Madness

by Zac Brewer

  I stood and hurried out of the office as fast as I could, slamming the door behind me. As I passed his receptionist’s desk, she opened her mouth to ask me about arranging my next appointment, but I cut her off with a curt “No.”

  When I stepped outside, I was relieved to see that Duckie was still sitting in the Beast, ankles crossed and feet on the dashboard, listing to some Concrete Blonde. He jumped when I opened the passenger-side door and got inside. Then he turned the volume down and said, “How’d it go?”

  “Fine.”

  He paused, as if debating whether or not to challenge my lie. Then he turned the key and the Beast’s engine roared to life. I stared at my feet the entire drive, not talking, just waiting to be home. And when Duckie pulled into my driveway, I got out without saying good-bye. He didn’t say anything either. Maybe he knew better.

  The house was quiet but for the stomping of my feet on the stairs as I made my way to my room. The only thing I could think to do was to fold some more goddamn cranes, but as I was walking into my room, my dad was walking out holding a bucket full of random dad stuff in one hand and a power drill in the other. “Fixed your closet. Clean up that mess now. And for the love of all hell, use a step stool next time, would ya?”

  “Yeah, Dad. Sorry. Thanks.”

  It had occurred to me when I was about thirteen that my dad never really said “I love you.” Not with words. He’d say it by fixing stuff that was broken and teaching me how I could do cool stuff like build small rockets that we’d set off in the backyard or blow up those little green army men by duct-taping them to firecrackers. He might not have said he loved me—not many times, at least. But stuff like him repairing my broken closet was about as good it got.

  It took me over an hour to put all my clothes back on hangers and organize my closet. As I was sliding my hamper back into place, I noticed something sticking out of the thin space between the wall and the floor trim. It was shiny and metal, and when I realized what it was, my heart jumped inside my chest.

  It was the razor I’d hidden there. Mom and Dad must have missed it during their sweep of the house.

  I sat there for a moment, staring at its edge, thinking about the doc and what a dick he’d been.

  Then I slowly closed my closet doors, leaving the razor where it was for the moment, sat down at my desk, and folded some goddamn origami cranes. Maybe I was hoping to find some quiet, some calm. But instead there was just anger and bitterness boiling up inside of me. At my parents for turning my house into another inpatient facility. At Dr. Daniels for thinking he knew so much. At Joy for succeeding where I’d failed. But mostly at myself for being naïve enough to think I could take away all my pain in a single night. With a single step. Into a single body of water.

  Other people seemed to think that most suicidal people had just one reason to feel the way they did—a distinct, clear moment in time that they could point to and say, Aha! That’s when it happened. That’s when I decided I wanted to die. But it wasn’t like that for me. It was like being slowly chased by this shadowy thing that refused to go away. There was no rhyme. There was no reason. There was no childhood trauma or sexual assault to blame it all on, no substance-abusing parents or relentless bullying experiences. There was just me. With my fucked-up brain. And some old man who’d decided that I didn’t deserve any kind of release.

  I hung the new cranes over my bed next to the old ones. They waved at one another with their tiny little paper wings, already friends.

  Tears rolled down the sides of my face, soaking my hair. I watched the cranes until sleep finally came. And just as I was slipping into unconsciousness, I couldn’t help but thank the cranes for understanding that though I was crying, I had no idea why—and the night for bringing me at least a small taste of the darkness that I so richly craved.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After school the next day, I was standing outside, waiting for Duckie, watching all the cars and buses pull out of the parking lot. Tucker had asked him to help out with moving some of the stage supplies from the auditorium to the shop class, so naturally, Duckie had said yes. I was perfectly content to wait on the sidewalk near the Beast while they spent a little time together. Duckie needed to make a move—and if he wasn’t going to, I was hopeful that Tucker might.

  From behind me came a familiar voice: Derek’s. “I heard something about you. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, and I don’t believe in listening to rumors.”

