Say What You Will

by Cammie McGovern

  “I KNOW. I HATE MYSELF SOMETIMES, TOO.”

  He took a long drink of water from a bottle in his backpack, and kept going. “I don’t want to make a little project out of this. You fixing me.”

  “WHY NOT? I’M HARDLY FIXING YOU. I’M HELPING YOU. YOU’RE DOING THE HARD WORK. I JUST SAT HERE.”

  “Exactly. It’s hard. And when—” He wasn’t sure how to put this exactly. “When I’m not in the middle of an attack, it’s pretty easy to see how stupid I must look.”

  “NOT AT ALL.” She thought for a moment. “IT’S PRETTY EASY FOR ME TO SEE THAT EVERYONE ELSE CAN WALK AND TALK.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “ISN’T IT? YOU DON’T THINK I FEEL STUPID MOST OF THE TIME?”

  The idea of this surprised him enough to think about it for a minute. No one blamed Amy for the way she looked and sounded. But people did blame him for the washing and the tapping and the strange things the voice in his head made him do. Maybe blame wasn’t the right word. But they noticed. They looked at him funny. They slid their lunch trays away. And their chairs. And their eyes.

  How long had he not wanted to admit this? He’d tried so hard to keep his private agony a secret that he didn’t realize how much it showed. Now that he thought about the looks people gave him walking down the hall, in class, even on the bus where he hardly knew anyone, it was like he’d become the contagion he was forever trying to rid himself of.

  It wasn’t a secret at all. Everyone knew. His mother. Amy. Everyone he’d walked past these last few years. It was a horrible feeling, like a bad taste in the back of his mouth that didn’t go away no matter how much he swallowed.

  After yearbook, they sat outside on the planter beside the roundabout where Amy’s mother picked her up. He thought about telling Amy she was right about a few things: He probably couldn’t do this on his own. He probably did need help of some kind. He’d probably have to do all sorts of scary and embarrassing things, like go to a doctor and tell that person all his problems. He knew Amy was right, but his throat felt too clogged to say it.

  There was a chance that he still might cry, and he didn’t want to add that to the list of embarrassing things she’d seen him do today.

  To his surprise she started talking: “I ASKED IF I COULD HELP YOU BECAUSE I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT FOR ANYONE. I WANTED TO SEE IF I COULD. IT’S TERRIBLE ALWAYS BEING THE PERSON WHO NEEDS HELP. I’M SORRY IF I MISJUDGED EVERYTHING. I’M SO NEW AT HAVING FRIENDS THAT I MAKE MISTAKES SOMETIMES.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  “IT WASN’T?”

  “No. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I just haven’t yet because it isn’t fun.”

  “NO. I’M SURE IT ISN’T.”

  He peeked up at her. “It made me mad, I have to admit.”

  “I KNOW. THAT’S WHY I’M SORRY.”

  “You want to hear something weird, though?” A car pulled up that looked like Nicole’s, but wasn’t. Relieved, he kept talking. “When I went to the bathroom just now I didn’t wash my hands.”

  “AT ALL?”

  “No. I wanted to. But I didn’t absolutely have to. Usually it feels like there’s no choice at all. But this time it didn’t.”

  “THAT’S GREAT, MATTHEW! THAT’S WHAT’S SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN! YOU’RE RETRAINING YOUR BRAIN!”

  “I still want to wash my hands. I probably will when I get home.”

  “THAT’S OKAY.”

  “I’m not cured or anything.”

  “OF COURSE NOT.”

  “I guess it’s good for me to practice.” He looked at her shyly. “And maybe have help.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IN THE BEGINNING, AMY limited her Matthew assignments to the days he walked her between classes. She printed them ahead of time so that no one overheard her in the hallway, instructing him to do strange, arbitrary things:

  Touch honey and leave it on your hands for an hour.

  Walk down four halls without tapping any lockers.

  It broke her heart the way he nodded with each assignment and then looked away, as if he didn’t want her to see his fear. She remembered reading that OCD was surprisingly unconnected to overall brain function. Meaning people with OCD can recognize how crazy their thoughts are; they just can’t stop them.

  Writing the assignments had another plus: they didn’t have to discuss why he did these things or what bad luck he was trying to keep at bay. Given the silence she spent so much of her day in, Amy recognized that with certain matters, the less said, the better. Irrational thoughts were irrational. No need to make him feel more self-conscious by insisting on a rational discussion of them.

