Free The Crazy School by Cornelia Read Page A

is scream at a concerned teacher when some other boy gets tormented until dawn by his dorm parents?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “You wonder why I’m hostile? Get a kumba-fucking-ya clue, lady.”
    I stood up and walked over to the window.
    “Goddamn joke to call this place a ‘healing community,’ ”
    I said, taking in the sorry-ass view of campus. “Kids would stand a better chance if you guys broke out some leeches and gave them all a good bleeding.”
    Okay, so now she was crying.
    I sighed and turned around. “Have some Kleenex,” I said, grabbing a box off her desk and putting it in her lap.
    She yanked out a half dozen sheets and blew her nose, then balled them up and made a wussy pitch at the wastepaper basket which landed two feet short.
    I leaned down to pick the wad off the carpet and tossed it home.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “So you throw like a girl.” I shrugged. “There are worse things.”
    “No, I mean—” she started, then got all choked up again.
    “I went back to school for this,” she said. “I worked my ass off to get a degree because I want to help people . . . the kids . . .”
    “What’d you do before?”
    “Wall Street.”
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    Perfect, my very own shrink-broker.
    All the same, I felt shitty for making her cry.
    “Look,” I said, “you want to do therapy, let’s do some goddamn real therapy.”
    She nodded, taking a shaky breath.
    I sat on the love seat and took a shaky breath of my own.
    “Last year someone I cared about a great deal tried to kill me.”
    “My God, Madeline! How did you cope with that?”
    “I shot him.”
    She reached for my hand. I let her take it.
    “Are you worried he’ll come after you again?” she asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “You’re sure?” she asked. “Depending on his pattern of behavior—”
    “I emptied both barrels of a shotgun into the man’s neck from so close it practically took his head off.”
    She didn’t say a word in response to that, just held my gaze and reached for my other hand. The two of us were so quiet I could hear the rumble of a man’s voice from behind some closed door down the hall, then the hesitant clatter of a hunt-and-peck typist.
    “Someone you cared about,” she said at last.
    I closed my eyes.
    “A great deal,” she said.
    “Yeah.” Such a tiny word, with so very much freight behind it.
    I pulled both hands free of hers. Covered my face.
    “Madeline, I have no doubt you did the only thing you could have in that devastating situation.”
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    I opened my eyes. Drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “The hard part is learning to live with that decision.”
    “You’ve taken the fi rst step, telling me about it.”
    Not fi rst step. More like last resort.
    The warning bell rang for the day’s fi nal class. I stood up.
    “Will you come back to see me on Monday?” she asked. “I’d like to hear more.”
    “Glutton for punishment,” I said. “Same bat time?”
    “Same bat channel.”
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    11
    The Brillo sky was spitting down cold rain, so I sprinted out of the Mansion with my jacket pulled over my head.
    Sitzman and Wiesner were already in the classroom by the time I skidded down the hallway. It was just the three of us for the day, what with Mooney and Forchetti being down on the Farm.
    We got through a good bit of the late forties and early fi fties, polished off the Korean War (with a fast-forward to Eisen hower’s Military-Industrial Complex speech in ’61), even worked in a bit of McCarthy intro before the bell rang.
    I was expecting the pair of them to bolt on the dot of three o’clock, but they didn’t budge. Maybe it was the rain.
    “Are you going to make us talk more about this Red Scare shit on Monday?” asked Wiesner.
    I tilted my chair back. “What kind of shit would you prefer?”
    “I don’t