Crazy

It started with the walls closing in. They shuddered, cracked. Collapsed like the flimsy sides of cardboard boxes. Then came the heat. It engulfed the broken room with a frightening fury. And worse, the smoke. It was smothering. It wanted her to die there, gagging on its stinking fumes. The scars on her arms and legs turned to blisters. Every inch of her was in agony. Every inch of her begged for the fire to consume her quickly.

And her mom was screaming her name in a panic, shaking her, dialing 911.

“My daughter,” she cried into the phone, “She's not breathing. I don’t know what’s wrong. I think…I think she’s hallucinating.”

Hallucinating.

Could a hallucination feel so real? Could a hallucination murder a person?

She choked on a smoke-filled laugh at the thought, as the heat tightened its fist on her lungs and stole what little air she had left.

Jonas Calderwood: death by hallucination.

“Jonas, did you take your medicine?”

Jonas fell back into bed, groaning. Her eyes found the offending bottle of pills sitting on her nightstand. Now, she thought. Now would be a good time for that nightstand to go up in flames. Where were the hallucinations when she really needed them?

“Jonas!”

“Okay! I heard you.” She rolled her eyes in the direction of her mom’s voice.

“Jonas,” came the expected reprimand.

Her dad sat in her desk chair, his long legs tipping it back until he was dangerously close to falling over.

“I don’t like it,” she complained. “It makes me feel…” She shuddered. “Empty.”

He leaned forward, the feet of the chair thudding softly.

The silence lingered, her woeful eyes on the bottle and her dad’s woeful eyes on her.

And then, “Am I crazy, Dad?”

She heard his sharp inhale, the muted creak of the chair, but she didn’t look away from the bottle—the little container storing what little was left of her sanity.

Crazy.

No one said the word outright. They tiptoed around it like it was biting at their ankles, calling her delusions tricks of the mind, the after-effects of trauma. But almost two years later, there should have been some kind of improvement. After all the doctors and psychologists and treatments, she should be getting better.

Right?

“You're a little crazy, Jo-bear,” her dad said finally.

She blinked at him, shocked. She’d expected something more like, “No, Jonas. You’re fine. These are nothing but symptoms. Symptoms can be fixed." Isn’t that what he was supposed to say to his crazy daughter?

“Let me tell you something,” he said instead, “It’s okay to be a little bit crazy. If you got to choose from a list of all the things you could’ve been after what you went through, I’d say choose crazy every time.”

Well, sure. Crazy is better than dead.

Her dad snatched up the orange bottle from the nightstand and pitched it at her. The evil pills rattled noisily in their cage.

“Bottom’s up,” he said with a crooked smile.

She grimaced, twisting the cap in her fist.

“I thought you wanted me to choose crazy.” She swallowed hard against the pills, then said, “Choose crazy every time, Jonas” in her best impression of his rumbling voice.

He raised his eyebrows at that. “Are you mocking your father?”

Jonas snorted, sliding her bare feet between the sheets. She could already feel it…a void expanding in her chest, leaving her breathless. Smoke filling her head, leaving her faint. Tired.

Empty.

She gazed up at her dad when he leaned over her. She could feel his large hand on her head brushing the strands from her face. She blinked, committing to memory the softness in his chocolate eyes, and the wildness in his dark hair and full beard and broad shoulders. She watched the edges of him as they started to fade away.

The words bubbled up from somewhere deep inside of her, lonely and grief-stricken, and barely audible.

“I miss you.”

His thumb brushed her cheek, probably to catch a falling tear. “I’m right here,” he whispered back.

Her response came slowly, pushing past heavy lips. “You are.” A sigh. A blink. His touch faded. Her dad was gone. The stupid drugs in her system took him away from her again. She breathed, “But only in my crazy head.”

If being crazy was such a big problem, even worse was being crazy and going to public school. Teenagers can be cruel, and still crueler to girls who've spent time in loony bins and have a tendency to talk to themselves or think the walls are on fire.

