Ticked

by James A. Fussell

  “Nope,” Jeff said with a crooked smile. “Guess it’s good to be lucky sometimes.”

  BUT JEFF SAVED the best for last. Seventh grade. Spring 1986. All sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were outside for a field day called the “Grand Olympics.” There were running and throwing and jumping events. The prizes: red, white, and blue ribbons and bronze, silver, and gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins that melted quickly in the summer sun.

  Jeff came in first in numerous events, even beating many eighth graders. Finally, he reached the last, and most prestigious, event of the day: the 100-meter dash. Jeff toed the chalk starting line. He looked beside him to see his challenger. Ron grinned back at him.

  “I’m taking this from you, Matovic,” he said.

  “Go ahead and try,” Jeff said.

  At the sound of the gun there was enough cheering that—for Jeff—it might as well have been the Olympics. His legs drove hard off the line as he pulled out to a quick lead. Knees pumping, arms swinging, and lungs puffing like a locomotive, he flew across the finish line a good fifteen yards ahead of Ron.

  As Ron panted, Jeff looked at his vanquished rival with a satisfied smile. “Ron?” he said. “You need a drink?”

  Suddenly silent, Ron turned and walked away. Kevin and Dan ran up and jumped on their friend.

  “I can’t believe how fast you were,” Kevin said. “That was amazing! I’ve never seen anyone run that fast in my life!”

  That weekend Jeff played in a basketball game. His parents watched from the stands with Kevin and Dan. In between plays they watched him stand on the court and tic uncontrollably, kicking his legs, punching his arms and grunting loudly.

  “Huh! Huh!”

  Just then a kid a couple rows in front of them began making fun of Jeff—mocking his movements, laughing, and calling him names.

  Kevin had heard enough. “Knock it off!” he screamed at the kid. “He has a problem, and the doctor’s trying to find the medicine.” That shut the kid up. Jeff’s mother had never been prouder of Kevin that at that moment.

  That night, as they often did, Jeff and Kevin slept over at Dan’s house. As usual, they played games, watched TV, and talked all night. The subject of Ron, and how Jeff had smoked him in the race, dominated much of the conversation. In the morning Dan and Kevin told Jeff not to pay any attention to Ron’s cruel taunts, and that he was just jealous.

  “Guys,” Jeff said with a large arm punch and leg kick before leaving to go home, “I don’t care about people making fun of me like Ron does. I just need to learn how to survive without you guys.”

  Kevin looked down and shook his head. “Gonna miss you like hell, Matovic,” he said, giving Jeff a fist bump.

  “Big time,” said Dan.

  16

  Comfort from Katie

  JEFF RETURNED FROM the sleepover looking as if he had lost his best friend. His eyes were red, his lips pursed.

  “What’s wrong, dear heart?” his mother asked.

  He looked down. He knew this was the last sleepover he would ever have with Kevin and Dan. Several months earlier his father had given him the bad news. He had been transferred. They were moving to Cleveland.

  It was February 1986, a month after his thirteenth birthday, in the middle of his seventh-grade year.

  “I know it’s hard,” his mother said, putting her arm around him.

  Such news would upset any child. But for Jeff it was doubly difficult. Life had improved since he found the courage to talk to Kevin and Dan about his tics. They had become an invaluable part of his support system. He couldn’t envision life without them. After the bad news, Jeff had gone through stages. He had reasoned, protested, shouted, and cried.

  Why does Dad have to be in the steel industry? he thought. Why can’t he just find another job with computers? Why can’t he just stay here? There have got to be other things here.

  He begged his dad. “Isn’t there something else you can find?”

  It was no use. They were moving. And there was nothing he could do about it but get mad. After school and on weekends he’d throw a baseball against their dark green shed, then throw a football as hard as he could against the brick part of the house.

  Finally, he had to accept his fate. His mother and father knew how difficult this was for their boys. They tried their best to make it up to them.

  “Come on,” his mother said later than evening, as a glum Jeff walked past her in the living room. “Let’s go out and get some ice cream!”

