OCD Love Story

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “Oh—” Beck starts. He thinks we’re going to do it again, and I’m sure we will sometime, but I shake my head vehemently and hold up a hand to make him wait. He sinks back into the bed and my pants come off one leg at a time. I guess when we did this before—got undressed—we didn’t take the time to inspect each other’s bodies. I turn to the side so he can get the full effect of the black and blue and purple and yellow and red thing that is taking over my leg. There’s no hiding his reaction—it’s like a punch to his chest. But then he leans forward and touches it. Even just that light touch hurts, which is funny since I’m used to pinching it. But when I’m in the moment, compulsing, I’m far enough gone in the anxiety and the release that I don’t think about the pain.

  I’m not like a cutter. I don’t want it to hurt. Jenny doesn’t want that pinch of hair coming out. Rudy doesn’t like the bit of blood that comes with the bit of pain when he excavates his face. These are things I don’t have to say to Beck, who is nodding at the size and shape of the bruise, at the flush of my face.

  “That it?” he says at last. And I guess it is.

  “I think that’s it. But I need you to come to Dr. Pat’s with me.”

  “If we leave the house, does this count as a date?” Beck says. “Our seventh date?”

  “Oh,” I say. “I forgot you were counting.”

  He swallows eight times.

  • • •

  An hour later we’re with Dr. Pat, at my house, in front of the fireplace. Dr. Pat must be from some kind of good New England stock, because she gets a fire going like only a real New Englander can: rolled balls of newspaper, strategically lit corners, a slow burn rising into a real flame.

  “Cozy,” Beck says a little sarcastically. I snort, snort, because Beck’s dry moments of humor are so sparse and unexpected they always catch me off guard and I can’t help the little noises my body makes in response to him.

  Then Dr. Pat brings out that stupid pink notebook. My heart basically stops as soon as I see it. I want to devour it. I want to eat it, so that the words, the moments I captured, remain inside me. Safe. Just when I’m readying myself for the explosion of anxiety coming my way, my mother appears with a stack of notebooks, all mine, all filled with clippings. Months and months of collected data to protect me from the terrible things I could potentially do or become.

  I go numb from anxiety. This is new: tingling fingers and a locked jaw. Awesome. I thought I’d experienced the full spectrum of symptoms, but there’s always more. The numbness makes it hard to breathe, too, and Dr. Pat’s saying over and over “What level, what level?” and Beck is looking me in the eye and it’s a ten, a full-on TEN; this is definitely what a ten feels like. And Dr. Pat puts the pink notebook in my hand and my head is screaming at me to read through it, to take more notes, to try to remember and write down exactly what was said the other night when they caught me.

  But I throw it in the fire instead. And we watch it burn.

  My hands shake, and I have a cold flash. My limbs turn to ice. This is new, I think, and shiver from the sudden drop in temperature. The obese Anxiety Man sits on my chest, and I’m caught, paralyzed in that cold, weighted-down, shaking place for what seems like hours.

  It is maybe seven minutes.

  And then it drops. Slowly at first. I find myself at a nine, and then an eight, a seven-point-five.

  I throw in the next notebook, and the next. I’m at a seven. A six-point-five.

  A calm, normal-temperature six. The buzzing in my head stops. The pressure on my chest is still there, but lighter.

  My mother makes hot chocolate and we experience the single weirdest afternoon of my life, watching my OCD notebooks smolder in the fireplace while stirring minimarshmallows into the Swiss Miss. Just me, my mom, Dr. Pat, and Beck.

  THERE’S NOT MUCH WE CAN do but look at Jenny and her peach-fuzz head.

  “Oh my God, that’s a thousand times better,” I say. It’s not the same as a compulsion. This time I say it not because it’s eating away at my throat or because it’s of dire importance. I say it because she needs to know that I’d rather see her bald than to see her destroying herself. Rudy’s eyes go huge from how pretty she looks. He’s drinking her in and the rest of us relax, for maybe the first time ever, into our awkward metal seats. It’s a weight off seeing her like that, clean and even and brand-new.

