In a Nutshell

[Nikolai Allen]

I'm Gonna Show You Crazy

Loco, maniac, sick bitch, psychopath
Yeah, I'm gonna show you
I'm gonna show you
Yeah, I'm gonna show you ~ Writer(s): Lauren Christy, Bebe Rexha, Jon Levine

Frances Ranier hated crying in front of people. Lately it seemed like that was all destiny had for her. She sat on the very bottom step of the west stairwell at New Haven Middle school, wiping tears from her face. She’d failed at holding them back, and had long ago discovered that once unleashed the things were impossible to put back. Her seat was in the least used stairwell, because it ended at a fire exit which would set off an alarm if anyone went out. Alone she used the tied off ends of her two tone braids to keep her fingers busy. The purple and green ends were extremely soft when she brushed them across her cheeks.

“You doing okay?” Great, she hadn’t heard the approach of the kid who’d asked her the question. She waved him away, trying to get him to leave. He was obviously stupid because instead of leaving, he sat down next to her and laid back like having the steps digging into his back was comfortable. “You found the best place to think on the first floor.”

“Hngh…” The grunting response was all that Frances was willing to give this interloper into her misery.

“My name’s…” The boy just kept talking, why wouldn’t he take the hint?

“I don’t care.” She cut him off before he could tell her, or worse, ask for her name. Her parents had named her Frances, but they called her Baby. They’d always make some joke about being in a corner. Joke was on them, Baby had put herself in a corner.

“Okay.” He sounded happy of all things, though why having her refuse to learn his name made him happy she would never understand. “You sure seem awful sad. I have a joke… hang on.”

He sat up and twisted himself around so that his back was to the wall, and he was watching her. Baby lowered her face far enough that her hair hid parts of her face, though she couldn’t help but look his way out of the side of her eyes. She didn’t want to hear a joke, she just wanted to be alone.

“What do you call a bear with no ears?” He brought his heels in towards his body and sat in an awkward looking lotus on the step. Baby just shook her head and gave him a nonverbal shoulder shrug.

“It doesn’t matter, it can’t hear you anyway.” The punchline was dumb, and predictable, somehow it still managed to get a half laugh out of her.

“So stupid.” Baby’s sniffle closely followed her appraisal of his joke, but she’d managed to stop crying.

“Not my best by a million miles, but sometimes stupid is what you need, right?” The kid couldn’t seem to stop moving, changing his position like being still would kill him.

“You probably don’t want to hang around with me. Everyone knows that I’m just the crazy girl.” That admission threatened to push her back into tears. One of the girls she’d thought was her friend found her prescription Sertraline and turned the entire class on her. It didn’t matter that she was having trouble dealing with the loss of her baby brother. Nobody cared because making her hurt made them feel better about themselves.

“So what if you are?” The boy had stood up and was currently trying to find a way to sit on the handrail attached to the wall. Trying and failing she noticed, but that didn’t seem to deter him.

“What? Are you gonna make fun of me now too?” Frances started to let her anger show toward this very strange kid.

“So what if you’re fucking crazy?” In a move that Frances barely registered, the boy had bent down and scooped up her wrist. “C’mon…let’s go!”

She tried to resist, but the kid was deceptively strong. He led her through the halls of the school to the ramp which led down into the cafeteria. “What are you doing?!” Frances yelled at him, trying to get him to stop pulling at her, unfortunately the noise of the cafeteria made her barely audible.

He stopped at the spot where the full wall dropped into something chest high. “Stay here.” He fixed her with a sidelong grin as he let go of her. He leaned in and whispered directly into her ear. “I’m gonna show you crazy.”

The boy backed his way across the commons room, then took off at a run. He swept past her, planted his hands on the top of the wall, and vaulted it. The drop into the cafeteria was twenty feet if it was an inch. Frances ran forward the moment he disappeared, only to watch him do a rolling landing on a table, smack in the center of all the girls who’d so recently driven her to her solitary stairwell. Shrieks and encouraging yells filled the air as the students witnessing the stunt were startled, then entertained.

The boy’s shirt had a mix of stains on it, chocolate milk and barbecue sauce from where he’d done his roll. That did not stop him from standing up and dancing his way back across the table, and using his feet to push platters into laps. Frances watched hands reach out to try and grab his legs, but the kid moved too quickly to be caught by them.

“MR. ALLEN!” For the second time in the last half hour Frances had been snuck up on. The bellow came from Principle Pennbrooke, it cut across all the noise of the cafeteria, silencing everyone, and stopping Mr. Allen’s dance right in the middle of a twirl.

The boy looked up, locking his face on Mr. Pennbrooke’s in what could only be an attempt at innocence. “It was that way…before I touched it!”

“My office! Now!” The principal started down the ramp, presumably to get the clean up going, and take any eyewitness statements. The boy however, looked up at Baby with a bright eyed, brilliant smile that was somehow so beautiful it was painful to look at. He took a running leap off the table and caught the top of the wall like a cat.

He pulled himself over the wall, dropping to his feet right in front of her. “So what if I’m fuckin’ crazy.” He skipped his way down the hall in the direction of the principal’s office, looking with every step like he was going to do as he was told.

Frances watched until he disappeared around a corner, only then noticing that people were coming up the ramp. She caught snippets of the conversations as people passed by her.

”Nikolai is nuts..”
…what the hell was that about?
...yeah, but so pretty…”
…who cares? It was funny.”

She merged into the pack of students, for the first time in a long time her head was held high. Her cheeks were aching from the smile that had managed to chisel its way to her lips.