Crazy (26 page)

CRAZY GLUE
:
Aren't you forgetting about us?

You're a figment of my imagination.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that, goob.

Just leave me alone.

I feel pretty good. I feel more like myself, my real self, not the scared-of-my-shadow self, than I have in a long, long time. Yeah, I'm calmer now, and I'm not so afraid of what's going to happen next. I even feel—surprise, surprise—less guilty and less angry at my mom. I know she didn't have a stroke on purpose. I know that. And I like remembering her. I just miss her. I need her so much. If only...

Nora turns onto the street where the Lynches live and I see a row of cars, a lot like the row out in front of Shelby's house, but here they're in front of the Lynches' house.

"What's going on up there?" Nora says. She slows down and we creep along the street.

As we draw closer to the house, I see a police car, and all my old feelings of dread and anxiety spring back to life. What's going on? I sit forward in my seat. "You can let me out here. Just let me out, okay? I need to get out of the car."

"Jason, what's going on?" Shelby turns around to look at me.

"I don't know. All the lights are on in the house. Just stop the car. I need to get out."

Nora stops and I jump out.

Shelby pokes her head out the window. "Should we wait?"

"No, go on. Thanks for the ride. I gotta go."

I recognize Sam's car parked in front of the patrol car and I think of Dad. Has something happened to him? I run across the lawn, my feet crunching in old crusted snow. I leap onto the stoop and open the front door. "Hello," I call out. "Where is everybody? What's going on?"

A rush of people come out of the kitchen into the hallway—Mrs. Lynch first, then two police officers, then some man I don't know, and Captain Lynch and Sam, and then two other women, one carrying Gwen in her arms.

"Jason, thank goodness! Where have you been?" Mrs. Lynch says.

"Why? What's happened? What's going on? Is my dad all right?" I look at Sam and then at the police officers.

"What's happened, Jason, is that you've been missing for the past three hours," Captain Lynch says, breaking through the small group to get to the front and face me.

"What? I haven't been missing. I didn't run away,
if that's what you're thinking." I glance at Mrs. Lynch's angry face and then at Cap's. He looks like he wants to knock my head off.

"Where have you been, son?" one of the police officers asks me.

"Jeez. I was just at a friend's house."

"What friend? We called the friends on the list the school gave us," Mrs. Lynch says, pulling a folded piece of paper out of her pocket.

"Shelby Majors. I was with Shelby Majors."

"We called there and spoke to Mr. Majors. He said you weren't there," Mrs. Lynch says.

"What? Jeez, what is this?" Why are they making such a federal case out of the fact that I went over to a friend's house? What do they think I was doing over there?

SEXY LADY
:
Oh, I can think of a few things.

"I was there," I say. "Her sister just drove me home." I pull my hair. "Shelby gave me this haircut."

"Mr. Majors said you weren't there," Cap says in a tone indicating the matter's closed.

"Well then," I say, getting irritated, "he was wrong. Look, his wife just died today, okay? Shelby's mom died today. So I went over there to see her."

"In the middle of class? Without calling us first?" Mrs. Lynch says.

"What? What is this?" I flap my arms, slapping them against my thighs. "I'm almost fifteen years old.
I've been in charge of my own life for a long time and now suddenly I'm what? I'm supposed to ask permission from perfect strangers if I want to go somewhere?"

The same police officer who spoke last time interrupts us. "Well, looks like he's safe, so I think we'll leave him to you, now. Good night, Captain Lynch, Mrs. Lynch."

Then everybody leaves, including Sam, who gives me the eye and says on his way out, his voice stern, "We'll be in touch, Jason."

The three strangers are Gwen's birth parents and her caseworker. They leave with Gwen to go out to dinner. Then Cap closes the door, and I'm alone with him and Mrs. Lynch.

"Jason," he says, "we'll finish our conversation in the living room." He gestures toward the room. I follow behind Mrs. Lynch and sit down in a chair across from the sofa where the two of them sit.

LAUGH TRACK
:
Uh-oh!

