Schizo by Nic Sheff Read Free Book Online Page B

very nice.
    It’s only a short bus ride down to Burlingame, so after work, I go to catch the Muni over on 19th Avenue. It takes a while for the bus to get here, but I finally see it coming through the fog, rattling loudly, then stopping with a hiss of its breaks.
    The bus driver, a tall, heavily built man with a gray coarse-looking beard, glances without interest at my bus pass. The whole bus is pretty near empty. There’s a man wearing a tattered corduroy three-piece suit that looks at least thirty years old. That is, the suit looks that old; the man looks much older. He rubs his chin with his thumb and forefinger over and over and seems to be speaking silently to himself, repeating words like he repeats the motion of his fingers.
    Another man, also in his fifties—or even sixties, I’d say—with a big white beard and his hair slicked back, stares straight down at his own hands, which are twisting and tightening around themselves.
    There is a small woman with a thick down jacket and a clear plastic bag covering her hair, presumably to protect it from the moisture in the air outside.
    I sit at the back on the hard plastic seat and take out the book I’m supposed to be reading for school—Leo Tolstoy’s
War and Peace.
It’s a big fucking thing to carry around, but I don’t mind because I really do love it—only, right now, I can’t seem to focus. My eyes are blurred, my thoughts scattered. I read three whole pages before I realize I haven’t remembered or comprehended a thing.
    Outside, along the rows of white two-story Victorian houses, the soft glow of Christmas tree lights blurs past in the front bay windows. The sidewalks are deserted, though there’s a steady stream of traffic on the street. The bus lurches and stops, and the driver honks impatiently at a truck stalled in our lane.
    There are well-fed but idle-looking black crows lazily grooming themselves, perched high up on the dead trees in the center island.
    The crows line the telephone wires, the rain gutters, and the rooftops.
    Crows everywhere.
    Again.
    Always.
    Forever reminding me that I am on the edge—teetering—fighting to hold on to the real through the unreal.
    Teddy.
    He is what’s real.
    My nine-year-old brother—out there somewhere, terrified and alone.
    Finding him is all that matters.
    I watch the fog beginning to dissipate as we climb out of the avenues, turning right past San Francisco State, merging onto the 101 Freeway.
    It ends up taking about half an hour to get to the bus stop closest to where Dotty Peterson lives. Burlingame is all suburban developments and strip malls and wholesale markets.
    The sky is clear and cold. I pull my hood down low over my eyes, walking up a residential street of run-down houses, mostly surrounded by chain-link fencing and rock gardens. A blue-gray, shaggy, medium-size dog comes running up from one of the yards. His bark is high-pitched as he jumps at the fence.
    A few cars drive slowly past. There’s a pair of ragged-looking squirrels chasing each other up a barren fruit tree. The blue-gray dog notices the squirrels and goes off after them, spinning in little circles at the corner of the fence. It barks and barks.
    The squirrels, for their part, stop chasing each other and begin taunting the luckless dog.
    I move off down the block.
    The wind blows stronger, so there are bits of trash—old newspapers, coffee cups, McDonald’s wrappers, and plastic bags—carried out into the street. One solitary black crow seems to be hanging, motionless, in midair above me, one leg tucked up to its belly, the claw curled like a tiny fist.
    I struggle to get a cigarette lit. There’s a bunch of giant blow-up Christmas decorations in the yard of a house built around a metal trailer. A generator groans ineffectually as the plastic Santa falls limp to one side and begins flapping like a flag in the wind. An equally unimpressive snow globe is bent