  “Can I touch it?” I say with a grin. I don’t know who I think I am. Beck’s the one who made the breakthrough in group and Jenny’s the one who has obviously made some kind of breakthrough at home, and I’m just the girl who yelled at everyone last time we were here. But Jenny nods and grins back and I rub her head before Dr. Pat can reinforce the rules.

  “Good” is all Dr. Pat says. “Good.” Then she pulls out a knife. Just like that. A knife that must be from her kitchen. It’s sharp and real and glinting, but no one else is flinching. Just me. “This is for Bea,” Dr. Pat says, and everyone nods and acts like the knife is some harmless mitten or banana.

  “That’s way worse than my Swiss Army knife, huh?” Rudy says.

  “I’m sorry. I have to go,” I say. It’s a reflex, just the same as a doctor knocking your knee with his little hammer-thing. Just as automatic. I trust the reflex that says, definitively, no.

  “Bea,” Dr. Pat says. Just that. Just my name and the knife glinting at me as she holds it out. “Hold it to my heart,” Dr. Pat says. This cannot be legal. I shake my head.

  “Hold it to my heart,” Beck says, and I know that’s for sure not okay, because Dr. Pat puts her hand on Beck’s back to tell him no. “Fine,” Beck says. “How about just Rudy’s knife? You know as well as I do”—Rudy is taking his little knife off his key chain and I’m shaking and I think this is actually somehow going to happen—“that this can’t hurt anyone.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Pat says. “Rudy? Can we . . . ?” But he’s already handing it to Beck. I’m all sweat and fast breathing and when I look around the room, I expect the rest of them to have some kind of cloud of panic crossing their faces, but there’s nothing like that. They’re looking on with placid, matching smiles of support. I’d like to scream at them, show them my notebooks of research about normal-looking, even occasionally pretty girls just like me snapping, losing their minds all of a sudden, and killing people.

  I mean, I have evidence showing what a bad idea this is. Evidence that shows just how unpredictable we all are.

  But I don’t have the notebooks anymore.

  “Okay,” Beck says. “Stab me.” It’s that dry humor again. The thing I love about him is now biting me in the ass. I’m breathing in short gasps, and when the knife is in my hand and erect, I’m shaking so hard I think I might drop it. Dr. Pat’s kitchen knife lies beside me too, just to add to the stress. The journey of lifting the knife to Beck’s heart is epic. And once it touches the hard mass of his chest, my anxiety is at a ten.

  “I can’t take it, I can’t do it! It’s a ten! Please let me stop!” I sob in Dr. Pat’s direction, but she and the group only lift their shoulders and bite their lips and wait it out.

  I’m going to kill Beck, I think. But I don’t.

  And then, like last night, the numbers start to drop. I do not spontaneously combust from the anxiety. It starts to subside. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum, it’s worn itself out and is giving in. I’m at a seven. And I think: I’m so not going to kill Beck. And then: I don’t even know how to hurt someone with a Swiss Army knife. I don’t really get below a four and a half. I don’t turn into some monk all of a sudden. And when Dr. Pat says I can take the knife away from Beck’s chest, I’m relieved.

  But. A little space has been created where I don’t have to be afraid.

  Then I’m thinking about shipwrecks on Caribbean islands, which I’m sure never happen. But I think about them anyway, as if they could. There’s this horrible situation, and about a million very real things that could happen, and you’re not exactly happy to be shipwrecked and you’ve got a lot of problems to sol
ve and shit to work out. But you’re on this island, and in the middle of building your hut and hunting for fish and, like, doing basic first aid on your injured friend, you take a break and lie in the sand and look at the way the palm trees swing a little in the warm wind. And the sound of the ocean hitting the shore is lovely, and you’re in maybe the most beautiful place you’ve ever been.

  So in the same moment you’re terrified and amazed at the sobering reality of the world around you and the purity of the beauty.

  Would you trade in that moment? Would you risk being shipwrecked to be able to see the most beautiful section of the human world?

  I guess that’s just a long way of saying I’m happy to be here. Beck and I are smiling goofy smiles at each other, and my stomach flips around thinking about getting naked with him on the mountain, and maybe again later in my room. It’s like, I’m scared and there’re a lot of ugly things, but I’d rather be shipwrecked on this lovely island than safe in a sad, gray cell. You know?

