He blinked again.

She blinked again.

Several awkward moments of blinking passed before she spoke up.

“I forgot to give Aria and Levi the cookies I baked for them.” She handed them our way, and then stood up straight. Her stare met Simon’s.

Simon blinked again.

Abigail blinked, too.

“I’m going to go now,” Abigail said.

“Yup, that sounds about right,” Simon agreed.

She hurried away, her high heels and swishing pants sounding her exit.

Simon flopped into his chair and buried his face into his hands. “Do you think she heard me?”

“No way.” Levi smirked. “I think you’re in the clear.”

* * *

When I wasn’t with Levi at school, I found myself thinking about him more than I should’ve been, and every time I received a message from him, my stomach flipped.

Levi: Eyesome – adjective | [ahy-suh m]: Pleasant to look at.

Me: Can you use it in a sentence, please?

Levi: You looked very eyesome when you walked into calculus today wearing two mismatched socks.

Me: You’re so crazy.

He didn’t respond.

I made dinner for my sisters, and checked my phone. I took a nap, woke up, and checked my phone. I weighed myself, stared in the mirror at my stomach, and checked my phone. I listened to Mom and Dad fight about me being homeschooled next semester, and then I checked my phone.

This was all before seven at night.

Levi: I hate that word. It’s my second least favorite word.

Me: Which one?

Levi: Crazy.

Me: Why?

He made me wait again.

I didn’t get a response until 7:39 P.M.

Levi: Because the people in my old town always called my mom crazy.

18 Levi

crazy | adjective | cra·zy | \krā-zē\

Mentally deranged, demented, insane.

Senseless, impractical; totally unsound.

Likely to break or fall to pieces.

Weak, infirm, or sickly.

My mom was the best mom in the world. Except for when she wasn’t. I hated her the same way I loved her: deeply. Both feelings came in waves. When I loved her, I loved her a lot. When I hated her, I couldn’t stand looking at her.

She never hated me, though, and maybe that was the problem. Maybe she loved me too much. It was hard being loved too much by someone because as time went by their love started feeling like a chokehold. I worried too much about disappointing her, or letting her down because if I did, she fell apart. She panicked, feeling unloved. She went crazy.

Being loved by a certain type of person was a tough job, and not everyone was right to fill that position.

I hadn’t always known she was unstable.

Growing up in the middle of the forest with only her and nature, I never knew there was anything wrong with her. We had fun together, laughing and singing and playing our instruments.

When my aunt Denise would come over, the two of them would always laugh and drink a lot of wine that Denise brought with her. Then Denise would leave for weeks, and Mom and I would go back to our normal routine. Denise was the only other person I saw for a long time except for when I wandered into town for groceries and stuff, where people would whisper about my mom and me.

“Is it genetic?” they would ask.

“Is he crazy like her, too?” they wondered out loud.

It took everything in me to not walk up to the strangers and punch them in their faces for talking about Mom. They didn’t know her. They didn’t know us. We kept to ourselves in our happy world. Why didn’t they mind their own business? Why did they think they were better than us?

I would return home, irritated with their hatred toward us when they didn’t even know who we were, but Mom would talk me down from my anger when she was in her right mindset.

“Words, Levi. Words. Those are just empty, meaningless words from empty meaningless people.”

It wasn’t until I started going to visit Dad during the summer that I realized maybe our life wasn’t so normal. Maybe the whispering townspeople were onto something.

It turned out that cleaning the outside windows of the house during a storm wasn’t the normal thing to do. Mom was convinced that using nature’s rain was the only way to truly get the windows clean, though. If I didn’t clean them well enough, she thought I didn’t love her.

So she panicked.

She started talking about voices in her head, claiming they were real. She started seeing things that weren’t there.

Denise later told me it was called schizoaffective disorder. I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded scary enough to make me worry.

Mom was put on medicines to help her troubled thoughts, and it worked for a long time. She wasn’t as afraid of things. She was my mom again—kind of. She smiled a lot less, but she said the voices were gone.

Then she stopped taking the pills because she thought she was better.

She wasn’t.

I also learned that it wasn’t normal to be a kid with no friends. When I was nine and Dad asked me if I had a birthday party that past year, I said yes. When he asked how many friends came, I said two. Mom and Denise. If I asked Mom if I could join a sports team, she thought I didn’t love her. She had these fixed beliefs that if I were to find friends, it would mean I’d betrayed her.

So she panicked.

She took her medicine again for a little while, until she thought she was better again.

She wasn’t.

The first time I forgot to say my prayers at night, she had a panic attack. She told me she was dying and it was because I didn’t tell God thank you. She told me God spoke with her and was angry and going to take it out on her because of my mistake. I remembered crying over her, begging her to breathe. Just breathe, Mama. I’d dialed 9-1-1 and when they came, she had already calmed down.

It was one of the first memories I had of her.

Just breathe, Mama.

* * *

“Mom, relax,” I sighed into the phone receiver as I sat on top of Dad’s rooftop. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to Mom because I could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t completely with me. I heard her sounds, but it wasn’t really her. She was so far gone I wondered if she—my real mom—was ever going to come back.

“Don’t you miss me, Levi? Why won’t you come home?”

Because I don’t want to see you like this.

“You know I’m figuring things out with Dad,” I lied. “We’re getting pretty close,” I lied again.