OCD Love Story Page 17

  “Paying attention to small details,” I say, not able to stop the flush from rising in my cheeks.

  I miss Beck, if it’s possible to miss someone you’ve been actively avoiding all day long.

  I sort of knew it would happen this way, that opening that little window of information about me would make things harder, not easier with Beck and me. That if I told him even one little thing about me, I’d want to tell him everything. It’s not itching in my throat, I’m not tapping it out into a text message or melting down with the trapped words. It’s not OCD that’s making me want to share; not this time. It’s the look of his face and the shape of his hands and the way we are when we kiss. It’s that he told Dr. Pat he likes me.

  I know what’s going to happen: He’ll ask me to tell him one more thing about myself and I’ll have no choice but to let it out in a blizzard of words and thoughts and feelings and crazy.

  “ ‘Esoteric,’ ” Ms. Peters says. “Can you use it in a sentence, Bea?”

  “I’d like to remain esoteric, because being mysterious is best,” I say. There are giggles and Ms. Peters smirks and shrugs her shoulders.

  “Sure,” she says. “Okay.”

  Well. At least I’m going to kick some serious ass on our vocab quiz.

  When Beck phones my cell during lunch period he calls me “babe” and says he’s been listening to the Tryst album we both bought at Newbury Comics, and thinking about me.

  “What the hell? Don’t you guys do schoolwork? Or do Smith-Latin guys just sit around listening to their iPods?” I say, but he’s not looking to tease.

  “You know the song ‘Blue-Eyed Danger Lover’?” he asks. “I like that one. The title makes me laugh, but it also . . . I don’t know. I love their lyrics. He’s kinda Dylan-y right? And she sounds like some old-school jazz singer. Oh! And the song ‘Ask’? That’s great too.”

  I don’t say much. Not because I’m not into the sweetness of his voice. Sometimes getting what I want gets me choked up, and I think I’ve always wanted to be spoken to in just this way, so I’m sort of swallowing back tears while eating a cheese sandwich in the cafeteria with Lisha. “Am I being way too intense?” Beck asks. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s the drugs Dr. Pat’s got me on. I usually play things a little cooler, I swear.”

  “You’re cute,” I say. Lisha rolls her eyes and leaves me alone at the table so that she can go get an order of french fries that she’ll probably never eat. I’m off the phone by the time she’s back; she nibbles at one single salty fry.

  “Does he know you’re, like, in love with another guy?” Lisha says. “Does he know you had a little Starbucks date yesterday with a rock star? I mean, save some men for the rest of us, lady.” This is the way we’ve always spoken to each other: verbal elbowing and big smiles. But today Lisha’s eyes are in little slits and there’s a new crease in her forehead. Her legs are crossed very tightly, her thighs and knees squeezing together. I bite into my cheese sandwich and try to laugh it off.

  My biggest fear, bigger than cars or knives or going crazy, is that our friendship will change. But of course, the more I fear it, the more it comes true.

  “I think you’re confused about what dating is. And I told you. I’m not into Austin,” I say. We are straining to keep it light.

  “Oh, I know. It’s just your OCD.” Then lunch is over before Lisha even really has a minute to roll her eyes.

  • • •

  We finished discussing The Great Gatsby yesterday in my advanced literature class, so today we’re reading the short story “The Lottery” out loud, and I think it’s going to be fine until I realize it’s a story about stoning someone to death.

  I have never before thought about the possibility of stoning someone to death. But now the thought exists and I know I’m going to do it someday because stones are everywhere and I can’t possibly avoid them with the same reliability with which I can avoid sharp objects.

  Crap. I do not want to be one of those people who can’t leave the house.

  I pinch my thigh as hard as I can. I cannot have a meltdown in the middle of class. It’s not like I have some great reputation here but I have not yet been deemed a total lunatic. I’m okay looking. Popular girls compliment me on my accessories sometimes. I get the occasional party invite, so Lisha and I have the grudging acceptance of the prettier, richer, much more athletic girls. But at Greenough you can’t get anywhere without being an athlete. And even the girls who hang out in the library loft have been giving me funny looks lately.

