Girl Against the Universe (3 page)

The pictures look like they belong on postcards—the blue of the Pacific spraying up onto jagged gray rocks, the sun setting in the distance painting the clouds a rainbow of red and orange, a cluster of seven or eight dolphin fins jutting out from beneath the crystal surface of the water. I would like it; pretty sure I'd love it, but for some reason I feel like messing with this boy. I toss the phone back to him. “Just because I'm a girl means I like dolphins?”

“More like because you're a human. Everyone likes dolphins.” He sets his empty ice-cream cup next to mine.

“Well. Probably not
everyone
.”

He shakes his head. “Pretty sure everyone. ‘Oh, ugh, not dolphins. I
hate
them.' That doesn't even sound right.” He
pokes me in the arm.

I twitch. I can't remember the last time I was touched by someone who wasn't related to me.

The boy keeps talking, oblivious. “They've got those smiley faces and big brains, and it's so annoying the way they're always learning complex languages in captivity and saving drowning fishermen in the wild.”

“Okay, probably most people,” I say. My phone buzzes in my purse. I pull it out. There's a text from my mom saying she's parked in front. “I've got to run, Dolphin Boy. Thanks for the ice cream.” I hop up from the chair and sling my purse over my shoulder. “We'll have to finish this discussion another time.”

The boy points at the floor. “Is that your bookmark?”

Sure enough, when I grabbed my purse I must have knocked my lucky bookmark to the ground. I start to bend, but he quickly reaches down, picks it up, and hands it to me. “See you next week, Dolphin Hater.”

I can't help but grin as I head for the door.

But then my smile fades.

Maybe this boy is right. Maybe I am missing out.

I'm not just missing out on dolphins.

I'm getting ready to leave for my appointment when my mom looks up from the kitchen table, the pages of a handwritten letter spread in front of her. I recognize the looping script immediately.

“How would you like to see your grandma Siobhan again?” Mom asks.

Siobhan is my dad's mom, a vivacious gray-haired lady who runs a horse farm in Ireland. I met her only twice: once when I was seven, when she traveled to the United States for Christmas, and then again at the funerals. She's actually the one who gave me my lucky penny bookmark. She used to write Mom and me letters when I was little. She'd send pictures of the new foal each time there was a birth. After the accident we slowly lost touch. I figure it's because thinking of Mom and me makes her think of Dad and Kieran. She lost both of her sons in one day.

“Grandma Siobhan wants to come here?” I ask hopefully. “That would be amazing.” I scan the kitchen, searching for Mom's car keys, but my eyes are drawn back to the pages of my grandmother's letter.

My mom exhales slowly. “Actually she invited us to Ireland. She's having a special gathering to honor your dad, uncle, and brother. Since this December will be—”

“Five years,” I whisper.

Mom nods. “Apparently everyone is going to come. Relatives I didn't even know we had. You could see where your dad grew up, his house, his town . . .”

My eyes start to water. “You know I can't get on a plane, Mom. I can't even ride in a car with other people.”

“I told her that's what you would say, but I wanted to run it by you . . . just in case.”

“Just in case what? I turned into someone else while you were having other kids?” My mom recoils, and I immediately regret my words. I have a half sister, Erin, who is two and a half, and a new baby half brother named Jacob. They are both adorable, and I love them to pieces. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that the way it came out.”

My mom nods again, but I can see that my words hurt her. “I just thought . . . in case Dr. Leed might be able to help you.”

“I don't think he's a magician,” I say. “But I guess it can't hurt to ask.”

But after the receptionist waves me into the office, it takes a few minutes to work up the nerve to mention my grandmother's invitation.“Hey, Dr. Leed,” I say as I settle into my usual chair. No music today. He's drinking a coffee from the shop next door.

“Hi, Maguire. You seem . . . different.”

“Who's the guy that comes after me?” I ask.

Dr. Leed shakes his head. “You know I can't tell you that.”

I tap my flip-flop against the black and white carpet. “Then just tell me what he does. Is he famous?”

Dr. Leed's eyes brighten behind his glasses. A smile plays at his lips. “Why the sudden interest in him?”

I clear my throat. “No, it's not like that. He just made a point of asking me if I knew him, and I was wondering why he thought I would.”

“Ah. Unfortunately, I can't talk about my other clients.” Dr. Leed sips his coffee.

I cross my arms. “You are not very helpful.”

He sets the coffee cup on the desk behind him. “I could be, if you let me.”

