Total Constant Order

by Crissa-Jean Chappell

  “I know how to get over the fence,” he said.

  I snorted. “Yeah, like I’m going down there.”

  Still, I followed him out through the parking garage.

  We stepped outside and stood on the root-buckled sidewalk. I watched an iguana scuttle through the sawgrass, its tail whipping.

  “Iguanas eat flowers,” Thayer told me.

  The bottom of the Circle was pecked with gaps. Thayer dubbed it “Valley of the Holes.” The archaeologists had left little flags raised like exclamation points. He wedged his feet into the chain-link fence and scurried up.

  “Hurry,” he urged.

  “Are you crazy?”

  He hit the ground. I could hear him breathing hard. Thayer ran to the Circle and, a couple of minutes later, returned with his prize—a flat piece of stone, thin as a splinter.

  “It’s cool,” he said. “Everything’s cool.”

  He climbed the fence again and dangled there, silent. Then he took out the stone, holding it up for me to see.

  “You stole that?” I said. Could I sound any dumber?

  Thayer tossed it to me. “Anyone who holds it must speak their mind. If you don’t, it will heat up and burn a hole through your skin.”

  I didn’t like where this was headed. I threw it back. He caught it one-handed. “Who’s got it now?” I said, trying to laugh.

  “Okay, okay.” He closed his eyes. “I’m thirsty.”

  I laughed for real. “No fair.”

  He pressed the stone between his eyebrows. “I want to see…something I’ve never seen.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Is that possible?”

  “It’s my birthday. I can do whatever I want. That is, if you’re up for the challenge.”

  I looked away. The Circle was amazing. I loved that he shared it with me. “I’m up for it.”

  He smirked. “Nah. You couldn’t show me anything I haven’t already explored.”

  “You better give me that stone.”

  “As you wish,” he said.

  We rode the Metrorail along US 1, from Brickell down to Dadeland South station. Tourists think the Metrorail works like a subway, only aboveground. This is mostly true, except the Metrorail doesn’t take you anywhere convenient. You get off at Bayside mall, but you still have to walk a mile to the entrance, which kind of defeats the purpose of public transportation.

  I decided to bring Thayer to the empty house. My neighborhood was just a short walk from the station, across from a vacant lot, the only one left. Everywhere we looked were McMansions that could’ve dropped from the sky—like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.

  I got off the train and clomped down the stairs. We dodged the honking, swerving sea of cars on South Dixie Highway and raced through the parking lot of Pollo Tropical. Finally we slipped into the gridlike suburban avenues of Pinecrest, all numbers, no names. You can’t even cut through people’s backyards, thanks to the chain-link fences and concrete walls. Not to mention block after block of “gated communities.”

  “So you live around here? Where’s your house?” Thayer asked.

  “I live a few miles south,” I said, not wanting to share more. “Usually I ride my bike to the station.”

  He nodded. “You live in one of these chichi villages?”

  “No. Gated communities suck. They’re like apartment buildings with doormen who block you from walking into the lobby. Instead, they block you from walking on the sidewalk.”

  “It’s the fortress mentality,” Thayer said.

  When we reached the empty house, Thayer hopped over the fence, ignoring the NO TRESPASSING signs. A busted lock dangled from a chain. Thayer stuffed the lock in his bag. What he’d do with it I couldn’t tell.

  I trooped toward the door, which was swung open so wide, you could herd camels through it.

  Thayer whistled. “How did you find this joint?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “Man, I could blow the wall with tags.”

  I lifted the sofa pillow and took out my pills.

  “You might want to get a couple fat Pilot markers,” Thayer said, not paying attention. “Practice tagging. Especially letters. Patterns and fades aren’t as important.”

  I tallied the leftover pills. Lost count, started again.

  “Yo, where’d you get the candy?” he said.

  “It’s mine.”

  He coughed four times. “No shit?”

  I passed him the bottle.