The walls of the room have been decorated with African masks, Peruvian rugs, and a set of ancient-looking pistols, stuff I figure Cap collected during his naval travels. The masks, with their turned-down mouths and their creepy, missing eyeballs, stare at me from behind the Lynches, so I've got several faces watching me with disapproving expressions.

"So you think you should be able to go wherever you please whenever you please, is that right?" Cap says.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Yup!

I shrug. "Pretty much, yeah. You're not my parents. You're never going to be my parents, if that's what you think, so—"

Mrs. Lynch interrupts me. "So if you were expecting to come home tonight and we were gone, gone for three hours after we had told you we would be here, you would think what? How would you feel?"

CRAZY GLUE
:
Ooh, good one.

I look down at my lap. "Worried, I guess," I say.

"Is that okay if we make you worry? Is it okay if we take off on vacation, say, and leave for a few days without telling you? After all, you're not our
real
son, so why should we tell you where we're going, right?" Mrs. Lynch says, totally irritated.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Zing!

"I don't know. I hadn't thought of it that way. I mean, today"—I look up—"I wasn't really thinking of anything. I didn't
not
tell you where I was on purpose. I just didn't think about it. I was kind of upset."

"Even upset, Jason, you have a responsibility to those who care about you," Cap says. "And like it or not, we not only care about you, but we're in charge of caring for you, and that means that you never on any condition make us worry like that. Do you hear me?"

I stare at the two of them sitting on the couch and picture my own parents sitting there giving me this lecture. I know my mom would have said the samething they just said to me, and Dad would have, too, in his right mind. I nod. "Yeah, uh—yes, sir, I hear you. I guess I'm not used to thinking about people worrying about me. Lately, I've always been the one doing the worrying."

"It's no fun, is it?" Mrs. Lynch says.

I shake my head and feel myself getting choked up like I might start crying any second as I think of the times Dad disappeared. I had been so scared. Anything could have happened to him. No, it's no fun worrying about where people are when they're supposed to be right there with you, no fun at all. I stare at my lap, sucking in my cheeks to keep from crying, and just sit.

"Well then, all right," Mrs. Lynch says after a long silence. "Why don't we all go have some dinner? I don't know about you two, but I'm starving."

The two of them stand up, so I do, too, and I follow them into the kitchen, where we put together a mess of chicken salad sandwiches and heat up some soup. Then, while I set the table, putting the fork on the left and the knife and spoon on the right, with the glass as an exclamation point over the knife, just the way Mrs. Lynch tells me to do, I decide that all this feels okay, the anger, the lecture, and now setting the table according to Mrs. Lynch's instructions. Yeah, it feels normal, sane. A guy could get used to this.

Dear Mouse:

A couple of nights ago on the way home from practice, I ran over some kind of animal. All I could see was the flash of white just as it ran under my wheels. I couldn't stop. I know I hit it. I killed a live creature! I can't get over this. I know some people think it's no big deal—so you killed a squirrel or whatever—but to me it is a big deal. How do I get over this? How do I deal with my guilt? Please don't say I'm being silly. This matters to me.

Deadly Driver

Dear D.D.:

I like animals, too, so I think I would feel like you if this happened to me. But you didn't mean to do it. If you could have prevented it from happening, you would have, right? I mean, you didn't do it on purpose. And you can't fix the past. It happened. So now I guess all you can do is be careful driving and maybe do something good for some other animal. What's the use of feeling guilty? It won't bring the animal back to life, so feel sad and then
do something for the animals in the world that are still alive and need our help.
So
like, forgive yourself.

Mouse

Okay, I know, I stole a little bit from Dr. Gomez, but I've been thinking about what she said. Maybe there was something I could have done for my mom when she had her stroke, but I don't think so, really. I think I've just been carrying around a useless sack of guilt over it and even more guilt over my dad having to go into the hospital. All that stuff's in the past. All I can do is fix the present. So I'm trying to let go of feeling guilty, and, funny thing, I feel less and less angry at my mom the more I let go of feeling guilty about her dying. And I think it's weird how I didn't even know I was angry with her. I didn't know how guilty I felt until the other day in Dr. Gomez's office when I went berserk. So I think I forgive myself. I think I'm feeling better now—sort of.