  My heart skipped a beat, and the new cranes that I’d folded that day began whispering excitedly inside my backpack. I told them to hush. “Oh yeah? What did you hear?”

  He withdrew a pack of smokes from his inside jacket pocket and popped an unlit cigarette into his mouth. As he pulled a Zippo lighter from his front jeans pocket, he said, “I heard you tried to drown yourself.”

  I shrank inside myself for a moment. The cranes in my backpack went silent.

  He sucked in, drawing the toxic fumes deep into his lungs. For a second, he closed his eyes. The look on his face was a frozen moment of pure bliss. Strange how someone who was slowly poisoning himself could look so happy about it. But then, maybe that was the point.

  Derek locked eyes with me. There was no judgment in his expression, no mockery. Merely curiosity. “True? Or not true?”

  I didn’t respond right away, but I did immediately wonder who’d told him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to respond at all, really. I didn’t owe him anything, this boy who had found his way into my life somehow. Not a damn thing. But after counting three of my heartbeats, I heard myself say, “True.”

  He nodded slowly, looking like he was debating the sanity of the thing I’d just admitted to. He returned his lighter to his pocket, and when he did, his right sleeve slid back a little. The leather cuff he wore on his wrist moved with it. Just long enough to expose a scar. “Why?”

  I swallowed hard. Was this the reason he seemed so curious about me—why he was bold enough to ask me outright if I’d tried to kill myself? Maybe this was something we had in common. Maybe not. I nodded to his wrist, feigning confidence and a certainty that I did not feel. “Probably for the same reason you have that scar on your wrist.”

  “You ran through a sliding glass door too?” He tilted his head, his eyes widening some at my words. I felt like a complete idiot. Why had I assumed he’d cut his wrist on purpose? Was my brain hardwired to see the urge to die in people all around me? Not everybody was as screwed up as I was.

  But after a second, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “Kidding. That’s just what I tell people when they ask about my scars. It’s amazing what an excellent liar someone can become just for want of being left the hell alone, isn’t it?”

  He removed the leather cuff, turned his right wrist over, and pulled up his sleeve so I could get a better look. The scar was fairly straight, and thicker than I’d thought it would be. It ran from where his hand met his wrist up his arm about four inches. He’d meant business, that was for certain.

  Without thinking, without asking, I reached out and ran my fingertips along the raised pink line, feeling its smoothness against my skin. He felt warm to the touch. “You did it the right way.”

  “Down the road, not across the street.” I’d heard the phrase dozens of times—referring to the proper way to cut your wrists so it was less likely that the doctors could save you—so I had no idea why his casual utterance of it bothered me. “Of course, the other one’s not so pretty.”

  He put the cuff back on his right wrist and slid his left sleeve up, exposing a second, jagged scar.

  Even though nobody else was around, I kept my voice low. This wasn’t a conversation for anyone but those who had been there, to that dark place. “Why didn’t you finish?”

  “Couldn’t hold the blade steady enough to do the second one. I was losing blood fast, kept getting dizzy—which is why that scar’s all fucked up.” The scar on that arm looked more like a lightning bolt and wasn’t as long as the other. As he pulled his sleeve
back down, he said, “You a cutter?”

  I knew I had no business feeling offended, but I did. As if there were something nobler about hacking away at your own flesh than drowning yourself. “No. Not . . . not normally. I mean, I did it once, but . . .”

  I never thought of myself as a cutter. But three pink lines marked my left arm. I hadn’t been trying to reach my veins, to slash my wrists, to die in such a bloody way. It wasn’t suicide then. Not yet. That was months before my actual serious attempt to die.

  Derek nodded to the three lines on my left arm. “Harder than it seems, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I just . . . wanted to feel something, that’s all. I guess. I don’t know.”

  He took a drag on his smoke and had the courtesy to turn his head away from me to exhale before meeting my eyes. “But you didn’t feel anything. Not enough, anyway. And so you decided to end it.”

