I was feeling. And he’d always been that way with me. I wondered if he’d suspected my intentions before I went to Black River, or if he suspected them now. I hoped not. Better that he not know. But if anyone could read my mind, it was Duckie. It was probably the most frustrating thing about being friends with him.

  We’d arrived well after the buses, which meant fewer people in the parking lot or milling about outside. Once we stepped inside, it was another story entirely. Students, teachers, tons of the usual people were everywhere I looked. And it felt like all eyes were on me with each step I took down the hall.

  Familiar faces seemed strange to me, as if I were looking at old photographs instead of living in the moment. Penny Curtis, Steve Hillard, Quentin Daly—all kids I knew. All friends I’d regularly hung out with. These were people who’d helped me decorate the gym for school dances, who’d pulled pranks on substitute teachers with me just for kicks. I’d known them all since I was in pigtails and sundresses. But they looked at me now like I was an apparition of some sort, something not quite tangible. I was a stranger to them. A ghost. How fitting.

  Duckie pretended not to notice the stares, but that didn’t make them any less real. He pulled open the door to the main office, and we went inside. Mrs. Kellog was sitting behind the front desk, glasses perched on the end of her nose, her favorite ugly, ruffled flower shirt still as ruffled and ugly and flower-covered as I remembered. I cleared my throat to get her attention, and when she looked at me, I said, “Hi. I’m returning to class today after an extended absence. I believe my mom sent an email . . . ?”

  With a heavy I-hate-my-job sigh, she slapped a pink piece of paper on the receptionist’s desk beside the chained-down pen. She looked at me over the rims of her glasses. “What’s the reason for your absence?”