At least she had Izzy.

"And I told Mr. Geoffrey that I would touch his foul-smelling, shriveled, dead—really, Jonas? Get your mind out of the gutter—his dead pig when people stopped using 'Hell freezes over' as their favorite idiom for never. And really, not even then. I mean, can you imagine it? Me, digging through rotting, formaldehyde-tainted guts? With these nails? Not in this lifetime, or the next."

Isabel Downing—Izzy for short—had been Jonas' best friend since, well, "before we could have formed any real opinions about each other," as Izzy liked to put it. She would say their friendship was founded on time and childhood ignorance. When they'd become wise to the idea that they could have chosen different friends, it was already too late for them to go their separate ways. They were bonded in secrets and weekend slumber parties for life.

Izzy heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Are we doing this again? No one is even paying attention. We could be invisible for all any of these brain-washed troglodytes could care."

Jonas rolled her eyes at Izzy's self-satisfied smirk.

"What?" Izzy asked. "It was funny. And anyway, can we talk about something other than your half-baked brain for a sec? I mean, old news. We need something fresh to chew on. For example...the new Mr. Tall, Dark, and Delicious I saw checking you out all through homeroom. He was seriously smoking."

Jonas attempted to dodge a group of boys playing keep-away with a rolled-up ball of paper.

"I know you know who I'm talking about,” Izzy persisted.

Of course she did. He would have been difficult to miss, the way he’d stared. Normally, it would’ve unsettled her. She preferred invisibility to anything else, but he'd singled her out somehow, for some reason, and the quiet smile that ghosted his expression was nothing like the sneers she had become accustomed to. It was...intriguing. And flattering.

And scary.

Izzy cocked a knowing eyebrow. “Deny it all you want. You’re not fooling anyone.” She gave a sharp hiss as a boy leaped by her to catch the paper ball.

"Careful guys,” he said, catching sight of Jonas. “Ghost-whisperer coming through.” All eyes turned to her, some curious, some mocking, some hostile—her worst nightmare.

"Definitely the type to peak in high school," Izzy muttered, glaring at their onlookers.

Jonas hunched her shoulders, lowered her head, and plowed through the crowd. Izzy didn’t follow. She did as most ghosts do and simply vanished on the spot. Jonas ran, holding her breath for fear that she would scream...or cry. Or both.

Not now, she thought desperately. Not now, not now, not now.

The smoke was seeping through the crevices, reaching for her as she hurtled into the nearest empty classroom. The heat was lapping at her bare skin, making it burn. She could hear the heavy breath of the fire. She knew it was coming. She knew it was going to hurt again.

"Dad," she gasped, her voice squeaking with tears. "Help me."

Her pills...they were in her locker. Too far away. She would go into fits of crazy before she could reach them, risking a mental breakdown in the halls before an audience of her cruel peers.

The familiar orange glow was dancing on the walls. She could feel the heat sucking the air from the room, from her body. She deflated, sinking to the floor. Her arms ached. Her scars screamed and sizzled.

"Help me," she cried again, desperately. "Please."

Where was he? Why hadn't he come? He always came for her. Always.

And then someone was there, but it wasn't the person she'd come to expect. In fact, it was the last person in the world she would have wanted in that room at that moment.

"Are you alright?" he asked as he knelt. His hands hovered near her but did not touch her. He waited for instruction, radiating concern as tangibly as heat from a flame.

When she didn't—couldn't—immediately respond, he said, "I'll get help." Jonas felt him shift into a crouch.

"No," she choked, inhaling the smoke. If he went to a teacher, or the school nurse, or anyone, there would be no hiding this. Her mom would be notified. She would be sent back to...that place. "Please. I just." Gasp. "I need." Gasp. "Medicine." Gasp. "My locker."

"Which locker?" he asked without hesitation.

When he returned, his breathing was labored, his clothes and backpack askew.

He found Jonas waiting alone in the middle of the room.

