My Kind of Crazy - Robin Reul Page 0,51
like I do with her. I feel like I could tell her anything.
I want her to know the truth. My truth.
“My mom had dragged Mickey and me on errands. We’d argued over who’d get shotgun so she’d made us flip a coin. He won, and I spent the whole ride pouting like a damn toddler. It started getting dark, and Mom had some extra money in her purse so she took us to McDonald’s as a treat for dinner. We each got to order a large fry and shake. When I had my fill, I thought it would be amusing to start throwing fries at Mickey, just to annoy him. It worked.” I feel the tears coming, but I fight them back. I puff out my cheeks, exhaling loudly. “I’m sorry. I’ve never told anyone this before.”
When I hesitate, she reaches for my hand and squeezes it lightly, then lets go. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Actually, the weird thing is, I do.”
She smiles and gently asks, “So what happened?”
“It started to piss him off, which only egged me on. Finally, Mickey whirls around, unbuckles his seat belt, and tries to grab my shake out of my hand. Mom turns her head to tell me to stop, so she doesn’t see the car in front of us slow down. She swerves and jumps the median into the path of a charter bus full of blue-haired old ladies on their way to the casino to play nickel slots. And then everything started moving in slow motion. I knew what was about to happen but was totally helpless to stop it. Two seconds later, they were gone.”
The tears sear my eyes, but I don’t want to blubber in front of her like a guest on The Jerry Springer Show. I take another deep breath and sigh.
Peyton puts her hand on my arm and stops. She faces me so that she’s looking right in my eyes. “It’s not your fault. You have to know that.”
I swipe my fist at the corner of my eye. “They said the only reason I survived is because Mickey’s seat broke my impact. It should have been me, not him. He had everything going for him. And my mom… God, she was an amazing person. She put up with so much, and yet she was always positive. Like a ray of sunshine and you just wanted to bask in her light.”
“Hank…it’s not your fault.”
I shake my head, the weight of their loss creeping around me like fog. “I killed them. If I hadn’t been such a stupid, obnoxious little kid, they’d both be here today. And my life wouldn’t be such a total piece of shit. Everything would be different.”
“You don’t know that,” she says quietly.
“I’d be different,” I tell her. “And maybe my father wouldn’t be the way he is. Mickey was always his favorite. They were into all the same stuff. They even looked alike: same chin, same grayish-green eyes. Mickey made you feel good just by being around him. He used to brainstorm ideas for comics with me. That’s how we came up with Freeze Frame. We’d work on it when we needed to block out the sound of Dad yelling at Mom. Mickey would write the story, and I’d draw the images.
“When he died, we were about to start a new issue. We’d left the story line on a real cliff-hanger. Then suddenly it was all up to me to figure out what happened next, without him. Now it keeps me going. Whenever I work on Freeze Frame, it’s like Mickey’s there, telling me not to give up, to trust my own voice. My mother and brother were the glue that kept our family together. And ever since they died, everything has pretty much fallen apart.”
Peyton says, “You can’t blame yourself. It was an accident. You didn’t kill them, Hank.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I want to believe that. I really do.”
“Sometimes, to help make sense of things, we tell ourselves stories and we convince ourselves that they’re true, but that doesn’t mean they really are.”
We walk the rest of the way to her house in silence. When we get to her driveway, we can hear the TV blasting from the street. Pete’s car is there. No sign of her mom’s. Peyton hangs back slightly, as if she’s hesitant to go inside.
“Hey, you wanna come over for a while? I could ask my dad if