I Don't Want to Be Crazy

  I Don’t Want to Be Crazy

  Samantha Schutz

  Scholastic Inc.

  New York Toronto London Aukland Sydney

  Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong Buenos Aires

  For Emily Kozlow—who saw the worst

  It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before…to test your limits…to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

  —Anaïs Nin

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  PART I

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  PART II

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  PART III

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  vi

  vii

  PART IV

  i

  ii

  PART V

  i

  ii

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books By

  Copyright

  Prologue

  I can’t believe

  no one else can hear

  I am screaming

  inside my head.

  Things are moving so fast.

  I am going to die.

  I am going to die.

  I am going to die.

  My hands are shaking.

  I try to squeeze them, try to make it stop,

  but now my fists are shaking,

  and this shaking is working its way through me.

  It must look like I am having a fit.

  I want to let the scream out,

  but I think if I start,

  I’ll never stop.

  It’s not supposed to be like this.

  I am too young to die.

  I don’t know how to make this end,

  and if it doesn’t, I’ll have to go to a hospital,

  be medicated, force-fed soft foods.

  I don’t want to be that person.

  I am not that person.

  I am not.

  I am not.

  Part I

  i.

  Each day another friend leaves for college.

  Yesterday Abe, today Claire,

  tomorrow Matt.

  When it’s my turn,

  nobody will be left

  to say good-bye to me.

  It’s crazy that I’m leaving

  everything and everyone I know,

  but there are things I want to leave behind,

  things I don’t have room for—

  like this version of me,

  like Jason.

  Sometimes I call him my boyfriend,

  but I know better.

  I’m excited to leave,

  to start something new,

  but it scares me.

  And what scares me even more

  is that things are supposed to get harder than this—

  harder than living in my parents’ house,

  harder than dealing with Jason,

  harder than high school.

  I can’t be a kid anymore.

  All my neighborhood friends and I

  go to one party after another,

  drinking, getting high—

  the same stupid stuff we always do

  in the playground of P.S. 98

  or down at the field.

  Now we call them good-bye parties,

  but they’re really just another excuse to get high.

  I am sitting behind the register at the theater

  looking out the window

  at the cars speeding by,

  thinking, I can’t believe it’s finally over.

  I am out of high school.

  I’ll never again have to wear that polyester kilt

  with the stapled hem and melted hole

  where Audrey accidentally ashed on me.

  I’ll never get detention for wearing combat boots

  or have to take the Q46 bus halfway across Queens.

  I don’t ever have to sit in the senior lounge

  wishing I could play my

  music without Justin calling Tori Amos Tour of My Anus.

  I don’t have to pretend to like people

  who are assholes and call me flat-chested.

  I don’t have to be treated like crap

  just because I’m not popular.

  Applying to college was a disaster.

  My parents had their choice for me,

  and I had mine.

  But since they were paying the bills,

  there was no room for compromise.

  We fought about my application essay for weeks.

  It had to be perfect—

  revised and reread dozens of times,

  marked up in red pen

  until it was bloody.

  In the end my personal statement

  was more my mother’s than my own

  and fiction became fact

  because it sounded better.

  It’s been like this

  for as long as I can remember—

  writing and rewriting homework,

  book reports, and papers

  until they were not mine—

  until they were perfect.

  I don’t understand

  how my teachers never noticed.

  How could they believe

  all those words were mine?

  Every time I handed in a paper

  I hoped I’d get caught.

  A week before I leave,

  Jason picks me up after work

  and we go down to the woods

  at the edge of the bay

  where there’s a washed-up diving platform.

  The moon is bright enough

  that we can find the path,

  but I still hold his hand—

  let him guide me

  around branches and rocks.

  When we get to the platform

  it’s covered with slugs.

  We kick them off and lie down.

  It doesn’t matter

  that there are trails of ooze.

  It doesn’t matter

  that it is low tide

  and the mosquitoes are out.

  All that matters

  is that his hands cover me

  like my clothes should.

