Crazy Cate

I never asked to be paired with Cate. The community center randomly threw us together with no apparent reasoning, other than we were around the same age. 

When my mom suggested I get a job with the Township that summer, I groaned and watched my days of reading outside in the grass under a tree evaporate like a puddle on a sunny day. 

“You’ll have plenty of time to read and be lazy until school starts again. I think you’ll like it,” she prodded. 

“Fine. I’ll apply, but if I DON’T get it, I can’t say I’ll be sorry,” I told her as I slunk from the kitchen and up to my room. 

To my mother’s delight and my disappointment, I was hired. Even worse, I could start immediately. I was to report to the Township Community Center the following Monday to receive my assignment. Would I be assigned Game Coordinator in the Rec building? Trash collector along the streets? Pool Concession stand worker at the Community Pool? I didn’t want to get my hopes up for any of the positions available that some town director doled out to hapless teens looking for summer jobs. I envisioned getting pelted with dodgeballs in the Rec room, and burning pizza slices at the pool. My preferred tasks were reading and eating popsicles in the summer sun. I decided whatever I was assigned would just be terrible. End of story. 

That Monday, I rode my bike to the Community Center, and dropped it in the lawn out front. I went into the mildly air conditioned building and found the reception desk. 

“I’m here to get my job placement for the summer. Where should I go?” I asked the girl manning the desk. She didn’t bother to look up from her Teen Magazine as she told me conference room B. Down the hall. The OTHER hall. (My sense of direction was as lacking as my other skills). 

I found conference room B and gently opened the door to peek inside. A handful of teens, dripping sweat and hormones, filled the tiny room. Everyone turned at once to look at me, and I felt my face redden as I tried to strut as nonchalantly and coolly as I could to the bulletin board listing our names and assignments. 

There it was. 

Rachel Roberts - Parks and Recreation Craft Committee 

What the heck was a craft committee job? There was no description. I saw everyone still staring at me, so I applied a mask of teenage apathy and turned to them and shrugged.

“Craft committee. Whatever.” 

I waited to see if they bought it. They all returned the apathetic shrug, gave a nod, and went back to their chatter. 

I was relieved to be out of the spotlight, and just as I began to let out a sigh of relief, the door swung open in alarming ferocity and spit through it none other than Crazy Cate Collins. 

Crazy Cate burst into the room like a firework set to explode at any minute. She let out a “Hey ya’ll!” and ran to the Corkboard of Fate and (Mis)Fortune, as I was about to find out my summer would be tangled up in Crazy Cate’s erratic life. 

“Craft Committee! Yes!” she shouted, and pumped her fist. She then ran around the room like an NFL receiver who’d just scored the winning touchdown of the game smacking everyone with high-fives. 

Wait. Craft Committee? With..me?! I knew it had to be a mistake. I couldn’t possibly be paired with that pariah. 

But no. There it was. Plain as the frown on my face. Cate and I were both assigned Craft Commitee for the summer. 

“Who did I get this year?” Cate asked and scanned the room. Nobody replied, but I could practically see the thought bubbles dancing above all their heads saying “thank goodness not me!” 

I slowly lifted my head, took a step forward, and accepted my fate with Cate. 

“It’s me. I’m on Craft Commitee too,” I about whispered. 

“Well, Worm, looks like it’s you and me this summer! Saddle up, it’s going to be a wild ride!” she laughed. 

“Worm? Actually, my name’s…” I started. 

“Bookworm! I know who you are. And listen, no books allowed on the job, ya hear me? We have serious crafting to do!” she feigned a serious face. 

It was worse than I thought. No lazy summer reading, AND paired with Crazy Cate making crafts? I never wanted school to start more vehemently than I did at that moment. 

“Well, let’s get our supplies and get to it!” she said as she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out the door. Good gracious, was she a weight lifter too? My little arm throbbed in her massively strong grip, as I urged my feet to move faster to keep up with her. 

“This here’s the closet we get our supplies before we start each day. We choose a craft, go to one or two parks in town each day, and the little lemmings come over to us and make something. Got it, Worm?” she asked. 

“Um, yeah. Got it. Um…how do you know all this already?” I asked quietly. 

“I was craft committeed by these clowns last summer too. I know it inside and out. How to work, how to LOOK like you’re working, and the best places in town to hide out til work’s over. Stick with me, Worm, and you’ll be in for the best time of your sorry life!” she promised. 

Sounded more like a prison sentence. And I was about to commence with Day 1. 