  THERE IS NO EIGHTH DATE. we just skipped it. Dr. Pat says you make your own decisions.

  MANY, MANY DATES LATER, LISH, beck, and i hang out in Harvard Square. There’s a place called The Pit, and it’s stoners and skaters and the three of us. We’re people watching.

  I’m taking notes, but it’s okay because it’s for a play I’m going to be costume designing at school. It’s not a huge deal, just this student-run evening of short plays that other students wrote, but I offered to do the costumes and everyone was psyched, like it was obvious that I’d be great at that. Which I guess means I’ve been totally successful at having my outfits stand out from the sea of J.Crew sweaters and tight black pants that make up the rest of the student population at Greenough Girl’s Academy.

  One of the plays is about punked-out runaway kids, and I figured this was the place to find them. Jeff used to talk about coming here on the weekends, scoring Ritalin, and learning how to skate.

  The memory of that doesn’t scare me so much anymore.

  But I told Dr. Pat I missed my compulsions. That sometimes I missed them because without them I was more anxious, but sometimes I missed them because they defined me. She recommended people watching. The winter is finally turning full-on into spring, and Beck, Lisha, and I can lean back and take in the crowds. It doesn’t have the same euphoric, druglike magic of checking on Austin and Sylvia, but it’s fun, catching snippets of conversation. I don’t write them down (Dr. Pat’s rules—I’m only allowed to write down costume ideas) but I share a smile and half laugh with Beck or Lish whenever we overhear a particularly good little moment between strangers.

  “I’m thinking of getting back into shoplifting. Am I too old?” a brunette, superpierced chick says to her sad-eyed friend.

  “. . . should I go out with him even though he’s ugly?”

  “. . . wish I just had one more purse, then I’d be in good shape.”

  “I’m thinking of moving to Sweden. I’ve heard good things. Healthcare and blondes and shit.”

  “You’re a real dick most of the time.”

  “You’re one beautiful bitch.”

  “I love you the most.”

  Lisha keeps smiling at the Harvard students that walk by since she’s about to be one of them. She crosses and uncrosses her legs in an attempt to fit in and look like them. It’s not warm between us, exactly, and we’re not back to normal, and there isn’t some perfect moment in the sun that fixes what’s hurt between us. She sits a foot or two to our left and doesn’t ever really talk straight to Beck, and she cringes when anything comes up that she thinks will trigger us: the number eight, soap, a sharp object, a guy in workout clothes on his way to the gym, a woman with fake breasts and gorgeous hair and dark eye makeup who could be Sylvia.

  “Is that . . . ,” Lish says, and I shake my head no, but then take a closer look and it is. It’s Sylvia, and Austin beside her, and their hands are knit together and their pace is perfectly in sync, long limbs stepping in time to some song we can’t hear. They share one pair of headphones between them and keep their heads close to listen to the music. Probably their own album. I want to point this out to Lish and Beck, who have both latched on to their presence, but then I remember they were never up in that apartment with me, and they wouldn’t understand.

  In some ways, Sylvia and Austin are still the people I know best in the world.

  I miss them.

  “You okay?” Beck says. There’s a hint of green, green jealousy in his voice and in the space behind his eyes, but he’s working hard to keep it in, to accept that handsome, string-bean, rocker-chic bit of my past. He’s trying. I can tell because his clothes are a little looser on him than they were before. Not normal yet, but not straining against every muscle, not breaking at the seams. He had a whole series of button-down shirts with pulled-out threads along the sides, long slits where the fabric could no longer contain him.

  He looks better now.

  I keep my eye on the figures of Sylvia and Austin as they go into a café. I wait just enough time to not cause suspicion.

  “You guys want coffee? I’m gonna go get a tea,” I say, getting up, stretching my legs, pinning my sunglasses to my face.

  “Black coffee,” Lisha says.

  “Latte,” Beck says, and beams at me. He’s working at breaking some of his rules, so green tea or bottled water is out. He’s trying to enjoy the occasional vice. “With sugar,” he continues, just showing off now.

