The Problem With Crazy (32 page)

Then I’d see him leave my house, hop on his bike and ride, crashing straight into a car, a truck, oncoming traffic, off a bridge. Every time I saw him it would be his face that stuck, red foam at his mouth, and life leaving his body. He was a limp, ragdoll of a man, and I’d try to shake him back to life, begging him to come back. I’d give him mouth-to-mouth, but his teeth would fall out, then his tongue lost the warmth of humanity and turned icy cold and I was trying to revive a corpse, a long dead memory of man. I’d wake, realise it was a dream and I’d fall asleep again, the dream always the same but different, the pain never any less real when I woke up.

After waking to my sixth scream I felt a glass being shoved into one hand, a small, round tablet into the other.

“Please, Kate.” Mum folded my fingers over the white pill. “To help you sleep.”

I gulped back the pill and choked water down my throat. She didn’t need to say please. She didn’t need to ask. I only wished she’d told me where the rest of the tablets were.

Because if things like this could happen, if someone who already had a time limit on their life had it cruelly ripped away … if Johnny could lose everyone, if I could mentally lose my dad and physically lose the only man I’d thought would ever understand me, then how could staying awake be worth it?

I wanted to sleep forever.

And ever.

L
IFE WAS
a blur. I lost track of time, became aware only of the numbness that overtook my body, interspersed with regular hits of pain when the sleeping tablets or the anti-depressants Mum gave me wore off.

She kept saying I was in shock; this was perfectly natural. She even had her GP come and do a house call, checking my blood pressure and all the other vitals. But nothing could make it right. This wasn’t a blood pressure thing. It was my heart that needed to be gauged.

It was everything, and it was not, it was the world and it was my life, all rolled into one. And it was crumbling in pieces around me.

On the third day, the doorbell rang. Two giant bunches of flowers were delivered. One was all expensive, foreign-looking things, snapdragons and tulips and strange, round coloured buds, the other simple white roses littered with baby’s breath.

“Don’t you want to know who they’re from?” Mum asked, taking out vases from some secret vase cupboard I knew nothing about and distributing the flowers, cutting the stems for display.

“Don’t care,” I grunted and rolled over. I preferred facing the cream surface of the couch. The world was too much for me.

“One is from a guy named Lee,” Mum continued. I shook my head. Who the hell was Lee? Clearly she hadn’t read the card correctly. “Yes, he says he’s sorry about the song, and that he’s dismissed the writer from the tour.”

I blinked.

Oh.

That Lee.

Lee-
freaking
-Collins.

For some weird reason, the thought brought on a new flood of tears, until the wetness leaking from my eyes dampened my T-shirt and turned it slightly see-through. In the real world, someone had realised Dave was a jerk. A singer from a famous rock band had sent me flowers to apologise for his support-band’s lead-singer’s stupidity.

I pressed my thumb and forefinger to the bridge of my nose.

“Oh, and the one with the roses,” Mum continued, splaying the stems out so each of the flowers settled into the perfectly balanced display, “it’s from Johnny.”

Johnny.

Johnny, who had also lost Lachlan.

Who didn’t have anyone else.

He’d sent
me
flowers.

No wonder all these horrible things kept happening to me. I was a truly selfish person; I deserved to have Huntington’s.

I don’t know how, but I escaped out the front door without Mum noticing. The keys to the Corolla were in my hand, tightly fisted, ready to aid me in my mission.

The engine turned without any protest and I was off, driving at a slow pace down the road. There was the street corner where Lachlan had walked me, the very first time we’d kissed. There was the cul-de-sac where the bush track branched off to the skinny-dipping pool.

It wasn’t on my way, but I drove through town, noting both the Thai restaurant where we all went to dinner, and the toilet block where Lachlan had waited outside.

Even then, he’d gone above and beyond for me. So why had he left me? What had I done?

I took the freeway exit, and cruised five minutes down the road till I saw the turning bay. I pulled my car in, conscious of the dimming light around me.

I remember reading somewhere that a majority of car accidents happen at dusk.

6:01 pm, the clock read.

Looked like the timing was perfect.

I waited and waited until finally I saw the bouncing headlights of a car in the distance. I didn’t know how big or small it was—it really didn’t matter. I turned the car and inched out, making sure it was only just my side in the line of impact. I didn’t want to hurt the driver of the other vehicle. I was the bull’s-eye in this game.

