Normalish (5 page)

Sucker Punched

A sucker punch happens when a person is completely relaxed and casual.
Unsuspecting. They might be standing around, talking to a friend, maybe laughing a little. Everything’s completely fine and normal until someone comes along and—without warning—punches them right in the solar plexus—the body’s core. At first the person who’s been punched doesn’t feel pain; shock is the body’s first sensation. Then, in the few seconds that it takes for the brain to process what’s just happened to the body, the pain hits. Hard.
That
is a sucker punch, and it’s probably no coincidence that half of the phrase is the word “sucker,” as in the one who receives the punch.

The sucker in my situation was me. Or at least that’s the best way I can describe the sensation I experienced when Anthony walked past me after second period the Monday after Chelsea’s party, giving me a nod and a “HeyStacyhowsitgoing,” all fast, said at once. He didn’t stop; he didn’t do any of the things I’d planned while I waited at home—all day Sunday—for his call.

I
could
have gone to the movies and then out for sushi with Mom and Jill, but no. I waited. And nothing.

We were supposed to live happily ever after. While I was busy planning our future together, writing
Stacy Zarate
over and over to see how it looked, he apparently forgot to call me. Total amnesiac case I’m thinking.

I thought for sure when I saw him at school, he’d run to me with his arms open and sweep me up. We’d pick right up where we left off. I could just picture it in my head. Oh, he’d have some excuse for why he didn’t call me. A very good excuse. He’d apologize, and then he’d take my books that I was holding with one hand, take my hand with his other hand, and walk me to my next class. He’d give me a soft kiss and tell me how beautiful I looked. This was how it was going to go.

So I waited where I knew he’d see me after second period. I was a little nervous—almost giddy with excitement.
Wait—there he is! I see him!

He looked at me and nodded.

“Hey, Stacy. How’s it going?”

“Hi, Anthony!” I waited, smiling my brightest smile, face turned towards him. One one-thousand, two one-thousand.

He turned the other way, kept
right on walking.

He gave me the brush-off. That’s it.

I was like a deflated balloon. I’d been sucker punched, and I really don’t know what else to say about it.

Anthony is a sadist/jerk.

I’ll never figure out why he did that to me. I’ll never figure out why he reached into my soul, ripped my heart out (while it was still beating), threw it down on the ground, and then crushed it under the heel of his motorcycle boot.

Maybe he likes to collect girls like other boys collect action figures or video games?

Curse you, Anthony. I curse the day I met you. You and your muscles and your perfect teeth.

Poor, brokenhearted, loser me.

Epic Romance Fail.

Becca Has Been Acting Strange
(Stranger Than Usual)

Talking about mental illness is kind of like talking about death.
I mean in the way that it’s another subject people seem uncomfortable with. It’s not contagious, as far as I know—I don’t think you can
catch
crazy—but still, it makes people feel self-conscious and awkward. Which is why I’d been keeping Becca’s strangeness to myself.

As if my life weren’t horrible enough—so much so that a list of the ways in which it blows would just be overkill at this point—Becca has been acting strange (stranger) lately.

First it was little things, like her flying off the handle, calling me names, and slamming the bathroom door in my face. Then it moved on to more and more bizarre behavior.

First, she dyed her hair black with hot pink streaks. She also pierced her nose (with a cute little diamond stud) and pierced her ears in the high part where it looks like it would be very painful. She now has multiple piercings and those little plugs that stretch the earlobes out in a gross way.

That wasn’t such a big deal. I thought she was just going for the intense artist/writer look since she’s editor of the school newspaper this year. And it kind of matches Roman’s skinny-jeans, all-black clothing emo look.

Second—but much more strange—she told me that she thought our neighbor Mrs. Chu was spying on us.

The thing about Mrs. Chu: she’s about eighty-five years old and walks with one of those delicate little sun umbrellas. She lives with her daughter, and whenever she’s out walking, she seems to always be on the verge of tipping over. Of all the people to suspect of spying, Mrs. Chu isn’t one of them.

Third, last week when I came home from school, I could tell she and Roman had had a fight
and
she was smoking. Becca’s never smoked in her life, and suddenly she’s sitting there smoking like a chimney and writing furiously in her journal, giving me the silent treatment. When she’d finish with one cigarette, she’d use it to light the next one. (She probably raided Mom’s secret stash of stress cigarettes that we totally know about.)

Lastly, Becca’s putting syrup on everything lately.

There are other things too, and when I brought it up to Mom, she didn’t want to talk about it. When I brought it up to Jill, she laughed it off as Becca just being Becca.

But when Becca cut the sleeves off almost all of her clothes Sunday night, Mom freaked. (She said she did it because she was hot, but the weather’s been cool lately.) She even cut the sleeves off the expensive black cocktail dress Aunt Linda gave her last Christmas.

So I guess I’m going to have to hide my clothes.

And I ask myself this question:
Could my life be any worse?
(Sadly, the answer is probably yes.)

And the Strangeness
Gets Stranger

I’ve been tiptoeing around Becca lately, trying to seem invisible
, which is hard since we share a room. I try not to look her directly in the eye. It’s like I’m watching a movie about two sisters, and one of the sisters is losing her mind while the other looks on. But
this
is real.