  “Paxil, huh? I forget. How long you been eating it?”

  “Since the beginning of school.”

  “Is this why you’ve been seeing the Bone Lady?”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I call Dr. Calaban.”

  “Oh.” I smiled. “Yeah, she’s got that weird bracelet. Maybe it’s a good luck charm.”

  Thayer rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Really?”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it. Whatever happens isn’t good or bad. It’s just what’s meant to be.” His gaze met mine.

  “It’s taken me a while to figure that out.”

  “For real?” He moved so close, I got a whiff of smoke. There was nothing left to do but spill.

  “Listen. I have this…obsession…with numbers. I need to count things to feel in control. I’ve been doing it all my life, but it’s gotten much worse lately.”

  “You have OCD?” He said it so matter-of-factly.

  “It sounds dumb, right? I thought Paxil would help me get over it. But it made me sick. So I quit. Only it’s like…the drug hasn’t left my body.”

  “No shit?”

  “You think I’d make this up? Besides, I still have the stone.”

  “Left or right pocket?” he said.

  “Um. Left, I think.”

  He slid his hand inside my pocket. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “Wait,” I said. “If you use it too much, the stone loses its power.”

  He stepped back. “Okay. You can keep it for now,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “Thanks for hearing me out.”

  “No problem. It’s good you quit the meds.”

  “I hope so.”

  “But you should’ve tapered off slowly,” he added.

  “Dr. Calaban said I might need antidepressants for the rest of my life. I thought they were training wheels, something to change my perspective so I could deal on my own.”

  “Who says you need to change your perspective? Maybe OCD is like perfect rhythm. It’s in you, right? I think you can learn to roll with it. You don’t need that Paxil garbage banging around your cranium.”

  Just mentioning Paxil made my head buzz.

  I could still feel the heat from Thayer’s fist warming my pocket. I’d told him about my freakishness and he hadn’t run away. What’s more, he seemed to get it. My obsessions belonged to me, for better or worse.

  Once we got back to school, nothing was different. I waited on the bench, looking for Mama’s car. Thayer rolled off with a noisy pack of skaters. I didn’t recognize any of them, so I guessed they went to another school. I waved but he didn’t wave back. I took out the stone, another crumbly hunk of coral for my collection. I pitched it in the road. Two seconds later, I decided to go back and get it.

  Standing there, kicking the pebbles around, I realized that all the rocks looked the same. I couldn’t be sure if I had picked the right one, not that it mattered so much. I grabbed the flattest piece of coral and shoved it in my pocket. Then I remembered to breathe.

  Secrets

  I was tired of keeping secrets.

  I came home from school and sniffed Raid hanging like a cloud in the air, and found the kitchen in shambles. Mama was on “ant patrol” again, ripping the cabinets off their hinges.

  “They’re everywhere,” she muttered. “I can’t seem to get rid of them.”

  She had tried cucumber sprays and ant traps, not to mention every bug repellent known to man. They came back in droves, popping up in m
y cereal bowl, floating in the milk like punctuation marks.

  While putting back the groceries, stacking cans in Mama’s preordained order (soup up front, tuna in the back), I asked, “Do you ever think about Dad?”

  She slid her eyes across the kitchen. Maybe she had been waiting for this question.

  “It’s perfectly normal to miss him,” she said.

  This wasn’t really an answer.

  I said, “Dr. Calaban and I have been talking a lot.”

  “That’s good,” she said, folding a paper bag to reuse later. She kept creasing the corners until they were straight.

  “She thinks I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

  Mama shoved the folded bag behind the refrigerator. “Oh, we all have that to some degree.” She laughed a little.

  “It’s not a joke,” I said.

  She didn’t turn around.

  “This disease is controlling my life and I want it to stop,” I said. “Dr. Calaban says it tends to run in families. It’s, like, genetic or something. Do you know anything about this?”

