The Lunatics 2: Push Tumble & Fall

Fourteen Days Ago

                                                     "The only ones for me are the mad ones."

                                                                                                                  -Jack Kerouac

                                                                          Prologue

We don't always get to choose who we are. I've learned that the hard way.

The first time it happened to me I was six years old.

Mom and I sat in the waiting room at the doctor's office. A woman sat across from me. She pulled out a white handkerchief from her brown purse, pressed it against her face, and began to weep without consolation.

Mom was too busy paging through a musty magazine to notice her. But not me—I saw her because, to me, her sorrow smelled like cherry lollipops. And that's what made it easy for me to walk over and sit next to her.

I took the woman's hand in my own; she seemed shocked at the kindness and confidence of a child like me. But still and all—she let me hold her. After a few seconds, her crying stopped and a smile drew on her face. It seemed like she was feeling better.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"My momma named me . . ." I started to say.

"No," she interrupted me and clutched her handkerchief. Her face responding as if she were in the presence of a Holy Being, "you, are one of them. You are a savior of the broken."

Back then I didn't know what this meant. But the image of that day steady stayed with me for a long time to come.

Until I became seventeen.

That's when they came looking for me. That's when I realized that I had no choice.

See. I have the power to take away all your pain and suffering and all in exchange of your sanity.

And I know it sounds exotic to have that much power over anyone. And I'd be lying to you if I told you that it wasn't.

Except the joke is on me, because although I can save almost anyone, no one can save me.

My name is Myla Blackbird, and I'm with the Order of The Lunatics.

Fourteen Days Ago

It had been nine months since the break-up.

To tell you the truth, when CS walked out on me and left Laurels, it blew me sideways and hit me on the temple like a two-ton fist. But as painful as that sounds, I learned to live with it. The misery had become comforting, consoling, a negotiation of a cloudy understanding I had made with myself—with my broken heart, that is.

Maybe a corrupt way to live, but it was my way, and my way, I was always good with.

But what I was not okay with, not even a little, was to tell you, or anyone else, the reason why CS had left me. Because, most of all, it was embarrassing. I was embarrassed that I had fallen into such a stupid trap. The kind of trap that you always asked yourself how it happened to others because surely, it would never happen to you. You would never make such a stupid mistake.

And now CS was like cancer in my head. I steady couldn't forget him.

There must have been something wrong with me. It was almost as if it the pain of missing him was getting worse, then a little better, then three times worse. I longed for him like some diabetic longs for strawberry jelly.