When I got home from school yesterday, Becca was wearing her goth cheerleader costume from last Halloween—with the arms cut off. She wore it to Roman’s house, just headed right out the door. I questioned this behavior.

Me: “Becca, where do you think you’re going in that?”

Becca: “Out.”

Like it was a totally normal thing for her to do.

When Mom brought home a bucket of fried chicken for dinner, Becca wouldn’t eat it. Wouldn’t even touch it.

We were sitting there at the kitchen table. She picked the drumstick up off her plate and stared at it, then pushed her plate away without taking a bite.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Mom asked. “Is there something wrong with your chicken?”

“It’s so…disgusting. Ugh. I just can’t. It makes me think of the poor chicken, and it looks like I’m eating something that died. I feel like a cannibal.”

But wouldn’t we be chickens then?

Becca shuddered. “I can’t eat this.”

Fried chicken’s amazing, but I’ll admit, I’ve always thought it was kind of gross when you really look at it—the little veins and nasty black stuff, the cartilage at the end of the bone.

My appetite was ruined, so I ended up just eating the mashed potatoes and coleslaw instead. At least there was dessert.

Unemployed Wizards
and Godzilla

When I walked through the door after coming home from school
, Becca was sitting on the couch smoking, with a full ashtray next to her. Her hair was swirled around her face; it looked like a tumbleweed. My eyes were focused ahead though, as I tried to sneak by her so I could just go straight to our bedroom.

“Stacy, come here.”

What name was she going to call me this time? Was she going to accuse me of taking her hairbrush again?

“What?”

“Come here,” she repeated, but her tone wasn’t angry or out of control. She seemed like she just wanted to talk, but I didn’t want to get too close, so I sat down on the arm of the couch.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, like she was asking herself a question. “I don’t know what it is, but I can’t seem to get a
grip
on anything. I haven’t been able to sleep at all, and when I do, I have terrible nightmares. My mind won’t turn off, you know?”

She seemed pretty serious. It had been a while since we’d really talked, had a real conversation. I hardly recognized her now. She looked scared, and
nothing
ever scares Becca. She’s never been the type to show a vulnerable side or let her guard down. She wasn’t like herself at all—very distracted, like her thoughts were all disconnected and random. She kept looking around the room, her eyes darting and not resting on any one thing in particular.

“Becca, are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. And I picked a fight with Roman, and he’s all pissed off at me, but I don’t even know if I care. It’s weird.”

Her head was resting against her hand, and she started playing with a section of hair. She kept picking up different strands, examining the ends of the hair like she was looking for split ends, and she seemed to be somewhere else for a minute until she looked right at me and asked:

“If the world stopped spinning, do you think we’d all turn to dust?”

Instead of saying something stupid like I usually would, I resisted the impulse.

“I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s something you really need to worry about, you know?”

“Or would we all fly off into space?”

“Um, I dunno, Becca. I’ll have to look it up.”

Science has never been my strongest subject.

“Last night I had a dream. There was a wizard. He had this remote control, and he wore a bathrobe or some kind of robe. He was controlling me—all of my movements. It seemed so real. I think it means something.”

This sounds mean, but I couldn’t help thinking that the wizard in her dream was unemployed. I mean, bathrobe and a remote control? What kind of wizard was this? I also wanted to ask how she knew he was a wizard if he was wearing a bathrobe, but dreams are like that. You just know.

“It’s like it really happened. Do you think it did?”

“Becca, it was just a dream. Dreams don’t mean anything. They’re just dreams.”

“But it felt like it really happened.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if it did or not.”

She was getting agitated, so I tried to calm her down a little, but I wasn’t really sure how.

“Listen to me, Becca: what you said makes no sense. It doesn’t make sense. It was just a dream. Dreams aren’t real. I dream stupid stuff all the time.”

Poor Becca. She started to cry, and I really had no words for her, because this was so out of my comfort zone, it wasn’t even funny, so we sat there on the couch, quiet, for a minute.

“I don’t want to sleep anymore,” she said finally, like she’d made a big decision.

It’s been so long since I’ve had a bad dream. When I was a kid and the neighbors next door were playing their stereo so loud and the bass was booming out, like really pounding, I dreamed that Godzilla’s footsteps were crashing down on the ground and that he was coming to get me. It was pretty terrifying. The look on Becca’s face, it was like
she
was the little girl with the Godzilla dream.

Mom, even Jill, would have been the ones to handle this situation, not me. I like to think of myself as being smart and together. I like to think of myself as being so mature, but this—it was
way
too much.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to not know whether you’re sane or not, whether the things you’re thinking about are real or imaginary, but I attempted to stay composed so that she wouldn’t see me upset. I tried to cheer her up by changing the subject. I told her a funny, heartwarming story about Mitchell at school wearing his pants so low that his friends snuck up behind him and pantsed him, which then made him trip and fall over without his pants. There he was, yelling, “You guys suck!” and threatening them while the whole time trying to pull his pants up. I was able to get her to laugh a little bit at that one.