OCD Love Story (13 page)

My
obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“You can be honest with me,” she says. Her head moves forward at an angle that reminds me of a turtle emerging from its shell, and I just know I'm not getting out of here without divulging something.

I'm not going to talk about Austin or Beck or the weird way I'm trying to balance out my feelings for the two of them. But I noticed something else in today's group session that's made its way into my obsessive thought hierarchy.

“Do you think you could ask Rudy not to bring that Swiss Army knife key chain into the room?” I say. It's not what she's looking for and I get that but until I address it I'm not going to be able to say anything else.

“I hadn't noticed he had one,” Dr. Pat says. I see for the first time that she has a diamond ring on her left hand. I'm either oblivious or she just got engaged. It's got a nice sparkle but I don't like how much I'm getting to know about Dr. Pat. I think I liked her more when she was mostly furniture and pat statements. “Does it bother you?”

She knows it does.

“It doesn't seem safe. And yeah, okay, I'm feeling a little bothered by really super sharp things lately. I mean, people do really crazy stuff . . . ”

“People like your groupmates?” Dr. Pat says. She clasps her hands together, accidentally letting them clap loudly as they come together. It's deeply awkward.

“People like me,” I admit with a roll of my eyes and a huge sigh.

“Ah,” she says, but she already knew. “I don't think you need to worry about that. You're not going to hurt anyone, Bea.” She reaches out to touch my arm and I jump, but I let her do it just to prove that I'm not as messed up as these other kids.

“No, I know I'm probably not going to really do anything, but I think it's distracting for everyone and, like, kind of unsafe to have a knife just sitting there in the middle of the room, you know? And do you really know enough about all of us to totally guarantee we don't have those tendencies? You know, I read an article about a kid who had these really
violent dreams and he was told to ignore them and then he killed someone in his sleep.”

I'd been holding on to that tidbit for a while. It wasn't a newspaper article exactly, but I read it online and pasted it into that notebook I had for school, thinking I'd talk about it in current events class some day, but I never did.

There's a real relief to having acknowledged it out loud. Maybe now Dr. Pat will lock me away or something so I can't do any real damage.

She nods, writes something down.

“I'm glad you've addressed that with me, Bea. I'm sure Rudy would feel terrible if he knew his key chain was impeding your ability to participate. I know usually you are a really open person, and I think the group is missing out by you being so quiet all of a sudden.”

“I thought my oversharing issue was sort of a compulsion?” I say. “So maybe I'm just actually making progress.” Dr. Pat grimaces and I pull my hands through my hair in exasperation and then immediately pull them away. Thoughts of Jenny's partially bald head shoot through my brain.

“These people are making me crazier,” I say to Dr. Pat. Then I'm flooded with tears because sometimes once I've relaxed a little bit I can't keep anything at all in.

“There we go,” Dr. Pat says. “Good girl.” She rubs my back for half a second and then says she'll see me in our next session. That's what's so weird about Dr. Pat. And maybe
therapy in general. You think you know what they want from you, but when you give it to them they basically shrug it off. And you're left in a pool of your own tears when all you really wanted was to dish about your date or get out of therapy altogether.

I'm not sure who I'll find out there waiting for me. Obviously I didn't drive here myself, so I have to just hope my mom and dad put two and two together and magically realized I need a lift.

That is extremely unlikely. On her days off from the prison job, my mom totally spaces out on the couch with the television blaring and watches girls with boob jobs compete for the affection of douchey guys with muscles. My dad is almost certainly in the garage doing some woodworking, his newest hobby. He blares the Rolling Stones and sings along with the chorus while he delights in all his shiny tools.

I'm already taking out my phone to give them both a call and planning a quick walk to Dunkin' Donuts while I wait for whoever manages to answer the phone.

But Beck's there. He is sparkling clean and pacing around his car.

“Okay. If we're going to do this, you need to tell me more about yourself,” Beck says. “I mean, I just said all that crap in group. You need to tell me at least one thing you don't want to tell me.” He smiles. No one has ever asked to know
more
about me. If you say everything on your mind up front, there's
never really anything left over for people to be curious about.

My mouth itches, wanting to tell him everything. I swallow. Swallow again. Pinch, hard.

“I listen in on people's sessions,” I say. “Before therapy with Dr. Pat. I listen to the couple who goes in before me. I'm sort of fascinated by them.” It's true, without being all OCD and oversharing. It's enough of a confession to temporarily experience a bit of relief from the overwhelming sensation that I'm going to melt away from not saying enough. It's the bare minimum of what I need to say right this second.

And Beck doesn't bat an eye.

“I MEAN THIS AS NICELY
as possible,” lisha says before second period on Monday, “but you sort of look constipated when you make that face.”

I'd be pissed, but I know the look she's talking about. Dr. Pat calls it white-knuckling, and it's what I do when I'm not “doing the deep work,” but instead am just focusing really hard on not compulsing. It is not a very effective method of not being crazy. And apparently it makes me look constipated, too. So, kind of a lose-lose way of dealing with my OCD.

“This better?” I ask with all seriousness, and arrange my face into what I hope is a more normal expression.

“You need a time-out?” Lish says, which is code for
No, that is not better at all
. I nod. Time-out means skipping class to hang out in the library, which is exactly what I need. Second period is Life Skills, anyway. And I reject the notion that we have to take glorified home ec when we are modern women. I only signed up for it because it was the closest thing to a class on costume designing. The first half of the semester was
okay. We did some sewing and balanced a checkbook, both of which seemed kind of useful and kind of antiquated. But I'm not one to complain about sewing. I stitched a tiny jacket for Lisha's tiny dog and got an A.

Now Life Skills has moved on to baking and I'm over it.

