My Kind of Crazy - Robin Reul Page 0,80
that awful hospital. I can’t go back to either one, Hank. I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to see you anymore. There was only one place where I knew I would feel safe, and that was with you.”
I can’t keep sitting here like this. I abruptly stand up and start walking, trying to get my bearings and process everything I’ve just heard—most of all, how she could have hurt herself like that. Pebbles on the path go skittering in all directions as she races to fall into step beside me. “Wait… What do you mean, send you back to your dad? I thought he left when you were a baby.”
“He did. He lives in California. But my mother sent me to live with him and his new wife and baby a couple of years ago because she couldn’t deal with me. My dad didn’t want me there, and his wife wanted me even less. They had a perfect new family and I was this screwed-up kid who ruined it. They ignored me. That’s when I began setting stuff on fire. I started with little things—a random baby toy, one of my dad’s ties, an expensive scarf that belonged to my stepmother. Stupid stuff. It made me feel powerful. Until things got out of control.”
Despite the fact that it’s about seventy degrees, a chill goes down my spine. “What do you mean?”
“They have these winds in California. They call them the Santa Anas, and when they blow, they can be like forty to fifty miles an hour. I was in the backyard while my dad was still at work and my stepmother was trying to put the baby down for a nap. I was lonesome and bored, so I started burning a stack of her stupid fashion magazines, when this big gust of wind came out of nowhere. It carried the embers, which were really beautiful actually, these glowing orange specks that just flew everywhere in the wind, and they landed on the roof of the old gardening shed. It was basically kindling, and the next thing I knew, the whole shed was on fire.”
“Holy shit,” I say softly.
I steal a glance at her. Peyton’s eyes are a million miles away, as if she’s reliving the moment. “I couldn’t stop watching it burn. My stepmother noticed it from the house and came outside, screaming and carrying on. She accused me of deliberately setting the fire and trying to harm her and the baby. She told my dad I was going to light the house on fire some night while they slept, and that I had to leave. I suppose I’m lucky because they could have sent me to some juvenile detention center, but instead they put me in the psych ward.” She wipes her nose with her fist and shakes her head. “I would never hurt anyone on purpose, Hank. You have to know that.”
“Except yourself, apparently.”
She stares down at her shoe and kicks at the dirt. “It wasn’t like I meant to burn down the shed any more than you meant to light Amanda Carlisle’s yard on fire. It just happened. In a way, it was the same kind of thing. We wanted to be noticed, to stop being invisible in plain sight for once.”
She steals a glance at me as I let that sink in for a minute. In a completely bizarre and messed-up way, I get what she means. And then I remember what she said that night she gave me the comic—about how we tell ourselves stories to survive, but that doesn’t mean they’re the truth. I wonder how many other things she’s lied about.
“So what happened after that?”
“After I was released from the hospital, I was sent back to my mother. She wasn’t too happy about it because I got in the way of partying with her steady stream of loser boyfriends. But then she realized it meant she’d be getting child support again, plus more welfare money until I’m eighteen, as long as I’m living with her. Suddenly she’s more than willing to have me come home. Not because she gives a crap about me, but because for the first time, having me around actually holds value for her. But trust me when I say that’s where it ends.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t even know where to start.
“You know what it is to have people care about you, Hank. To have a family who loves you. I never had that, not for a single