  Jeff shook his head no. Then he shook it from side to side.

  “Are you sure, honey?” she asked in her sweet, comforting voice. “Your dad and I would love to treat you to the movies today. It will be dark, there will be air conditioning. How does that sound?”

  Jeff was conflicted. One part of him really wanted to see a movie. But another part—the one with Tourette’s—sounded a warning.

  Everyone’s going to be looking at you, you freak!

  “Mom,” Jeff said, stooping to pick up the family dog, “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ll just stay home with Katie.”

  Katie was an eighteen-pound black cockapoo with three white paws and a white stripe under her neck which ran down to her belly. She was the first pet Jeff had really loved. Even if he was having a horrible day, Katie could always make things better. Katie was not allowed on the furniture.

  One night, before the move to Cleveland, he asked his mother for an exception. “I’m just having a really tough time with the Tourette’s,” he said. “Can Katie sleep with me?”

  His mother looked at her youngest boy and gave a soft smile. “Absolutely,” she said.

  That night Katie snuggled up to Jeff. There were things he could tell Katie that he couldn’t tell anyone else. He’d hold her closely, stroke her softly curled black fur, and whisper his secret frustrations in her ear. Katie trusted Jeff. When he’d finish petting her, she’d gaze up at him and paw at his hand, asking for more.

  But it wasn’t always like this. Weeks earlier she cowered in the corner of his room, whimpering and afraid to come near him. That was the day Jeff lost it. Katie just wanted to stay out of the way.

  His explosion happened soon after he had learned that he would have to move to Cleveland. It wasn’t fair! It felt like the earth was shifting under his feet, and he was being thrust into the scary unknown; like he had already run two marathons in his life and now he was back at the starting line just beginning his training. After dinner one night he told his parents he just wanted to be alone and headed for his room.

  He called Katie in. She walked around the room as he stared out his bedroom window into a front yard covered in fallen snow. For a moment he felt like leaving tracks in that snow.

  “I guess running away wouldn’t do any good, would it Katie?” he said. He picked her up and held her in his arms. He cocked his head, feeling the softness of her ear against his. He couldn’t stop thinking about the move and all the horrors it would bring. He didn’t want to start again. He couldn’t start again!

  He wiped away a tear pooling in the bottom of his eye, got on his hands and knees beside his bed, and began to pray. He said some Our Fathers and some Hail Marys, but that wasn’t really what he wanted to do. He was unsure what he wanted. He was just so afraid and confused and sad and mad. And then, in the middle of an Our Father he burst out sobbing.

  Everything seemed to hit him all at once—leaving Pittsburgh, leaving Kevin and Dan, starting over with no support system, being the new kid, being the weird kid, being stressed and not knowing where to turn or who he could trust. He took his fist and starting ramming it as hard as he could on the bed saying, “No! No! No! NO!” Every hit was more forceful than the next.

  Realizing he was getting loud, he stuffed his face into his pillow to muffle the sound of a scream. As his left hand pulled up the edge of the mattress, his right hand pounded away. By this time he was doing violent, full roundhouse windups with every ounce of power his six-foot body could deliver.
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br />   “It’s not fair!” he screamed. “It’s not fair!”

  And for the first time he cursed God. “You suck!” he screamed. “I hate you! You suck! You suck! You’re nothing but a letdown!” He thrashed and screamed. And when he ripped the covers off the bed, his tears soaked the bare mattress. After a few minutes he rose to his knees and ran his right hand over his aching head until he reached the back of his sweat-soaked neck. Just then he looked back at Katie to see her cowering and shaking under his desk.

  Now Jeff began to cry in a different way. Katie!

  It broke his heart to see the only pet he had ever had whimpering and afraid of him. How could he have forgotten she was in the room? He walked over to her as calmly as he could, putting his hands out as if to say “It’s OK. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

  “Katie, it’s not you,” he said in a tender voice. “Come here. I love you.”

  He petted her until she was no longer afraid. He held her for five minutes on his bed, squeezing her softly and crying into her fur as he thought of everything that was to come.