We go to the library, with its fake marble columns and comfortable armchairs and rows and rows of books. There're a few of us who sometimes meet in the lofted area, which features a group table, big windows, and a slightly relaxed “No Noise” policy. Two of the usual crew are up there, Kim and Lacey, and they continue their serious-looking talk but hand us a tin of homemade chocolate cookies and gesture that we should dig in.

Kim and Lacey have Life Skills first period.

All the girls who come to the library loft are in that nebulous world between popular and loser. We're not really a group, but we have a couple of inside jokes and sit together during all school assemblies. Their numbers are in my cell phone.

Kim and Lacey used to chat with me about that kid Reggie, the one we talked about in current events class, but at some point I kept talking about him and they stopped really participating in the conversations. Kim would try to change the subject and talk about the hot new soccer coach. I'd get all flustered and imitate a girl who cared about hot soccer coaches, and I'm not a great actress so I'm sure I didn't pull it off.

Besides, the soccer coach is not that cute, and girls only
like him because they all just like soccer players in general. When I tried that theory out on Kim, she blinked too quickly and got suddenly superinterested in her algebra book.

• • •

Lish and I pick books for each other, which is what we always do on our time-outs. Today I hand her an Italian cookbook and she gives me a month-old copy of
New York
magazine, which she knows is my favorite. She must feel really bad for me today, so I can only assume I look like crap. We sit side by side on the floor for the whole period. Our backs rest against the rickety shelves, and I successfully skip over the article about New York's faltering prison system and instead rip out a few pictures from the “Street Style” article: neon armbands, vintage chandelier earrings, high-waisted linen pants, dark green denim.

One of the models reminds me of Sylvia. I pinch my thigh and promise myself I can drive by their place after school.
It's no big deal,
my mind says.
It's better for everyone if I just go check on them.

“Is this helping?” Lisha says, catching me mid thigh-pinch.

“Totally!” I say, but my teeth grind as I smile.

When the period's over, we part ways with cheek kisses and plans to meet up at the Pancake House later. Lisha has AP Calculus and I have an elective photography class. Guess which one of us got into Harvard early?

My library time-out with Lish chilled me out a little, and
I make it to the end of the school day without incident, but before I'm even to the parking lot, my phone is dinging its text message sound. It's Beck. Smith-Latin must get out at the same time as Greenough Girls'.
Ding-ding.
Beck again, and then again. I'm about to tackle responding to the first few texts, but my mind (uncontrollable, but somehow ridiculously predictable) zips to thoughts of Austin; and worrying about what to text Beck morphs quickly into worrying that Something Terrible has happened to Austin. Plus I promised myself I could go check on them after school, and it would be a terrible idea to break that promise. And once I'm gripped with that thought, the text message dings from Beck are inconsequential and I just have to
go
. I have to check on Austin.

My car is fully stocked with today's newspaper and my pink notebook with the ugly gold star and the binder from current events class that I have recently stuck a few more articles into. I wish I'd stop carting around the book of Mary Oliver poems from Kurt, too, but I can't seem to let them go. Not the poems, not the notes I have inside about him, and not the very small urge to stop by the ice cream place I know he still probably frequents. I throw the poetry book in the back. I'm not an idiot; I've already gotten into enough trouble with Kurt.

Anyway, there's a half-drunk, mostly cold thermos of hot tea in the car too, and my mother's forty-dollar lip gloss, and
cigarettes I bought last night in case Sylvia's out there looking for a smoke.

I think of everything and I'm pretty sure if I could use my organizational skills for something else, like wildlife survival kits or preparing people for nuclear warfare, I'd be a millionaire. Or at the very least actually a useful human being. But as it is, I just have a packed car and a lot of extra shit that makes me look like a sociopath.

I'm dry-mouthed and I don't really want to drive because it seems like the kind of day I might go crazy and run someone over by accident. So I go twenty miles an hour and lean forward to make sure I don't take my eyes off the road, and I stiffen every muscle in my body so there's no chance of relaxing for long enough to do something stupid.

I'm almost at the highway, which I'm going to have to force myself to go thirty or forty miles an hour on.

I hate merging. Let's be honest, it's a cesspool of dangerous possibilities and accidents waiting to happen. Merging should be illegal.

My hands are shaking now, and my phone's still buzzing with text messages until Beck has sent exactly eight. I know 'cause at a stop I see that the last one reads:
Sorry to text so many times. Once I sent 2 I had to send 8. Lucky for you, I'm done now.

He may be the perfect guy for me but I can't text and drive at the same time and even when I try to smile at the
memory of Beck's fingers reaching for mine over ridiculously expensive pasta and awkward glances, I fail. I can't even get the image of his face in my head. In fact, I can't get the image of his
hands
into my head either, but my mental photograph of Austin comes in clear as day. His hair. His stubble. The scuffs on his cowboy boots. The worn elbows on his fitted sweater. His kind eyes and full lips and irrefutably sexy swagger.

When I finally get off the highway almost ninety minutes later, I slow down to fifteen miles an hour but it feels almost excusable since it's a school zone. A girl with pigtails is walking a yellow lab and I'm moving so slowly we're almost at the same pace. It doesn't stop me from slowing down even more, though. I can hear my heart in my ears and I have never been more certain of anything: I am going to run her over. I am used to the thought occurring, but this is the first time it has felt like a prediction and not a fear. I slow down even more until I'm barely moving, but the certainty of what I'm going to accidentally do keeps pounding through my whole body. The gasping, the difficulty breathing, makes it worse. I know if I'm distracted by the need to get a breath in, I'm even
more
likely to lose control of my car. All of that is waving through me and when I finally get past the little girl, she turns onto a side street.