Grandma Siobhan's letter flashes in my head, followed by my mom's hopeful look. I take a deep breath. “Yeah. About that. I heard you give people homework.”

“You heard wrong. I help people create challenges for themselves.”

“So like, you think these challenges can fix me?”

Dr. Leed leans back in his chair. “You're not a toaster, Maguire. You're not here to be fixed.” He makes air quotes around the word “fixed.” “The first thing you need to realize is that mental health is fluid. It's not like you have an infection and a doctor gives you antibiotics and then you're cured. No matter what the two of us accomplish together, you're still going to have good days and bad days. Make sense?”

“I guess,” I mumble. “Though I think I might rather be a toaster.”

“You and me both.” Dr. Leed smiles. “What I try to do is get my clients to tell me where they are and where they want to be. And then we figure out together how to get you there.”

“And this has actually worked for you?”

He laughs under his breath. “Once or twice.” For a second we both just sit there, looking at each other. Then he says, “What's changed? A few weeks ago you didn't want to talk at all. Why are you suddenly interested in therapy challenges?”

“I want to go to Ireland,” I blurt out. I tell him about Grandma Siobhan and her horse farm, about the memorial service, about the look on my mom's face when she brought it up. “I wish there was a way I could do this for her.”

“It helps if your goal is something you want to do for yourself,” Dr. Leed says kindly.

I take in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I want to do it for me too. I want to see where my dad grew up, see my
grandma again, meet all my relatives.”

“So what's the problem?”

“I can't get on a plane! I can't even ride a bus or be in the car when my stepdad is driving.”

“So you're afraid of public transportation?”

I shake my head. “I wish it were that simple. It's like I told you last week. I'm afraid of hurting people.”

Dr. Leed's cell phone vibrates on the desk behind him, startling both of us. He reaches over to grab it, peeks at the screen, and then tucks it into his pocket. “Sorry about that. Hurting people. But you mean indirectly, because you might be . . . cursed.”

“Yes—like I showed you in my notebook. Bad things happen to other people when I'm around.”

“Well, I don't know if any challenge is going to convince you that you're not cursed, but the type of therapy I do is meant to help you face your fears and also to restructure your thought processes. That way, even if the same things happen, you'll think about them differently, in a more helpful manner.” He pauses. “I understand why you've been isolating yourself, but we can both agree that it isn't healthy, right?”

“I guess,” I mutter.

“So basically you need to do things around other people and have nothing terrible happen. And then if that works okay, maybe we can get you on public transportation of some sort, and ideally help you see that you and everyone else can survive a plane ride to Ireland.”

“Yeah, that's it exactly.” I sigh. Saying it aloud makes it feel like an impossible task. “Sure you're up for the challenge?”

“You're the one who's going to be doing all the work,” Dr. Leed says. “I generally have clients come up with a list of ten things and have them try to complete one challenge each week.”

“Ten? That feels like a lot. What about five?”

Dr. Leed raises an eyebrow. “What about seven?”

“Lucky seven.” I nod. “I guess it could work. But where do I even start?”

“We don't have to come up with the whole list at once, but I recommend things like sitting in a public area, talking to a stranger, riding in a car with someone besides your mom.”

I think of Perfectly Assembled Boy. “I talked to a stranger last week,” I say proudly. “And can I count school for sitting in a public area?”

Dr. Leed taps a few notes into his computer. “If you think being around people is dangerous to them, how do you manage to go to class and sit in a room with thirty other students?”

“I tried to get my mom to homeschool me after the birthday party incident, but she said no way. So I do these safety checks.” I tell him about my five-second checks, how I look for fraying electrical cords or tripping hazards or classmates who look like they could get violent, etc. “I also knock on wood a lot, throw salt over my shoulder, wear a lucky
amulet—you know, basic good luck stuff.” I shrug. “Can't hurt, right?”

“So your mom forced you into an uncomfortable situation, and you came up with a way to help yourself cope?”

I chew on my bottom lip. “I never thought about it like that. Yeah. I guess I did.”

“How much time do you spend on these things?” Dr. Leed asks.

“Not too much,” I say. “I have a series of good luck rituals I do each morning when I wake up. And then maybe a few times an hour for the checks.”

Dr. Leed enters more notes. “And how much time do you spend each day worrying about bad things that might happen?”

“I don't know. Why?”

“Developing obsessive-compulsive disorder secondary to PTSD would be unusual, but it wouldn't be unheard of.”

