“I need for you to tell me everything that happened, Mason, while it’s still fresh in your mind.” Mom paced back and forth in front of me.
“It happened so fast.”
“The guy she attacked. What did he do?”
“We were just playing paintball.” I tried to remember if anything specific occurred.
“Did he say something? Do something? Something had to have set her off.”
Suddenly, it hit me. “He sang.”
She spun around to look at me. “Sang what?”
“Come out, come out…”
Mom finally relaxed. “Okay. We can deal with this.”
“What happened, Mom? I don’t understand. One minute she was fun and happy, and the next I thought she was going to kill him.”
“She probably would have if you hadn’t pulled her off.”
“But why?”
“Ash is mentally ill, son. She’s very disturbed. It’s impossible to say what will trigger her.” She stopped a
nd stared at me, her hands on her hips. “I still can’t believe you did this. I trusted you.”
“Mom,” I hedged, “I didn’t mean to.”
“You meant to, Mason. You blatantly disobeyed me and did something you knew you shouldn’t have done. I’m taking your car for a month. You can take the bus to and from school.”
“Mom,” I complained. “Can I at least ride with a friend?”
“The bus, Mason. You can take the bus. I trusted you and you blew it. There are consequences.”
“The bus…”
“The bus.”
I threw up my hands.
“And I want you to stay away from them. All of them. It’s too much for you.”
“When you say all of them, you mean—”
“I mean all of them, Mason.”
“Lynn too?”
She nodded her head. “Lynn too.”
“But, Mom…” She wasn’t going to give in. I could see it in her eyes. She meant it. Every word. “Mom, I’m eighteen years old,” I reminded her. But the argument sounded feeble even to me.
“You’re still a child, Mason. You proved that with your actions today.”
She went to talk to the police, and she assessed the injuries of the guy Ash had attacked. His helmet bore the brunt of it, and he was fine.
But me? I was left with scars from that incident. Mom did let me see Ash again, but I never tried to leave the hospital with her again, after that one night, despite the many ways she begged me. Then she figured out how to hide her crazy convincingly, and Mom let her out for longer and longer periods of time. The hospital staff felt like she was no longer a threat to anyone.