  Like right now, for instance. Kim and Lacey are whispering about something in the back row and I think it’s me.

  Don’t think about it, I say to myself. Forget about the stoning. Don’t listen. Think about Beck’s forearms.

  I want that to be enough. I know for other girls it is enough. That falling for someone is enough to make even the worst, most gruesome thoughts bearable. I thought, when I was kissing Beck the other day, that I would be able to return to the memory of his mouth on mine over and over and that just that thought would make me somehow magically normal.

  I was wrong.

  So I go back to what works: the pinch on my thigh and some serious note-taking. I list every household object that could potentially be used to kill someone. Then I list school utensils that should be kept locked away instead of out in the open for anyone to grab and attack with.

  Sudden, very serious concern: How can I be a costume designer if I am afraid of scissors?

  Saying I hate myself right now would be an understatement. Lisha has to poke me when class ends to remind me to get up. And maybe we’re on edge with each other, but she is still a lighthouse for me, still something to give me hope in the midst of all the crap.

  “You’re sweaty, Bea,” she says, and pulls me into the bathroom where she hands me a bunch of cold, wet paper towels.

  “Come on. We’re skipping history class,” she says when we’re done dabbing me off.

  “Hm?”

  “You can’t make it through a short story about sacrifice and farming, you’re certainly not going to get through a class about gas chambers and human suffering.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bea. You’re not fooling me. You weren’t taking notes during class, you were drilling holes in paper. That’s what it looks like when you go all hyperfocused and weird. It’s not like you’re hiding it well or something. Seriously. You think people don’t notice that kind of thing?”

  I hold my notebook closer to my body. She’s not saying it to be mean, but it still hurts.

  “Do you really think it’s okay to have a bunch of unstable kids read about stoning their parents?” I say. I think if I emphasize the right words, Lisha will finally get it. That I’m not crazy for being vigilant. Maybe I’m just mature.

  But Lish shakes her head and gives a laugh that is more an exhale than anything else.

  “Bea,” she says. It’s a tone of voice I’m getting used to. Part exasperation, part condescension. I miss the way it was just a few months earlier: me telling her what sex feels like and how to wear her hair and what fabulous thing I have been up to all evening. “You need to skip last period. I’m gonna go get ready for my recital. You go do what you need to do beforehand, okay? I really want you there.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. I’m totally fine,” I say, but we both hear the lie in it. She’s going to rehearse for the world’s most boring dance recital and I’m going to drive slowly to Austin’s but make it back in time to hand her some roses and pretend she could actually be a Harvard-educated ballerina. (She won’t be. If Lisha can be honest about my OCD, I can be honest about her future as a ballerina.)

  Lisha drives off and I’ve gotta get out of the parking lot before a teacher catches me. The end of the school day is still an hour away but there’s nothing safe to learn about in there. They’re pushing violence down our throats like Columbine never happened, like it’s Canada or something and schools are safe.

  They’re not.
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  I know if I get in my car, it will drive itself to Austin and Sylvia’s place and I’ll be able to breathe normally but I’ll be right back at square one. Dr. Pat encourages us to find ways to resist compulsing when we can. “Challenge yourself,” is how she puts it. Like not performing the rituals that keep me and my friends and the strangers of the world alive is some kind of worthy goal instead of a death wish.

  But I do what she says. I challenge myself.

  New plan. I want to love something normal; I want to want something that other girls want. A cute guy with muscles and a kissable mouth and an interest in indie rock.

  Smith-Latin’s not far from here. And I wore my old-school hiking boots ironically over my dress-code-appropriate khaki pants, and I’ve got a very serious winter coat, so it’s not a completely insane walk to be taking. If I text him first he could say no, so I just go for it. One foot in front of the other. I have to believe Dr. Pat would be proud.

  I walk back roads and the being alone is bliss. I can pass boulder-size rocks or dangerously broken, splintered tree branches and it doesn’t matter because there’s no one for me to hurt. I totally get Thoreau or Salinger or whatever famous writers shacked up in the woods for decades on end. Maybe they weren’t hermits. Maybe they didn’t hate people. Maybe they just were looking out for the rest of the world.

