Read They Call Me Crazy for Free Online

a cleanup hitter, and the opposing team knows to back up when she comes to the plate. Long-legged and left-handed, she’s also a natural at first base. Rebecca is usually picking flowers in the outfield.
    I’m trying to focus on the game, but I can’t help hearing Daze and Pet’s conversation.
    “I don’t know why Roland even lets her out in public,” Daze says. “She looked like she’d been in a cat fight and lost.”
    I try to picture Cass wrestling with a wild cat, but that would have to be one tough kitty.
    When we were kids, I lived on East Avenue, not far from Main Street, and Cass lived a few blocks away down by Washington High School. We both went to Central and were always assigned to sit together because of our last names: Shatner and Spencer.
    If I’d have known at the age of six the true meaning of crazy, I probably would have steered clear of Cassie. Even in first grade, Cass did things I would never dare attempt, like putting a half-melted ice cream sandwich in Miss Leeper’s desk drawer and cramming an entire mound of sauerkraut in Benny Cloud’s jacket pocket when he was turned the other way. She sure made me laugh.
    “She’s definitely a mixed-up broad,” Pet says.
    Isn’t that the truth?
    Cass’s dad ran off when she was just a baby. He didn’t run far; she and her grandmother knew that he lived in St. Louis. But he never called, and he never once, in all the years I hung out with her, came to visit or even sent a birthday card.
    When Cass was five, her mother hanged herself. Cass and her nine-year-old sister, Lola, were left in the care of their grandparents, Babe and Jack Shatner. Jack sat on the porch all day and watched the cars go by. Babe made potions and told fortunes. Crazy runs in that family.
    They lived in the same house that her grandmother lives in now. The small four-room house was painted red, yellow, green, and white and had a large pentagram scrawled above the front porch. Filled with herbs and God knows what else, the place was creepy then, and it still is. Babe was always nice to me as a child, but she was one of those people who stared at you too hard and too long, which sometimes made me uncomfortable. She said she was reading my aura, which I guess was usually as it should be because she seemed to approve of me. I doubt that would be the case these days, and I’d rather not get close enough to give her the opportunity.
    A dark cloud has come up pretty fast, typical for this time of year. It’s concentrated over the center of town, and I hope it at least holds off until the game is over. Shay is on deck. Rebecca is at the plate. She strikes out. Damn, I didn’t get to watch her try to run.
    “You’d think that crazy bitch had a little somethin’, somethin’, the way she walked in Logston’s and looked down that snotty nose at me.” Daze is pretty worked up.
    But I know that there’s no telling how Cass acted. She never did know when to stop.
    As we got older, her antics became more elaborate, and sometimes not so funny. In fourth grade, she beat up Benny Cloud on the playground for stealing a red rubber ball from her. She pounded him bad , too. He cried, but later he said it was because he got gravel in his eyes.
    That day, Roland became friends with Cassie and me. Roland was always big for his age, and although he wasn’t fat, he had gotten the nickname Rolly, most likely from Benny. Roland was cute, in a big-kid sort of way, and nice to everyone. I think seeing Benny get his due made Roland’s day, and he was the first to congratulate Cass on winning the fight.
    Roland lived outside of town on the old highway in a double-wide Econoline with his mother. She told everyone that his father had been “killed in the war,” but as we got older, we began to think the truth was that he had simply moved on after Roland was born. That was pretty similar to what Cass’s father had done, which may have been her and Roland’s first connection.
    “All I can say is