Love Like Crazy

by Megan Squires

  The thing that movies failed to mention was the fact that when someone ran toward a person, that other person was usually running away.

  “Eppie!”

  Leaving him in the rain, under a cloud of deep gray and in a consuming fog, I ran away from everything I recently knew to be good in my life.

  The crazy thing was, it sure felt a lot like jumping.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Lincoln: Are there ways to hate someone, yet still peaceably communicate with them?

  The glow from my phone illuminated the room instantly, spreading shards of light into each corner the way a flashlight does during a game of shadow-puppets. My lamp looked like a crane and the slats on the back of my chair resembled jail bars as they duplicated onto the wall in a blackened outline.

  I rubbed my eyes to bring the room and the numbers from the alarm clock into focus. 2:34 a.m.

  Me: I don’t hate you, Lincoln.

  It took two tries to get that message punched out correctly. My fingers hadn’t woken up just yet.

  Lincoln: I was referring to my own state of self-loathing, actually. I’m wondering if there is a way to run through this internal dialogue in any other manner than the one that constantly says, “Just shut up, you nimrod. You have no right to words, anyway.”

  Me: You have a right to words, Lincoln.

  Lincoln: But you didn’t want to hear the ones I hoped to speak.

  I rolled onto my back and held the phone up above me, a slow smile pulling at my lips. My biceps trembled when they were suspended like this, but I ignored them for the moment and continued my text.

  Me: Because I’ve heard them before. Lincoln, I’ve heard it ALL before. Believe me. I just didn’t want to ever hear those words coming from your mouth.

  Lincoln: Will you please let me explain myself? Then, if you despise everything I have to say, you can revoke my right to speech.

  Me: If only I wielded so much power, to possess control over your first amendment right ;)

  I had to flip onto my stomach; my shaky, weak arms just couldn’t take anymore.

  Lincoln: You possess control over my right to the pursuit of happiness, and that’s just as bad.

  Me: So I’ve effectively made you a sad mute?

  Delirium had settled in, tainting my words with an even sillier banter than we were accustomed to. But it felt good. So much better than yelling at him in the street in the pouring down rain. I’d always thought a scene like that would be so satisfying, thrilling even. But it was nothing if not absolutely horrible. Fighting with Lincoln was horrible, no way around it.

  Another text.

  Lincoln: Precisely. I’m a sad mute. Just like that mime at the circus with the painted white face and permanently drawn frown. Sam is, in fact, suffering from flashbacks. It’s a bad situation we’re all in over here, Eppie. Please rescue us from this quiet, clowny hell we’re in.

  I giggled at that, even though I was still trying desperately hard to cling to any ounce of frustration I could muster up toward Lincoln. I sucked at mustering.

  Me: Okay. Then talk.

  Lincoln: Open your window.

  My phone dropped onto my pillow.

  I scooped it back up quickly.

  Me: What?

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The quilted comforter was off in a flurry. And then I panicked. I’d only been wearing an oversized t-shirt I’d won at a triple-A baseball game I went to with Philly a few years back. Remarkably, I’d caught it when they’d fired it into the stands out of one of those big guns that sometimes shot out burritos, sometimes balled up apparel. It had the horrifically inappropriate phrase, “Come on down to Leesle’s Automotive. We like 4-play,” on it, featuring a pixelated graphic of a truck, motorcycle, van, and car, one in each quadrant. It was awful, so I ripped it over my head and raced to my closet to clothe myself in something less... well, just something not that shirt.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Oh crap, what if he could somehow see in? The room was so dark that I stumbled my way around, worrying that if I flicked on a light, I’d be silhouetted just like those furniture shadow-puppets. I did not need my meager breasts showcased in that way. They didn’t need to be showcased at all.

  Picking a pair of navy yoga pants and my dad’s old Cornell college sweatshirt out of the hamper, I slipped into them quickly and then drew back the aluminum blinds covering my window.

