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Ms. Cruz Control

When I got to the office and gave the secretary my name
, she was friendly, which was all wrong. A dead giveaway. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just told her, “My sister Becca was here a little while ago.”

“Just give me a minute, dear.”

I didn’t like how she looked at me. Her eyes looked a little sad, like I was some lost puppy. She called me “dear” when usually she says rude and impatient things.

“Okay, I’ll send her in,” she told the person on the other end of the phone, then turned to me. “Ms. Cruz would like to speak to you, dear. She’s the second door to the left.”

I mumbled, “Thanks,” and found Ms. Cruz sitting behind her desk. She was wearing a brown turtleneck, cute black eyeglasses, and dangly earrings. She tapped a pencil against the side of her desk, like this bundle of nervous energy. I think she’s a little off, to be completely honest. I’d met her once before when we planned my classes, my life. Her desk was full of little pamphlets about STDs and anorexia and crazy parents and the big one—teen pregnancy. I wanted to ask her, “So is there a book on what to do when your sister starts a fight with the lunch ladies?”

“Hi, Stacy. Have a seat.”

She motioned for me to sit down across the desk and focused her eyes on me.

“How are you today, Stacy?”

“Uh, I’m…okay? How are you?”

I tried to stay calm, but my stomach was in knots. I was right on the edge. The fragile hold I had on myself could disappear any second.

“Stacy, I don’t know if you heard, but there was an incident with your sister Becca—”

“Is she okay?” I cut her off. I couldn’t help myself.

“She’ll be fine, but your mother picked her up.”

I stared at Ms. Cruz, trying to concentrate on what she was telling me. Her face was soft, her voice reassuring.

“I hear things have been difficult around your house lately.”

“Yeah, they have. She’s been acting strange, not herself, for a while now. I really don’t understand, to tell you the truth.”

And I told her about some of Becca’s strange, new behaviors and how I’ve had no clue about anything—how to act, what to do around her.

“Try not to worry. She’ll be okay, she just needs some help. But are you okay? Do you want to call home?”

“Yeah, I think I will.”

She handed me her phone, and I got ahold of Jill who was on her way to get me.

I waited in the office, looking down at my feet, trying to avoid eye contact. My tennis shoes really needed to go in the wash. They had dirt on the toe part.

It was still lunch, and teachers and students kept coming in and out the office door. I wanted to crawl under the chair and disappear. Maybe Mom would let me homeschool. That could work. I’d never have to show my face again.

Quick mental inventory: Becca’s nuts, and I can never return to school. There are probably other things that could go wrong with my life. What will be next? What else could
possibly
be next?

After waiting for ten minutes that felt like an hour, Jill came and signed me out. She looked like she left the house in a hurry—she was wearing sweats, hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup. She was out of breath.

“Stacy. Oh, my
God
. Did you hear what happened?”

“Yeah, but only because everybody told me about it.” That wasn’t true, but who knows how many saw Becca making her scene. “Let’s just go. We can talk about it on the way.”

We walked through the halls, and I felt more eyes on me.
Do they all know
? Maybe I was being paranoid. That was probably it. People were probably just looking at Jill and wondering who she was. Even scruffy looking, she’s still very attractive. And anything different gets attention around here. Scott and Kevin from my Algebra class were drooling over her like they were hungry dogs and she was a T-bone steak.
In your dreams, boys.

Jill and I walked fast, and she told me what happened, between breaths, and it was pretty much the same as what Roman already told me.

“Since when does she eat veggie burgers anyway?” I asked.

“Since when does she do
half
the things she’s been doing lately, Stacy? Come on, keep up. I don’t know if you heard about her shirt—”

“Yeah. Heard about the shirt.”
Poor Becca.
But really all I could think about was poor
me
. “I’m never going to be able to show my face at school again.”

Jill stopped and looked at me; by this point we’d made it out to the parking lot. “Come on, Stacy. Don’t be such a drama queen. That’s the least of our problems now anyway. A little self-absorbed, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, maybe I am. But come on, Jill. This is my life, my school. It’s not fair.”

“I hate to tell you this, but life isn’t fair.”

“Well, that makes me feel a lot better.”

“Stacy, you don’t have to be sarcastic all the time, you know.”

We walked to the car, and I felt guilty. This
was
my sister after all, not some stranger. I just wish things could be—what’s that word again? Normal. Normal is looking really good to me right now. Normal as in normal problems, like my giant pimple or your parents fighting, even divorcing. That’s normal. Your sister going off on mental episodes is not normal. Far from.

Jill drove, and I looked out the window and thought about how everything we passed looked the same as it had in the morning, but now everything had changed.

“So what now?” I asked her.

“She’s at the psychiatrist’s office. Mom took her straight over. So we wait.”

I sat in the car thinking my selfish thoughts about how all of this would affect my practically nonexistent social standing. Would I now move down in the social order from nonentity to outcast?

The funny thing about high school is that everyone wants to be seen as unique, yet no one wants to be thought of as different. Being different means you’re a freak. Outcast. Pariah. So while we want to think we’re different, what we really want is to be exactly the same. It makes no sense, but that’s how the world is. It’s how people are, I guess. We travel in packs, and no one wants to be the freaky weirdo.

I looked out the window, and I kept thinking:
Why Becca? Why was she having these problems and not, say, me?