  In the morning I wake up, shower,

  see that I am covered in bites, some bleeding

  from where I must have scratched them in the night.

  I spend the day at work

  counting bites, rubbing on cortisone,

  and thinking of Jason’s hands.

  It sounds nice,

  but it’s not.

  It sounds easy,

  but it isn’t.

  The next day Jason is a half hour late

  to get me from work.

  No phone call.

  No explanation.

  Just like always,

  I am an afterthought.

  Just like the night he promised

  we’d be alone and showed up with two friends

  ready to smoke a blunt.

  Just like the afternoon

  he said he was going to pick me up

  after his laundry finished drying

  and never showed

  because he fell asleep.

  It’s been like this ever since Christmas,

  when he kissed me

  and then told me he’d been waiting


  a long time to do that.

  Ever since then

  I’ve been waiting

  for him to do something, anything

  to show he cares,

  for him to be the one to ask me to hang out,

  waiting for the phone to ring,

  checking to see if the phone is broken,

  or if someone’s already on the line.

  I’m glad I’m leaving.

  I don’t want to wait anymore.

  I’m surrounded by stacks of towels,

  linens still in the package,

  jeans and sweaters,

  jumbo boxes of tampons,

  soap, and shampoo.

  I’m listening to Ani DiFranco so loud

  my parents are going to start to yell.

  By the end of the week

  everything needs to be packed

  in these giant plastic tubs

  like leftovers

  and in garbage bags

  like trash.

  Everything I own,

  everything I care about, is at my feet:

  a Valentine’s Day card from Jason

  that reads I wish for you,

  a collage Claire made for my birthday

  of handpainted portraits of the two of us,

  a photo of me and Audrey

  sitting in the back row of the Q79 bus,

  a drawing I made in 1983.

  I can’t wait

  to get out of this room

  with its stupid flowered wallpaper,

  out of this house

  with all its rules,

  out of this neighborhood

  where everyone knows each other.

  I try folding things neatly,

  even though I’m a slob.

  I am starting something new.

  I want to do this right.

  A couple of nights before I leave

  Jason tries again to get me to have sex with him.

  We are in his bed when he gives me a speech

  about how I won’t want to lose my virginity

  to some stranger in college.

  He reminds me

  that he is here,

  next to me,

  safe.

  But I’ve already given him everything else.

  This is the only thing I

  have left.

  I’m leaving tomorrow

  and saying good-bye to Jason tonight.

  I don’t think I can handle it

  if he kisses me.

  It will only make things harder.

  It will only make me cry

  to kiss him,

  to feel the emptiness.

  I wonder if he feels it.

  I wonder if he even cares.

  What a fitting ending with Jason.

  No hug.

  No kiss.

  Nothing.

  Just like always, he was late

  and I was pissed.

  This time it was the weed’s fault.

  It knocked him on his ass, hard.

  He was pale, almost green.

  He could barely speak.

  His best friend Nate was there

  to confirm the story.

  I could see in Jason’s face

  that it was the truth,

  but it was too late.

  I can’t fall asleep.

  It’s like the night before camp,

  except I don’t come home after six weeks.

  It’s like the night before an exam

  that I haven’t studied for enough.

  It’s like the night before my birthday,

  knowing my expectations will never be lived up to.

  It’s like the night before a vacation,

  and I’m terrified to fly.

  It is the night before everything.

  ii.

  My roommate Sarah is in our dorm room

  when my parents and I get upstairs with the first load.

  She is one of the kids I met

  at the overnight open house in the spring.

  None of us knew if we’d been accepted

  and it was strange to think

  that we might make friends we’d never see again.

  That night, in the woods, behind one of the dorms,

  a bunch of us got stoned and swore that if we got in,

  we’d go, be friends, request to be roommates—

  Sarah and I,

  Josh and Adam.

  We’d be safe from the freaks.

  When I walk into our dorm room,

  I drop my stuff on the floor,

  and Sarah and I scream and hug.

