Compulsion (10 page)
Authors: Heidi Ayarbe
My chair doesn’t slide away.
The clock looks straight now. The room is back in order.
Just. Stop.
Screaming. Surround-sound, high-pitched screams echoing off the walls like we’re stuck in an endless corridor.
Kasey shrieks, her voice sharp and piercing.
“I just need some air. Give me a second.” I push away from the table, dragging my chair with me, fumbling to set my watch, wind it, get the time back.
I shove my chair in front of the wall clock, covering my ears from the screams, unable to tell the difference between then and now—what’s real and what’s in my head.
“I’ll be right back, Jakey. Look at the time. Here.” She paints a minute and an hour hand on my watch. “When your black hands line up with these marks, I’ll be here. Take care of Kasey.”
The second hand isn’t steady—it catches every time it hits fifty-three seconds, then continues. I hold my watch, my thumb on the face.
One, two, three, flick, one flick, two, flick, three flick . . .
listening for the clicking, whirring sound. Twenty-three times, ninety seconds. Counting. Counting. I shiver, wishing I had a warmer sweatshirt on.
Ten flick, eleven flick, twelve flick . . .
A draft comes from under the door. It’s cold. I shiver and go to the hall closet to pull out my coat. The door swings and clicks shut behind me, enclosing me in blackness except for the green light of my Indiglo watch. The doorknob is jammed.
There’s a snap and the sickening sound of bones breaking—the rat’s chest rises and falls, then shudders. It whines out its last breath, the trap shoved between a rubbery Halloween clown mask with bulging eyes and a box of tangled tinsel from last year’s Christmas tree.
Silence.
Somebody rakes her bow across violin strings,
see-saw, see-saw
. Screaming violins.
She’s awake. “Mama? Mama?” Her voice muffled by the door.
“She’ll be right back!”
“Mama?! Mama?!”
“Stay. Just stay!”
Screaming.
See-saw, see-saw
. Laughing. “
Psycho
, dude. Total
Psycho
. Can you do the banjo duel from
Deliverance?
”
I throw myself against the door; it won’t open. And Kasey keeps screaming.
A thud. High-pitched terror.
Muffled sobs.
The violins stop. The speakers boom: Magic Martin! M&M!
“Speech! Speech! Speech!” They chant.
I swallow back the bubbling acid that works its way up my throat.
What if she’d gotten more hurt? What if she’d broken more than her arm?
What if . . .
Stop it.
Stop.
I stare at the numbers on the clock, working them out, making the patterns.
A heavy silence until Jenny Roark talks into the microphone. “Apparently, M&M, the greatest athlete to come out of Carson High, is concentrating? On—” She taps my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Winding. My. Watch.” I try to keep my voice steady.
Tick-tock, tick-tock
.
“Winding his watch,” she says.
Luc says, “He’s got to be on time one more day. We’re all responsible for his punctuality today. Who’s going to chaperone Jake to his classes?”
A spray of hands goes up like drowning swimmers—desperate to take on the impossible task of harnessing Jacob Martin’s challenged time-management skills.
Everybody cheers.
I push my chair between Mera and Riley, the saxophone guy. “Can I sit here, please? Just for a second?”
Mera nods and dives into a yogurt parfait, like me sitting next to her is the most normal thing in the whole wide world.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
I work out the numbers to try to get ahold of the day.
The room has cleared out. I’m still wedged between Mera and Riley. Tanya stands with Luc and Amy at the door—her arms crossed in front of her chest, eyes all red and puffy. Oh Christ.
“Hey,
guevón
!” Luc hollers. “You coming?”
“Thanks,” I whisper to Mera, then turn to Riley. “Thanks.”
Mera squeezes my arm. “Are you okay, Jake?”
Are you okay?
No. I don’t think so
.
Wrong answer.
I’d nod if I didn’t think my head would explode from excessive movement, so I just grunt, “Uh-huh.” Then Luc corrals me into his car and we leave the Nugget, pulling up to Carson High just a few minutes before the bell.