"You're okay," he breathed, and his words were a sigh of relief. And then he was instantly concerned again, saying, "You are okay, aren't you?" His eyes scanned her from head to toe as if to check for evidence that she was not, in fact, okay.

An entirely different kind of horror was taking root in the pit of her stomach. This boy she hadn’t officially met, for whom she had constructed a near-instant infatuation, had just witnessed her in the midst of a complete psychological meltdown.

"Um...do you still need this?" he asked tentatively. Her lack of response seemed to fuel his nerves. Her doctor-prescribed drugs rolled toward her on his upturned palm.

How could something so loathsome appear so small and innocent?

"Thank you," she muttered, somewhat inaudibly, as she reached to claim the villainous bottle.

"You're Jonas, right?" he asked. "Jonas Calderwood?"

She expected his next words to be, "So what's it like, being crazy?"

"I noticed you in homeroom," he said instead.

Noticed? That was a slight understatement.

"I saw you raise your hand when the teacher called out your name...for attendance,” he said next. He stumbled over his words, adding, "I, uh...liked your drawing."

"What?"

"The picture you were drawing on the corner of your textbook. The elephant and the palm tree. It was good."

"Oh."

"So, you like elephants?"

"What?"

He laughed nervously and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Clearly I'm making the world’s finest first impression.” He held his hand toward her and added, "I'm Jordan. Jordan Presley. My friends call me Elvis."

“Elvis?”

“Oh…because of the last name…Presley. Elvis Presley. You know…The King?”

An unbidden smile pushed at the corners of her lips. "What should I call you, then?" she asked, managing an entire sentence for the first time. She shook his offered hand.

"Whatever suits you," Jordon said.

"Look how cute he is when he's nervous," Izzy gushed, appearing suddenly alongside the wall by the door as if she'd just walked into the room. "He has that little crease between his eyebrows that I like."

Jonas had to refrain from glaring at her invisible best friend.

"So," she said timidly. "You're new here."

"Brilliant. Woo him with your mind-blowing conversational skills.”

Izzy's sarcasm was not helping the situation.

"First day," Jordon responded with a winning smile. "I've been homeschooled for the past six years. Just got back into the public-school scene. Though I can't say I'm off to a great start. I'm supposed to be in class right now."

Jonas' gut clenched in panic. School. Her Chemistry homework. It had completely slipped her crazy mind.

"Don't you dare, Jonas," Izzy warned. "Don't you dare pick your GPA over that adorable little forehead dimple. I promise, I will haunt you every second of every day if you—"

"Sorry, I have to go," Jonas said, taking a step toward the door.

"Ah, but we were just about to become friends," he said, nearly drawing her back with a heartrending look of disappointment. "You didn't even ask why I was homeschooled for six years. It's everyone's favorite question."

"Oh, I already know why," Jonas said, backing toward the door as she spoke.

His eyebrows shot upward.

"You do?"

"Sure. I mean, public school must have been so difficult for you...being 'a hunk, a hunk of burnin’ love' and all."

She stayed just long enough to see the delighted grin bloom over his face before making her escape.

She didn't talk to him for the next couple of weeks.

It wasn't that Jonas didn't want to talk to him. She really, really did. She'd had a million different conversations with him in her head—all of which portrayed her as being perfectly charming and funny...and sane. But she knew, without having to experience the disappointment firsthand, that the real thing could only end in disaster.

Still, he made it quite difficult for her to go unnoticed.

"Hey, Jonas," he said cheerfully, taking a seat across from her at an otherwise empty lunch table.

She managed a rather questionable smile of welcome.

"Is it okay if I sit with you today?"

"Say yes. Don't make me possess you," Izzy threatened. "I'll do it. I swear I will."

"That's fine," Jonas said.

"Cool," he said. "So...I got you something." He was already reaching for his backpack. From it, he pulled what looked to be a lumpy gray teddy bear. He turned it around to show abnormally large ears and an elongated nose.