  After a few weeks, he admitted that her repetitions helped. Occasionally she played those again if she saw his hands shaking, or his lips moving. “THIS ISN’T A RATIONAL THOUGHT YOU’RE HAVING. YOU ARE SAFE. YOU ARE FINE. THE FEAR MAY BE REAL BUT THE DANGER IS NOT.”

  His progress was bumpy. Some days he’d have no problem walking down the hall without tapping lockers; other times she watched him go white as his lips moved: “The fear is real. The danger is not.”

  To take his mind off his assignments, Amy told him more stories. She could see that it helped. As they walked and he concentrated, she played stories that she’d typed in the night before. She told him about trips she’d taken with her parents to France, the Grand Canyon, and Disney World. The best part, she said, was usually the motorized scooter they rented for her on the trips. “YOU CAN’T BELIEVE HOW FAST THEY GO. FEELS LIKE FLYING.”

  When he asked why she didn’t use one all the time, she explained her mother’s philosophy: that if Amy wanted to keep up in the real world, she could never take the easy route. “Yes, this will be hard,” Nicole would tell Amy as they practiced walking four or five hours a day through the first six years of Amy’s life. “But we’re not afraid of hard.” When Amy told him this story, she mistyped it. “You’re not afraid of heart?” Matthew said.

  “HARD.”

  “I don’t get that.”

  “WE’RE NOT AFRAID OF HARD. LIKE, ‘LOOK, HONEY, EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE HARD FOR YOU. DON’T BE AFRAID OF IT.’”

  “Oh.”

  “IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE INSPIRING. GOD KNOWS I DON’T APPROVE OF EVERYTHING MY MOTHER DOES, BUT I THINK SHE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT. SHE TAUGHT ME NOT TO BE AFRAID OF HARD WORK.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  Matthew listened to this and remembered another story Amy had told about her mother. After she was born, the doctor told them Amy would probably never walk, talk, or even lift her head. “SO GUESS WHAT MY MOTHER DID?” He couldn’t guess. “WHEN I WAS FIVE MONTHS OLD, SHE LAID ME FACEDOWN IN THE BATHTUB WITH ABOUT AN INCH OF WATER IN IT.”

  Just hearing the story sent a chill down his spine. “Why? You could have drowned.”

  “BUT I DIDN’T! I LEARNED TO LIFT MY HEAD.”

  It was like Amy had never been afraid of anything. Starting school in second grade had been no problem. Not being understood until she got her first communication device, a DynaVox, in fourth grade, was frustrating but not particularly scary. He tried to imagine being so young, navigating his way through endless days around a huge school when no one understood a single word he said. Another chill ran through him.

  “IT WAS FINE!” Amy insisted. “I WAS OUT OF THE HOUSE, IN THE SAME ROOM WITH OTHER KIDS. I WAS HAPPY.”

  Some of her stories weren’t so happy. She told one about being in Mr. Heffernan’s seventh-grade science class. It started as a funny story about Sarah’s father, except it wasn’t all that funny. Amy loved science, and worked hard on a project proposal for the state science fair. When she was one of four students chosen as a finalist, Mr. Heffernan told her she couldn’t go. It would be too hard on her, he said.

  “That’s terrible,” Matthew said. “Weren’t you mad?”
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  “MY MOTHER WAS. I DON’T KNOW IF I WAS SO MAD.”

  She finished the story that night on email:

  To: mstheword@gmail.com

  From: aimhigh@comcast.net

  Subject: seventh grade

  When my mom went in to complain that I had a proposal that had been accepted and an A in his class and what more did he want, Mr. Heffernan said, “Yes, but she has an aide assisting her in taking all the tests. I have no real proof that she’s doing the work.”

  I told my mother it didn’t bother me. How was he to know that if Sybil, my aide, had taken the test, I’d have probably earned a C in the class? Embarrassingly my mother kept pushing the issue, even after I asked her to stop. She said if she didn’t fight him, he’d continue to exclude every disabled kid coming up behind me. He still held his ground. It would never work, he said. It would be too hard on me. He said parking in the city was a problem. Sometimes they had to walk two or three blocks, carrying their projects. The less valid his points seemed, the harder my mother fought, until it became an all-out war of letters and emails. I didn’t realize it was happening until years later, when I found copies in my mother’s desk drawer.