But I’ve got to get back home—to start the day over.
I have no choice.
Friday, 7:43 a.m.
Seven forty-three. Seven plus four is eleven plus three is fourteen minus seven is seven. OK.
Tanya sniffles all the way to school, pasting a fake smile on her face. She’d probably be a lot less sensitive with a decent meal in her. But I’m smart enough not to say anything. When we get out into the parking lot, Luc pushes me along. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “Are you
on
something?”
“Yeah. Blackberry protein shakes.”
“Don’t be an asshole. Be on time. Just today, okay?”
“Sure, Luc, I’m gonna blow the last day of classes off before the big game. C’mon, man, give me some credit.” I sound normal. My voice doesn’t even have the slightest hint of panic in it.
“Yeah. Fine.” Luc doesn’t sound totally convinced. He pulls Amy to his side, squeezing her hand.
Tanya walks off at a distance.
Amy and Luc exchange a glance, but right now I’m too tired to play the game. I can’t even muster the strength to ask somebody to give her a fucking Pop-Tart. Or something. Anything with calories.
I need to start the day over.
If I can’t do the things in the right order, everything else gets stuck, in that place between the inside and outside door, a limbo-land where nothing ever happens. And tomorrow is too important for me to be stuck, because everything rides on tomorrow.
Everything.
Luc, Amy, and Tanya’s words are lost, floating up to the cold November blue sky, smothered by cartoonlike white clouds. I look up, feeling like I’m in a spinning, snow-globe world, flecks of blue sky being shaken down on top of me. Thoughts, memories, words whirl around my head in chaotic flurries.
Just. Stop. Spinning.
When we were kids, Luc, Mera, and I loved the merry-go-round at Sunset Park. It was one of those rusted ones that have all probably been recalled by now because some kid got tetanus or something just by touching it. Plus it got sizzling hot—third-degree-burn hot—in the middle of summer. It was wobbly, and when we ran to push it, on one side we’d almost blow out a knee because of the funky angle. But then we’d all jump on and lie down, letting the sky spin above us. It was a horrible, good sick feeling being dizzy like that, flat on our backs, feeling like the world was spinning out of control, and the only place that we were safe was on the merry-go-round.
But it was stuck—stuck turning around and around on the same axle in the same place. We never actually went anywhere, so when we got off, it was like “Fuck. That’s it?”
Then we’d do it again because we really believed that one day the spinning would take us where we wanted to go.
I’m still spinning; I’m still stuck.
Today, I need to start over, so I can get to tomorrow and leave the webs and spiders and the
tick-tock
behind. Tomorrow is my day.
Mental inventory of time available to go home, touch flamingo, get inside, get back in bed, get up, shower, touch grandfather clock. Thirty-five minutes. Lunch. That’s not a problem. I just have to make it through the first two blocks and get a car.
There’s gotta be at least five to six hundred kids in each grade, a third of whom might drive to school, so that leaves me with a possible seven hundred cars that I can use. I only know one guy who
might
let me use his.
Fuck.
Maybe I should’ve worked on maintenance Kasey style over the past four years and developed an ongoing relationship with somebody, besides Luc, with a car.
In first-period government class, Ms. Baker pairs us up and tells us we have to brainstorm a list of possible senior project ideas to hand in to her by the end of the period. Everything in my body has frozen, replaying the order of the morning, ticking off all the things I left undone.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
I can hear the scratch of each pencil, the rub of erasers and swipe of red rubber shavings on the floor. The sounds meld together like the heavy drone of eardrum-blowing cicadas with flicking wings and buckling tymbals. I tap my ears and look around.
Nobody else hears the buzz.
It’s like watching a bunch of domesticated turkeys drowning in the rain because they don’t close their fucking beaks. They’re all
suffocating.
They can’t know that everything is wrong because things only work when I start the day right. Today can’t happen until I start again.
What if . . .