An elephant.

Jonas stared at it with wide eyes. "What's this?" she asked, gaping dumbfoundedly, ignoring Izzy's sharp words of reproach.

Jordan held up a finger and said, "Wait for it."

He pinched the tip of the elephant's trunk. A moment later, the elephant was crooning like The King, Burning Love blaring so loudly that Jonas jumped in her seat a little. Jordon bobbed his messy mop of black hair and mouthed along to the words.

He caught her eye and grinned proudly until the song died out.

"So?" he asked. "What do you think?"

Jonas ducked her head, embarrassed. Surely, everyone was watching, whispering as per usual. She was too afraid to look.

Jordan caught on quickly. He asked, "You finished?"

"I...um...yes?"

"Good. Come with me."

He snatched up the musical elephant, took Jonas' wrist, and pulled her away from the cafeteria until they found themselves at the very top of the football stadium seats. As far from the world as they could get on school grounds.

"Here," Jordan said, placing the elephant in her shaking hands.

"Thank you," Jonas replied, and this time her smile came easily enough. “But...why?"

"Well, when we first met...it wasn't exactly under the best of circumstances."

She bit her lip and looked out across the field to hide her apprehension. She was afraid of where this conversation would lead.

"Finding you on the floor like that, I...didn't know what I was supposed to do."

Jonas cringed, recalling every detail with painful clarity.

"Which is why I might have mishandled the situation, like the idiot that I am," he went on to say, persevering in spite of her continued silence. "For that, I’m sorry. And I want to redeem myself. But I couldn't show up empty-handed"—he gestured toward the elephant she was clutching in her lap—"in the small chance we might be able to...start over."

"But...you don't even know me," Jonas said finally.

Jordon nodded his head thoughtfully. "That's true," he replied, choosing his words carefully as he spoke. "But I've heard quite a bit about you already, and you seem like the kind of person I would like to get to know. If you'll let me."

She met his gaze with one of shock.

"I’m not following," she said. And her confusion, she felt, was warranted. What kind of teenage boy came to a new school, heard the rumors about the girl who was way off her rocker, and thus, decided he'd like to be her friend?

"I guess I should give you some backstory, huh?" He smiled and winked, then continued soberly, "When I was ten, I was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma. That's, like, bone cancer."

Jonas listened with horror and pity as Jordan explained how quickly and thoroughly his cancer had changed his life. His regrets for having missed out on so much of his childhood. The pain and worry his family had been forced to overcome. The doctors, dubious of whether or not he would live to see his next birthday.

"And now I'm in remission," he said, wrapping it all up with a happy little smile. "They gave me a clean bill of health over a year ago. I managed to convince my parents last month that I was ready to get back out in the world. And here I am. Out in the world. Enjoying public school in all its glory."

Jonas was shaking her head in the way that people do when they are so full of sympathy that they have absolutely no idea how to put it into words.

And then, "I'm so sorry you had to go through something like that."

"Yeah," Jordan agreed. "You will never, ever hear me say I'm glad I got cancer. But, you know, life has this funny way of dragging people through the darkest, most painful pits of Hell, to then pick them up and brush them off on the other side and say 'there...now you're stronger. Go out and use your newfound power for good.'"

Jonas couldn't help thinking that Life had somehow forgotten her and left her to suffer in one of those dark, painful Hell-pits.

"Anyway, now that you have backstory...allow me to explain myself."

He turned toward her on their shared bleacher and inched closer.

"Being the cancer-kid for over a third of my life made me realize a few things. First, I will forever be known as the cancer-kid and will always be treated as such. Which led to me feeling more comfortable around people who'd gone through similar struggles. We could relate to each other in ways that healthy people could never understand. So, I find myself being drawn to you because I don't have to tell you what it feels like to be the only person to walk into a room wondering what it'll take to blend in when everyone else already knows the truth."

