Nobody would have thought Pete crazy. Every morning, he could be seen leaving his mother's house with a cup of coffee in his hand, getting into a bright, red Nissan Sentra parked in the driveway, for his job as an English teacher. Every evening he came back, parked his car in the driveway, and waved to the neighbors, before going back into the house. He never barbecued, he never had parties, he never played ball with the other guys in the local softball league, he didn't even do any gardening. He was a quiet guy, who kept to himself. He never did anything that could be called crazy.

Of course, most of the neighbors would remember the arguments Pete's mother and father had, when he was a baby. They could hear the doors slamming, the shouting, the broken bottles. Pete's father left abruptly, and never returned. He went somewhere in California, and Pete's mother never spoke about him, except to say he was a liar and drank too much. Pete never gave an indication of what he thought about it. While the other kids played ball in their yard, Pete would sit on his porch, as if he did not know what to do with himself. He watched the other kids in the neighborhood from his chair, maybe a little enviously, maybe a bit resentfully. When Mr. Carlson took his boys on a fishing trip once, he watched them pack their station wagon, and drive away. Then, he went back inside.

His mother was not a baseball fan, or a fisherman. She worked as a secretary and watched game shows when she came home. Pete would watch with her. After she became ill, he would have to help clean the house, and do the shopping. He would make frozen dinners for her, and bring them out to the living room, where she ate them on the sofa, watching TV.

By the time he was in high school, Pete was a bona fide loner. While the other kids found friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, and chatted merrily with each other at lunch, Pete sat by himself and played chess games with a computer. He had no time to join the football team or the Drama Club. He had to go home after school to look after his mother. After he had done the shopping, cleaned the house and made dinner, he would sit in his room and watch movies; teen beach movies, like Beach Blanket Bingo, or Molly Ringwald movies like Pretty in Pink. Sometimes he would go to the mall and walk around with his hands in his pockets, watching the girls from a respectable distance, looking like he did not quite know what to do about them. Buying himself an ice cream sundae and eating it in the food court, under the light of the atrium, while the shoppers waltzed around him in an endless promenade.
Sometimes he went to the movies, and sat by himself in the last row. Sometimes he just went home.

After he graduated high school, Pete went to a local college and majored in education. For some reason, he went to his old alma mater often. He would walk around the sports field with his hands in his pockets, watching the girl's field hockey team practice, or sit in the cafeteria watching them talk to their boyfriends. If one of the teachers asked what he was doing there, he would shrug and say he was thinking about becoming a teacher too. Then, after a little small talk, he would leave, just as mysteriously as he came.

He got good grades, graduated with a degree, and made his way into an apprenticeship program, and after that, became a substitute teacher at a middle school. It wasn't long after that he took a regular position as an English teacher at a high school not far away. He explained that he had to be close to his mother, whose illness had progressed.

The teachers would have lunch together up in the teacher's lounge, where they invited Pete, naturally enough, to join them. It was he who always politely refused, turning down the ping pong games and the scrabble tournaments in favor of eating his lunch in the cafeteria, with the noisy kids, pretending to read a book, or grading papers. He would smile politely at the girls from his classes, and hold doors for them when they left the cafeteria, much to their amusement.

Pete never got married. In fact, if you asked any of his colleagues or neighbors, or relatives, no-one could actually remember seeing him with a woman. It wasn't that he was bad looking. One of the other English teachers, a pretty blond named Sally, even had an eye for him once. She sat next to him one day before school up in the lounge and tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he got flustered and spilled his coffee over the sofa. Another time, when he refused a friendly invitation to play a game of scrabble, she went so far as to go down and sit with him in the cafeteria. When she asked him why he was sitting by himself, he blushed and proceeded to say he had to grade papers. He ignored her, she got up and left, and that was the end of that.

None of that was enough for anyone to go and call him crazy. He showed up at his job, he never called in sick, he was punctual at meetings and knowledgeable in his subjects. The kids liked him; he was funny, he joked around, he created a light atmosphere in the classroom. Especially the girls. But the years went by, with their classes of kids, boys and girls whom he met in September as freshmen and counselled until they were seniors, when they moved on and out of his classroom and got on with their lives. He would try and joke around with them in the halls, talk to them in the cafeteria, tutor them in the library; but they were mostly eager to hang out with their own friends or get back home, and in the end, they gave him the cold shoulder.
Krystal was different.

She was a beauty, with wide, dark eyes, long, silky black hair, and fine, delicate features. Unlike many of the other girls, she would stare at him during class, leaning her pouting face on an upraised hand. She was always asking him questions, and when he answered them, with a polite smile, she would smile back and kept staring at him. She didn't seem to have many friends. She would find him in the cafeteria or the library and tell him she was having a problem or didn't understand the lesson, and then sit next to him and stare at him while he tried to explain. After school, he would find her wandering around the lobby. She never seemed to want to go home. Sometimes she would walk out to his car with him, and ask him what he was making for dinner that night or what he was doing with himself on the weekends. Once, she asked him if he was married.

