OCD Love Story (9 page)

Except, of course, for the way it feels to be around him. That part is romantic.

I get back in my car and wait a long, long time before getting back on the road. I hate merging, and there's a veritable parade of cars passing by. Cars with children in them. Cars driven by sweet little old grandmothers. My driving instructor always told me to trust myself, but the thing is . . . how?

So I sit there as the cars drive by one by one, and I savor the last few moments of total safety.

I breathe, like Dr. Pat tells me to do. I probably shouldn't spend any more time in the car today. But if I don't drive by Austin's place, he might vanish. Into thin air or a hospital or a foreign country, I'm not sure. I need to write something in my pink notebook and tomorrow is so far away, it might not ever happen.

If I don't check on Austin,
I
might vanish.

Poof.

BECAUSE SHE'S CALLED SO MANY
times and because I need to interact with a normal human being for at least a few minutes every day, I decide not to cancel on Lisha, and I drive to her house. She's that perfect kind of friend who's always home and available because she has no other friends.

Cooter is in the driveway shooting hoops. He makes me nervous; his face focusing on the hoop spurs the edge of a memory I don't want to think about. We used to play H-O-R-S-E out here: me, Cooter, Lisha, and Jeff. Jeff of the ratty Dr Pepper T-shirt and sneakers colored in with a Sharpie. Jeff with the shaggy, Austin-like hair and the lips that kissed with pressure, opening a little but not searching. Jeff, who was the first guy to call me pretty, and for all the wonder of that tiny moment, I get a gasp of bile in my mouth at the thought of him.

Jeff isn't around anymore. He's not dead or anything, but he's gone.

Cooter dribbles and passes the ball to me without warning. It hits me in the stomach, and I let out a hiccup of surprise.

“Look alive,” he says with a smirk, and I know I'm supposed to grin back and push the ball into his chest and wave my arms in his face, which is the only part of defense I ever understood. I haven't touched a ball since Jeff left, and with my mouth open and the ball at my feet Cooter realizes his mistake. “You okay?” he says. Doesn't come to put a hand on my shoulder or anything, but looks like he really cares.

“Yeah, sorry, been awhile. Guess my athletic days are over,” I say with the lamest laugh, the kind that is basically just an exhalation of breath. In trying to remember nothing, I remember everything: Jeff's long, skinny arms moving gracefully and his clown feet dancing around me. The flash of his neon-dyed hair making me flutter inside. The way he'd grab me by the waist when I'd get the ball, lifting me up to the basket, and the whooping as I made a slam dunk.

It hurts my heart, and my mouth goes dry at the memory. I pinch my thigh and let myself in to the house without another word. It's not so hard to run past Lisha's parents and their awkward small talk. They're not exactly outgoing, so they call out to me in small silky voices and if I just wave exuberantly and smile wide, they're satisfied. When I get to her room, Lish is fixing a tie around her neck (must be an old-school boy's uniform) but is otherwise innocuous. Her blond
hair hits that vague place between her shoulders and her collarbone and she's wearing enough makeup to smooth out her skin and add a little push to her eyes, making the brown pop under mascara-ed lashes. But it's all to make her blend in, not stand out. The tie (navy, skinny, loosely knotted) is a sort of sad attempt to be noticed.

I smile anyway.

“You're all put together!” I say, and check myself out in her mirror to see how we fit (or don't fit) together. I'm all glittering eyeshadow, and the layer upon layer of dress-cardigan-vest is dancing on that line between homeless and hot. Sort of inspired by Sylvia's overdone celebrity style. No wonder I'm totally scaring off Beck.

But I do want to be a costume designer someday, so at least I'm succeeding there. See, it's not all obsession and stalking. Some of it is run-of-the-mill dedication to my craft. Maybe Sylvia is just my costume-designing muse.

“You're really late,” Lisha says. She's at her desk, which is made for a child, not a near adult, and she's doing homework for some stupid class that I'm sure she's acing anyway.

“You know how it is,” I say.

“No. I don't. Was it group therapy? What was it like? Was the girl with no hair there? Did you and Beck talk?”

Lisha needs a television. Or another friend.

“Did you already go by that apartment? Of that guy? What's his name?”

“Austin,” I say, but I'd rather have kept it to myself. “Haven't been yet, so let's do it.”

“I think it's a bad idea,” Lisha says. I notice she has a pair of scissors out on her desk. Professional-looking in their sharpness. I almost tell her to put them in a drawer where they can't hurt anyone, but the words sound weird even in my head. Still, I can't seem to get my eyes off of them.

“You will love their building. It's, like, from the future. And they are totally fabulous,” I say, happy to talk about Austin and Sylvia and drag my mind kicking and screaming from those scissors and their sharpness. “It will be an adventure, I swear. We can get Starbucks on the way.” I know if I can at least get her moving, then I'll be able to answer whatever questions she comes up with later.

“Getting in your car and letting you buy me a mocha does not mean I'm committing to going the whole way there,” she says. I roll my eyes. She's frowning but getting her coat and mittens on at least, and it's a good thing, 'cause my heart is racing. My mind can't seem to decide between thinking of Beck and thinking of Austin. It's all wound up together. But at least they both distract me from thinking about Jeff. “He's like, hot, right?” Lisha says. “Hot and old?”

“Not ancient or anything. I think he wears eyeliner, which I guess
some people
think is hot,” I say. Lisha has a weakness for guys who wear makeup, which is hilarious since she herself barely wears any. Lisha blushes.

“Shut up and buy me a mocha,” she says, walking out of her room before I can get a look at the sheepish grin she's never able to get control of.