  “Oh, gosh, Fin,” she said. “Your grandmother used to wash her hands over and over. That was her thing.”

  “Well, my thing is counting,” I said. I didn’t tell her that hand washing was my thing too.

  “You mean, like a magic number?” she asked.

  “Yes.” That was it exactly.

  “It will go away on its own. You have to be strong and say, ‘I won’t let it bother me anymore.’ That’s what I did. I mean, when I was a lot younger.”

  That was it? Just tell it to go away? Did she really know what it felt like, living under an evil spell, following the rules and never feeling in control? I couldn’t believe that she had anything in common with me, despite our DNA.

  “Did you ever try medication?” I asked.

  Mama was rearranging the fridge now, clinking bottles. “That’s not your business,” she said.

  “It is my business. You gave this to me. Now I have to deal with it.”

  “Fin, I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

  “But I do.”

  She slammed the refrigerator door. “My physician gave me belladonna. It’s a homeopathic remedy. He said it would calm my nerves. I didn’t know any better back then.”

  I considered the word “belladonna,” tasting it on my tongue until it made no sense. It sounded like an evil princess in a fairy tale. “Did it help?” I asked.

  “In the beginning, yes. Then I couldn’t stand it,” she said.

  I clenched my fists behind my back. Opened them. Clenched again. “What do you mean, ‘couldn’t stand it’?”

  “I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Detached. Like I was dreaming all the time and couldn’t wake up.”

  I nodded. I knew how that felt, sleeping while awake, everything at a distance.

  “So I stopped taking it. I got really sick, Fin. I laid in bed for days, just shaking. I thought I was going to die. Then I finally told the doctor and he tapered me off slowly. But I will never go back on it again.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Please, Fin. I don’t want to keep talking about it.”

  “When?” I repeated.

  “After you were born,” she said, looking at the floor.

  I shoved my finger in my mouth and chewed the ragged edges. I’d said that Mama had given OCD to me, passing it down through our genes like dirty blond hair and skinny hips. Now it seemed the other way around.

  “Was I a bad baby?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  Mama folded her arms around me, squeezing so hard, my ribs ached. I could feel her pulse thumping out of sync with mine. She smelled the same as always—Ivory soap and cigarettes.

  “You were a delightful baby,” she said. “Your face lit up whenever someone walked into the room. You would stretch out your arms, asking to be held.”

  “I did?” I said. This was hard to believe.

  “But taking care of you was a lot of work. You never wanted to sleep. I wasn’t prepared for it,” she said.

  Even as a baby, I was an insomniac.

  “What about Dad? Did he like taking care of me?”

  Mama smiled. “He was the only one who could get you to dreamland. He would throw a blanket over your head and dance you around the living room, swinging you back and forth and singing those crazy rock songs. I was always afraid that he would drop you. Especially when he pushed you on that swing.”

  The swing in my old backyard was built by my dad, a tire looped with fifty feet of ragged rope. The knots reminded me of cords on Venetian blinds. It scraped my thighs when Dad pushed me to and fro, soaring higher until I imagined flipping over, like a cartoon, and looping around the oak tree.

  My mind spun in circles. I glanced around the kitchen. Mama had a pile of junk on the cabinet—a toy car from Taco Bell, a stack of envelopes I assumed were bills, a paintbrush so clean, I knew she had never used it.

  For someone obsessed with cleaning, I found it strange that she saved everything. It wasn’t much different from my bottle-cap collection. Of course, she had no problem selling my toys at a tag sale.

  I looked outside. There was a green glow over the neighbor’s backyard, spotlit like a stage. Their pool light was a Cyclops eye hovering above nothing. I saw my own reflection in the sliding-glass door. For a moment, I seemed pale and less than solid, like a ghost.

  What He Told Me

  In Dr. Calaban’s office on Friday, I saw Thayer in the waiting room. I felt funny acknowledging him there, but he saluted me.

  “Hey, shortie. What’s shaking?”

