I couldn’t; I was too riled up. In an effort to calm down, I changed out of my work clothes and pulled my long hair out of my “work appropriate” bun. I grabbed my brush, pulled my desk chair up to the spot by the window, and started brushing out my mess of hair, not taking my eyes off the back yard.
I’d really started to think that this was all over. I thought life could finally be normal.
When Ry was younger and the voices started he would panic every time he heard them and tell anyone nearby – me, Mom, his teachers at school, his friends, their parents – anyone. We thought it was just a normal childhood “imaginary friend” sort of thing, but it wasn’t long before everyone realized it was more than that. These voices he heard came at random times and usually said really weird things. Like once, Ryland had an all-out panic attack at a baseball game because there was a voice screaming that if the Pirates didn’t win someone was going to die. Another time he was at school and had to be pulled out of class because he started crying hysterically when his teacher returned their most recent math test. Everyone assumed that it was because he’d gotten a bad grade, but he insisted that it was due to the voices that had suddenly come, yelling and crying in this head.
It wasn’t long before he stopped receiving invites to friends’ houses, started sitting alone at lunch, and began making regular trips to the counselor’s office. Everyone thought he was crazy.
Finally the guidance counselor, with the help of the school psychologist, started sending people to talk to Mom about getting “help” for Ry. The problem was when they said “help” what they really meant was locking him up to be observed and medicated, and I couldn’t let that happen. He was my brother, and I had to take care of him.
But more than that, I knew he wasn’t crazy. Deep down, I knew it. Yes, he heard voices, and yes it was strange, but why was everyone so convinced that Ryland was imagining the voices he heard? What if they were real? No one had ever even tried to figure out what was going on or if there was a way to help him – actually help him, not simply slapping a “crazy” sticker on his forehead so they could hide the problem behind an institution and drugs. I seemed to be the only person who wanted an actual explanation for the problem, not just a by-any-means solution.
A knock at my door made me jump. I reached for the handle, thinking it was Mom, but the voice on the other side wasn’t hers.
“Rebecca?” It was the younger of the two men.
“What?” I snipped.
“Do you mind if… Can I speak with you for a moment?”
I was about to tell him to go to hell, but something in the tone of his voice stopped me. Maybe I should talk to him. The fact that they hadn’t left yet meant they were going to be persistent, so I might as well get ready for the long haul. Anyway, better him than the crooked-nosed creature he had brought with him. “It’s not locked,” I said, though I still put as much venom in the words as I could.
He slowly opened the door, stepping in so cautiously it looked like he was trying to avoid landmines. He stopped five or so feet from where I stood with my arms crossed, ready for battle.
“So, talk,” I said, after a few moments of silence.
“We really do want to help your brother.”
Really? More of this? What, so cute guy thinks he can just waltz up here and win me over with some alone time. I snapped. “Oh, sure, you want to ‘help’ him ‘control’ his ‘condition’,” I said, making sarcastic air quotes. “Do you really think you are the first people to come and try to take him away ‘for his own good’? Do you think I don’t know what that means? I don’t care what you’ve been told, he’s not crazy. If you think that I am just going to stand by and let you lock him up in some institution somewhere, so you can–”
“I would never do that,” he interrupted quietly. His tone hadn’t been more than a whisper, but it was so earnest and solemn and, honestly, a little scary, that I couldn’t help but believe him. And just like