Call Me Crazy (10 page)

“It’s time to live,” she cackles over her shoulder. I realize then that Candy is having one of her highs and after this she is bound to fall. I don’t know what Candy’s official diagnosis is. I’ve never asked and she’s never offered, but I’ve learned her patterns. The greater the high, the lower and more painful the crash will inevitably be.

“And just what do you have planned?” I groan.

“Have you ever
ran full speed towards a pond and jumped as hard and high as you could?”

I inwardly groan as I realize her plan.

“I’m taking your silence to mean you have not,” she continues as she throws her free hand up in the air dramatically. “Pinky, you are so young, so innocent, with so much life ahead of you. You have yet to experience all the things that you must in order to make your teenage years worth remembering and I only have a month left to squeeze it all in.”

I decide to address the most pressing question first and deal with what she has said later.

“And how do you plan to get us out?”

“Oh ye of little faith. One thing you should know by now, my sweet protégé, is that everyone has a price and everyone can be bought.”

I do not fail to notice that she has not answered my question. We reach the back double glass doors on the farthest side of the building, where the employees go to smoke.

Her head swings back to look at me and she smiles wickedly.

“Turns out that Bob’s price was something that I could easily pay.” She winks at me and I slap my hand over my mouth and feel my eyes widen. Bob is one of the nightly cleaning crew and is known for whistling annoying tunes while running his floor waxer thing. I kept waiting for the night when poor Bob’s whistling would finally land him as quarry for one, or goodness forbid, several of the utterly lost souls who could no longer separate reality from delusion.

“Please tell me that you did not provide a sexual favor just for us to jump in a bloody pond.” My words come out muffled because my hand is still covering my mouth.

Candy lets out an annoyed huff as she raises a brow at me. “He wanted Sheila’s number. Good grief Pinky, you might as well just roll around in that gutter you seem have found yourself in ever since Sacajawea came swaggering in.”

“You do realize that Sacajawea was a princess, as in, not male.” I point out.

She shrugs. “If you want to get technical, but since you have yet to examine the goods, for all we know he’s just a poser and could very well be a princess. He does have lustrous long hair.” She pauses and then smiles slowly, “Unless that bench out their got consecrated.” She waggles her eyebrows at me and I try very hard not to allow the picture she evokes to pop into my mind. Successful? Plead the fifth.

“Could we please get on with breaking the rules so that you can rest assured that I have
lived
.” I make air quotes around the last word as I follow her out of the door and into the hot summer night.

“So, I got Bob Sheila’s number and I might have accidently written her address on the piece of paper as well. I kind of get the stalker vibe from him, but Sheila will probably be too high to even notice if he is lurking outside her window.”

My mouth drops open gaping at her words as I stop in my tracks.

“You gave Sheila a stalker?” I squeak out.

Candy lets out a huff that puffs out her lips and makes her wrinkled face smooth for a brief moment. She stands their looking at me for a moment and, other than the chirps of crickets, the night is quiet.

“There,” she says motioning with her hands quickly, “we’ve had a moment of silence in honor of the weirdness that Sheila is bound to have to endure with Bob’s advances. Now can we
please
continue on with my brilliant plan to corrupt you?”

With nothing to be done about it now, I nod and begin to follow her again. To my surprise, when I arrived at MPF over nine weeks ago, I discovered a beautiful pond about a quarter of a mile behind the building. The perimeter of the pond was adorned with a concrete walking trail, impressively manicured shrubbery,
and a cornucopia of perennials. I wondered at the time, though I didn’t ask, why on earth they would put a pond so close to people who just might entertain the idea of throwing themselves into it in hopes of ending their miserable existence.

As I see the pond come into view I admit that the moon shining off of the rippling water is very tempting. Remembering to be thankful for small victories, I take relief in knowing that the temptation is not to seek the depths of that pond and never resurface. A gentle breeze caresses my skin pushing me forward, beckoning me like a siren.

“Okay Pinky,” Candy stops and stares out at the water longingly and I wonder if she feels the pull as well. “This is where we run. We feel the wind rushing across our skin, blowing our hair behind us like the manes on wild horses and then we jump for all we’re worth.”

“I didn’t know you were so descriptive,” I tell her and smile.

“Yes you did, you just didn’t know that describing terrifying scenarios for the paranoid and delusional crack pots wasn’t my only talent.” She motions me to follow her as she takes off in a surprisingly quick run for a sixty year old. “Now quit stalling and come on!” She yells.

I hesitate for one, two, three beats of my heart and then mutter, “What the hell.” I’m running, my arms are pumping and my breath begins to speed up as my lungs push for more oxygen. All I can hear is the wind rushing past my ears and the pounding of my heart. Just before I reach the pond I push with all my might, my legs kick wildly as if running in midair. I’m not sure but I think I let out a yelp and it’s abruptly cut off as my body hits the water and I’m swallowed up. The darkness is absolute as even the moon does not penetrate the surface and illuminate the depths. I feel peace envelope me and sink even more into the warmth of the water. The peace only lasts a few seconds as I suddenly feel the water convulsing around me. I lower my legs so I’m vertical and kick frantically to get to the surface. When I break through I feel the warm air hit my skin. I rub my eyes as I kick with my legs to stay above the water and look around to find the source of the commotion.

“CANDY!”

To my horror, she is bobbing up and down as her arms flail rapidly, vainly attempting to keep her above water. Her eyes are wide with fear and I gasp as I realize she can’t swim.

