The Crazy School Read Online Free Page A

around the edges. “What I’m hearing you say is that you’re concerned about your ability to handle responsibility. Struggling to overcome feelings of inadequacy—”
    I waited for the rest. I did not nod.
    “And I’m looking at how you’re sitting right now, Madeline,”
    she continued. “How you’re presenting yourself to us.”
    She paused, bringing in Tim and Mindy with a small swoop of her hand.
    Tim plucked at the sofa’s upholstery.
    Mindy blew her nose.
    “Sitting up straight,” Sookie went on. “Ladylike, in a studied way. Earnest. Your back isn’t touching the chair . . . exactly how I hoped I would look when I grew up.”
    She tilted her head to one side. Appraisal. “I’m just wondering who that’s for .”
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    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Someone trained you to sit that way, Madeline.”
    I fought the urge to cross my arms, knowing the gesture would be counted against me. A defensive move. An attempt at distance that Sookie would lap up as confi rmation.
    She gave me the curt nod. Zeroing in. “Someone made it very clear that you were required to cloak yourself in this sort of polished, impenetrable affect. This rigidity. Your parents?”
    That made me cock a sarcastic eyebrow. Couldn’t help it.
    Sookie leaned toward me, her face going all gentle again.
    “Madeline,” she said, “were you sexually abused as a child?”
    Mindy and Tim snapped to attention.
    I rolled my eyes. Shook my head.
    Sookie was unfazed. “I know it’s a tremendously diffi cult thing to talk about. If you’d prefer a private session, I can make time for you tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Oh, for chrissake,” I said.
    She got out of her chair and knelt before me, taking my hand in both of hers. Petting it. “It’s all right, sweetie, we’re here for you. You’re safe now.”
    “Sookie, I’m sure you have all the very best intentions, but you’re way off base,” I said.
    “You’re in denial, Madeline.”
    I tried extracting my hand from her grip, but she just latched on tighter.
    “Perfectly natural under the circumstances,” she said. “We often want to block out our most painful memories, repress them so we don’t buckle under the sheer weight of shame and horror.”
    “Sookie—”
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    “What’s important is that you know you weren’t at fault, Madeline, and understand that you didn’t do anything to encourage the abuse.”
    Mindy was nodding now, too.
    Terrifi c.
    I tried breaking through to Sookie again. “No offense, but on what planet does good posture indicate a history of molestation?”
    “In fact,” Sookie went on, oblivious, “it’s often that sense of having provoked the incidents which renders victims incapable of remembering them. And hostile.”
    “Of course Madeline’s angry, Sookie,” Mindy chimed in.
    “She must be sooooo weirded out now that she knows what’s actually wrong with her.”
    “Mindy?” said Tim.
    She looked at him. Blinky blinky. “Uh-huh?”
    “Shut the hell up.” He gave her a sharp fi nger poke in the arm for emphasis.
    I wanted to hug him, but the warning bell for the day’s last class went off, and we all bolted out of the room, except for Sookie.
    “Come back tomorrow at one, Madeline,” she called after me.
    My third class was all boys, three of them. Wiesner again, but no repeat of Forchetti, thanks to a last-minute shrink appointment. American History B: Civil War to Vietnam. We were kind of at Yalta, not that anyone was keeping track.
    I was trying to get across why Stalin and Churchill and Franklin D. were so happy in the photo on page 192 of We the 2 3
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    People, the archaic textbook Santangelo had probably scored at some other high school’s tag sale.
    We were all pretty dopey after lunch. The room’s air felt thick and stale, bearing grace notes of mothball, sweat sock, and spilled root