They Call Me Crazy Read Online Free PDF Page B

gullibility.
    But Roland only shrugged and said, “It could be worse.” From then on, she stuck to him like paint on clapboard.
    I turn into my driveway and hit the button on the garage-door opener. I pull in, shut the door, and sit in the dark.
    Cass used to say that she had Grandma Babe’s power of sight. That used to scare me, but now I know for sure that she doesn’t. I wouldn’t be here if she did.
    I haven’t visited Grandma Babe in nineteen years, since the day before I went back to college that first summer break. It’s not because I’m above the dotty relic of a woman. On the contrary, I feel a real connection to her and would probably appreciate her readings more as an adult than I ever did as a child. The problem is that I do believe Babe has a gift. I realized it the last time I saw her. She told me my aura was horribly tinged and that she wanted to do a reading or two to find out what was wrong. I wouldn’t let her.
    I know why my aura is tinged, and the last thing I need is for her or Cass to know.
    Cass and I have been friends since the first grade—close friends, best friends. But with any relationship, years of good experiences can be washed away with one mistake. Although Babe, Lola, and Cass have been a second family to me, they aren’t blood, and I never would want to cross them. Not in a big way. Everyone knows Babe is a psychic or healer or mystic or whatever they call people like her, but nobody knows Lola and Cass have some inherent weirdness, too. And while Babe and Lola are both carefree and not very intimidating, Cass scares me.
    Not many people know it—I’m sure it never made it beyond Babe Shatner’s psychedelic walls—but Cass cut herself when she was thirteen. I don’t mean by accident. I mean she took a straight razor that she found in her Grandpa Jack’s bathroom and made a slice across her wrist while I sat there and watched.
    “It’s not a big deal, Maryanne,” Cass said, looking me straight in the eye. “If I get dizzy or start to pass out, I’ll wrap it in a towel and stop the bleeding. I won’t die or anything. I just want to see how it feels.” She raised and lowered her eyebrows.
    Maybe she was kidding, but I wasn’t sure. She had joked about killing herself before, and although it made me uncomfortable, I never thought she would really do it. But that time, she really did slice her wrist, kind of deep, and if I hadn’t tied the towel around her arm and yelled for Grandma Babe, she probably would have died. And there would have been another suicide to add to the family list.
    The scariest part about the whole episode wasn’t the blood but the way she reacted. She laughed .
    “Oh, you are so uptight,” she said. “I wasn’t going to die. If I wanted to die, I would have cut this way”—she drew a finger down her wrist to demonstrate—“really deep, not straight across.”
    The fact that she knew how to effectively cut her wrists at the age of thirteen was bad enough. But laughing about it? That was when I knew she was mentally unstable.
    And if she’s capable of hurting herself, she might hurt someone else, especially someone who had made a mistake that could destroy what little happiness Cass has in her otherwise troubled life.
    Yes, I’m scared of her. Terrified.
    But I still refuse to call what Roland and I did a mistake. Our relationship was beautiful. It was how things should have been. And Cass can never know.

    Shay’s ballgame is out west of town, at what the townsfolk call the Mickey Mantle field. I sit on the bleachers, smiling as people say hello but trying to avoid any long conversations. I just want to watch my girl play ball. Not everything needs to be a social event, regardless of what the people of this town think.
    Pet and Daze Harper are sitting two rows below me. They’ve come to watch Pet’s girl, Rebecca. Not much to watch, if you ask me. The girl can’t hit, and she runs as if she’s got a pumpkin between her knees. Shay’s