“Lachlan, I’m sorry,” I said to the empty car. Tears were wet down my cheeks.

“I really liked you, and you—it’s not fair,” I gulped. “You were just—you were everything, and you’d been through so much, and
you weren’t supposed to die!
”

The headlights beamed closer, so close I could trace their path till impact.

“I don’t kn-know that anyone else will ever see in me what you did,” I choked.

Five seconds
.

“You set me free,” I whispered. Now I could make out the shape of the vehicle, a four-wheel drive. Perfect. They would most likely pull through, and I would undoubtedly be ruined. Survival of the fittest. Big car versus small car.

Three seconds.

“I—” The headlights were close now. I braced myself for impact, my heart pounding in my chest, my body already numb to the impending pain that was rapidly descending upon it.

Two.

Shit.

One.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the turning bay, the car in reverse. I blinked, staring at the little red
R
light, as if it were a joke.

Had it been me, all along? Was I the one who didn’t want to die?

I turned the car on again, heard its throaty rumble, and drove home.

I’
D CALLED
Johnny to see how he was doing, but he’d closed the café temporarily, so it went straight to voicemail. I was on full-time Father duty, a task that seemed a breeze compared to my recent life drama.

Dad set himself down in the living room in front of the television and I got us both some snacks from the kitchen. I could have started on dinner but it was only five, and even if it felt like I’d started to live in a pensioner-care house, I figured I didn’t have to eat like I was in one.

I put a can of soda and a bowl of chips down in front of the television, then took a separate bowl and can to the kitchen counter where my laptop was set up. It was easier this way. This way I didn’t have to connect.

I didn’t want to connect with anyone.

I pressed the start button and checked my emails, noting that some final running orders had come through from the caterers on food to be provided, and timing for the launch. The launch, for the guy who was dead.

I hit the reply button, ready to cancel it all. The words were stuck in my mind. How do you say, “Sorry, but the event I planned? The star of it all died. So, do we lose our deposit?”

I felt more tears well in my eyes and I pressed them tight together. Why wouldn’t it stop? I just wanted the pain to stop.

“Kate.”

Dad stood in the doorway, his hands by his side. His drab, brown shirt was creased from sitting on the couch too long, and his hair was sticking up. I wondered if Mum had taken him out at all today, and fervently hoped not.

“Yes?” I snapped my eyes back to the screen. I’d just gotten him some snacks and a drink; what could he possibly want now?

“W … want to watch TV with me?”

I blinked, staring at the document on my screen so hard that the words all blended into a bright, white light. Did I want to write the body of this email?

Or did I want to watch TV with my father?

Why would I? It wasn’t like we talked much. We hadn’t seen much of each other at all, ships passing in the ocean of our house. Sure, I took him out when I needed to, but it wasn’t like we were friends. We weren’t proper “father and daughter”, and I saw no reason at all to stop that now.

Except that, one day, he’s going to die
.

Like Lachlan.

Like, maybe, you.

“Sure.” I pushed my chair back and stood up.

What are you doing?

One part of me was screaming at myself, tsking and shaking my head as I went to waste time with someone who wouldn’t even remember it tomorrow.

The other part of me grimaced and plonked myself down on the couch, trying to feign an interest in
The Price Is Right
, a television show I’d never really cared for.

“How—is work?” Dad’s eyes were glued to the screen. I ground my teeth together.

Work has been on hold since Lachlan died, thanks for asking.

But he didn’t know about that.

“Fine,” I said. On the television, a new contestant had come up to play the Higher or Lower game. He was super excited, as all the contestants were, big smiles and bright eyes. I wondered if they had problems like we did in their real lives. Real problems.

“Are you scared?” I turned to look at Dad. His head spun and met mine, a serious look on his face. There were parts of him that were the same as the dad I’d known before, the father I’d grown up with, mixed with new lines of age, a slackness of the jaw, a skinniness of the cheeks.

“Of what?” Dad spoke slowly, and I felt him really watching me, like he was judging everything behind my eyes. I was worried about what he might find—and what he might not.

“Everything.” I shrugged. “Dying, what people think, what will happen in the future …”

“But—everybody dies, Katie.” Dad reached a shaking hand out to grip my knee. “Everybody.” His voice was soft, and I looked into his steely eyes and saw what I thought was an understanding there; knowledge of the situation, answers about the future. I reached my hand down and squeezed his.