  “Something like that.” The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood uncomfortably on end. “You speak pretty openly about the subject. What are you, some kind of peer counselor? Is this the part where you tell me I have a lot to live for? That you and I are survivors? That life is hard, but it gets better if you let it?”

  “If I really believed life could get better, do you think I would have slashed open my veins with a pocketknife?” His words were matter-of-fact. No bullshit. Derek spoke in a way that he knew I would understand. In a way that only a person who’s been consumed by the darkness of depression can possibly understand.

  “Depression’s a bitch, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Almost as much as life.”

  For some reason, his response made me laugh a little. What a ridiculous conversation. I couldn’t talk to Duckie, my parents, or Dr. Daniels about any of this. But here I was, sharing intimate details about my darkest thoughts with a boy I didn’t even know. And I wasn’t sure I wanted the conversation to end. It was nice to feel understood. “Why a pocketknife and not a razor?”

  He shrugged, tapping ash from the end of his cigarette. “Availability, mostly. I had the pocketknife on me, and I wasn’t in a waiting kind of mind-set. I wanted it over, and I wanted it over right then. At first, I didn’t think the blade would be sharp enough, but it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re determined, isn’t it? It only takes a pound of pressure to slice into human skin.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Images flashed through my mind. My left wrist. The blade. How hard I’d sliced into my own flesh with barely anything to show for it. Maybe I was just weak. Physically. Emotionally. I shifted my feet, wondering how much longer Duckie would be gone. Not that I wanted him to return anytime soon. I was actually enjoying Derek’s company. “So what stopped you?”

  “UPS guy saw me through the window after I passed out, broke in, and called nine-one-one.” He said it with such casual flair, as if attempted suicide was something that people discussed every morning over doughnuts and coffee. I was honestly grateful for his tone. Most people spoke about it while shaking their heads and looking mournful. Derek didn’t seem to give a shit about pretense. “Y’know, just a tip, but it’s pretty impossible to drown yourself on purpose.”

  What was this? First the thank-you note, and now this bizarre conversation? When I spoke again, I felt my guard going back up. “Not when you down a bottle of sleeping pills first.”

  “Huh. That’ll do it, I guess.” He paused to take a final drag on his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and crushing it with his boot. The sight of his jawline was almost mesmerizing. He didn’t offer me a smoke. Maybe he sensed that I just wasn’t the type of person who smoked. Maybe he didn’t think about whether or not I smoked at all. As he blew out the smoke, he said, “So what went wrong?”

  I sighed, suddenly wishing the subject would change. “Some old man was out walking his dog that night. He saw me jump into Black River and pulled me out.”

  “Fuckin’ heroes, man.” He shook his head. “How long were you inpatient?”

  “Too damn long. Six weeks.”

  “And now everyone treats you differently.” There was no question in his tone. Just understanding. He must have done inpatient time too. You don’t cut your wrists that deeply and get sent home after a few stitches or staples.

  “Yeah.” I wanted to say more, to talk about how much it hurt to be treated like the town freak. But I didn’t trust him yet. I didn’t trust anybody anymore. Especially myself.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Duckie exit the front of the school. Derek followed my eyes to my approaching best friend and took a step closer to me. Maybe he felt the same way that I did about other people not understanding. “They have to treat you differently, you know. You are different. You’ve been to a place they can’t even wrap their heads around.”

  I looked at his wrists. With his sleeves down, his leather cuff on, I couldn’t see his scars, but I knew that they were there. Shoving my hands in the pockets of my jacket, I spoke—my voice hushed, as if we both shared a secret. Which, when I thought about it, we did. “But you’ve been there. You’ve been to that place.”

  “If you mean I’ve peered into the darkness and seen what lurks on the other side? Yeah. Yeah, I have. So I guess we have that in common.” He smiled, and I wondered what his lips might feel like against mine.

  As Duckie approached, just yards from us now, I said, “Thanks for the talk.”

  Reaching out, he took my hand in his and pulled a marker out of his back pocket. Then he wrote a phone number on my palm and said, “My cell. In case you ever feel like talking.”

