Made You Up(3)

Then my mother had taken me to see a child therapist, and I’d gotten my first real introduction to the word insane.

Schizophrenia isn’t supposed to manifest until a person’s late teens, at the earliest, but I’d gotten a shot of it at just seven years old. I was diagnosed at thirteen. Paranoid got tacked on about a year later, after I verbally attacked a librarian for trying to hand me propaganda pamphlets for an underground Communist force operating out of the basement of the public library. (She’d always been a very suspect type of librarian—I refuse to believe donning rubber gloves to handle books is a normal and accepted practice, and I don’t care what anyone says.)

My medication helped sometimes. I knew it was working when the world wasn’t as colorful and interesting as it normally was. Like when I could tell the lobsters in the tank were not bright red. Or when I realized that checking my food for tracers was ridiculous (but did it anyway because it calmed the prickle of paranoia on the back of my neck). I also knew it was working when I couldn’t remember things clearly, felt like I hadn’t slept in days, and tried to put my shoes on backward.

Half the time, the doctors weren’t even sure what the medicine would do. “Well, it should lessen the paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations, but we’ll have to wait and see. Oh, and you’ll probably feel tired sometimes. Drink a lot of fluids, too—you can get dehydrated easily. Also, it could cause a lot of fluctuation in your weight. Really, it’s up in the air.”

The doctors were oodles of help, but I developed my own system for figuring out what was real and what wasn’t. I took pictures. Over time, the real remained in the photo while the hallucinations faded away. I discovered what sorts of things my mind liked to make up. Like billboards whose occupants wore gas masks and reminded passersby that poison gas from Hitler’s Nazi Germany was still a very real threat.

I didn’t have the luxury of taking reality for granted. And I wouldn’t say I hated people who did, because that’s just about everyone. I didn’t hate them. They didn’t live in my world.

But that never stopped me from wishing I lived in theirs.





Chapter Two




The night before my first day of senior year at East Shoal High School, I sat behind the counter at Finnegan’s diner, my eyes scanning the dark windows for signs of suspicious movement. Normally the paranoia wasn’t so bad. I blamed it on the first-day thing. Getting chased out of the last school was one thing—starting at a new one was something completely different. I’d spent all summer at Finnegan’s trying not to think about it.

“You know, if Finnegan was here, he’d call you crazy and tell you to get back to work.”

I spun around. Tucker leaned against the door to the kitchen, hands jammed in the pockets of his apron, grinning at me. I would’ve snapped at him if he weren’t my only informant about East Shoal—and my only friend. Gangly, bespectacled, hair black as an oil slick and always perfectly combed forward, Tucker was a busboy, waiter, and cashier here at Finnegan’s, not to mention the smartest person I’d ever met.

He didn’t know about me. So his saying that Finnegan would call me crazy was pure coincidence. Finnegan knew, of course; his sister was my latest therapist, the one who’d gotten me this job. But none of the other employees—like Gus, our mute, chain-smoking cook—had any idea, and I planned on keeping it that way.

“Har har,” I replied, trying to act cool. Beat down the crazy, said the little voice in the back of my head. Don’t let it out, you idiot.

The only reason I’d taken the job here was because I needed to appear normal. And maybe a little bit because my mother forced me to take it.

“Any other questions?” Tucker asked, walking over to lean against the counter next to me. “Or is the crusade over?”

“You mean the inquisition. And yes, it is.” I kept my gaze from wandering back to the windows. “I’ve been in high school for three years already—East Shoal can’t be that much different than Hillpark.”

Tucker snorted. “East Shoal is different than everywhere. But I guess you’ll find out tomorrow.”

Tucker was the only person who seemed to think East Shoal wasn’t the perfect place to be. My mother thought a new school was a great idea. My therapist insisted I’d do better there. Dad said it’d be okay, but he sounded like my mother had threatened him, and if he’d been here and not somewhere in Africa he would’ve told me what he really thought.