Compulsion

by Heidi Ayarbe

  Mera stares at me with her mannequin eyes. But this time I don’t look away.

  She hands the keys to me. “But you better fill up the tank.”

  “What?” I say. “Christ, I’m only going home and back.”

  “Well, everything has a price now, doesn’t it?”

  “Goddamnit,” I mutter. I already owe Luc for last night’s coffee run plus “interest,” as he puts it. I shove the keys in my pocket, then turn to the clock, working out the numbers. Before the bell rings, the four of us walk back to class, my work sheet conspicuously blank.

  Mrs. Hayes looks up and says, “What’s with this? What did you do for ninety minutes?”

  “I was—” I don’t figure telling her that working out prime numbers from the time would be an acceptable answer. “It’s just, I’m stuck.”

  “Stuck?”

  I nod. It’s the most honest thing I’ve said in the past five years. “I’m stuck.” It’s the only thing that explains why I do what I do.

  Mera interrupts. “We worked together. He jammed his finger at soccer practice.”

  Mariana huffs behind us and Mera shoots her a look: one head-swivel, kryptonite–projectile vomit away from demonic possession. Major intimidation.

  The bell rings, and I run, leaving Mera behind with Mrs. Hayes and my blank work sheet. I zigzag through the cafeteria out into the parking lot, avoiding Luc and the other guys. Mera’s van isn’t hard to find. She’s probably the only chick at school who drives a van. And that, for many guys I know, is a major waste of horizontal space.

  The van reeks of patchouli in a lame attempt to cover years of raw meat. I rev the engine and tear out of the parking lot, flying over the speed bumps. The lot gates close ten minutes after lunch bell. I honk and try to butt into the line of cars.

  I turn on the radio. Classical music? C’mon, Mera, you’re killing me. I flick it to K-Play AM sports and turn the volume to nothing, then crank it up thirteen notches. In five minutes I’ll be home. Less than five minutes.

  My phone rings. After three rings, I turn it off. “Fuck them. I’ve got time,” I mutter.

  I just need to start the day over. It’s not that big a deal. I know that this isn’t right. It’s not normal. But it’s what I do.

  Because I need the magic.

  Forty-Seven Genesis

  Friday, 11:43 a.m.

  Eleven forty-three. One plus one is two plus four is six plus three is nine minus four is five. OK.

  I don’t rub the flamingo beak; I already did this morning, so I rush up the front steps, into the house and my room, setting the clock, undressing, and jumping into bed.

  And everything’s going to be fine. I close my eyes and turn on my side to face the clock. Ready to begin the day.

  I open my left eye, count to three, then open my right eye.

  One plus one is two plus seven is nine minus four is five. OK.

  Eleven forty-seven and fifty-five.

  I slip my left foot out from under the covers and count. One, two, three.

  Fifty-six, fifty-seven—

  Right foot. One, two, three.

  Fifty-eight, fifty-nine.

  Up.

  My shoulders relax as the tension drains from my body. I can hear the phone ringing, but I block out the noise. The machine will pick it up. Plus it’s too early for phone calls. It’s Genesis. The beginning. He had to do it right. Begin with the heavens and the earth.

  I have to do it right.

  I have to begin my day.

  Ring. Ring.

  Just ignore the phone. I walk to the bathroom. Damp towels are thrown over the half-closed curtain—starting to smell like mildew. I do a quick cleanup, organize the towels and shampoo bottles just right, and jump into the shower, forty-seven seconds on each side, and out and dressed and rushing downstairs.

  Just have to make it through the routine. Go through the steps.

  I shake off the bad feeling that I’m doing everything too abbreviated. Half-assed. That it’ll just be some hack way to get back the magic I lost this morning. Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow I can do everything double.

  I tap the grandfather clock three times, opening the door with both hands. The door closes behind me with a click. I look at my watch.

  11:54

  Eleven fifty-four. One plus one is two plus five is seven plus four is eleven. OK.

  I turn and see Mom standing in the driveway, staring at the car’s bumper. I didn’t even hear her drive up.