The rest of my first week back at school is the best week I've had in a long time. I feel like an honest-to-goodness normal person.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Lets not get carried away, goob. We're still here, aren't we?

SEXY LADY
:
He needs us.

AUNT BEE
:
It's all right. He knows we're just a figment of his imagination.

That's right. That's what I keep telling you.

So I go to school each day wearing decent clothes
and a decent haircut. I've got friends—real friends—and they're happy to see me, and the teachers are helpful about my getting caught up with my schoolwork.

After school each day I go home, eat a snack, and do my homework. After dinner I go to the club with Cap, and we shoot baskets or swim for an hour or so. Then I come home and read or something and go to bed.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Aren't you leaving something out?

AUNT BEE
:
Some things should be private.

CRAZY GLUE
:
He's the one who's opened his life to the whole world here.

All right, yeah, I cry myself to sleep every night. But it's a good cry. I cry over my mom. I think about her. I remember our hikes together and her teaching me stuff about photography, and junk like that, and it's just, I miss her. I really miss her. And my dad. I'm all he has.

Anyway, as sad as I feel every night going to sleep, somehow every morning I wake up feeling great, as if I've washed away a little more of my grief and guilt every time I cry.

The hardest part of the week is Thursday morning at Shelby's mother's funeral, but even that turns out all right. At first I didn't want to go. I thought the funeral would be way too painful for me. I didn't tell Shelby this, but she must have noticed the way I was dragging my feet about going, because she took my hands and squeezed them, and told me she needed me there. "I need my friends by my side," she said.

"Then I'll be there," I said to her.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Aw, she needs you.

I borrow a suit from Haze, who surprised me because I never would have expected him to own even one suit, and he owns two. We look so different all suited up, Haze, Pete, and I, like waiters at a fancy restaurant. It makes us act different, too, more formal, more dignified, that is until the actual funeral service where I cry like crazy ... and I didn't even know Shelby's mother.

We didn't have a funeral for my mom. She was cremated. We have her ashes in an urn in Dad's study. I've decided I want to scatter them on top of Mount Washington some day 'cause I've realized that my mom had her stroke doing what she loved to do. She was on her favorite mountain, looking out at her favorite view.

Shelby seems different during the funeral, too. She seems older, more mature. For one thing, she's wearing a dress, a form-fitting dress, and I can't help noticing her form. She's hot!

SEXY LADY
:
I get the feeling I'm being replaced.

She looks really beautiful with her hair pulled back in this kind of knot thing, and she wears these tiny dangling earrings. Yeah, she looks beautiful, and still a bit fragile in her grief, and it makes me feel protective of her. I think Haze and Pete feel the same way, because the three of us stay really close to Shelby. We hold her hand, put our arms around her, hug her a lot, make sure she eats something at the reception. We stand
beside her like bodyguards while people offer her their condolences (man, I hate that word), and we make sure no one talks her ear off. But Shelby holds her own, acting like the hostess. She's gracious to everyone, the teachers and other students who have come, her parents' friends, and her relatives, and even her sister and father, who both talk like they're the ones who stayed by Mrs. Majors's side throughout her illness.

By lunchtime, we're all back in school sitting in Dr. Gomez's office for our usual Thursday session. Even Shelby surprises us and returns to school, leaving her father and sister to deal with the relatives and friends still at the house.

We sit on the floor of Dr. Gomez's office, eating from a plate of brownies and cookies Shelby brought with her from the reception, and we talk about the funeral. All of us feel kind of giddy for some reason, so instead of sounding sad and mournful, we crack jokes and make fun of one another.

"Jason, you were such a crybaby," Shelby says, jabbing her elbow in my side. "I couldn't look at you at all during the service or I would have totally lost it."