  I took the marker from him and wordlessly wrote my number on the back of his hand.

  Derek started to turn away. Still wearing that same smile on his lips, he said, “Welcome to the afterlife, Brooke Danvers.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The rest of the week flew by—probably because school was boring and my mom kept me busy weeding the flower gardens all weekend. Duckie was happy to come over and help, but even someone as funny as Duckie couldn’t brighten the mood at Casa de Danvers. My dad spent much of the weekend in the garage, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t really fixing or building anything. He was avoiding me. Because I wasn’t his daughter anymore. I was just a painful reminder that he’d failed as a parent.

  Before I knew it, it was Tuesday again, which meant another fun-filled hour of getting my head shrunk. Fidgeting in my seat a little, I glimpsed the crappy, outdated magazines on the table next to me. Nothing but Hollywood gossip rags, with not one book in sight.

  I hated the smell of Dr. Daniels’s waiting room. It smelled like old magazines and the dusty, fake Ficus tree that stood in the corner. But worse than that, it reeked of desperation. One by one, patients would enter the door and close it behind them, flitting a glance around the room to see if they were alone. But they were never alone. No one was ever alone. And no one ever spoke. We all just sat there in shame and hopelessness, occasionally thumbing through an old copy of People magazine or messing around with our phones. I didn’t know why the rest of them were there, but I knew that none of us thought we were fixable and that all of us thought we were somehow better than everyone else in that room. Like, I might be crazy, but not as crazy as the lady in the corner muttering to herself, and certainly not as crazy as the old man with his eyes locked solidly on his untied left shoe. Maybe I was nuts. Maybe I was unfixable. But at least I wasn’t them.

  Maybe that made me a bitch.

  Maybe the doc had a pill for that too.

  The small glass window slid open and I heard the receptionist say, “Brooke Danvers?” And then it was time for the walk of shame.

  There was something so terrible about standing up in the waiting room when your name was called and making your way to that window. Whether or not it was true, it felt like every eye in the place was on me, judging me, wondering why I was here. And why wouldn’t they? I was judging them. Maybe I deserved it.

  I handed over my insurance card and followed the receptionist’s nod to the no
w-open door, where Dr. Daniels was standing. He wore a kind smile—the sort I imagined a predator wore right before it struck its prey.

  Yeah, I was being dramatic, but what did you really expect from a crazy person?

  To go along with his killer smile (pun intended), he wore khaki pants (again), a white shirt, a dark blue tie, and a tweed jacket. As we stepped inside his office and he closed the door, he said, “Good afternoon, Brooke. How are you?”

  I sighed. “Crazy, apparently. Otherwise, why would I be here?”

  He shook his head and offered me a bottle of water. “You’re not crazy. You may be struggling with mental health issues, but that doesn’t make you crazy.”

  “So what does?” I took the water from him, but I knew I wasn’t going to drink it. Was he worried I’d get dehydrated from crying? Not likely, doc. Not likely.

  “That’s a good question.” He took a sip of water from his own bottle and said, “Typically, when someone is referred to as ‘crazy,’ they’re considered mentally deranged in a really aggressive manner. But I don’t care for the word. It’s outdated and insulting. It insinuates that whatever is going on with a person cannot be treated. I don’t believe in that. I believe that with enough time, effort, behavioral modification, and possibly medication, everyone with mental health issues can be helped.”

  I stared at him for a moment. Then decided to call him on his bullshit. “So you’re saying I can be cured. Pardon me, doc, but I think that’s a load.”

  “I never said you could be cured. I said you can be treated.”

  “And the difference would be?”

  He sat forward and met my eyes. I hadn’t noticed during our last visit how young he seemed. He couldn’t be out of his thirties yet. He said, “You have clinical depression with suicidal tendencies, Brooke. Think of it like having diabetes. You’ll always have these health issues, but they can be managed. You can go on to live a happy, normal life with the proper treatment. You will never be cured, but then, there’s nothing to cure. Just something to treat.”