At home, I pulled up a stool in the kitchen and watched Jill as she made us quesadillas with the good cheese—the cheddar and jack mixed together. I poured out glasses of iced tea as she cut the quesadilla in half and pushed a plate toward me. We sat down to eat.

“Why Becca though?” I asked between bites. “Why not me or you? Why is this happening to her all of a sudden? I mean, I really want to understand this.”

Jill knows more about this stuff than I do—she’s taken a few psychology classes in school—but she just shrugged her shoulders.

“Who knows? The brain’s a mystery. Mental illness
does
tend to run in families though.”

She gave me this serious look.

“Great. That makes me feel
much
better now.”

“I’m just telling you—you wanted to know. Nobody
really
knows what causes someone to go off the deep end. Some people are more sensitive, or they might have a chemical imbalance, or they took drugs, or something terrible happened to them when they were little and it takes a few years to come to the surface. Who knows?”

Then I told Jill what I’d been thinking lately with Becca acting so strange, about normal, and what it really means.

“So who decides what normal is?” I asked.

Jill shrugged her shoulders again. “Normal—” she made little air quotes around the word “—normal is whatever society decides it is. And that’s just how the world works. It might not be fair, but—”

And I finished her sentence. “But who said life is fair?”

Checking In And Checking Out

When Mom walked in the door with Becca
, they had this tired, defeated look.

“Well, let’s get your things packed, sweetie,” Mom told her in a quiet voice.

Becca walked past us to our bedroom with an empty look on her face. Jill and I looked at each other, then at Mom.

“Mom?” was all I could say, because anything else seemed unnecessary.

Mom told us about the scene at the psychiatrist’s office, how the doctor gave Becca a pill to calm her and told Mom that Becca might have a form of schizophrenia—a mild form—which, if you’re going to have schizophrenia, I guess that’s the
best
kind to have. Becca, of course, started to cry when he said this. Who wouldn’t? I mean, it was her sanity we were talking about here. It’s not like hearing you have a cavity or need to have your tonsils removed.

The doctor gave Mom a referral for a residential treatment center, Brookside, where Becca will get counseling and treatment. She’ll be gone for at least thirty days. After that, after her meds have kicked in and helped even her out, she’ll probably come back home with us. Probably.

Becca packed. We all helped—Mom, me, Jill—and we asked her about the different things she wanted to take with her, trying to be helpful.

“Did you get your journal? Your earbuds? Do you want my shampoo?”

I asked her these things, and she gave quiet nods, but her eyes didn’t register the words. She wandered around, moving slowly at first, then quickly, frantically opening drawers and throwing her clothes in a heap on top of her suitcase. She started to cry.

I tried not to cry, but the hard, little lump in my throat was making it difficult to swallow. Mom, of course, cried. Jill, who’s usually the strong one, started crying too.

We were a tragic little group standing in the bedroom crying, but what else could we do?

When Becca was all packed, we drove her to her new home. It’s just a couple blocks off Lankershim. I don’t remember ever really noticing it before because it’s one of those places that blends into the background. There’s nothing unusual about it. Brookside looks like a large modern house, like two large boxes, one square and one rectangular, set next to each other, with plants and trees and a little brick pathway that leads up to the double doors. There are a couple of wooden benches sitting out in front and flowers in pots. It doesn’t look all institutional like a prison, though. I pretended it was Becca’s mental health resort.

When we got inside, the receptionist, a small woman with a kind face, welcomed us.

“Hello there.” She took Mom’s hand. “I’m Marcy.”

She focused on Becca.

“You must be Becca. I’m so glad to meet you.”

And she held her little hand out to Becca, and Becca kind of grabbed for Marcy’s hand like she was a little unsure about the whole shaking-hands custom.

Marcy led us down the hall and gave us a quick tour, explaining the house rules, visiting hours, pointing out the common room for the residents and their guests—the place where we’ll be when we come for visits.

She showed us Becca’s room, a tiny little cubicle about half the size of our bedroom. There was a bed, a bedside table with a lamp, an overhead light fixture, a simple desk and chair. And a small dresser—three drawers—for her clothes.

“I’ll give you ladies a few minutes, then you’re going to have to leave so Becca and I can go over a few things.”

Marcy left us, and there still wasn’t really enough room for us all in there, so we stood bunched up together.

It still doesn’t seem real to me when I think about it. Just when it seems like you have things figured out, something like this—something so completely unexpected—comes along. I couldn’t get over it. The sister that I’d shared a bedroom with my whole life, that I’d fought with and laughed with, I was saying goodbye to her. And I was scared—really scared—that she might never be the same again.

“Bye, Becca,” I said, giving her a hug, and she held on to me tight, and it felt like she was a little rag doll. It was impossible for me not to cry, so I just gave in and held her a few seconds.

When it was Mom’s turn and Becca clung to her like she was her life raft and called her “Mommy”—something I’ve never heard her say—I felt the tears coming to the surface.

“It’s okay, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay,” Mom said as she stroked her hair. Jill put her hand over her mouth like it was all too much, and I left the room. I had to leave because it was hard to breathe. The walls were starting to close in.

I found a seat in the visitors area. The kind woman Marcy put her hand on my shoulder, which made me cry even more.

“Your sister’s gonna be just fine here. Okay?” She looked at me with her soft eyes that made me want to trust her. “This is what we do. We take care of people like Becca. Don’t worry.”

So that’s it. We drove home, none of us saying anything. I mean, what else was there to say?