Jonas processed this with a slightly upsetting thought. "So...you want to be my friend because I'm...." What? Unhealthy? Damaged?

Crazy?

"Beautiful."

Jonas looked away again, her stomach lurching toward her chest.

"Inside and out," he continued boldly. "I know what you've had to overcome, and of the ghosts that still haunt you."

She blinked and saw her dad standing on the other side of the field, his hands in his pockets, watching over her with his warm gaze. Izzy was at the bottom of the bleachers fanning herself, her long legs stretched out to bask in the warmth of the midday sun.

"That doesn't make you weak, Jonas," Jordon said softly. "It doesn't make you unwanted. You fight and you go on, day after day. And that strength makes you shine in ways they can only dream of. Your scars...."

He reached for her arm, but stopped when she flinched. He reached instead for the collar of his shirt and pulled it away from his neck, baring his shoulder and giving her a glimpse of the thick, lengthy disfigurement marring his collarbone.

"You have those scars because you're still alive, Jonas," he continued. "The marks of the strong person that experience shaped you to be."

"I don't feel strong," she breathed shakily. And her mouth was suddenly full of words she'd never said to anyone. "I feel like I cheated somehow. Like I should have died with them in that fire. It feels...like a mistake. Like the fire is still there, waiting for its chance to finish me off.

"And my dad.” A shiver ran up her spine. “He wasn't even supposed to be there. He—" She clenched her eyes shut. Talking about it was almost as bad as hallucinating. "I still see them," she admitted. "I see them and feel them. I think...part of me is afraid to let go, because if I do then...they'll really be gone, and there's nothing that will ever change that."

"But that comes at a cost, doesn't it?" he asked perceptively. "You can't hold on to the memory of them without remembering the fire, too. You continue living the worst experience of your life over and over again just to keep a piece of what it took from you."

She nodded, squinting against tears.

"You won’t forget them, Jonas," he said. "You can't. But if they could talk to you—I mean, really talk to you—they would tell you to let go. They would tell you to live.”

Jonas gave his smile of comfort a half-hearted one of her own. "I know."

For a moment, Jordan was quiet. He followed her gaze across the empty field. And to him that's all it was—empty.

"After going into remission, I started having these panic attacks," he said. "I would wake up at night not knowing where I was, thinking I was back in the hospital. Thinking I still had cancer, my heart beating so fast I wouldn't be able to catch my breath. It felt like I was going to die—and I know what that feels like."

He shrugged in that it-couldn't-be-helped kind of way.

"How did you get the panic attacks to stop?" Jonas asked, thinking of her hallucinations.

"My mom," he answered with a crooked, affectionate smile. "She would find me mid-meltdown...and hold me for a while. And then she'd sing this ridiculous song."

"What song?"

"Down by the Bay."

"Don't know it."

"Yes, you do.”

"No, I think you'll have to sing it," she replied, the corner of her mouth twitching.

"Come on, you know... ‘Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow, back to my home I dare not go’." And then he sang, "‘For if I do, my mother will say—'"

“‘Did you ever see a goose kissing a moose’?"

"I knew it. I knew you'd heard it before."

"Of course I have. Who hasn’t?"

"Mmhmm," he murmured, a stern set to his mouth. But he was smiling again when he said, "Anyway, the song helped me calm down. It got me out of my head. With time, and a lot of support from the people closest to me...I was able to move beyond my fear of the past."

Jonas frowned and stared at the stuffed animal between them. She ran her finger down its trunk.

"You make it sound easy.”

"It's not. It's not easy at all. But I didn't have to do it alone."

He reached for her hand, and she didn't pull away. He caught her gaze and held on to it. She saw the kindness in his eyes—the courage. This boy, who had appeared so suddenly, who knew all the right words to say when she needed him to say them, who had already wormed his way into her every thought and breath...had somehow given her something no one had been able to give her in the last two years of mind-numbing grief.

"You don't have to do it alone, Jonas."

And with those words he filled the emptiness inside of her.