  I can’t believe we are really here,

  that all of this is finally starting.

  Sarah’s stuff is already unpacked

  and neatly laid out.

  She’s managed to make her side of the room into a home.

  I can’t believe she moved in by herself.

  She is quick to excuse herself.

  Maybe she can tell that my family is the type

  to scream and yell no matter what we do.

  Maybe she wants to leave before we ask her to help.

  Either way, I’m jealous.

  We carry everything up the five flights

  because the elevators are backed up.

  All my clothes are packed in garbage bags.

  My life looks like a dump.

  My mother carries a lamp,

  then positions herself on the extra-long twin bed.

  She supervises for the rest of the afternoon

  as my father and I go back and forth

  to the Volvo and up and down the stairs.

  I wish I didn’t have to do this with my parents.

  I wish we didn’t have to fight

  about where everything goes

  and have the other kids in my suite hear

  and think I am a baby.

  My parents leave after the big stuff is in place,

  the photos and posters are hung and level,

  and my father has changed into a clean polo shirt.

  I am finally alone

  and it is wonderfully quiet.

  That first night Sarah goes out

  and Josh comes over.

  We’ve e-mailed since the spring,

  exchanged stupid high school stories,

  recommended books and CDs,

  and speculated on what it would be like

  when we actually got to school.

  We smoke a joint

  and Josh lies down in Sarah’s bed—

  eyes shut, hands folded across his chest

  with his cigarette between his fingers.

  He doesn’t move for a long time.

  “Josh?” No answer.

  Louder, “Josh?”

  No answer.

  Is he sleeping? Dead?

  I go over to see if he is breathing,

  but I am too high to tell.

  I lean in closer,

  and closer.

  I am going to have to put a mirror under his nose.

  I can’t believe that I killed someone

  my first night of college.

  I am just inches from Josh’s face

  when he opens one eye

  and smiles at me.

  I say, “I thought you were dead.”

  He starts laughing

  and I fall back on my ass

  and laugh harder

  than I have ever laughed before.

  When I met Adam in the spring

  there was an instant attraction.

  I felt it the first minute I saw him—

  the back of him, really.

  I was walking behind him during the campus tour,

  watching his hair swish.

  That night we stayed up until four in the morning,

  and talked about high school

  and wanting to get out of our parents’ houses.

  I knew he felt the connection too,

  but he had a girlfriend


  and I had Jason,

  so we just slept on nearby couches.

  The night after I move into the dorm,

  Adam and I go for a walk

  while everyone else is at the freshman meet-and-greet.

  It’s the first time we’ve spoken since the spring.

  He doesn’t have a girlfriend anymore

  and we kiss in the grass

  by one of the outdoor sculptures—

  giant yellow metal beams

  that look like reaching legs.

  We can hear laughing and cheering

  coming from the party across the green.

  I feel like the cheering is for me,

  for us.

  This campus is tiny compared to others I’ve seen,

  but it’s still a mystery to navigate.

  They’ve given us a map

  that I wouldn’t be caught dead with

  so there’s no chance of getting through the day

  without asking where something is.

  The dining hall is the worst.

  It’s packed with people—

  people who know their way around,

  who have friends,

  who know where they like to sit

  and how to balance their tray

  without spilling their coffee

  into their cereal.

  In high school I knew the rules.

  I knew which girls were my friends

  and which ones were fake.

  I knew the fastest way

  to spread a rumor was to tell Lauren

  and the fastest way to the lunchroom

  was to take the hallway by art class.

  I knew my friends sat at the last table on the left

  and the cool kids sat at the last table on the right.

  I knew that after lunch

  my friends hung out in the stairway by the gym,

  and if you were careful

  you could slip out the East exit

  to smoke a cigarette.

  Part of my financial aid package

  is a job in Food Services.

  I was a waitress a few summers ago,

  but this is humiliating.

  I wear an apron, rubber gloves,

  carry food back and forth,

  clean up tables,

  scrape uneaten food off plates.

  I go home stinking