Levitating Las Vegas(5)
Author: Jennifer Echols

• Control the minds of others

Most troubling, patients with MAD may become violent. Therefore, it is imperative that patients control their symptoms with medication at all times.

Holly’s own tears plopped onto the pamphlet and ran down the slick paper. Earlier her parents had forbidden her to date Elijah, and she’d thought that was the end of the world. Now she faced a lifetime of mental illness, a job bagging groceries, a room in a halfway house with the other crazies, or—God forbid—living with her parents forever.

She felt a little better when she opened the pamphlet. Inside were rainbows and butterflies. Both stick people stood upright and triumphant. They had taken their medicine.

Holly’s mom swept in and sat in the chair. She took the pamphlet from Holly and set it aside. She held Holly’s hand in both her cold hands and gazed at her, looking even older than she had earlier that evening. “Sweetie, the doctor says everything’s going to be okay. Nobody has any reason to be afraid of you as long as you take your medicine. But you know how cruel teenagers can be.” She squeezed Holly’s hand. “Don’t tell anyone what happened tonight. Don’t let anyone know you have MAD.”

“Don’t worry,” Holly said. She pictured herself announcing to her school, Guess what? I’m not just a fourteen-year-old showgirl anymore. I’m a violent fourteen-year-old showgirl with a mental disorder! No way would anybody ever hear about MAD from her. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t that crazy.

“The kids at school could make fun of you,” her mom understated. “If this health problem goes on your permanent record, you could have trouble getting into college or finding a job. It could be bad publicity for your father’s act. People hold such prejudice against the mentally ill.”

Holly’s eyes flitted to her dad, who glowered at her from the doorway. The red bruise under his eye had turned purple.

“Don’t even tell your best friends.” Her mom produced Holly’s cell phone, which she must have taken from Holly’s purse while Holly was unconscious. “Especially not Elijah Brown.”

Holly grabbed for the phone.

Her mom snatched it out of Holly’s reach. “You sent texts to that boy all day at school when you were supposed to be paying attention in class. You had countless messages from him today—”

Fourteen, Holly thought.

“—and another seven in the last hour,” her mother finished. “Seven!”

“What did they say?” Holly wailed.

“I erased them.” Her mom eyed her sternly. “Break up with him, or I will call his mother and break you up myself. Text him right now and tell him you can’t go with him to the matinee or the prom.” She handed Holly the phone.

Holly took it with a frustrated sigh. She didn’t want to break her date with such a cool guy, on a text. But honestly, she thought it might be for the best, now that she’d been diagnosed. Thank God she’d freaked out here at home. What if that had happened on a date, and she’d given Elijah a shiner?

Besides, breaking the date with him on a text was definitely better than her mom calling his mom, which might get around school. She didn’t need anything else added to her Ninth-Grade Freak tally.

She thought for a moment, then composed a message her mom would deem appropriate. But she made it sound stilted and un-text-message-y. She hoped Elijah would figure out that she’d been forced into it. She didn’t want him to hate her. Cringing, she handed the phone over.

I’m sorry to cancel our dates to the prom and magic show. My parents and I concluded it’s not the right decision for me at this time.

Her mom read the screen, gave Holly a satisfied nod, and pushed send. She tossed the phone backward to Holly’s dad, who fumbled with it and dropped it. There was no real magic in this family.

Her mom rubbed Holly’s arm and stood up. “Get some sleep, sweetie. We’ve all had a hard night, but you need to go to school tomorrow so no one suspects anything’s wrong.” As she passed Holly’s dad leaning in the doorway, she put her hand on his chest. Then her high heels clicked across the marble floor of the living room, fainter and fainter.

Holly’s dad stepped forward to Holly’s bedside. “I’m sorry, kiddo.”

Holly swallowed. “I’m sorry for hitting you. I thought you were trying to kill me, seriously.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” he said hoarsely, on the verge of tears. “Just take your medicine.” He bent down and touched his forehead to Holly’s. This close, his black eye filled her field of vision. He rocked his forehead back and forth against hers. Then he kissed her on the tip of the nose, backed away, and turned off the light as he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Holly nestled down into her soft bed. She lay on her sore arm. She rolled over to the other side. Now she lay on her sore hip. In her faulty memory, she’d landed on her hip when she fell from midair. She wondered what had really happened.

She jerked upright in bed and switched on her lamp. During her hallucination, she’d punched her dad with her telekinetic power. In reality she must have punched him with her fist. He had a shiner. She would have a corresponding mark on her knuckles.

She gazed down at her hand, skin smooth, nails unbroken. She wiggled her fingers. They weren’t even sore.

She stared at her closed door. What if her parents had made up her disease? What if she really did have magical power?

She tried to open the door with her mind. Nothing happened. No delicious sparkly feeling at all.

Shaking her head, she turned off the lamp and snuggled down into bed again. The clock on her bedside table said that only an hour and a half had passed since Holly had sat at the kitchen table in front of that doomed plate of edamame. But her mom was right. Holly was bone tired, as she should be. She’d had a physical fight with her parents. She’d attacked and hurt her own dad. Her parents hadn’t made up her disease and then let Dr. Gray in on the secret. Only a crazy person would come up with a conspiracy theory like that.

Besides, her parents wouldn’t do that to her.

Elijah retrieved his backpack from his locker in the casino’s employee break room. He thumbed through the messages on his phone as he headed down the employee corridor toward the bus stop. But the message from Holly stopped him cold. Poker dealers and cocktail waitresses and someone dressed up as a giant banana flowed around him as he dropped his backpack on the industrial linoleum and read the message over and over, trying to make sense of it.