Free Normalish by Margaret Lesh

selfish thoughts about how all of this would affect my practically nonexistent social standing. Would I now move down in the social order from nonentity to outcast?
    The funny thing about high school is that everyone wants to be seen as unique, yet no one wants to be thought of as different. Being different means you’re a freak. Outcast. Pariah. So while we want to think we’re different, what we really want is to be exactly the same. It makes no sense, but that’s how the world is. It’s how people are, I guess. We travel in packs, and no one wants to be the freaky weirdo.
    I looked out the window, and I kept thinking: Why Becca? Why was she having these problems and not, say, me?
    At home, I pulled up a stool in the kitchen and watched Jill as she made us quesadillas with the good cheese—the cheddar and jack mixed together. I poured out glasses of iced tea as she cut the quesadilla in half and pushed a plate toward me. We sat down to eat.
    “Why Becca though?” I asked between bites. “Why not me or you? Why is this happening to her all of a sudden? I mean, I really want to understand this.”
    Jill knows more about this stuff than I do—she’s taken a few psychology classes in school—but she just shrugged her shoulders.
    “Who knows? The brain’s a mystery. Mental illness does tend to run in families though.”
    She gave me this serious look.
    “Great. That makes me feel much better now.”
    “I’m just telling you—you wanted to know. Nobody really knows what causes someone to go off the deep end. Some people are more sensitive, or they might have a chemical imbalance, or they took drugs, or something terrible happened to them when they were little and it takes a few years to come to the surface. Who knows?”
    Then I told Jill what I’d been thinking lately with Becca acting so strange, about normal, and what it really means.
    “So who decides what normal is?” I asked.
    Jill shrugged her shoulders again. “Normal—” she made little air quotes around the word “—normal is whatever society decides it is. And that’s just how the world works. It might not be fair, but—”
    And I finished her sentence. “But who said life is fair?”

October 13, Even Later -
Checking In And Checking Out
     
    When Mom walked in the door with Becca , they had this tired, defeated look.
    “Well, let’s get your things packed, sweetie,” Mom told her in a quiet voice.
    Becca walked past us to our bedroom with an empty look on her face. Jill and I looked at each other, then at Mom.
    “Mom?” was all I could say, because anything else seemed unnecessary.
    Mom told us about the scene at the psychiatrist’s office, how the doctor gave Becca a pill to calm her and told Mom that Becca might have a form of schizophrenia—a mild form—which, if you’re going to have schizophrenia, I guess that’s the best kind to have. Becca, of course, started to cry when he said this. Who wouldn’t? I mean, it was her sanity we were talking about here. It’s not like hearing you have a cavity or need to have your tonsils removed.
    The doctor gave Mom a referral for a residential treatment center, Brookside, where Becca will get counseling and treatment. She’ll be gone for at least thirty days. After that, after her meds have kicked in and helped even her out, she’ll probably come back home with us. Probably.
    Becca packed. We all helped—Mom, me, Jill—and we asked her about the different things she wanted to take with her, trying to be helpful.
    “Did you get your journal? Your earbuds? Do you want my shampoo?”
    I asked her these things, and she gave quiet nods, but her eyes didn’t register the words. She wandered around, moving slowly at first, then quickly, frantically opening drawers and throwing her clothes in a heap on top of her suitcase. She started to cry.
    I tried not to cry, but the hard, little lump in my throat was making it difficult to swallow. Mom, of course, cried. Jill, who’s usually the