The Problem With Crazy Read Online Free Page A

curtains, and its cream suede couches, which surrounded a wooden coffee table in the middle.
    I handed the bottle to Mum then sat on the edge of the couch opposite them, facing the window. Outside, a summer breeze was tilting the heads of the flowers in the garden, their shapes highlighted by a streetlamp as it flickered to life. Night was officially here.
    I didn’t want to look at my parents. A feeling of impending doom hung in the air.
    “Kate, there’s something we need to tell you,” Mum started. Her hands shook as she flipped the top on her bottle of beer. Her lower lip started to tremble. “It’s … about your father.”
    I turned my attention to him. He was seated apart from her, just a little. His hands were shaking, too, his eyes sallow and sunken. He looked thinner than I remembered him, and every now and then his left knee gave a tiny spasm, as if he couldn’t keep it under control.
    My earlier thoughts came rushing back.
    That was the sort of behaviour that drugs addicts engaged in …
    “Are you . . . are you on drugs?” The words I never thought I’d speak came out. Mum choked on a mouthful of beer, causing Dad to pat her on the back. Tiny droplets of alcohol landed all over the room, over the coffee table and on the stack of old magazines sitting in the corner. Some fell on Dad’s leg, which he attempted to pat dry with another unstable gesture.
    “I told you it wasn’t that ridiculous,” Mum said.
    “Your mother thought that, t … too.” Dad shook his head and stared at the beige-coloured carpet next to his brown scuffed shoes. Funny . I remembered them from when he’d leave them at the door after work.
    “What is it, then?” I kept my voice level.
    Silence enveloped the room, and I widened my eyes, raised my eyebrows. Any time, now …
    “Your father—he’s sick.”
    The words echoed around my head, repeating themselves over and over.
    Sick. My father was sick.
    “What do you mean? The kind of sick where you get better soon?”
    “The kind of sick where you—”
    “I have a disease.” Dad said the words with pride, like he wore them as a badge. He straightened his posture a little, chin jutting into the air.
    I could hear my heart thudding.
    My father was sick. He had a disease.
    “In the way that alcoholism is a disease?” I bit my lip.
    “No.” Mum sighed. She was frustrated; her tone gave her away almost as much as the hand on her temple. “A disease that affects his behaviour.”
    I blinked. It was all I could do not to jump to my feet and scream. What sort of a disease changed the way you acted? Yesterday I’d graduated from high school, and today my parents were trying to tell me that my dad had a disease.
    So why was everyone taking so long to get to the goddamned point?
    “What kind of a disease?”
    Please don’t say cancer. Please don’t say cancer.
    I didn’t know anyone who’d had cancer, except for one of Stacey’s grandmothers. She developed kidney cancer and died six months later.
    That couldn’t happen to my dad.
    Please don’t let that happen to my dad.
    “It’s called Huntington’s disease.”
    “Phew!” I smiled, my lips wide and almost at my eyes. I was an over-animated version of my normal self to counteract the melancholy occurring on the couch opposite.
    But even as I tried to be enthused about it, I knew it was wrong. Their grim faces didn’t look like the canvases of people celebrating. “I mean, at least it’s not cancer, right?”
    “It’s not cancer, no.” Mum shook her head. She placed a trembling hand on Dad’s leg. “It’s different from cancer.”
    “Different how?”
    “It’s a neurodegenerative disease,” Mum replied. I narrowed my eyebrows. “It destroys the brain cells that can effect movement, speech, memory and—” Before she could finish the sentence, big, fat tears started snaking their way down my father’s face. He held his head, shaking, his calloused veiny hands raking through his grey-flecked