“Great,” I say. “The ER docs said I had anxiety, and you said I have PTSD, and now I have OCD too? Isn't that where people wash their hands like forty times a day?”

“OCD is characterized by irrational or excessive worrying and repetitive behaviors that are done because of those worries, but like anything else, there's wide variance when it comes to the actual symptoms and their severity.”

“Oh.” I guess I can see where my checks and rituals might qualify. I chew on my lower lip some more.

“What are your grades like?” Dr. Leed asks.

“I get all
A
s. Maybe a
B
in gym.”

“And how are things at home?”

“You mean like do I get along with my parents and brother and sister? Yeah, we're good.”

“Okay.” He types more notes into his computer. “If you're spending less than an hour a day on your coping mechanisms and it's not affecting your daily functioning, then you probably don't fit the diagnostic criteria for OCD. But either way, secondary diagnoses are often transient.”

“Meaning you can fix me?”

“Meaning if we address the underlying cause, then the symptoms might resolve on their own,” he says. “So back to the primary problem. You don't think you can survive a plane ride by doing your checks and rituals?”

“No way.” My heart thuds audibly in my chest as I imagine my mom dragging me screaming and crying onto a plane, concerned passengers recording me with their cell phones, flight attendants calling for airport security.

“Why not?”

“Because I know what to expect in a classroom. I know what to look for. I don't on a plane, and even if I saw something, there might be no way to fix it, you know? I wouldn't have any control.”

“I see,” Dr. Leed says. “So we need to start with something where you don't know exactly what to expect. Something slightly tougher than sitting in class. What about joining a club, or even better, trying out for a sports team?
Exercise tends to reduce anxiety and improve mood.”

The only sport I've done recently is running. I started jogging a couple of years ago as a way to stay in shape. “Would cross-country count?”

Dr. Leed adjusts his glasses. “I'd prefer to see you attempt something with a little more interaction. How about track and field?”

“That's a spring sport, I think.”

“Are there any other fall sports that interest you?”

I start to tell him that other sports are too dangerous, but then I stop. I used to play tennis a lot when I was little. Tennis was Mom's thing the way rock climbing was Dad and Uncle Kieran's. Dad, Mom, Connor, and I would play doubles at the park by our house. Connor and I even took lessons for a while. I haven't played in years, but maybe if I got out on a court, the technique would come back to me. And when it comes to safe sports, tennis is probably the next best thing to running cross-country.

“How about tennis? Is that interactive enough for you?”

Dr. Leed nods. “Do you think you could survive trying out for the tennis team if you did your good luck rituals and your five-second checks?”

Most points in tennis are only a couple of minutes long. I could get away with doing quick scans in between them to make sure no one was in danger of tripping over an untied shoelace or a runaway tennis ball. “Probably. But what if I can't? What if I freak out or something?”

“Do you have a certain way you calm yourself down if you start to feel anxious?”

I nod. “My old therapist taught me a bunch of different techniques—square breathing, visualization, relaxing all of my muscles.”

“I find coping statements can be helpful too,” Dr. Leed says. “Just something simple to remind yourself that the situation isn't as dire as it might feel. Maybe something like ‘I can't control the Universe' or ‘No one is going to die.'”

“Okay, but what if I go out for the team and don't make it? Or I do make it, and I hate it?”

“Then you quit?”

“And that's okay with you?”

“Anything is okay with me, Maguire. You have to do this at your own pace, but if you want to go from where you are now to getting on an international flight in December, you're going to have to push yourself a bit.”

My hands shake a little at the thought of tennis tryouts, at the combination of worrying about other people and being stared at and judged. I guess as the new girl at school I'll be stared at anyway. And as long as I do my five-second checks, a tennis court isn't a whole lot more dangerous than a classroom.

Maybe.

I see Mom's face again, her expression a mix of hope and resignation. This trip to Ireland means a lot to her. It would mean a lot to me too. I was still in shock when my family was
buried. I could use a second chance to say good-bye.

I nod. “Okay, I'll try. So that's challenge number one then? Try out for the tennis team? I'll do it. For my mom, and for Ireland.”

“And for yourself,” Dr. Leed reminds me.

“And for myself,” I repeat.

“You're smiling,” Perfectly Assembled Boy says. Today he's back in his fancy jeans and button-up shirt, his hair impeccably messy.

“No I'm not.”

“Yes you are.” He glances down at his phone and rolls his eyes at the screen before tucking it into his pocket. “Did you tell him you talked to me?”