Shaking off the shock I dive forward, kicking hard and circle around to her back. I’ve taken one lifeguarding class, enough to know that you don’t approach a drowning victim from the front. They will latch onto you and drag you down with them. I quickly move in behind her and wrap an arm around her neck pulling her onto her back. She instinctively grabs my arm with both hands and, when my other hand supports her torso to keep her above water, she stops fighting me. I lean in, dropping my shoulder just below the surface and begin scissor kicking my legs.

“I’ve got you Candy,” I tell her in the calmest voice I can muster. I kick harder and, though we’ve only jumped a few yards into the water, I’m exhausted by the time we finally reach the edge of the pond.

“I need you to turn and grab onto the ground Candy; I will not let go of you. I need you to try and pull yourself up.”

She starts to shake her head ‘no’ and I feel her shutter.

“Dammit Candy! Quit acting like a frightened kitten and get out of this water!” She stiffens briefly in my arms and then she begins to sit up. I help her get vertical and, as she grabs the ground pulling with everything she’s got, I push her. I sink under the water and grab the backs of her thighs and lift her so that she can get one leg up on the ground. From there she takes over and pulls the rest of her body out. She’s panting hard as she lies on her side and then rolls onto her back.

I hoist myself up out of the water and stare down at her.

“Are you alright?” I ask as I bite back the emotion coiling inside me preparing to strike like a snake.

Her eyes close and she coughs, and then to my utter shock she begins to laugh. First it’s just a chuckle, but then it’s a full on, rolling on the floor, laugh. I suppress my desire to strangle her and take several deep breaths. I try to remind myself that Candy isn’t a normal person; she’s in a psychiatric facility and for good reason.

“You should have seen your face,” she says through her laughter. “I’m serious it was so, so,” words elude her as she continues to laugh.

If thought I could keep my calm because she’s a nut job, I thought wrong.

“WHAT THE HELL CANDY!” The tone of my voice has penetrated her bubble and she abruptly stops laughing and looks up at me.

“How can you find this funny?” I’m gritting my teeth and I think that if I clench them any tighter I just might break my jaw.

“Whoa, wait a second,” she holds her hands up as if to hold me off, “you’re mad? At me? I was the one who nearly drown, how can you be mad at me?”

“You could have DIED!” I motion wildly to the pond.

“But I didn’t.” She looks at me like a child beaming with pride and looking for approval from a parent.

“That’s not good enough for me. You jumped into that pond knowing that you can’t swim. You didn’t stop to think about how that would affect me. You didn’t consider the consequences of doing something so reckless, so incredibly irrational!”

“Who are you to preach at me about being rational?” Candy snaps as she clamors to her feet. Though her soaked clothes stick to her skin, she seems unfazed. “You, who turns to a blade or flame with every emotional plunge. Really, Tally? You want to start comparing our crazy notes?”

I step back feeling the sting of her words like the slap of a hand across my face. She’s right, which only pisses me off more.

“I don’t drag others down with me,” I counter. “I keep my crap contained in my own messed up bubble. But you vomit your crap all over everyone and then you run and hide, leaving the rest of us to deal with your mess.” The minute the words are out I see her face change and the glaze of indifference that is so common here, film over her eyes.

She starts to back away from me and she begins to nod. “Okay, I hear what you’re saying. You think I pull you down, I
vomit
on you.” I take a step towards her, but she keeps moving backwards. “I can’t pull you down if you’re not tied to me, so consider yourself untied.”

“Candy wait,” I call out to her as she turns and walks briskly towards the back doors we had only a little while ago slipped through.

I stand there alone, dripping wet. I am so confused as to how the night went from us doing things to help me experience life to saving Candy from death. How’s that for irony?

~

The next morning I stand in front of the cork board where I have taped the positive statements that Dr. Stacey tells me I need to ingrain in my mind. My eyes lock onto my least favorite one. I want to grab it and crush it in my hands but I don’t. I push the words from my mouth even as I loathe saying them.

“Today is hard, it’s lonely, it’s crappy. Today is a day that you want to crawl in a hole and never come out. But today you will smile anyway.” I can’t help myself; I give the saying the bird. Yes, I know, real mature.

The morning is a blur as I get my meds, go to breakfast, and then to group. I haven’t seen or heard Candy and the hole that she fills is beginning to open up. My time to meet Trey is nearing and I’m so desperate to talk to Candy, to have her distract me from my nerves with one of her outlandish statements.

I’m walking back towards my room when I pass Zeke.

“Hey have you seen Candy?” I ask him.

Zeke’s face falls, and for a split second I feel my heart drop into my stomach as I fear the worst.

“She won’t leave her room and the only thing we can get her to tell us is that she will keep her vomit to herself.”

“Thanks, Zeke,” I tell him quickly as I hurry towards Candy’s room.

I knock on her door, more out of politeness than necessity, as there are no locks on the doors in the nut house.

“Go away,” she snaps.

I open the door and slip inside, closing it quickly behind me. Candy is sitting on her bed, her back against the wall, knees bent and feet flat.

I smile tentatively when she looks up at me.

“I know your diagnosis is
bipolar, but when did your co-diagnosis become dumbass?” She glares at me.

“Okay, I deserve that one.”

I walk further into the room, thinking that at any moment she just might cause me bodily harm. Hey, it could happen.

She lets out a slow bre
ath and as her shoulders slump. I see the sixty years of life that has weighed her down.

“What do you want, Tally?”

She’s using my name, not a good sign.

“I came to apologize for last night.”

“For being an asshat?” She retorts.

“Yes, for being an asshat.”

“And a bitch?”

“Yes a bitch.”

“And…,”

“You’ve made your point Candy,” I cut her off before she can continue her long list of adjectives. “In my defense, I was scared.” I take another step closer and another until I’m able to sit on the end of her bed. I turn my body towards her and meet her stare.