“Peter,” her mom called sharply behind her. “It’s happened. I’ll get the shot.” Watching Holly, she stepped right through the mess of pills and broken glass and plate on her way to the kitchen.
Shot? Holly didn’t like shots, especially shots with sinister connotations of lying in wait for her. She picked up her mom with her mind and hung her in midair.
“Holly, Holly, careful, careful,” her mom protested. Out of the corner of her eye, Holly saw her mom careening against the kitchen light fixture. But Holly could only devote so much attention to her mom. She turned to focus on her dad coming through the doorway.
She didn’t get the chance. Her dad grabbed her neck. But he never touched her. He stayed in the doorway. Holly could tell from his intense gaze on her and the sudden pain in her throat, and her own experience of the last fifteen minutes, that he was squeezing her neck with his mind.
The world went red.
She lashed out at him with her magical power, a blind punch, to make him let her go.
The pressure on her neck released and she gasped at the same time she hit the marble floor hard on her hip. Before she could take another full breath, her mom sat on her and jabbed something into her arm. The shot. Holly knocked her mom off, flung the shot away, and tried to levitate out of harm’s way. But the excited sparkles drained out of her like her drool pooling on the cold stone floor.
“Peter!” Holly’s mom yelled. “Call Mr. Diamond!”
Holly wondered why her mom wanted to drag the owner of the casino into this. This dream was the strangest one she’d ever had. That was her last thought before she blacked out.
“Holly, sweetie,” her mom whispered. Her mom’s fingernails hissed through Holly’s hair, stroking, comforting. Holly opened her eyes.
She lay in her bed. Her mom leaned over her. Her dad and a balding man in a white coat—not Mr. Diamond, but a doctor she’d never met—stood at the foot of the bed, chatting quietly in concerned tones.
Looking past them, Holly tried to lift her copy of Romeo and Juliet off her desk. Nothing. Then her pencil cup, her pink stapler, her tennis tournament trophy from eighth grade. No movement, no tingle. Nothing.
“Do you remember what happened?” Holly’s mom asked.
“You gave me a shot!” Holly cried. “Dad tried to choke me!”
“No,” all three adults said sadly, as if they’d been afraid of this.
“We held you down while the doctor gave you a shot of medicine to stop your hallucinations,” her mom said gently. “We couldn’t control you. We didn’t want you to hurt yourself or one of us. You punched your father in the eye.”
Sure enough, Holly’s dad’s left eye was shaded, developing into a shiner. Holly shrank against the headboard.
“Holly, I’m Dr. Gray.” The physician approached the bed. “You have a condition called mental adolescent dysfunction,” he said in the tone of the narrator of antiquated films about menstruation that Holly’s PE teacher had shown in middle school. “It’s a psychiatric disorder that presents in puberty. The bad news is that this is a serious condition. In the past, people have been institutionalized their whole lives with the disease. But the good news,” he went on quickly as Holly started to hyperventilate, “is that it’s easily controlled with medicine. We gave you the initial dose in the shot.” He pulled a prescription bottle from his pocket and shook it. Pills rattled inside. “Take one of these every night before bed. Don’t ever take more, don’t ever miss a dose, and you should be fine.” He set the bottle on her bedside table.
“That’s not what happened,” Holly murmured.
“What do you mean?” Holly’s mom asked, playing along, like this was all one of Holly’s childhood tea parties when Holly was little.
“You and dad left for dinner,” Holly said. “While you were gone, I felt like I—”
The adults watched her.
She skipped that part. “You came back to get your purse. You yelled to Dad that you were getting the shot, like you had something ready and expected all this to happen. You told him to call Mr. Diamond.”
“Mr. Diamond!” Her dad laughed.
Holly pointed at her dad. “And you tried to choke me!”
Her dad flinched as if Holly had hit him. Again. She realized how serious this accusation was and how hurtful, but he had tried to choke her. Hadn’t he?
“Holly.” Dr. Gray pulled Holly’s desk chair close to her bed and sat down. “Your parents tell me you had a disagreement tonight. That’s how the disease manifests itself. Your parents made a decision to protect you, but you’re angry with them for having power over you. Your father is allowing you to work as his assistant so you can learn the magic trade, but you’re jealous and impatient. You want to be the magician.”
Holly squirmed. This might be true. But she would never dream of hurting her father to take over his act. No.
“These are common emotions, Holly,” Dr. Gray said. “All teenagers feel this way about their parents sometimes. The only difference between other teenagers and you is that you, unfortunately, have a mental disorder that pushes your delusions of grandeur into the danger zone. When you were in that state, you probably thought you could fly or something.” He raised his eyebrows in question.
His description of what she’d experienced was too accurate to be wrong. She eyed him guiltily.
He didn’t seem to blame her, though. He patted her arm—ouch, on the sore spot where someone had given her the shot—and handed her a glossy pamphlet. “This will tell you more about the disease. Just take your medicine, Holly, and I think you’ll be fine. If you’re not, we’ll move to the next step.” Her parents followed him out of the room. Holly heard them walking him to the front door with good-byes and thanks for the emergency house call.
Tuning them out, Holly examined the pamphlet. On the front, a stick person held its head in its hands while teardrops sprang from its face. Another stick person put its arm around the first, lending comfort in 2-D.
WHAT IS MENTAL ADOLESCENT DYSFUNCTION?
Mental adolescent dysfunction (MAD) is a lifelong mental illness that strikes during puberty (≈ 14 years). The first episode is brought on by strong emotion. Thereafter, sufferers are plagued with delusions that they have magical powers. They may believe that they can:
• Move objects with their minds
• Read minds