Call Me Crazy (14 page)

“I can do that,” she eventually says, laying the folder down on the floor. She waits patiently, body relaxed, hands in her lap and eyes showing genuine interest in what I have to say.

I suck in a deep breath and the words come with it as I exhale. They pour from me like a river, its dam failing and raging water that has been set free. I tell her it’s the visitor—Trey, that he doesn’t know that I am a patient and that Candy has been helping me keep him in the dark. I tell her about our first meeting on the bench and about the day that Candy told him I went out swimming with friends, implying that other guys were there as well. I tell her that I’m glad he was jealous, but then he was gone for three days. I explain exactly how low and hurt I had felt. I know that I’m smiling foolishly when I tell her about our talk when he finally came back and about his honesty regarding his feelings.

I feel the words flying out of my mouth, one right after the other, and frankly some of them might be so jumbled that she misses them entirely. I cannot help it. I need to get it out, to get it off my chest so that I
can breathe.

My heart speeds up as I tell her about today, about the past two days. How he had come every day and just sat with me. Sometimes we talked non-stop and then sometimes we just sat, both trying not to get caught staring at one another, until Trey ultimately just said, “to hell with it, you’re beautiful and I want to stare at you.” Yes, I inwardly swooned and I’m not ashamed.

Finally, all of it is out. I watch doc’s face and can tell that she is searching for something un-psychobabble-ish to say.

She clears her throat before she speaks. “You like him.”

Okay, so it’s not the earth–shattering, squealing response I would normally get from Natalie, but I accept it.

It isn’t a question. But I treat it like it is.

“I do. Very much.”

“He’s kind, attentive, funny, intelligent, and obviously very caring since he comes to see his mother every day.”

I’m not catching on to why she is stating the obvious, so I just nod.

“You feel a close, strong connection to him because you have spent time getting to know one another
but haven’t taken the next step of becoming physical.”

I frown. “Doc, this is starting to sound like babble.”

“I am simply trying to understand you and because I am not the type of person to tease you with sex talk or fantasize for you about what your babies would look like. I will try to help you break down the walls and separate the feelings that are overwhelming you.”

I roll my eyes and toss my hands up. “Well, you tried. I’ll give you that much. So, get on with it. Examine, peel away, carve out, or whatever other description you like to use.

“You’re being released in two days. You have shown that you have the ability to reasonably cope with difficult situations. You have developed relationships instead of seeking solitude. Your medicine is working. You will have a week and a half to acclimate yourself back into everyday life before you start school. You need that time, Tally. You need to see that you are in the driver’s seat and the disease is no longer in control.”

I sit there staring at her, unblinking, still as a statue. My mi
nd is still stuck on the words,
You’re being released in two days.
I feel as though a baseball bat, swung by the world’s greatest batter, has just nailed me in the stomach. I try to catch my breath, try to get even a millimeter of air into my cut-off wind pipe. My mind is screaming at me, telling me that I should be ecstatic. I should feel proud that I have come so far from that scared, broken girl who crawled in here nearly three months ago.

“Tally!” The demanding tone of her voice snaps me back from my growing fear.

“How can you be sure that I’m ready?” I sit staring at her. My veins feel like they are filling with ice and my heart feels that at any second it will cease beating.

“You have been able to maintain a friendship with a guy that hurt you and you didn’t lash out. Instead, you reacted in a rational manner. I know that it’s hard, but you are taking control.”

“I’ve lied to him so that he would think that I am normal, that I’m not some F'd up girl who cuts her arms when she can’t cope anymore. How’s that for rational?” My words are sharp and I’m shaking: with anger, fear, or pain. I don’t know which. Possibly all of them.

“I don’t think that was irrational behavior. I think that was a girl who has been rejected by her peers and her parents because of something that is beyond her control, who saw an opportunity to have someone see her as something other than a mental health patient.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“I didn’t say that,” she tells me as she leans forward in her chair. Her eyes are filled with fierce determination, but also with hope. “You need to tell him the truth before you leave. He deserves that much and you need the closure. He has been good for you, even if he didn’t know the truth. He has helped you to realize that you are still a human being with feelings that can be good. He gave you something nobody else has bothered or could give you.”

“What?” I choke out, not realizing that tears are slowly falling from my eyes. “What has he given me?” I ask again, attempting to control my quivering lip and hiccupping breaths.

“That is for you to figure out. Consider it your final assignment.” She stands up and I realize that the session is over. It’s over and I still don’t know what just happened. One minute I’m pouring out my heart about Trey and the next I’m told that I’m leaving.

As I leave doc’s office, I walk slowly, as if on autopilot, retreating to my room, the only place that I can call my own. As I turn the corner, my eyes land, not on my door, but on the figure standing in front of it.

Trey’s mom is standing there, her arms folded across her chest, leaning against the wall as if she has nowhere else to be, which, she didn’t. As I reach her, I mentally say a quick thank you to Trey for telling me her name yesterday. I try to smile and I wonder if it is convincing, but suddenly I don’t care.

“Tally,” Lolotea says curtly.

“Hi Lolotea, it’s nice to finally meet you.” I’m begging her in my mind to just go. We’ve met now please go. App
arently, she can’t read minds.

“It is time that I speak with you.” Her words sound oddly formal and I realize that I don’t want to speak with her. I want to hide. I want to run. Fight or flight. Candy already pinned me as a flight kind of girl. Instead, my feet are moving of their own accord, following Lolotea down the hall.

We reach what must be her room and an ominous feeling envelopes me as she closes the door. The feeling is heavy and I think that it just might drop me to the ground.

“You are lying to my son.”

