Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories Read online

  Baker stood there, looking goofier than any human being had a right to and still reproduce. He grinned at Zoë like she was so cute when she was mad, which let me tell you she isn’t. She’s got a look that can peel paint, but it didn’t have any effect on Baker, him being ninety-nine per cent dumb as a rock.

  “You should be ashamed, Zoë,” Baker said, sort of soft-voiced. “Getting letters like this is what should be illegal. In fact, I think it is because it’s pornography and you can’t get that through the mail. I should just turn you in, but I’m not going to, honey, because I want to save you. How about I pick you up at eight?”

  Zoë said, “Baker, you are dumbass pond scum,” and marched back inside and slammed the door, and Baker just stood there, his grin gone and this terrible hurt look on his face.

  I wanted to go out and tell him that if he wanted to get Zoë, trying to humiliate her was not the way, but I’d already done enough coaching and look where that had got us, so I stayed put, and Baker kind of slumped down the steps, which made me feel sorry for him all over again because he was trying the best he knew how, and he still wasn’t getting Zoë. I knew all about that. I mean, sometimes I watch her walk down the street, and the heads turn, and I can’t see it, whatever it is that Zoë’s got, but I know it’s there, and it’s not beauty because she and I look a lot alike, so it’s something else, and whatever it is, Baker wanted it and so did I. Not in the same way, of course. But I did understand how he felt.

  Zoë didn’t, she just wanted him dead. “Quinn, we have to turn him in,” she said when I got back inside.

  I looked out into the street and saw Mrs. Mueller talking to Mrs. Papacjik which she does everyday anyway while she waits for the mail, but you know what they were talking about that day. I knew if Zoë didn’t stop Baker soon, it was only a matter of time before the news percolated down to Mama, and there would go Zoë’s chances of ever finding heaven on the back porch with Nick again, let alone my chances of getting her married and gone.

  So I didn’t try to stop her when she called the post office, but it didn’t do her any good. This was Tibbett after all, and Baker had been carrying the mail for over six years without a complaint. They promised to look into it, but I could tell from the look in my sister’s eyes when she got off the phone that looking into it was not going to be enough.

  Zoë said, “Quinn, those damn fools aren’t going to do a damn thing, and I’ve got no way to call Nick and stop him from sending me those letters because they won’t let them get phone calls.”

  I said, “Call them and tell them somebody died,” and she said, “I can’t, they check stuff like that, I’d have to really kill somebody to make that work.”

  If you ask me, that’s where she got the idea to shoot Baker.

  She didn’t say anything to me about what she was going to do, and the next day, close to mail time, I came downstairs to see if Baker was going to act right or not, and there she was with our old shotgun under her arm.

  I said, “Zoë, tell me you are not going to kill Baker Turnbull,” and she said, “Quinn, I am not going to kill Baker Turnbull.”

  But she had that look in her eye, so I said, “Give me the gun, Zoë,” and she said, “Quinn, that man has tried to make me small. He has read my life on the steps of my house, and he thinks that is the funniest thing in the world.”

  I moved in front of the door. I said, “Zoë, you do not want to do this. You have always told me that it doesn’t matter what other people think as long as you know who you are, and you know who you are better than anybody else I know, so what difference does Baker Turnbull make?”

  She said, “You don’t get it, Quinn.”

  I said, “I am trying to get it, Zoë, I have been trying most of my life, but I do not see how shooting Baker will make you a better person. Explain that to me.”

  She looked kind of surprised at that, and stopped and thought for a minute, like she’d never had to explain anything before, even to herself, and then she said, “I know who I am, and Baker can read those damn letters until his mouth gets numb and I’m still not going to feel small and stupid and cheap the way he wants me to, but he’s got to know who he’s dealing with here. I am Zoë McKenzie, and I do not put up with men trying to make me feel small, even if they are bat-shit civil servants, so he has to go down for it, and I am the one who has to put him there.” Then she looked me square in the eye and said, “Now are you with him or with me?”

  And the thing is, I was really with Baker because just by living Zoë makes me feel small, although I wouldn’t have put it like that before she said it. I mean, I knew just how Baker felt, wanting to get Zoë down to his size so he could get to her. But I understood what Zoë meant, too. She really did have to stop him, and I really wanted her to, because if Zoë got small, where would I be?

  So I said, “With you, of course,” and then Baker walked up our front steps, and while we watched the son of a bitch tore open a letter and screamed, “Dear Zoë, I dreamed about you naked on your back porch again last night, and I’m going to go blind if I don’t see you soon.”

  I thought, Baker, you are dumb ass pond scum, and I said, “Shoot him,” and Zoë went out on the porch, aimed the shotgun, and said, “Baker, you have just violated your last piece of U.S. mail.”

  Baker’s eyes got wide when he saw the gun, but he said, “Zoë McKenzie, you wouldn’t shoot a person, I know you better than that, honey.”

  Zoë said, “I have loaded this gun with salt pellets, Baker, and as far as I am concerned, you are not a person, you are a mouth with legs and you better use them because I’m not putting up with this shit any more.”

  I think that’s when Baker saw the real Zoë instead of the sweet, pretty thing he’d been going for because he turned and ran, and Zoë opened fire. She caught him right below the mail bag, across the backs of his legs. She has a good eye, my sister, and a steady hand, and I was proud of her at that moment, I truly was, even though I did feel sorry for Baker.

  Baker’s screams were awful, and Mrs. Papacjik came out to look, but he was gone by then, at least one street away because he was moving at a pretty good clip. I thought Baker might prosecute, but Zoë said he wouldn’t dare because he’d lose his job if everybody found out he’d been opening the mail, and she was right, he didn’t. He just asked for a route change, and now we have Mr. Fisher, who is not as obnoxious as Baker but not as interesting, either. He does tend to look kind of uneasy when he delivers the mail, and once I came to the door and he jumped a foot, so I suppose Baker talked, but I don’t care. Like Zoë says, I know who we are, so it doesn’t matter.

  Zoë told Mama about Baker reading the letters, and I think that’s why Mama only grounded her for twenty-four hours because she likes Nick and never had much time for Baker anyway. And Nick is coming home in two weeks in uniform, which should be something to see, and Zoë says she’ll wait that long and see if he’s as good as his letters, so I’m hoping that maybe she’ll get married after all.

  But I can tell you this, any pond scum who tries to make me small is going down for it, even if Mama says we’re not allowed to shoot anybody again. I don’t know who I am, but I know I’m not small.

  Except when I’m next to Zoë.

  Several early readers pointed out that this Quinn doesn’t sound like Quinn from Crazy For You. Of course, she’s only fifteen in this and hasn’t been out of Tibbett to go to college, but it’s still a valid point. I think the reason is that this is where Quinn started. Characters grow and change as you write a novel, you discover so much about them and their characters shift to match that discovery. I think her basic character is still the same: she loves Zoë but feels overshadowed by her, she works behind the scenes to make things happen, and when she’s finally pushed to the wall, she’s ruthless. I might have made the teenaged Quinn a little less forceful if I’d written this after I finished the novel, but this is where she started, and I like her just as she is.

  Sleep Cure

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