• • •

We get past her parents without much discussion once again. After Lisha got in early to Harvard, they stopped needing to keep track of every little thing she did. Kind of like getting into Harvard was the end of the parenting race, and now anything else Lisha does is a cooldown from that victory. As soon as we're in the car, though, Lisha is all over me.

“Can you just explain it again? How do you know this guy, exactly?” She keeps peering at me like I'm a knot of string to be untangled, but I don't have time or space in my head to go over this. My breathing already feels funny. I haven't felt right since I dropped Beck off at the gym. Maybe it's guilt for having helped him do his OCD thing.

I turn on the radio and zone in on the local news just in case. Something about a fire.
Crap
. I start the car and Lisha reaches to turn the radio to whiny college kid rock, but I clear my throat to stop her.

“That's kinda near where they live,” I say. “That fire they're talking about. Can we listen for a sec?” I feel a shake in my voice, but I'm hoping she can't hear it, and I decide to drive as fast as I can, which right now is thirty-three miles an hour, because there's probably black ice on the roads from this morning's chill.

“I've, like, run into him and his wife. I just think they're . . . cool. They go to Dr. Pat. I don't really
know
know them.” The car slows as I talk; doing both at once seems dangerous.

“Oh my God, he's like some hot mystery guy! Intrigue. And married? Is she hot too? Are they in, like, marriage counseling? What do you guys talk about? This is kinda sketchy, right? Are you being sketchy?” And I know she's trying to sound judgmental or at least concerned, but she doesn't. She sounds one hundred percent thrilled. The report about the fire has ended with no real details, so I try to push myself to get a tiny bit more speed. Just in case. Lisha changes the radio to the indie college station and takes off her boots so that she can bend her knees up to her chest and get comfortable in the cramped seat. It's the best part of friendship: the familiarity, the little bits of routine that mean everything's okay. Lisha pulls out a granola bar and breaks off a piece for me.

Somehow, my hands won't move from the wheel. I want to just take it from her hand, but my brain is telling my hands to stay on ten-and-two.

“Black ice,” I say, “need both hands.” I open my mouth and she lets me clamp the bar between my teeth, like it's the most normal thing in the world.

“Anyway, I barely know him. Let's say I'm intrigued,” I say. But Lisha's already in a fit of giggles planning my torrid love affair with Austin.

“Oh my God, this is
bad
,” she says. Covers her mouth with her hands.

“He seems like a rock star. Charismatic. But fragile. His wife, too.”

I don't say:
I'm pretty positive if I don't check on them a few times a week at the very least, something terrible might happen.
I don't say:
If Dr. Pat knew about this, she'd be even more convinced I have OCD.

“Oh my God, are they divorcing? And then will you move in on him?” Lisha puts her legs up on the dashboard. “Can you speed up, please? This is painful.”

“Honestly, he doesn't even know who I am.”

“Are you his stalker? I'm not judging, but stalking is a felony. Or a crime. Something. And I'm sorry, you sort of have a history with—” I don't let Lisha finish the sentence.

“Lisha,” I say, stopping her with what I intend to be a snap but comes out as a plea.

It's funny having someone know so much about me. Funny and infuriating. But she squeezes my shoulder, zips her lips, takes a breath, and does her best to change the subject.

“So,” she says. “What do you know about the wife? Is she pretty? Do you want me to drive, Bea? This is killing me. It's going to take, like, two hours to get there at this pace. The weather is not that bad.” It's like she saves all her energy and all her questions and all her enthusiasm for life for just our
time together. She's been storing up all this energy and it just comes spilling out.

“It's fine. I'm not stalking. I'm only going to go with you this one time and then I'll give it up.”

Lisha nods.

“Hey, did you hear that Mr. Venner is getting asked to leave? Like, getting fired,” she says, filling the air with gossip about our Latin teacher that would usually be more than enough to keep my mind occupied. “And it gets even better, because I guess Mr. Venner is involved with a former student.” I want so badly to be in a place where this conversation matters. I try to make my mind focus on that fact. If I can just care about this bit of gossip, I will be a normal girl again. It's almost working. I'm about to ask Lisha who found out about it and what the administration is going to tell us and whether or not we know the student, but my mind splinters off just as I'm starting to relax. Kind of like my brain can't stand being calm.

It feels like a big cartoon lightning bolt
crack
.

“Did you see the puppy back there? The black lab?” I say, interrupting Lisha and my own thoughts and totally destroying the tiny moment of normalcy I'd almost gotten my hands on. I'm trying to look in the rearview mirror but that's hard to do when you're also trying to keep your eye on the road.

“Yeah. So cute,” Lisha says. “So anyway, supposedly
Mr. Venner started trying to date her like the
second
she graduated, but he didn't realize that her mother was on the school board—” She interrupts herself to turn the volume up on a Journey song that we both love to sing along with.

“No, but did I hit it?” I say, and turn the volume right back down. Then I change it back to news. Enough is enough.

“Um, no?” Lisha says.

“Did you see for sure though?” I can tell from the look on her face—crooked mouth, squinting eyes, wrinkled nose—that I am being weird.

“Bea, you'd know if you
hit a dog
. Are you high?” Lisha tries a laugh and nudges my shoulder. I wince.

“Careful! I'm driving!”

“Hey, okay,” Lisha says. She crosses her arms over her chest and slouches a little in the seat. Lisha is not a good punching bag. She doesn't like it when I snap at my mother, let alone at her.

“I just . . . I feel like I lost control of the car for a second there. I'm not driving very well right now.” I try to say it like it's no big deal.

“Was group therapy bad? Maybe you're just upset from that or something? Pull over, I'll drive,” Lisha says. Her hand twitches, like she might reach it out to me, but she reconsiders.