  By the time I get to the Smith-Latin campus I’ve moved from chilly and windswept to full-on sweaty and hot.

  I swear to God, someday I will hang out with Beck when I resemble a normal human being with glossy hair and clean hands (but not OCD clean), but I guess today isn’t that day. I don’t know where to find him so I do the only thing I can think of, which is staking out a couple of the bathrooms and hoping I’ll catch him on his way in. The day must be almost over, so he’s either in his last class or getting ready for sports, but either way he’s not going anywhere until he’s washed his hands.

  • • •

  Sudden terrifying/gratifying realization: I’m not stalking Beck because I have to; I’m stalking Beck because I want to be around him. There’s no higher purpose. He is not some OCD creation. He’s like Lisha—just a person I actually like.

  • • •

  I find him outside the bathroom right off the main hallway. He’s suited up in Smith-Latin dress code: collared shirt and a tie and shoes without laces. His are so shiny they remind me of the shoe-polishing kit my dad used to keep in the kitchen and use every day before work when he was still at a big corporation. I liked the early-morning ritual and the way the box got shifted around to become the foot stand, and then folded back on itself to become a box again.

  The thought of that small pleasure isn’t enough to distract me from the rush of words pounding in my throat and then spilling out so they don’t singe the delicate inside of my mouth.

  “I decided to go for a walk and I ended up here. I look like crap because it’s actually a really long walk. And I promise I will wash up first, but will you go to a dance recital with me? Is that the weirdest thing I’ve ever asked you?”

  “Yes,” Beck says. But then: “How long will it be for? How many dances will there be?”

  “I’m not staying there for eight dances,” I say. “You have no idea how boring it’s going to be. We are talking some seriously lame choreography and some seriously uncoordinated little girls. The only thing I like about it is the ridiculous costumes, but you’re probably not going to be into that either.”

  “Are you trying to convince me to come or to not come?”

  “I want you to come,” I say. “Eighth row? Eight minutes? What are the rules of your eight thing?” Beck gives a sheepish smile and shrugs. Classes are letting out all over the building and I’m suddenly the center of attention in the hallway of the all-boys’ school. I’ve never been as desirable as I seem to be for these few moments. The standards of beauty change quite a bit when there’s no one to compete with.

  I don’t need to pinch my thigh or anything: I am here. I am holding everyone’s attention and if there’s anything I know for sure, it’s that at this moment, even in fluorescent lighting and the ugliest boots I own and my hair in a pile on top of my head, I exist.

  “Kind of a big deal, meeting the infamous Lisha,” Beck says at last. He’s moved in a little closer to me since the boys started pouring out of every classroom. But he’s still not close enough to touch and he’s still keeping a steady eye on the bathroom and the good clean soapiness it promises.

  “Famous. Not infamous. They teach you guys anything at this fancy school of yours?”

  “Ok, smarty. Famous Lisha. You said she’s the person who knows you best,” he says.

  “I did?” I’m not remembering any of this. I experience group therapy amnesia, I think. I’m working so hard to not talk about Austin and so hard to not wrestle Rudy’s Swiss Army knife out of his hands that it’s impossible to actually take much note of the little bits and pieces of my daily life I do divulge. I kinda think I have no idea what I have actually talked to Beck about, I only know what I’ve managed to hide from him.

  “Well, you seem to have crawled all the way out here just to ask me out, so it’s a date,” Beck says. I go to give him a playful shove, a flirtatious bit of contact with his shoulder or the solid mass of his arm or whatever but he sidesteps it on autopilot. “Meet me outside, okay?” He hides his hands in his pockets and bows his head and pushes his side into the bathroom door to open it before he even hears my response.

  If Austin lived an even remotely walkable distance from here, I’d skip out on everything and head to his place, where he’s safer, and I’m safer, and Sylvia’s safer, and maybe the whole world is actually safer.