  Not now, I think. Not today. I can’t do it today. I walk toward Mera’s van, keys jangling in my hand, when Mom calls out to me. “Jake!”

  “Hey, Mom.” I wave at her.

  “Oh Jake! Oh my God, Jake. I think—” She covers her face with shaking hands. “I hit a cyclist. I tried to avoid him. I really did. But I know I hit him. Oh God, Jake. Oh my God.” She stares at the bumper, then drops to her hands and knees, going over every inch of it with a magnifying glass.

  “Mom.” I walk over to her. “Mom, what are you doing?”

  “Blood. Looking for blood. Oh God, Jake.”

  “Stand up, Mom.” I pull her up off her knees and cradle her head on my shoulder. “See, Mom? There’s no blood here. Or dents. Or anything.” I try to reason with her. “If you had hit a cyclist, there’d be dents. Something, anything to show for it. There’s nothing here.”

  The numbers of the clock in my head whir. Time has sped up now, just to fuck with me. Just to make sure I’ll be late. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I’ve got to be on time.

  Tomorrow I’ve got to play because all of this has to end.

  “We’ve got to go. Go back and make sure,” she pleads. She whispers, “I was real tired this morning. So tired. But then I had to get the groceries. I didn’t think—”

  I look in the car and see the ice cream carton’s edges have softened; pink drips down the side and puddles on the passenger seat. Dad’s going to shit.

  “Get in the van,” I say. “We’ll drive by where you passed the cyclist; then I’ll leave you to get a cab.” I pull out my empty wallet. “You have cash?”

  But she’s back on her hands and knees, staring at the bumper, scraping some bird shit off the chipped chrome. I pull her back up. “C’mon. Don’t do that,” I say, and usher her to Mera’s van, helping her into the passenger side.

  I pull away from the house and head toward Safeway.

  “No,” Mom says. “Costco.”

  “Costco? Since when do you shop at Costco?”

  “I just thought. It’d be easier there. No bicycle paths. But look what I’ve done.” Her hand shakes as she dials her cell phone. “Yes. I’m just wondering if there’s been a hit-and-run reported off Old Clear Creek Road. Yes. Yes, sir. I’ll hold.”

  I snatch the phone from her and hang up. “Jesus Christ, Mom. Don’t do that. Don’t call the cops. You know you can’t call them about that stuff anymore.”

  I take the back roads until we have to turn onto Highway 395. How the hell am I going to explain this to Coach, Luc, the principal? Dad? I look at Mom. She rubs her hands together, wrapping her fingers around her knuckles—rubbing, wrapping, gazing absently out the window.

  It’s just a game. A game with twenty-two guys running around a field after a ball. Why does it have to be everything?

  I cup my hand over hers.

  She wipes a tear from her cheek and swallows as I turn up Old Clear Creek Road, eyes scanning the road for signs of death.

  We drive to Costco, through the parking lot, and down the road again. We stop where Mom saw the cyclist, and we get out of the car looking for signs of any kind of accident. “See? Nothing.”

  She exhales. “Nothing.”

  I won’t look at the time now. I can’t. It’s too late. Everything was wrong from the beginning today anyway.

  Mom wraps her frail arms around me. “Thank you, Jake. Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing. C’mon. I’ll take you home.”

  “You’ll be late,” she sa
ys in a lame attempt at being a mom.

  “I won’t be late.”

  She accepts this as the truth because she needs to get home fast and go to bed. Maybe drink something. I don’t know.

  I mentally organize the afternoon. It’s like trying to piece together the remains of an explosion, putting together the puzzle of shards so it’ll look like the day it was supposed to be.

  What if I can’t play tomorrow? What if the spiders never leave?

  I swallow down the possibility. There’s gotta be a way to play—to get to class—to make it up. I’ll fucking do detention for the rest of the year.

  I just need tomorrow. I need the game.

  When we pull into the driveway, Dad’s car is parked behind Mom’s. He’s walking melted groceries into the house; his uniform is sticky from the ice cream and who knows what else. He turns and sees Mom and me in the van and nods.