  Sure enough, like a bird or some stray cat, Lincoln was perched on the other side. On my roof. Lincoln was sitting on my roof.

  He twisted at the waist, holding up his phone and waving it to me.

  I retrieved mine from my bed.

  Lincoln: What’s taking so long in there?

  Me: Wardrobe malfunction.

  He smiled as he received my text.

  Lincoln: I would’ve been happy to help out with your malfunctioning wardrobe.

  I shook my head and he shrugged like he was nothing but absolutely innocent, and then I pulled on the lever to the window, unlocking it so I could slide it open. The track was dirty, filled with grit and probably the remains of a colony of dead flies, too, making the frame catch on it a little, but the screen had never been replaced so Lincoln was able to reach back and help pull it all the way open.

  “Hi,” he said, just air between us now and no glass.

  “Hi,” I said back.

  He settled in on the shake shingles again, patting the spot next to him with his palm.

  “I think I’m better off staying in here,” I admitted. “And I’m trying to decide if I should be worried by the fact that your actions are slightly stalkerish, sitting on my roof in the dead of night and all.”

  “I think what you should be more concerned with is that fact that I’ve waved to, smiled at, and exchanged pleasantries with at least three of your neighbors while up here, and not a single one of them has alerted the authorities.”

  “They must be used to crazy people hanging out on rooftops, then.”

  “Eppie.” He said my name like it hurt him. “I want you to know that I didn’t read any of those articles.”

  I think he gave up the hope of me joining him out there, so he swiveled to face me completely. His confidence had to come from his work in construction because he didn’t look like a person that was at all unsure or unsteady up at these heights, even though I knew there was fear rooted deep in him. But in truth, he was so unnaturally tall that maybe this didn’t even feel high up enough to be considered fear-worthy. Maybe it just felt like standing on tiptoe. Maybe he feared greater heights.

  “I didn’t read them,” he said once more.

  “But you wanted to.”

  “No,” he corrected quickly, shaking his head fast. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s just that my parents obviously knew your story already, and I guess I wanted to know why the version of you they supposedly knew was so different from the version of you I think I know.”

  It would’ve been easier if he had just gone ahead and read the articles. Less explaining. Less reliving. Then it would be a clean break and he’d realize most people where better off without extra drama in their lives and that he fell into that most category. I was the outlier in this.

  “Maybe the two versions aren’t so different,” I said.

  “They have to be different, Eppie.” He was almost leaning into my window, his hands hooked on to the wooden sill. “Eight-year-olds aren’t in the business of attempted suicide.”

  “And mothers shouldn’t be in the business of child abuse.”

  His shoulders sagged, a marionette whose strings had been dropped. “I’m coming in.”

  Before I could stop him, all six-foot-five of Lincoln was climbing through my window, one lanky leg at a time.

  “There.” He brushed off his pants and stood immediately in front of me, feet resolutely planted. “Give me your headline.”

  His hair was wet, long strips made darker by the rain that clung to them in beads. He shook the errant strands from his brow the way a dog s
hakes off after a bath, and looked down at me with sincerity in his eyes. Puppy dog eyes. Fitting.

  “My headline?”

  “Give me the one true headline about what happened to you, Eppie,” he said. “A simple Internet search comes up with approximately 341 articles on you and your family, but that doesn’t necessarily make any one of them true. There are an infinite number of pages relating to Sasquatch, but we all know he doesn’t even exist.” He paused, then smirked. “Well, we mostly know he doesn’t exist. Like 97% know. I’m allowing for the improbable reality of unicorns, leprechauns, trolls, and saber tooth tigers in that 3% margin, too.”

  “I think saber tooth tigers actually did exist. I’ve seen Ice Age.”

  “Okay, so more like a 2% window.” Lincoln laughed and, for a moment, I worried that my dad might hear and realize I had a boy in my room at 2:30 in the morning, but then I figured I had the advantage of Dad’s fresh drunkenness on my side, since he’d probably only gotten home a short while ago, anyway.