They keep gobbling, scribbling, totally fucking oblivious. They all act like it’s okay.
It’s not okay.
I have to start over
.
I can’t leave home before dawn—before the routine—because if I do . . . I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
What if we lose tomorrow?
What if Kasey gets hurt because I didn’t touch the grandfather clock?
What if Mom really hits a cyclist or Dad gets in a car accident at work?
We. Can’t. Lose. Tomorrow.
Everything I am is riding on tomorrow.
Ms. Baker circulates the room like a predatory hawk; her talons—age-spotted fingers with nicotine-stained nails, ridged and thick—swipe across the desks to look at what people write.
I count, tapping the face of my watch, playing with the numbers raining through gaping holes in my brain.
8:08
Eight-oh-eight. Eight plus eight is sixteen. Eight minus eight is zero. Eight divided by eight is one.
Fuck
.
Eight times eight is sixty-four minus eight is fifty-six divided by . . .
Fuck.
I can’t get the numbers to work either.
It’s so fucking loud.
“Jacob, what are you going to do your senior project on?” she says. The sound of her words blends together with the scratch of pencils and rub of erasers until I hear a deafening buzz.
I write “cicadas” on my sheet of paper.
“Bugs?” she says. “You’re going to do your senior government project on bugs?”
“Bugs,” I say. “Cicadas—the Magicicada.”
“Keep your voice down, Jacob. I can hear just fine.”
But how can she hear above the hum—the batting wings and popping tymbals?
“Would you like to tell me why? As your advisor, I need something more concrete than a bug’s name to approve the project.”
“The noise,” I say, leaning my head on the desk.
“You don’t need to whisper, Mr. Martin. I don’t appreciate the attitude.” Ms. Baker takes my paper. “You want bugs, you got bugs.”
I can tell she thinks she’s going to teach me a lesson. Ms. Baker wanders around the room, deaf to the wing-flicking drone. I can’t get rid of the noise.
I write one to five hundred on my paper and go through the algorithm.
When I finish the chart, the primes pop out at me in three dimensions. They float off the page and circle my head like a swarm of bumblebees. When I reach out for them, everything goes back to its two-dimensional reality. But looking close, I can see the bulge of the numbers on the page, how they swell and are ready to float away again.
I mentally check off the things I’ll need to do in the thirty-five-minute lunch break. Because if I don’t do them . . .
Tick-tock.
I just need to start the day over.
Friday, 9:37 a.m.
Nine thirty-seven. Nine plus three is twelve plus seven is nineteen. OK.
During nutrition I find Luc. “Luc, man. You’ve gotta lend me your car. I’ve got a killer headache and need Advil or something. I’ll pick it up during lunch.”
Luc shoves his keys into his pocket. “Go to the nurse.”
“C’mon, she can’t give me anything but a Band-Aid.”
“You can’t take anything anyway. Tomorrow’s the big game. Scouts mean peeing in cups. So suck it up and have a glass of water.”
“Luc, I
need
something.” My palms itch from touching the flamingo this morning and not going back in. I stare down and see the first signs of blisters—pink welts forming. I shove my hands into Luc’s face. “See. I just need to get home to get things taken care of.”
Luc pushes my hands down. “What are you talking about?”
I look down. My palms burn, but the welts are gone. I run my fingers across the tender skin. Nothing.
I’m fucking crazy.
Crazy.
“Can you lend me the Dart or not?” The probability that he might actually say yes is about as great as me having a sexual encounter that doesn’t include
Manuela
.
“No fucking way. You’re not going to do this to us. If you’re late, we’re screwed. Today, it’s not just about
you
, it’s about the team. And it’s about somebody here doing
something
.”
“Don’t say there’s no
I
in team,” I say, trying to make a joke, keeping my voice steady. “Luc, I’ve got thirty-five minutes. I just need to get some shit cleared up at home.” My palms still burn, but when I look down, the only things I see are the half-moon indentations of my nails.
