“What does it feel like to be insane?”
















He leaned back in his old, rickety rocking chair. The nails and springs holding it together squeaked as he closed his eyes, his thick eyebrows scrunched together, the sure sign that he was thinking, and hard. I could almost hear the wheels in his head turning like the wheels of a tractor; slow, determined. He was thinking, all right. A toothpick hung nonchalantly from his partly-opened mouth. He chewed it subconsciously. I waited patiently for an answer to my-what I believed-innocent question.















“Well,” he said finally, his soft voice dripping like a raindrop off the windowsill, “I don’t rightly know, missy.”





























I knew he was lying. I can always tell. I always know when he’s upset or frustrated about something. It shows on his face and in his eyes. He never looks me in the eyes when he’s lying to me. And right now, he was focusing only on the edge of the toothpick dangling from between his cracked, dry lips. I stepped closer to him and placed his long, light blue sleeved arm around my shoulders. I opened my equally blue eyes wide and stared right into his, so he was forced to look at me-to tell me the truth.








He sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to escape my question…knowing that he had to say something, anything, to satisfy my curiosity about such a vast, complex subject.







“Insanity,” He said quietly, “is like a book. Not a newspaper, with every little fact and statistic you need to know right there on the page. Insanity has many pages, concealed, hidden. It’d like a…a…a cursed book. You don’t want to open it, so don’t go playing around with your mind.” He took a deep breath and a surprisingly vicious chomp on his tiny toothpick. “And don’t go messing with other people’s minds, either,” he whispered. “Messy stuff. Never ends well…”








I tightened my grip on his arm as his eyes glazed over in thought. He stared into the distance; over the tree tops and geese. But it was quiet. No wind, no rustling of the trees, or honking of the geese over the lake. It was eerily quiet.













“Grandpa?” I whispered. He slowly turned his head. His eyes stared into mine as if seeing me for the first time. My baby-thin brown hair. Soft, white hands. He stared.








“Messy stuff,” he mumbled. His eyes widened-was it fear? His old legs seemed to tense, as if he wanted to run away, but couldn’t. He suddenly untangled his arm from my shoulders and rubbed both his hands over his forehead, as if trying to rid his mind of some horrible image. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, if he was okay, if he needed help. I reached out a tiny hand to touch his arm. He slapped it down. I stood, shocked, my chubby arm swinging like a pendulum by my side. I was so shocked, I did not feel the pain. My grandpa gazed at his wrinkled hands, inspecting them. He shot suddenly out of the rocking chair and towards the corner of the porch, away from me, yelling, “Get out! Get away!” The chair rocked violently, all the back, all the way front. It shrieked loudly, making my petite ears ring. Tears sprang to my eyes.









“Grandpa!” I screamed, my throat searing. He shrank to the corner of the front porch, his eyes the size of dinner plates. “This-you-“He stuttered, attempted to back away as I stumbled closer to him. “You can’t be here!” He screamed. “You-you don’t...exist!” His whole body was trembling. What had I done that was so horrible? Hot tears leaked from my eyes, burned my face.








“Get away!” He yelled again. “You don’t belong here! Go back!”








I heard running coming from inside the old house. A young woman banged open the front screen door. She ran to my cowering grandfather, not even bothering to see if I was alright. He pointed in my direction, his fingers shaking.



















“What is it, dad?” She said, her voice soft, quiet, just like his. “What are you pointing at?”



“D-don’t you see her?” He asked, pointing in my direction. I stood, terrified, waiting for her to turn and yell at me for scaring my grandfather.













But she didn’t.

















“Dad,” she said softly, “come on, now. Let’s stand up and go into the living room. I’ll call the doctor, okay? Then everything will be alright.”










“Don’t you see her?” He asked again.















“Well…yes, of course I see…her.”



























But that’s when I realized. She was lying. I can always tell when someone is lying. She didn’t see me.






Nobody did.













I watched as she helped my grandfather up off the ground and slowly into the house. After he sat on the couch, I saw her scan the porch with her light blue eyes, like her father’s, like mine, as if searching for something, anything, to describe her father’s strange behavior.









My face, I realized, wasn’t wet with tears. I had never even cried. I had never yelled.


I never even existed.















I slowly walked off the front porch, slowly, one chubby bare foot in front of the other, into the woods, a mile or so from the glistening lake with the swinging trees and honking geese. Into a spongy clearing, littered with headstones. I wasn’t afraid. I was home.