  As his laugh trailed off, Lincoln said, “But I’m 100% sure the girl in those news stories isn’t the girl standing in front of me right now. I’m certain, journalistically speaking, they got it all wrong. So I want yours. Gimme your best headline, Eppie. Help me understand.”

  This was hard. So much harder than any of my school assignments. Harder than any of my college application essays. I wasn’t sure I could do this, sum up my life in two sentences.

  I breathed in slowly through my nostrils. Then I puffed out the exhausted air through my mouth. The least I could do was try.

  “Eight-Year-Old Girl Seeks Help for Incurably Crazy Mother, Father’s Guilt-Ridden Stupor Leaves Her to Suffer Alone.”

  Well, that was awful.

  “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?” I asked.

  “That you weren’t trying to kill yourself.”

  “Of course I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” How that had always been the explanation, I could never figure out. “I was eight. They made it sound like I was so sick and my mom was so horrible and I just wanted to end it all.” Once the words started, they wouldn’t stop. Apparently I did have more than two sentences worth in me. “Jumping from a second story window is not likely to result in death, no matter what they say. I was trying to get help for her, Lincoln.”

  “I know.” He didn’t know, but I supposed that’s what you said when you wanted someone to keep talking. How you validated them and encouraged them to continue.

  “They were yelling downstairs like always.” It wasn’t like the memories suddenly came flooding back, because they’d always been hanging there. In fact, they were just waiting their patient turn on the tip of my tongue. With permission finally granted, they flew out of my mouth so quickly, I didn’t really even have to formulate them or prepare their delivery. They just dropped out. “Dad was angry, not drunk at that point, but mad. Mad at himself, mad at her. Mad that he’d suspected it all along, but never did anything about it. She’d been making me sick, but I didn’t know that at the time. He’d known, or at least he figured that might be the case.” There was absolutely no judgment in Lincoln’s eyes. He did a really good job of holding a flat expression, another thing I wanted to learn from him. How to both feel and how to hide that feeling. “Dad kept saying, ‘We need to get you help,’ over and over, like he was on repeat. But no one was leaving to get that help.” My voice was steady, calm. “I kept thinking, ‘Why aren’t they getting her help, then?’ If she needed it so badly, why were they still downstairs arguing and screaming? I knew I couldn’t go down there. Anytime they fought and I showed up in the middle of it, it didn’t end well for me,” I said. “So I just sat here, staring out my window. I figured it wasn’t far to fall. That I could climb out and get someone like a policeman or doctor and they would come back and help my mom. That I could be the one to help her this time.”

  Though his jaw was set and his eyes were still rounded, they gathered with water and it made me instantly feel bad. This was why I didn’t want to share this with him. This sort of reaction was exactly what I’d hoped to avoid.

  “They gave me too much credit, you know?” I said. “Like they made me out to be so much older and more worldly than I could’ve possibly been at that age. I think maybe it helped strengthen their case, to make it seem like all of the years of her mistreating me finally drove me to the edge. That she was a villain I was trying to escape from, in every possible sense of the word.” I shoved the heel of my hand to my nose and sniffed. “The age of reason. That’s what they all clung to. That I’d magically reached a time in my life where I could understand the things that adults had only been privy to before.” Lincoln’s hand reached out and softly touched my elbow, just one slight tap. “But the only thing I could understand was my heart. And in my heart, she was my mom and she needed help, and after all her years of helping me, it was finally my turn to help her. But all I ended up doing was sending her to jail, then to the hospital. Now she’s gone. Where’s the help in that?”

  Lincoln leaned over and kissed my forehead, then he pulled me into his arms. I felt his chest puff up with air, so tight it could burst, and then deflate slowly against my own.

  “But you did exactly that, Eppie. You got her help the only way you knew how.”

  I huffed. “I’m not sure if you missed the newsflash, but she was incurably ill in most people’s opinions, Lincoln. I honestly think being in that facility just made her more crazy. Plenty of people live out their crazy within the comforts of their own homes just fine.”