  I make my way to the far side of the Smith-Latin campus, a soccer field near the parking lot where I think I recognize Beck’s car. I sit on the ground without thinking through the potential for getting my pants soaked with snow or muddy from the patches where it’s melted away. Sometimes I wish more than anything that I had an entirely different kind of OCD that would keep me clean and pretty and presentable. I’m going to need Beck to drive me by my place or the mall or something to get another pair of pants. I have passed into the Unacceptable, even for me.

  It doesn’t take him an hour this time, at least. Beck cleans up quickly and finds me like we are magnetically drawn to each other, and I make an apologetic half smile at my now completely disastrous outfit. Ironic dirt-caked boots. Wet, loose-fitting khakis. For someone who hates dirt as much as Beck, he’s certainly tolerant of me.

  “You have to drive me home,” I say. “I’m like a five-year-old boy. I cannot stay clean to save my life.”

  Beck doesn’t reply, but we get into the car and he’s driving and it seems like it’s in the direction of my house until he makes a swift turn and pulls onto some bumpy unfinished road.

  “Do you hike?” Beck says.

  “I wasn’t kidding. I legitimately have to go to this ballet recital . . . ”

  “I know. Answer the question.”

  “I’ve hiked before.”

  “Me too. I used to really like hiking,” he says. “Your boots reminded me. And the mud on your pants. And your hair. Your hairline. It’s sort of frizzing and it’s just like my sister’s used to do when we were on a family hike.” The car’s still running, so I guess we’re not getting out, but we have a view of what should never qualify as a mountain. Hiking trails twist up its sides in lamely named paths. CLEAR CREEK TRAIL. BEAR MOUNTAIN PASS. WHITE WATERFALL WONDERLAND.

  I don’t even have to hold my tongue. I’m not fighting the overshare or any other impulse. It’s pretty here, the way the sun hits the snow and the trees shake off little showers of flakes every few seconds. And Beck is beautiful here, his eyes half shut and blurrily focused, his fingers totally still.

  “Sorry,” he says after a few moments of breathing in time and watching the wind.

  “No. Why? No,” I say.

  “You want to try on the jeans I keep in the back? Is that an
insult? I know girls don’t like to have the same size waist as their—” I cut him off at the word “boyfriend.” Not because I don’t want it to be true, but because I can only take so much in one day.

  Dr. Pat says for some people even good news is anxiety inducing.

  “Your jeans would be great.”

  Beck is all broad shoulders but has a tiny waist and undersize legs, and he’s the kind of guy who spends money on things like jeans, so the ones he hands me are neatly folded up and dark denim and probably more expensive than anything I own.

  “Should I . . . ?” I point to the backseat and Beck pops to attention.

  “Oh yeah, of course. I didn’t mean you had to, like, strip in front of me. I’m sorry. I’m doing this all wrong. I’ll close my eyes.”

  I’m sure there are girls who wouldn’t find a beat-up Jeep in winter romantic. Girls who don’t see any kind of sexiness in the smell of dried mud or the clunking sounds of an old car or the idea that you can do the least expected thing and just see what happens.

  I’m sure there are girls my age who haven’t had sex and are waiting on some kind of sign from above or a romantic gesture or at the very least for an aggressive guy prodding them along in order to give it up. But that’s just not me. I’ve had sex. It was pretty fun. I wouldn’t mind trying it again.

  “Help me out of this stuff?” I say. My heart’s going hard: pound, pound, pound.

  I think it’s his fear of physical touching that makes me want it more. Kind of like a challenge, but kind of like a validation, too. If I can get him to love me like this (dirty, undone, brazen, unabashedly myself) then maybe this is something real.

  Beck keeps his eyes open but he doesn’t rush at me. It’s an even sweeter thing that way. I’m goosebumped from the waiting and he’s giving a half smile, and then he hooks the palm of his hand around my neck and pulls me in to kiss me.

  He doesn’t help me out of my pants or even my shirt, but there’s that lost-time, lost-location kissing again. My lips cling to his; I don’t want to let them slip from mine for a moment. The bottom half of my body leans toward his and I tighten my arms around his neck. A little sigh escapes from my mouth to his.