After Obsession by Carrie Jones, Steven E. Wedel

Dad says it, but it’s true. Dad’s not a bad dad. He’s just a dad with a busy job. I switch tactics. “That’s an awesome goose egg on your forehead. Did you get in a fight?”
    “This kid said Mom was mental.”
    I pull in a big breath. “Mom had a disease, a disorder. Bipolar disorder. Right? You know that.”
    He shrugs.
    “She wasn’t crazy,” I tell Benji, the same way Gramps told me a million times right after she died. “She wasn’t crazy. She was ill. She was still beautiful and good and kind, but she sometimes couldn’t control how she felt.”
    “What’s the difference between crazy and sick?” Benji asks.
    I think about how sweet our mom was most of the time; how she’d put her hand on my forehead when I didn’t feel good; how she’d hug me and I’d feel so safe; how she could sing lullabies that were softer than bird wings. She just got lost sometimes.
    But I don’t say anything about any of that. I just say, “I’m not sure.”
    The squirrel rattles off a list of our crimes at us. He jumps up and down on a branch, shaking his paws—hands—at us.
    “That squirrel’s got a serious problem,” I tell Benji.
    There’s this huge pause and it’s like the entire world is waiting for what Benji’s going to say next. He says, “I think our house is haunted.”
    “Me, too.”
    His face lights up. “Really?”
    “Yeah. I was thinking maybe it’s Mom, just visiting us, checking in, you know? I can almost smell her vanilla soap sometimes. Do not look at me like I’m crazy, Benji.” And I start to say more, but then the freaking squirrel throws an acorn at me. An acorn! It hits the side of my shoulder. “What the heck!”
    Benji’s eyes get huge. “He attacked you!”
    Another acorn comes pelting down. It hits the deck between us and skitters over the side.
    “Don’t attack my sister!” Benji screams. He starts throwing twigs at the squirrel.
    “I thought you were a pacifist,” I say.
    Benji raises an eyebrow at me. “Not when it’s my sister. Duh. I was just trying to make Gramps mad.”
    “Look! He’s got backup,” I say, pointing at two other squirrels.
    “Attack!” Benji yells.
    I grab a pinecone and throw it. “Leave us alone!”
    “Loser squirrels!”
    “Jerks!”
    We keep throwing things at the squirrels. I don’t know what we’d do if we actually hit them or anything, but it feels good, somehow, me and Benji battling off the world. Squirrels scurry up higher into branches, leap from one to the other, away.
    “They’re retreating!” Benji jumps up and down, pumping his fist in the air.
    “Dude, we rock.” I give him a glam rock-’n’-roller hand signal, and he hugs me. I don’t ask him if he feels better about the bully boy now. I don’t say anything stupid and parenty and chirpy, because I don’t have to. I just know. “Does your head hurt?”
    “A little.” He scrapes the toe of his shoe against the plywood, sweeping off a few last pine needles. “You want to touch it?”
    “You want me to?”
    “Sometimes you make things feel better.”
    He says it very matter-of-factly. My palm presses lightly against the bump on his head. My hand starts to tingle in a circle right where I’m touching him. His face relaxes. I pull my hand away. “Better?”
    “Way better.” He reaches up to touch it and asks, “Is it smaller?”
    “Half the size.” I smile.
    “I wish I could do that. Gramps said Mom could do that. I tried to ask Dad about it, but he got all mad.”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “It’s not nothing. You always say everything you do is nothing. Painting is nothing. Soccer is nothing. It drives me crazy!” He glares at me.
    “Sorry,” I offer.
    “Hmph. Why does Dad get mad about stuff like that?”
    “I think it makes him miss Mom too much,” I say, and don’t add that I think he worries that if I’ve inherited her healing traits, then I’ve probably inherited her bipolar disorder, too. Instead, I check out the plywood of the tree