  “I wondered if you’d show up,” I blurted.

  He laughed, despite the half-dozen patients glaring at us. Or maybe because of it.

  “I’m getting my prescription refilled,” he said. “I need it to get through today.”

  “Sounds like you’re psychologically hooked on Ritalin,” I told him.

  “Probably,” he agreed. “Hey, there’s something I gotta tell you. I’ll give you a ring later.”

  Give me a ring? In my mind, I saw a diamond with a cartoony sparkle. It took me a minute to realize what he meant.

  When he finally called after dinner, I saw “Pinsky” on the machine and picked it up before Mama got in the way.

  “Thayer?”

  “I knew you were psychic,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I said. I hated talking on the phone.

  “Just thought I’d give you a shout and tell you I’m alive. Well, almost alive. I’m in sinus confusion land. I’ve been taking Benadryl, like, on the hour.”

  “Well, it’s nice to know you weren’t abducted by aliens.”

  “I wish,” he said. “Did you know Benadryl was developed as a sedative for mental patients? Mom uses it to drug the dog when our neighbors set off firecrackers on Cinco de Mayo.”

  I nodded, though nobody could see me nod.

  “I tried shots, decongestants, antihistamines, nasal sprays,” Thayer said.

  In the living room, Mama was watching TV, as usual, calling out answers to a Weather Channel quiz. “What is atmospheric pressure?” She sat in the wicker chair wearing her “South Beach” sweatshirt and jeans. What I really wanted to do was grab her skinny shoulders and tell her to shape up.

  “Fin, did you get that?” she yelled.

  I picked up the phone and snuck outside. Cordless phones are a miracle.

  “Where are you?” Thayer asked.

  I closed my eyes. The rainy smell of the leaves drifted to me. “I’m on the porch.”

  “Let me hear,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “What does it sound like?”

  I lifted the phone and let him listen to the bufo toads croaking in alto.

  Thayer coughed a long, rattling cough. He was already in the middle of some randomness.

  “Okay. So let’s just take tonight, for example, okay? My mom’s all attitudey. She caught me smoking pot in the garage and took away my w
eed, which is actually hers. She’s all up in my face while I’m petting the freaking dog. So I go outside to find Bozo’s Frisbee. And Mom’s all like, ‘Thayer, get in here.’ God, it’s so freaking annoying. She just can’t let me be.”

  I waited for him to finish.

  “Are you there?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  I hugged my knees and felt my heart thumping fast.

  “I got suspended,” Thayer said.

  “Again?”

  “This time it’s bad. Real bad,” he said. “I got caught writing up my desk. Then smartass Sharon Lubbitz is like, ‘That looks like the graffiti in the girls’ bathroom,’ as if everyone hadn’t already seen it. So basically I’m screwed on many levels.”

  “How many?”

  “Suspension is the least of my problems. My mom’s talking military school. And though camouflage is my color, I ain’t going.”

  I was quiet for a minute. Then I opened my mouth.

  “I could take the blame. I mean, Sharon’s two-faced buddies have caught me doing it.”

  “Whoa, shortie. You’d front for me? That’s mad sweet. But I’ve got another plan. I’m getting out of here.”

  I squeezed tighter. He had to be joking. So I joked back.

  “Russia is recruiting volunteers to Mars?”

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “Do you know where I want to go?”

  “No clue.”

  “To New York. That’s where my gram lives. Up there, I could finally get something going with my art.”

  “You mean, like art school?”

  “No. I’m going to hook up with a crew and tag all the trains in Brooklyn. School blows. Going to school for art would tell me that, number one, I’m not original, and number two, I’m just a toy. Bottom line, it would be like going to school for breathing.”

  I thought I was going deaf. “New York is really far away,” I said.

  “I’ll hitchhike. Or take a bus. Hell, I could be there in two days.” I heard him suck in a raggedy breath. “I’d give anything to be out of school and on my way to NYC.”