  In one letter, Mr. Heffernan wrote, “With all due respect, you might have a skewed view of your daughter’s abilities. Perhaps you haven’t considered the disservice it does to her very real accomplishments to insist she’s capable of being superior in all her academic subjects. I’d ask you to look again at your daughter—where her genuine affinities lie—and not push her into areas where she isn’t interested in achieving.”

  The first time I read that, I actually thought he had a decent point. Because academics came so easily to me, my mother wanted me to be great at everything. But I’ve always loved reading and writing most of all, so why did I have to be great at science, too? I don’t know. Maybe I just admired him for standing up to my mother.

  No one else had ever done that.

  That night, Matthew surprised himself by composing a longer response than usual.

  To: aimhigh@comcast.net

  From: mstheword@gmail.com

  Re: seventh grade

  Your story makes me think about Sarah and what it must be like to have only one parent and have that parent be Mr. Heffernan. I always remember this one conversation I had with her in eighth grade. We were dialogue partners in French, which meant memorizing these stilted, fake conversations where teenagers ask each other what time it is and then talk endlessly about the pleasant weather. They always end up going to a café and ordering a jambon sandwich to trick you into saying it wrong. In France you say sandweeeech. Sarah and I had the softest voices in the class, which meant the teacher was always clapping her hands and screaming, “Repetez! Repetez!”

  I felt especially bad because it seemed like the teacher didn’t give Sarah a break, even though we all knew her Mom had just died the year before. Then one day, I couldn’t believe it. We were in the middle of our dialogue and Sarah started crying. She was turned away from the rest of the class so only I saw it.

  We talked for the first time after class that day. She said she wasn’t sure why reciting dialogues was so hard for her, but she thought maybe it was because she spent most of the time feeling invisible and doing those dialogues made her realize she wasn’t, and that made her even more sad.

  So that’s why I had a crush on Sarah for a little while. Kind of hard not to, but nothing ever came of it. Partners got switched in French, we were both paired with shouters, and we never talked again.

  The weird thing now is that even through that whole training week at the beginning of this year, we never once mentioned that French class. I assume girls forget things like that, maybe. Boys don’t. Or I haven’t anyway.

  About your story—I think Mr. Heffernan was totally wrong and you’re being way too nice by forgiving him. I just looked it up and keeping you out of the science fair is against the law. Nobody can be excluded from a school or activity because of their disability. So, yeah. I guess your mother was right to fight that one.

  Do you have another task for me? I can’t believe I’m asking this.

  On Monday, Amy greeted him with a big smile. She’d been puzzling over his story all weekend, wondering if it might be a hopeful sign. He’d had a crush on Sarah and had done nothing about it. It wasn’t Amy’s body he was scared of; it was all girls. At first it made her nervous; then she got an idea. The more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed. “I HAVE A NEW ASSIGNMENT FOR YOU.”

  He looked especially handsome this morning, in a black T-shirt with a fading guitar logo on the front, which made this even better.

  “Okay. What is it?”

  “TODAY YOU WILL ASK SARAH OUT ON A DATE.”

  “Oh, okay. No thanks to that one.”

  “LET ME REPHRASE. NOT A DATE DATE. YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS TO INVITE SARAH TO TACO BELL FOR LUNCH, ORDER TWO BURRITOS, AND EAT THEM. NO BATHROOM TRIPS, NO TAPPING. AFTERWARD I’LL NEED A FULL REPORT.”

  He shook his head. He couldn’t look at her.

  “Are you serious?” he said.

  “VERY SERIOUS.”

  “Because this is different than any of the other assignments. This involves one: getting over the fear of stepping into a Taco Bell; and two: getting over what you obviously understand is a large fear of talking to Sarah.”

  “ EXACTLY. THAT’S WHY I PICKED IT. PLUS IT’S THE ONLY RESTAURANT YOU CAN WALK TO.”

  “Why do I have to do both things at once? Why don’t I just go to Taco Bell with you?”