  “But that’s only in cases where it doesn’t directly harm those around them.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, if not reluctantly. “I guess so, if we’re only talking physical harm.”

  Lincoln looked down at me for a moment. His teeth pierced his bottom lip briefly in a way that led me to believe they were blocking some thought from coming out. Some enameled barricade. Whatever they were trying to do, they failed, because he ended up saying. “Awkward Teenager Prone to Panic Attacks Falls Incurably in Love with Tragic Girl Prone to Amazingness.”

  “You’re not awkward, Lincoln,” I shot out fast, blushing at the same time. “And I’m not at all amazing.”

  “My ego is wondering why you choose to focus on those two bookends, when the real news is that I’m incurably in love with you, Eppie.” His full lips kissed the corner of my mouth lightly. “Incurably.”

  Then his lips kissed my chin.

  Then my cheek and the corners of my eyes and then the tip of my nose and top of my forehead. Finally, like they’d been blind and were searching everything out through touch alone, they fell on my mouth.

  I hadn’t been in love before, and I assumed neither had Lincoln, because this sort of kiss was a once in a lifetime, only for your first love, type of kiss. The kind on reserve for that moment when it truly needed to come out of hiding and prove its worth. It was the kind of kiss that stopped the continuum of time and the earth’s rotation and light and sound and movement and breath.

  It was the kiss that existed in its own realm, deserving of its own category of being. The kiss to end all kisses.

  And I recognized the value in it. I knew this was something that would never happen again, at least not in this way and in this mindset and form. This moment was as unique as the boy in front of me, and as unique as the love he offered me.

  So I grabbed on to it—onto him—and fell wholeheartedly in love with Lincoln right there, like this was some combustion of all that feeling I’d stored up for him since the first day with the rotating hamster wheel and the dirty baseball cap and Namaste and peanut butter sandwiches.

  Every moment between us—each interaction, every word spoken—stacked one on top of the other until they filled up every hole in my heart, plugging it, repairing it.

  Love was not a feeling anymore. It wasn’t a four letter word. It wasn’t even a word at all.

  Love was a tall, gangly boy with floppy brown hair and an asymmetrical smile
whose heart beat against my cheek and whose words made me insane, but for all the right reasons.

  Lincoln was all of that, and all of that was love.

  I wondered if I was that for him, too. If I’d become a definition of a word so powerful people died for it. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever ascribing that sort of importance to me. It seemed blasphemous, almost.

  “I’m so much in love with you, Eppie.”

  I pulled away to tell him, “I’m so much in love with you, too,” not wanting to waste a moment between his declaration and my reciprocation. Wanting the moment to be one continuous thing.

  And then we were kissing again, this one different from the last.

  His hands were gripped on my hips, both of his thumbs teasing up the hem of my sweatshirt, touching my bare skin, but not touching it in unison, so it made me focus all of my attention on one side first where one finger rested, and then the other. There was no rhythm to it; it was all frantic energy leaving Lincoln in the tips of his fingers.

  I was sucking on his bottom lip, feeling weird at the amount of sucking I was doing. Like he’d look back and all he would remember was me mauling his lip as though it were a pacifier. So I stopped sucking, mostly because I didn’t want him to remember it that way. But I doubted boys did that—I doubted they had analogies for kissing maneuvers. And I doubted they had running commentaries forming in their heads as they kissed because seriously, who did that?

  I needed to just shut up and go with it.

  So I did. I went with it.

  And going with it looked a lot like letting Lincoln take the lead. Those fingers on my hips moved up, brushing against my ribs, feeling each one. Was he counting them? How many ribs was I supposed to have, anyway?

  I breathed into his mouth.

  Breathe, just breathe.

  I could do that. After all, I’d been doing it my whole life. But not like this. Never before had I needed to continue breathing while doing something so detrimental to my normally regulated, consistent breathing routine. People hyperventilated as a result of the types of breaths this kiss made me breathe.