  Mom wrings her hands. “We can’t tell him.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Thank you, Jake,” she says, and steps out of the van. “Have a good day at school,” she says. She walks toward the house, wisps of dandelion hair blowing in the wind. I rev the van up and drive away before Dad comes out of the house.

  * * *

  1:23 p.m.

  One twenty-three. Good number. One plus two is three plus three is six divided by two is three. OK. One times two is two plus three is five. OK.

  I wonder since I missed a class if that’s technically being late.

  Fifty-Three Mera’s Song

  Friday, 1:31 p.m.

  One thirty-one. One plus three is four plus one is five. OK.

  I pull into Mera’s parking spot and work my way to the side of the building. Some ROTC kids are walking in, and I slip in the doors behind them.

  Perfect record.

  I walk down the empty hallways. It’s already last block. It’s pretty stupid to be here at all. I should’ve just stayed in Mera’s van until it was time to dress out for practice, but there’s something great about wandering around empty school halls, not having to avoid anybody, not having to hide.

  I peek into a classroom where some substitute is trying to break up a fight. I wander past the drama theater and band room. The horn section of the band is working on a new song—something for the winter concert. I pause. It sounds like “Winter Wonderland.” Kind of.

  I work my way to the auditorium. It’s dark except for a dim stage light. Mera’s sitting, drawing her bow across the strings. I slip in the door and sit in the shadows, leaning my head back against the chair, listening to the repetitive song, how she plays it louder and louder, the same notes, the same melody.

  In the background there’s a CD playing a rhythm—on a drum. The longer Mera plays, the more it feels like the notes she’s playing are trying to break free of the steady background beat. A couple of times it’s almost like she’ll make it, like the notes will change, but then she pauses a few beats and begins again.

  The beat doesn’t change. Her notes don’t change, and no matter how hard she saws on that violin, she’s stuck in the same melody.

  Then there’s this weird, discordant note and a fitful end.

  It’s over.

  The ending leaves me unsettled. As if the melody gave in to the tapping of the drum, the rattle of nails rapping a window.

  Mera sits on the stage, her chin resting on the violin, the CD whirring to a stop, then looks up where I’m sitting, shading her eyes with the palm of her hand. “Fine. Church songs and people. Sperm donor: ‘My Cup Runneth Over.’”

  “Sperm clinic nurse: ‘Kumbaya.’” I pronounce it “Cum-Boy-Yeah.”

  She cracks up. “That’s cheating.”

  “Somebody in this country, somewhere, would pronounce it like that.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I laugh and feel the tension ease out of my shoulders. Mera covers her eyes from the glare of the overhead stage light and looks my direction. “Why are you always hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Whatever, Magic Martin.”

  I rub my sticky palms on my sweatpants. “You hide too,” I finally say.

  She looks up to where I’m sitting.

  “You do. Behind your anger and I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude. Because you do give a shit. We all hide. We’re not so different.”

  “You know what your problem is?” Her voice is tight.

  I don’t. But I sure would like somebody to tell me. We stare at each other across the dark auditorium.

  Mera stands up and moves the music stand across the stage in a horrific screech. She unplugs the CD player and cradles it under her arm, holding her violin with the other hand. She shakes her head and sighs. “Never mind. Anyway, it’s Bolero. By Ravel.”

  “Bolero,” I echo.

  “They say he had frontotemporal dementia when he wrote it, which might explain the fact he wrote a sixteen-minute, one-movement song.” When she talks, her words echo off the auditorium walls, so even though she’s standing in front of me, it sounds like she’s coming from everywhere.

  “Frontotemporal dementia?” I ask.

  “Yeah. His brain was getting all mushy.” She stands, staring at the darkness, then starts flapping her arms up and down. “‘You dare to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!’”

  I stifle a laugh. It’s nice to know somebody’s as weird as me in this world.

  “ ‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!’ ” She puts her hands on her hips. “Okay, Oz, time to come out.”

  I stay seated, wishing she’d just keep playing.

  “Weird-o.” She whistles and leaves the stage just as the bell rings.