  She smiled and almost typed something flirty. Are you asking me on a date? But she didn’t. Since Christmas vacation, when she’d tried to tell him how she felt, Amy’s feelings hadn’t changed, but her strategy had. If she was really his friend and helped him get better, maybe he would see what was obvious. That he liked her, too. Of course it was a risk as well—sending him on a date with another girl to get him to notice her. But it was a risk she’d have to take. “BECAUSE I DON’T EAT THERE. IT’S A LITTLE TOO GROSS FOR ME.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I’M NOT TRYING TO BE FUNNY.”

  “I don’t want this assignment. Give me something else.”

  “YOU AGREED, MATTHEW. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS IF YOU WANT TO GET WELL. BESIDES, I HAVE A THEORY. YOU SAID YOUR OCD GOT WORSE STARTING THREE YEARS AGO, WHICH MEANS IT WAS NINTH GRADE, THE YEAR RIGHT AFTER YOU HAD YOUR CRUSH ON SARAH. I THINK THAT MEANS SOMETHING.”

  “Like what?”

  “LIKE MAYBE THE VOICE BLAMES YOU FOR NOT BEING BRAVE ENOUGH TO ASK HER OUT BACK THEN. THIS IS ABOUT CONQUERING FEARS, RIGHT?”

  “I guess.”

  “DOES THE IDEA OF ASKING HER OUT MAKE YOU AFRAID?”

  “Yes.”

  “GOOD. THEN YOU SHOULD DO IT. IT WON’T BE A DATE. PRETEND YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT ME, SINCE THAT’S WHAT YOU HAVE IN COMMON NOW. THAT SHOULD GET YOU THROUGH LUNCH, AT LEAST.”

  “You really want me to do that?”

  As she typed, she thought about the question. Did she really want him to do this? What if it went amazingly well and a few weeks from now he wrote her to say, Guess what? Sarah and I are going to see a movie tonight. Given that Sarah dated a twenty-three-year-old last year, it wasn’t likely, but it was possible. She might surprise everyone by looking at Matthew and seeing what Amy saw—his beautiful blue eyes, the way his smile made his whole face light up. Sarah might not care about his nonexistent social status, and think, Why not date a nice boy after all these jerks who never call? It could happen. The possibility scared Amy, but she also knew this: Matthew needed to prove something to himself.

  Up until now, they’d been working on irrational fears. Shyness around a girl wasn’t irrational. If he could do this, it would be big. “YES,” Amy typed. “I DO. I THINK IT WILL BE AN EXCELLENT EXERCISE.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  OH, THE WHOLE EPISODE was excruciating. His heart thudded audibly; a bead of perspiration trickled down one side of his face. “Hey, Sarah, what’re you doing for lunch?” Matthew said, coming up behind her at a water fountain.

  “Today?” she said, standing, dripping water from her chin. “Right now?”

  “Not right now. It’s only ten fifteen. But we have the same lunch block, right? At least I think we do. Never mind. Maybe we don’t.”

  “I’ve got C.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, I guess that’s the same, then, right?”

  “I guess it is.”

  “If you’d like to go out for lunch, we could. I don’t have a car or anything so I couldn’t drive us. We’d have to go to Taco Bell, which some people think is gross, I know.”

  “That’s okay. I like Taco Bell.” She looked around the hallway. “Sure, why not? Does anyone else want to come, or just us?”

  He panicked. He wasn’t prepared for this question, even though it was probably a normal one. How many times had he heard someone say, “We’re headed to the Bell, anyone want to come?” Never to him, of course. But people said it.

  He couldn’t think how to respond. They weren’t part of any larger group. They shared no friends, unless she meant Amy. But Amy couldn’t come if they were going to talk about her. And Amy couldn’t swallow anything at Taco Bell, except maybe refried beans and a little rice. Instead of answering Sarah’s question, he let an awkward amount of time pass without speaking. Finally he said, “So . . . what? Should I meet you out front at eleven twenty?”

  Seniors were allowed to leave school for lunch on Fridays only. So far, Matthew hadn’t left for lunch once, but he knew most kids piled into cars and drove. Taco Bell was the only place in walking distance. It required taking a route past the field house and down an alley filled with trash Dumpsters. Matthew wondered if his brain would let him touch food after walking past so much trash. He wondered if Taco Bell sold any food he could eat with a fork. Would it be worse to eat his food holding it with a paper wrapper, or to wash his hands a few times before they sat down? What had Amy said the rules were? He couldn’t remember.