  Holding Katie calmed him down. He even laughed slightly despite himself when he saw his teardrops fall on her little black nose and onto her ears.

  “Aw, I didn’t mean to soak you, Katie!” he said. Gently he lifted her up under her front legs until he and his pet were face-to-face. He put his nose against hers and rubbed it.

  “Katie,” he said, gazing into her eyes, “at least you’re coming with me.”

  17

  A Teenager with Tourette’s

  Bay Middle School, Bay Village, Ohio. Spring 1986.

  “If you’re going to sleep, get out of my class!”

  Everyone turned to look at Jeff.

  First rule of middle school: don’t call attention to yourself—especially if you’re the new kid already struggling to keep people from thinking you’re a freak.

  Jeff didn’t care. Eyelids heavy as hammers, he rested his head on his desk. When his health teacher called him on it, he lifted his head and looked at him with a blank stare.

  “What?” he asked in a groggy voice.

  “I said if you’re going to sleep, get out of my class.”

  “OK,” he mumbled, sleepily. “Where do you want me to go?”

  “To the office.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Downstairs. Take the hallway to the right. It’s in the center of the hall on your left.”

  “Whatever,” Jeff said, rising from his seat. Slouching and heavily medicated, he looked at his feet as he trudged toward the door.

  For Jeff, moving to the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village in the middle of seventh grade wasn’t as bad as he thought. It was worse.

  Newly thirteen, he had to adjust to a new house, a new city, and a new middle school with no best friends to talk to for moral support. Being the new kid was hard enough. But he also was the weird kid. And already over six feet, there was no place to hide.

  Classmates called him Spaz Boy and Tic Man. They mocked his movements and even turned them into a dance. “Man, you are weird,” they’d say, high-fiving each other as they walked away. Sometimes he just heard laughter and people asking, “What’s he shaking for?”

  He tried not to shake. He even took pills for it. While the powerful medication he began taking in Glenshaw just before he left reduced the frequency of his tics, too often it turned him into a zombie. He felt dull, blunted, dead inside. At its worst his brain was a slow-moving train. He didn’t care if he was late for class, or even fell asleep.

  Those were the bad days. He had better ones. And since he was generally a happy kid who was good at disguising his symptoms, some days there appeared to be nothing wrong with him. As a result, to many of his classmates, Jeff seemed like a walking contradiction. Was he the happy Jeff who was smart, confident, jovial, and funny—the kid who was upbeat and good in athletics? Or was he the tortured Jeff who was by turns anxious, fidgety, or zombielike—the one who often was so animated with his arms and leg movements he looked like he was playing a game of charades with himself?

  That was the problem. He was both.

  JEFF MET HIS best friend at the end of seventh grade.

  “Hey, Blair!” a boy called to a large and athletic student named Jay Blair, while motioning toward Jeff. “The new guy. You gotta arm wrestle. It’ll be epic!”

  A knot of middle schoolers gathered around as Blair, a blond-haired student with a big chest and thick arms, glanced toward Jeff.

  Oh great, Jeff thought. He didn’t want to arm wrestle anybody—especially not that kid. But how could he turn down such a challenge with everybody staring at him?

  All right, he thought. Let’s get this over with.

  The two boys—two of the largest in school—sat down at a table in an empty classroom as a small crowd formed around them. It felt like they were in the center of a small arena. Jeff looked at Jay as they both leaned forward, set their elbows on the wooden table, and locked hands.

  “Let’s go,” Jeff said.

  “Let’s go!” the kids said, roaring their approval. “Let’s go!”

  Jeff made a face as the match began. With a tremendous surge Jay forced Jeff’s much thinner arm backward toward the table.

  “Get ’em, Jay!” someone yelled. “Yeah!”

  To Jay’s surprise, Jeff responded with an equal surge that pulled him back to even. His arm may have been thin, but it was all muscle.

  Both boys used every ounce of energy they had, trying to force the other’s arm down. After several minutes of straining, their aching muscles felt as if they might explode. After nearly ten minutes both boys were drenched in sweat and staring at each other with flushed faces. Neither could win. And neither would give up.