Okay, we’re just going to skip the pleasantries. Fine. My day has already gone to shit. Let’s just top it off with a good verbal thrashing from Trey’s crazy mom.

“It’s complicated.” I cannot believe I just said that and the tightening of her lips and narrowing of her eyes tells me that she can’t believe it either.

“I may be in a mental hospital, but I am not dense. So please, un-complicate it for me.”

This was not my plan for tonight and I fight the urge to stomp my foot and tell her how I was supposed to be curled up in a ball on my bed freaking out. But I won’t say that, not to Trey’s mother.

“I have bipolar disorder. Everyone knows it: my parents, my friends, the entire freaking school. The fact that I am in a mental hospital is the gossip of the century. People whisper around me and refuse to look me in the eyes, like at any second I’ll snap and start screaming that the voices won’t shut up.” I’m crying again and it pisses me off. I wipe my eyes, frantically trying to clear them, to remove the evidence of how badly all of it has hurt me, is still hurting me.

“Trey treated you normally.” Her voice is softer, gentler, and when I look at her through the wetness in my eyes, I see understanding in them, not the condemnation from minutes ago. “He saw you, not the disease.”

My knees shake with the effort to hold my body up and I reach to the wall for support.

“He loves you.”

NO
, I scream inside, but outside I calmly shake my head.

“No, he doesn’t. He can’t love me. We’ve only known each other a week. Plus, he doesn’t know me, not really. He knows the Tally I wanted him to know.”

“I disagree. He knows the Tally who doesn’t have to pretend to be okay because everyone is judging her every move, her every word. He knows the Tally who is able to be exactly who she really is because, in his eyes, she is not broken. She is whole.”

“But I’m not. I’m not whole.”

“With him, you are.”

Her words reverberate in my head as a sob escapes my erratic breathing. That’s it, that’s all I can take. Without looking back, I turn, fling the door open, and rush into the hall. I reach for the rationality that Dr. Stacey is so sure that I have and collect myself enough to not be a spectacle. I hold it together just long enough to reach my room. Now, all bets are off. I let the tears loose and give in to the shame of what I have done. Pain
, as though a knife were plunging into my chest, rips through my heart. But would I bask in that pain? Physical pain: that I can handle. Physical pain I would welcome with open arms. But this anguish, terror, and indignity that is running through my veins, wrapped around my nerves, and invading my mind, I can’t handle. This pain stays once the tears have run out. The dull ache of it stays with me like a festering wound that refuses to heal.

I don’t hear the door open and only vaguely register the arms wrapping around me, offering me comfort that I do not deserve. I have no idea how long I lay on the cold floor. I don’t care anymore.

“Pinky,” I hear the worry in Candy’s voice. “The dumbest thing a person asks in these situations is ‘are you all right,’ because it’s obvious that you definitely aren’t all right. So I have concluded a better question is, ‘who do I need to kill?’”

I want to laugh, I really do, but there is no laughter in me. The laughter left once I decided to accept that what I had done was selfish, and so very, very wrong.

“Sit up, Tally.” She uses her firm,
I won’t take any crap
, voice. Out of habit, I obey. I lean back against the wall and she sits beside me.

We sit like that, no words, just nothing, and I feel myself putting up the walls that had taken months to tear down. It was the only way I was going survive what I knew I had to do. 

“You’re not going to tell him are you?” Candy finally asks.

“I can’t.” My voice is hoarse from the tears and weeping. I try to clear it but it’s useless.

“It doesn’t have to end just because you’re leaving.”

“Yes, it does. He would find out the truth if we kept seeing each other.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” she asks.

I look over at her, feeling lost by her words.

“You of all people should understand. I would not survive seeing the revulsion, or worse, the pity, that I would see in his eyes. I’m used to seeing that look every day from my parents. I need to remember the way we have been together. I need untainted memories of the tiny bit of time I stole with him.”

I can tell she wants to argue, but she stops herself and just pats my leg. “Okay,” she relents.

“Do you have a plan for leaving?” she asks me.

“Haven’t really made it that far, yet.”

“Do you want to see him one more time?”

“No.” My answer is swift and rings with a finality that I can’t escape.

“Today is Tuesday. You aren’t leaving until Thursday.” She points out unnecessarily.

“Then I guess I need to leave sooner.”

I see Candy’s wheels turning as she considers my words.

“We’ll need Zeke. Are your parents coming?”

“No, I’m eighteen, I can sign myself out, and Dr. Stacey agreed that that would probably be best.”

Candy nods and then stands up, moaning and groaning and mumbling something about getting old being a bitch. “I’m going to go get Zeke, we’re going to get this planned and then you are going to get some sleep.”

“Yes Aunt Candy,” I say as I roll my eyes and cringe because they hurt from me digging my hands into them trying to stay the tears.

~

Exactly twenty two minutes from the time Candy left my room in search of Zeke we have a plan. It sucks, but unless I’m ready to bear my shame and truth to Trey, which by the way that’s a big freaking
hell no
, then this is the best I’ve got.

“I’m glad you’re getting to leave Tally, but I’m going to miss you.” Zeke’s smiles at me and I wonder again how someone so large can be so gentle. He hugs me and because I’m falling apart, I hug him back. “You don’t worry about a thing, Candy and I will make sure he doesn’t find out.”

“Thank you, Zeke,” I whisper to him before I finally let go.

I look over at Candy, not really expecting any sappy words.

“You aren’t really leaving tomorrow brat, so I’m not giving you any blubbering or goodbyes.”

I smile at her and realize that not only am I going to miss Candy, but I was losing a piece of myself. Candy holds a special place in my heart, and so that piece will stay with her when I leave. That’s what sucks about giving away your heart, whether to friends or lovers, if you love completely then you never get that piece back.