Not As Crazy As I Seem (19 page)

Tanya dives into her ball of mashed potatoes with a spoon. In three mouthfuls she's done. I've never seen a girl eat faster. Then she unwraps her chocolate cone and takes a lick. "Delicious. Best ice cream I've ever had."

I tear the paper off my cone and lick. The chocolate tastes just regular to me, not good or bad. I guess Tanya's using her willpower to convince herself she likes chocolate now.

As we eat our ice cream I look around. In the corner the geeks are whacking at the clocks, playing speed chess. The preppies are calling each other on their cell phones. The jocks are laughing over some stupid bodily noise one of them made. Everything's happening like it always does. Nobody even notices that we're sitting in the middle of them, overcoming our worst fears.

When we're done Tanya leads me to the disposal area,
and we put our trays onto the conveyor belt. She wipes her lips with her napkin and tosses it into the trash bin. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

I didn't even taste the fish, or the potatoes or the string beans, so what can I say? "The chocolate cone was pretty good." That's looking on the bright side of things.

"I meant the whole experience. We actually ate in the caf and survived. Survival is what it's all about."

Tanya is always saying something is "what it's all about," like respect, or family or survival. Whatever she says seems right to me.

"Half of life is just showing up, Dev. That's what we did today—we showed up."

We head for the door. Other kids are leaving, too. I stop to let her go through first, which is the polite thing for a guy to do. I don't even count what number I am. Four, seven, nine—it's not important. I just ate lunch in a germ swamp, so why would I worry about going through a doorway?

When she sticks her hand out, I grab it, and we walk through together.

"Come on in, Devon, I have a surprise for you."

Dr. Wasserman is grinning. It always worries me when a shrink grins at you. I step into his office, and there's an orange chair in the corner where the vinyl one used to be. He waves his hand at it. "It's brand new. Sit."

What am I, a dog? Maybe there haven't been thousands of squirmy asses sitting in this chair, but there's probably been dozens since he got it. "I don't think so."

"It just came today. You'd be the first one to use it."

That's hard to believe. "You haven't had any other patients yet?"

"Not since the chair arrived, so there's no reason for you not to sit, is there?"

I guess there isn't. Except..."At the store there were probably all kinds of people trying it out."

He shakes his head. "This one came directly from the factory, wrapped in plastic. It's never been sat on."

I can't think of any reason not to sit down, so I do. The chair feels weird, and it's pretty uncomfortable. But at least I won't have to lean against the wall for the whole session.

"I spoke to your mom, Devon. She said you've had an emotional few days."

I've been slapped and screamed at by my dad. I've been kicked out of school and then put back in again by the headmaster. I've gone from ordering my closet like I'm in the army to throwing all my clothes in a heap on the floor. And I ate in probably the most germ-infested place on earth—a high school cafeteria. "Yeah, it's been pretty emotional lately."

"Well, out of emotion often comes the truth, and I think you hit on it yourself when you were breaking things in your room."

"What truth is that?"

"You tell me."

I ripped up my shirts and then threw the snow globes into the wall. Dad rushed into my room to stop me. He hugged me, and I felt like a little kid again. Is that where the truth was? "I don't know what I said."

"Your mother said you spoke about your grandfather."

Granddad, yes ... I wished him dead, and he died.

"You've felt responsible all these years for his death, haven't you?"

"Can you feel something and not know it?"

"Certainly. Subconsciously you believed that you wanted him dead and that you let him die by taking your hand away from his heart and not calling for help. Your guilt over this sparked your obsessive thoughts. To deal with them you developed the compulsions to keep your world neat and clean."

It's strange hearing someone explain your life to you. He wasn't around, so what makes him so smart about me? It's like he opened to page thirty-eight of
The Shrink's Guide to Messed-Up Kids,
and there's my picture with a little write-up.

"You just think that's what happened, right? You don't really know."

"It's not just what I think, Devon. You're the one who revealed what was going on inside you."

I know myself, that's what he's saying. I guess I'm like an oracle, at least for my own life. Maybe everybody's his own oracle, if he can just read the signs.

"Stand up for a moment, would you?"

I stand up, and the doc comes over to the chair and bends down. He loosens the ties around the legs, then yanks off the orange slipcover. I can't believe what I'm seeing—the black vinyl chair!

"You said this was new, straight from the factory."

"The slipcover is new, Devon. Just arrived today."

"You tricked me."

"Yes, I tricked you. The question is, will you sit in the old chair now that you know the origin of your obsessions?"

It's a good question. Nothing bad happened to me after eating in the cafeteria. Nobody died after I ripped up my shirts and threw them on the floor. In fact, Mom yelled at me to clean them up, which was totally strange. Maybe it is time to sit in the vinyl chair. A hundred dollars could convince me.

"I might sit, if you want to offer some motivation again. It wouldn't cost you a million dollars this time."

"I'm offering something more valuable to you today than money, Devon."

"What's that?"

"A start to a life free of your obsessions."

"Couldn't I have that
and
the money?"

He shakes his head.

Okay, obviously I'm not getting paid to sit in the crummy chair. I have to do it out of my own willpower. I back up to it.
Sit!

That didn't work. I'm still standing. This is like the first time I dove into a swimming pool, when I was frozen on the diving board. Dad called up to me to close my eyes and think of a friendly face waiting for me in the water. I thought of Granddad then and what he said to me once, "When
you're scared just yell out 'Geronimo!' You won't be scared no more."

I close my eyes now, and Tanya's face pops into my mind.
Go on and sit, Devon. There's nothing to worry about.

"Geronimo!" I'm falling, falling backwards ... and I hit the black vinyl chair!

"Good, Devon, very good."

I open my eyes and see the doc, not Tanya. I did it. I sat. I proved I could. But there's no reason to stay sitting on this sweaty old cushion, is there? I jump to my feet again.

Doc leans back, like I'm springing at him. "Well, you've taken a big step forward today, Devon, and I think we won't push things any further. I'm letting you go early. Next week we'll take up where we left off."

That sounds good to me. I'm out of there. He swivels in his chair to get something from his bookshelf, and I open his office door. I could step right through. I do it all the time. But I figure, things are going so well, why take the chance of messing them up? I twist around once and then jump over the threshold. Now everything feels right with the world.