  Kids continued hooting and hollering. An exhausted Jay looked at an exhausted Jeff. “Wanna just call it a draw?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Jeff said, “I’m pretty tired, how ’bout you?”

  “Yeah,” Jay said.

  They broke their grip and took big breaths as they smiled at each other and leaned back in their chairs. The crowd of kids groaned. They wanted a winner. Jay and Jeff didn’t care. They had both just made a new friend.

  Jay nodded at Jeff as they left the room together. He shook his arm, scrawled something on a piece of paper, and handed it to Jeff. “Here’s my number,” he said. “Let’s get together sometime.”

  It wasn’t long before the two became best friends. Eventually, in the summer before they went to high school, Jeff even built up enough trust to tell Jay about his Tourette’s.

  “That’s cool, man,” Jay told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  JEFF COULDN’T HELP but worry about it. It seemed his symptoms were getting worse every day. New tics joined with old, making them twice as terrible. Like a boxer, he moved from throwing single punches to combinations. There was eye blinking with lip smacking, head shaking with neck twisting, the sharp jab of the arm with the quick snap of the leg. And for the first time he flexed his wrists and ankles both ways, as hard as he could until it hurt, contracting his muscles and holding them so long that he wanted to cry.

  At the same time puberty had begun playing its practical jokes. His cracking voice was bad enough. But when Tourette’s forced him to grunt—hard enough to startle someone from across a room—it came out with a loud, embarrassing, high-pitched squeal.

  Tourette’s is hard at any age. But trying to be a teenager with Tourette’s was like trying to fight a fire with rocket fuel. The explosive combination of becoming a teenager, being in middle school, and being a new kid while grappling with a worsening movement disorder made Jeff sometimes feel like the shoestrings of his sanity were coming untied. Most days Jeff kept his struggles to himself. But that sort of stoicism was a double-edged sword. While his ability to cope was laudable, hiding his pain only made it worse.

  In the last year of middle school he didn’t tell his teachers, or anybody else, that he had Tourette’s. A form required to
play sports asked if he had any medical conditions. He answered “none.” He didn’t want a piece of paper to be passed between hands of people he didn’t know that in any way connected him with Tourette’s.

  He’d constantly wonder about that form. Was it lying face-up on a teacher’s desk? What if a student saw it? What if the basketball coach pulled it out and said, “Jeff, tell me about your Tourette’s and how it affects your basketball.”

  No. As long as he could hide it, disguise it, explain it away, or refuse to talk about it, he told himself, he would. To Jeff the letters TS were more than Tourette Syndrome’s initials. They were scarlet letters, and he would do anything to keep from wearing them. As a result, for the first year in Bay Village, Jeff lived his life in denial. He didn’t want to be a burden to his family. And he certainly didn’t want to think of himself as defective or damaged.

  He fought the pressure of his tics alone in his room. Screaming into his pillow became as common as combing his hair. Most mornings he cried as he looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his door, trying to find the motivation to face another day. Disgusted by what he saw, he couldn’t even look himself in the eyes. Many nights he went to sleep convinced he would not have the strength to get out of bed the next morning.

  He always did. Thanks to his mother, he had near-perfect attendance. She would sit with him on his bed every night and cry with him. “I can’t understand how hard this must be for you,” she said. “For all you’re going through and all you’re dealing with, I just want you to remember the strength in there,” she said, pointing to his head. “And in there,” she said, lightly touching his chest near his heart. “And just know how much your father and I love you every day.”

  He nodded. He’d try, he said.

  Jeff was nothing if not a good actor. He presented himself well and could fake a certain confidence that belied the pain below the surface. Tall, dark, and handsome with only a sprinkling of acne, he was a preppy dresser with a slender but athletic build. He liked to wear dark jeans and polo shirts with two T-shirts underneath for an extra-smooth appearance. He wore a gold watch and Drakkar Noir cologne and parted his short, black hair on the left, finishing with mousse and a spritz of hair spray.