  But the music’s still here, in the air, the beat still pounding in my head, keeping the melody trapped inside those short, even notes. I listen until a crackly voice interrupts the drumming: “Jacob Martin.”

  Oh fuck. I’m totally losing it. Totally.

  The voice repeats: “Jacob Martin.” This time clearer.

  And I wonder if crazy people think they can hear God. Or what if I do hear God? And it’s a chick. Like who’s gonna believe that?

  It sounds like thunder followed by heavy breathing: “Jacob Martin, please report to the attendance office.”

  I shake my head and look up. The school intercom is right above me.

  I leave the auditorium, running into half the orchestra. “Hey, man, they’re looking for you,” some kid says.

  “Yeah. Thanks,” I say, pretty relieved I’m not hearing voices, too.

  Yet.

  Maybe I have that brain-mush problem.

  “Hey. Good luck on Saturday!” He waves at me. Friendly. Nice. “You’re totally wick.”

  “Did you just say wick?” some other kid asks.

  “Well, yeah. Wick. You know. As in wicked. But short.”

  “Not as in candle?”

  “C’mon, Craig, you can’t tell me you’ve never heard wick before?”

  And I’m out of earshot before the orchestra determines whether wick is an appropriate abbreviation for wicked, which would mean I’m pretty much amazing.

  Which I’m not.

  Fifty-Nine Reviving the Dead

  Friday, 2:03 p.m.

  Two-oh-three. Two plus three is five. OK.

  I dress out in Mera’s van and watch everybody stream out of the school. When I squint, it looks like everybody’s drowning, heads bobbing up and down in a sea of Carson High blue. And there are no lifeboats.

  I turn my phone on. Seventeen missed calls from Luc. One from Kase.

  Kase. I’ll talk to her tonight. She can tell me about her day. And everything will go back the way it needs to be.

  Nobody says anything when I walk out onto the field. Luc’s seething. Major Univision mode.

  Fuck you, I want to say. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.

  And the closet smells return—damp boots, last year’s wool sweaters, forgotten half-eaten sandwic
hes in coat pockets—all faintly masking the musty animal smell—that sterilized sick-dog veterinarian-clinic smell.

  The whisper of death.

  If I could just go back to the day before that night and do things right, change the order, I wouldn’t be like this.

  The spiders stop spinning on the loom of my brain. That night, stuck in the closet, waiting for the time on my Indiglo to match Mom’s squiggly clock hand, they came to stay. I’d felt the spiders before, but after that night . . . That’s when I figured out how to keep them back—how to count them away.

  It’s like all this time they’ve been waiting for perfection.

  Tomorrow is perfection. Tomorrow I will be normal.

  I catch myself and reverse my thoughts.

  There’s nothing wrong with how I am. Nothing.

  Fuck you.

  The team sits in a circle, stretching to Luc’s count. I strap on my guards and start to warm up, running around the field. I don’t need them.

  They need me.

  They need the magic.

  So when I make the goals, everything will be okay. Life will go back to normal. We’ll win the game and it’ll all be over. The spiders will disappear.

  Then I can just walk away.

  Coach is talking to Principal Vaughn. A bright blue vein throbs in Vaughn’s temple—a neon strip against his blotchy, sun-damaged forehead. Vaughn’s suit jacket and pants flap in the wind. The only thing not moving is his gelled hair.

  The wind has wrapped his purple tie around his neck, and he yanks on it, trying to keep it from sailing behind him.

  I put my head down and run.

  Coach hollers at Luc. “Get the nets out for soccer tennis, Luc! You’ve stretched enough.” His hands are balled in fists at his sides, his face a scrunched raisin.

  Luc catches up to me and says, “Hijo de puta. You’re total smegma. Just one fucking day to be on time. One day to normal out.”

  “Fuck you,” I say under my breath. I am normal.

  Then all I feel is the pounding. Luc becomes his dad—his clenched fists and hate words. The sour smell of his breath and bloodshot eyes.

  I try to push the thoughts away—to stay away from that night—but I can’t breathe with Luc lying on my chest.