Not As Crazy As I Seem by George Harrar

Author:George Harrar [Harrar, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

CHAPTER 16

If it's Wednesday afternoon, I must be at the shrink's. Of course, if I keep my eyes closed like this I could make believe I was anywhere else in the universe I want to be. I've always thought Pluto sounded like an interesting planet. At least it's far away.

"Devon, I'd like to begin."

Okay, back to Earth. If I don't cooperate Dr. W. will call home and get Dad angry at me again and who knows what he'll make me do next. Going to pick up a corpse with him was enough "consequences" for one week. It seemed like a "punishment" to me, but Mom and Dad don't use that word. I think they read in one of those "How to Raise a Perfect Kid" books that "punishment" sounded medieval.

"All right, Doc. I'm ready."

"I want to try something a little different today. Let's talk about memories. What's the first thing you can remember?"

I send my mind backwards to our home in Amherst where we moved after Granddad died, then further back to Intercourse, where he lived with us on the third floor, when he got sick. I was the one who ran things up and down for him. He gave me a dollar a week to do it, which doesn't sound like much, but this wasn't a normal dollar. Each Friday he had me pull out his metal coin box from under his bed, and he gave me a Peace silver dollar from the 1920s. Each one of them is worth about thirty dollars today. He told me not to tell Mom and Dad because they wouldn't like him paying me. He said it was his business who he gave his money to, and he wanted to give it to me.

I don't want to think about him. He was the nicest person in the world to me, and I hope he went to Heaven or someplace else good. I tried to be nice to him, too, but I was pretty young then—eight years old. It's hard being nice all the time when you're just a kid. It's not easy when you're a teenager either. The problem is that what seems perfectly nice to you isn't perfect for adults. I can't explain that.

I grab a soft fuzzy ball from the shrinks shelf and throw it up and down a few times. Then I aim at the hoop hanging over the door. This shot is for Granddad. I shoot and miss by a foot. I never should have thought that. I pick up the ball and throw again and miss again. I pick it up again and throw and miss and pick it up and throw and miss...

"Devon?"

...and pick it up and throw and swish—Devon the Dominator scores again! Granddad's safe.

"I asked you about the first thing you can remember?"

"I know. I was thinking. I don't remember anything first."

"There must be something you can recall from when you were perhaps six years old, or even five or four."

"I only remember general things, like going to school and.

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