Pete was excited by her interest in him. She seemed to be waiting for something, lingering around him, daring him to make a move. He had never really known or been shown how to make a move, and this had paralyzed him around women his own age; but Krystal was like a blank page, an inexperienced debutant, and he felt more at ease around her. Once she asked him if he could drive her to the public library, so she could do her homework, and he began helping her with her homework there. Sometimes they would forget the homework and just talk. Krystal liked music and she asked him what kind of music he liked. She said she wanted to come over his house and listen to some of his CD's with him.

"Don't you have to go home?" Pete asked her, curious.

She looked out of the window at the dogwoods blooming in the garden outside the library, and ran her fingers through the long, black strands of her hair. "I want to run away," she told him.

"Why?" he asked her, acting surprised.

"Because I hate my mom."

"Why do you hate your mom?"

"Because she doesn't love me. Nobody does. And my brother's a bitch."

"I'm sure he isn't that bad," Pete told her, sounding incredulous. He leaned over and looked sympathetically at her.

She threw back her head and laughed. While she did that, she arched her shoulders back, and stuck out her chest. When she saw that he had noticed, she turned and looked at him, smiling wryly. "Could you do me a favor?" she asked him.

"What is it?" he asked, anxiously.

She laughed again. "Could you buy me some beer? I'm dying for some beer. You could get me some, couldn't you?"

Pete paused, as if he were standing on a cliff, one step away from going over, into the rush of the air, and a step back from safety. "You know you're too young for that," he said, mischeviously. She looked at him and they both laughed.

"I've had beer before," she told him, triumphantly. "My brother lets me have some, when he feels like it. But right now he's bumming around with his stupid friends."

"What's wrong with his friends?"

"When they get drunk, they all hit on me," Krystal said, running her fingers through her hair again.

Pete looked at her intently. "What does your mom say about that?"

"She's not around. She left."

"She left?"

"She went to my grandma's in Orlando. She goes there a lot. She won't be back until she feels like coming back."

"You mean, she just up and left you, just like that, all by yourselves?" Pete sounded at once incredulous, and at once excited.

"Yea. And now my brother is acting like a jerk."

"What about your father?"

Krystal laughed. "I haven't seen him in years. He's in Los Angeles, I think."

Pete looked at the abandoned girl sitting next to him. "I know how you feel," he said gently. "My father left for California too. He and my mother didn't get along."

Krystal looked at him, squinting to look in his eyes. "That's pretty wild," she said.

Pete began to look forward to their times in the library, after school. Krystal had her hair highlighted with red streaks. She wore little shorts to their meetings, and crossed her legs under the table. She told him that she wanted to run away, go to Hollywood or Las Vegas, and become an actress or a singer. She wanted to be somebody. She told him she had always dreamed of standing on a stage, and listening to everyone applaud her. He asked her to sing for him once, and he sat and listened to her with his head in his hand, smiling. And the girl who had no-one to go home to loved singing for him, watching the way he couldn't take his eyes off of her.

They began talking about their fantasy trip to Los Angeles. They looked at hotel brochures, and restaurant reviews, and talked about the concerts they could see together on the road. Krystal would become famous and they would drive around in her bright, red sports car. They would live in one of those townhouses in Hollywood. They could throw pool parties, toga parties. She would be on TV and everyone would wish they had been her friend.

Pete had never done anything crazy before. He knew that he would never be able to take her to Los Angeles and live with her. But there was no denying the fact that part of him wanted to. When she sat next to him, in those little shorts, and those halter tops, his heart hammered with anticipation. He had never known how to make a move on a woman; he had never known what to do. This girl seemed to have dropped out of the sky and into his lap. He might never get another chance like this. She was perfect.

He decided that he would take her on a trip out to a lighthouse one day over summer vacation. They would find a lonely beach. He would tell her he would take pictures of her and they could send them into a fashion magazine He imagined her in a bikini, kissing him. He imagined himself running his hand over her leg...

When he told her his plan, she was excited. They went to the mall, and she picked out a new bikini, a pair of flip flops, a beach blanket, a pull over, and new mirrored sunglasses. He cheerfully bought it all for her, putting them on his credit card. He drove her to a liquor store and let her pick out a bottle of wine. He bought film for his camera.

The day of their adventurer, Pete had his car washed, and packed their picnic lunch carefully in the trunk. He was bringing a Styrofoam cooler for that bottle of wine, and some beers. He had a rolled up beach towel, and a package of condoms, just in case. He drove down to meet her at the park behind the library.

There she was, as she said she would be, in her shorts and hat, swinging in the swing. He got out and walked over to her. She smiled when she saw him. She was wearing those sunglasses.

"You look great," he said.

"My mother went to Orlando again," she told him.

"No kidding," he said, sitting next to her.

"She won't be back until next week, the bitch. And my brother's drunk, with his asshole friends. I can't wait to get out of here."

"With me?" Pete asked her.

Krystal laughed. "I'm ready to be a star!" she said, leaning back, and letting her hair down, stretching her legs to reach for the sky.

"You're crazy," he told her.

"Maybe we're both crazy," she said.