We grabbed the craft boxes and carried them outside to her car. I use the term loosely. It had an engine, some doors, and it moved. But I felt like I should be signing some kind of waiver before getting inside: “I hereby relinquish all rights to life while traveling from point A to point B” or something of the sort. 

“Get inside, Worm!” Cate ordered. 

I obeyed, wide-eyed and terrified. 

The car smelled of some kind of alcohol and I was pretty sure a family of skunks had made a home under the driver’s seat. 

“First we can go to Memorial Park. It’s pretty empty Mondays. We can lay low there awhile.”

On the way, Cate told me we just had to tell the township folks which parks, which days, and how many kids crafted that day. A purely made-up magical number not-too-high, not-too-low, just right to keep us in “business”. 

And so it was. 

For the duration of the summer, Cate and I went park hopping with our craft supplies. She would disappear into the woods with a backpack of bottles, like bait for the “cool kids” who followed her in. The pied-piper of delinquents. 

I’d sit at the picnic tables and benches waiting for any kids that wanted to craft, with instructions to tell our boss Mr. Carter she was just in the bathroom with “lady troubles” should he show up for a spot check to make sure we were crafting. That excuse always caused him enough awkward discomfort to slow down his checks on us. 

I began to worry about how much and how often Cate got into drinking and drugs. She always managed to be well enough by the end of the day to drive us back to the center to return the supplies and for me to get my bike to ride home. 

But I feared it didn’t stop when she got home. And it started getting worse as the days drew near to summer’s end. 

“Mom? Can I talk to you about something?” I had started one day. I needed advice. I needed to know if I should talk to Cate about what I was seeing. 

“Yeah, Sweetheart? What is it?” My mom asked with a smile on her face. 

“Um, did you wash my red tank top yet? I wanted to wear it tomorrow,” I chickened out. 

“Yeah, it’s in your room. Was that all?” my mom suspiciously asked. 

“Yep! Thanks!” I said and ran off. Bock Bock Bock. 

I was still debating how I could bring up the topic the next day, when Cate slung her backpack over her perfectly tanned shoulders and got ready to disappear again for the day. 

“Alright, Worm, hold down the fort and man the glitter til I get back!” she said with a salute of her hand in my direction. And then she was gone. Again. 

Hours later, she still hadn’t come out from the woods. Not entirely unusual for her, but I suddenly had a feeling in my gut I should go look for her. 

I left my glue and popsicle sticks, and went to the tree line where she had gone in. It was eerily quiet. I called out a few times, but without an answer. I could feel the sweat running down my back as I began to worry more. 

As I walked further into the woods, my shoes crunched the leaves of last Fall, soon to be replaced with the leaves of this Fall. I looked down the path ahead, and saw something. I hurried closer and found a very pale, very unconscious Cate. 

I tried to wake her up, but she was out. I ran from the woods as fast as I could to the pay phone by the bathrooms. I rummaged through my Jean shorts pockets and found coins, then called 911 breathlessly as my hands shook and my heart punched my chest. 

I told the dispatcher what had happened, where to send an ambulance, and then ran to the road to guide them to the woods when they arrived. 

I remember watching them take Cate on a stretcher out of the woods, and into the ambulance. I remember watching it pull away, screaming sirens cutting the hot summer silence. I don’t know how long I’d been crying at that point, but I sank to the ground and sobbed then. Full body, shaking crying. 

An EMT had called my mom to pick me up, and I went home and just sat with her. Crying, worrying, and wishing Cate would be ok. Mom tried to make me feel better, told me I’d done the right thing. Did I? 

I finished out the next week by myself at the parks. I wondered how Cate was doing, and if she was still in the hospital. 

When school started, I heard a rumor Cate was in rehab and wouldn’t be back for awhile. I wondered if she was mad at me for calling the ambulance. Maybe she would have been fine and woken up? Maybe I overreacted? I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I got her in trouble and she would never forgive me. And everyone at school wouldn’t forgive me either for jumping the gun and ruining Cate’s summer when all she wanted to do was have fun. These thoughts consumed me for weeks. 

I was still trying to push those thoughts away when I stopped for a drink at the water fountain after Science. As I stood up, I looked down the hall and saw her. It was Cate. She was back. And she was walking straight towards me. I tried to read her face, and couldn’t. Was she mad? Would she even acknowledge me? She looked so much better than she had in the summer. Her tan was long gone, but her face looked healthier. Her eyes weren’t sunken in and rimmed with darkness. 

As she grew close, she gave me a nod. 

“Hey, Worm. Thanks.” 

And with that, she walked by me and greeted her friends who were waiting down the hall.

But that’s all I needed.