  I counter by dropping my notebook on his lap so he can see that every single line of scribble in there is about clothing ideas for the show. Sometimes progress becomes a minicompetition between us. One where everyone wins, I guess.

  God, I sound like Dr. Pat when I get this way.

  I make it all the way to the door of the café. Just a push of the door and I’ll be in there, in line behind Austin and Sylvia. And I want it, maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Maybe more than I want Beck and his deeply scarred but recovering hands on my body, or his eyes on mine.

  There are huge windows and I don’t hide, I just stand squarely facing them for long enough to breathe through and let go of the impulse.

  I do not pinch my thigh, which is a strange brown-yellow in its latest stage of unbruising itself.

  Austin’s eyes find me there, outside looking in, like some puppy trying to beg through the storefront glass, practically panting. His hand goes to Sylvia’s back and I think he’s about to point me out but he doesn’t. He just lets his hand stay there and he has the saddest eyes and a new tattoo on the back of that hand. I can tell because it looks raw and unfinished next to the expert patterns on his forearms.

  They’re so close, just behind the glass, that I can see every bit of him without straining. Every detail.

  Or maybe it sticks out because it’s a symbol I recognize: a small shooting star. This one is black, but the one it reminds me of was gold, embossed on the surface of a pink notebook I used to have.

  A pink notebook I burned.

  There’s a squeeze in my heart with the realization that I may never know exactly what it means that he’s tattooed himself with something that was on my notebook.

  It could even be, I suppose, coincidence.

  Dr. Pat says the human mind is a complicated place. That we hold on to things, images, words, ideas, histories that we don’t even know we’re holding on to.

  Sometimes lines of poetry from that book Kurt gave me still flit through my head. It doesn’t mean I’m going to call him and check to make sure he’s still breathing. And even right now, I want to touch Austin’s new tattoo, the one I think he got in my honor. I want to know how they’re doing. The need hasn’t vanished entirely, but it’s become this thing I can dip into for a moment, and then dry off from.

  Quick and dirty, that’s what Beck calls it when we slide into a compulsion for one glorious moment and then save ourselves from the full immersion. I smile at the thought of it, because I like the turn of phrase. Austin smiles back. Guess he thinks I�
��m smiling his way, saying hello, but really, I’m not.

  I don’t go in. I don’t have to.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A huge, over-the-top thank-you to my amazing agent, Victoria Marini, whose support made me believe and whose insight helped me make it true.

  I’m so lucky to have the honor of working with my fabulous editor, Anica Rissi, who gets me, challenges me, and inspires me.

  Thank you to Monday Group and Thesis Group for reading, shaping, encouraging, and giving me deadlines: Dhonielle Clayton, Sona Chairapotra, Alyson Gerber, Caela Carter, and Amy Ewing.

  I’ve been blessed with some unbelievable teachers in my life, and I’d like to thank all of them, but most especially Sandra MacQuinn, Dan Halperin, Hettie Jones, David Levithan, and Patricia McCormick. And an especially large thank-you to a truly amazing teacher and role model, Victoria Hart, who probably doesn’t realize what a huge difference she made.

  Thank you to Red Horse Café and Tea Lounge for making me mochas, playing good music, giving me distractions, and providing a cozy place to write.

  So many people gave time and thought to this book and my particular journey to publication. A special thanks to Navdeep Dhillon, Michael Strother, Liesa Abrams and the rest of the Simon Pulse team, Kalah McCaffrey, Laura Schechter, and Danielle Chiotti.

  I’m so grateful for my tiny, book-loving family: the Haydus: Dad, Mom, Andy, Jenn, Ellie, Gary, Marie, and Tina; the Spokeses: Dick, Carol, Suzie, and Jen; the Rosses: Judy (who is probably hand-selling this book right now), Doug, Cam, and Ian. And of course the grandparents.

  And all my love and thanks to the ones who let me talk, cry, complain, exclaim, obsess, and celebrate:

  The ten years or more club: Julia Furlan, Kea Gilbert, Mandy Adams, Honora Javier, and Tracey Roiff. I’m very lucky you’ve all put up with me and my crazy-writer ways for this long.