Authors: Cammie McGovern
M
ATTHEW KNEW SHE WAS
right. It
had
gotten worse. At first, telling Amy had been such a relief that he got the dizzying impulse to confess every irrational fear he’d ever had. For a while, he made funny stories out of the old ones. (“I used to be afraid of touching money,” he’d told Amy over lunch after he’d bought himself a milk. “I had to pay for my milk with little baggies of coins.”) At some point, though, a surprising aftermath hit. Something fired in his brain, like a seizure of panic. The voice returned angrier and more insistent.
You think I’m a joke? Something to tell that girl about?
It made him stop talking about it completely. If Amy asked how he was doing, he told her he was reading the books and learning a lot. He told her he was doing the exercises in the books, even though he wasn’t. Now he sat across from her in yearbook and thought about telling Amy the whole truth. What this was
really
like. How hard he tried to battle the worries. How he reminded himself, every morning:
think good thoughts.
How he had his own speech composed long before she delivered hers. Only his existed solely inside his head:
Life is good. You are fine. No one will die because of you.
What if he told her about the internal monologue that got delivered inside his head all day long:
It’s just a faucet. It’s off. Life is good. It’s off. Don’t check. You’re fine. Okay. Check it once. Now. It’s off. It’s fine. No one will die or be hurt because of you. You checked the faucet. Amy is good. Amy is fine. Amy will not die or be hurt by that faucet. You checked the faucet. You can check again after Spanish but not before. If you check before you might get sick or Amy might get sick. She probably will get sick. So don’t! Stop! If there’s a quiz in Spanish you can check before the quiz because you haven’t studied for the quiz so you’ll need something to help. There is a quiz. Go! Go fast! Run out like you’re sick with no time for a hall pass. You are sick because you knew there was a quiz and you wanted a reason to come back and check. There. You’re fine. You’re good. No one will die because of you.
Because Amy was looking at him funny, he didn’t say any of this. Instead he said, “It doesn’t help to have you stand up in front of the whole school and announce my problems!”
“I DIDN’T.”
“Yes, you
did
. I’m trying to deal with this. I
am
dealing with this, but it’s
my
thing to deal with, not yours. You think just because you’ve read a book, you know what will work for me better than I do. But this is my life. You don’t know what’s going on inside my head.”
She deleted whatever she was typing and replaced it. “THEN TELL ME.”
His breath went short. “I—I can’t. It’s not that easy.”
“TRY.”
“I don’t want to.”
She pulled up what she was typing before. “IN EIGHTY PERCENT OF PEOPLE WITH OCD, SOME COMBINATION OF MEDICATION, TALK THERAPY, AND BEHAVIOR TRAINING HELPS. YOU’RE NOT DOING ANY OF THOSE.”
He had no answer. She was right. He wasn’t. He felt his breath go shallow, like he might start to hyperventilate.
“DON’T FREAK OUT. WHY DON’T YOU LET ME HELP YOU INSTEAD?”
“How?”
“I COULD GIVE YOU ASSIGNMENTS WITH JUST ENOUGH DIRT AND GERM EXPOSURE TO MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. THEN I’LL MAKE SURE YOU DON’T WASH YOUR HANDS, OR CHECK ANY FAUCETS. I’LL KEEP SCORE AND GIVE YOU MORE POINTS FOR THINGS THAT MAKE YOU REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE.”
He couldn’t look up at her. He talked while looking down at his knees. “I don’t think I’m meant to include other people. I think this is a private thing.”
She typed quickly. “YOU’RE WRONG. YOU’VE BEEN TOO PRIVATE. BEING SECRETIVE MAKES IT HARDER.”
“How would you know?”
“BELIEVE ME, I KNOW.”
“How?”
“GIRLS TRY TO BE PRIVATE ABOUT CERTAIN THINGS, TOO, AND IT DOESN’T WORK.”
“What are girls private about?”
“LOTS OF THINGS.” She typed quickly while he worked to catch his breath. “LIKE PERIOD STAINS. YOU TRY TO BE PRIVATE BUT THEN YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE A BIG, RED STAIN BETWEEN YOUR LEGS AND WHAT YOU REALLY NEED IS
HELP.
”
Why was she telling him this? It made the back of his neck prickle. “Then you wash it away, right?”
“NOT AT SCHOOL. WASHING IT WOULD MAKE YOUR PANTS WET AND WOULD LOOK EVEN WORSE.”
He felt his throat tighten. He couldn’t bear the thought. He shook his head to clear the picture of the bathroom and sinks filled with bloody water.
After this, I can go wash my hands,
he thought.
One quick trip to the bathroom. I’ll wash once because I’ve earned it, sitting through this talk. Or twice, in case the faucets are dirty.
He had long sleeves on, thank goodness. That helped with faucet germs.
If everyone turned faucets on and off with protection, there would be no problem with contamination at all. If the world could see—
Something in his brain stopped the train of thought.
A new thought materialized: Amy had done this on purpose. She’d brought up period stains knowing it would make him anxious. Knowing he’d hear it and want, first thing, to get to a bathroom and clean up. His hands were already damp and sweaty. He couldn’t wipe them on his pants, which were covered in chair germs and bus-seat contamination. The safest place was putting them in his armpits. Hopefully that would quiet his heart as well.
Why would she do this on purpose?
Then he realized she’d already told him.
I’ll give you assignments that will make you uncomfortable.
He was plenty uncomfortable now. His shirt was damp; sweat stains were blooming from his pits down to his waist. “You’re not going to let me go to the bathroom, are you?”
She thought for a bit before she typed. “OF COURSE YOU CAN GO, BUT I’LL ENCOURAGE YOU NOT TO.”
He started to rock.
I’m okay,
he thought.
Amy is okay. No one is going to die or be hurt if I don’t wash my hands. I can do it later, after we leave, and everything will be fine.
That’s when Amy’s computer started talking again. “YOUR OBSESSIONS AREN’T RATIONAL. YOUR FEAR MAY SEEM REAL BUT THE DANGER IS NOT. YOU’RE SAFE. YOU’RE ALL RIGHT. YOU’RE HAVING A PANIC ATTACK, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU NEED TO WASH YOUR HANDS OR DO ANYTHING AT ALL. JUST RIDE IT OUT.”
He couldn’t look at her.
He certainly didn’t want her to reach over and touch him. He couldn’t bear that. He’d fly apart or scream if she pushed this any further. She would let him go to the bathroom, but he couldn’t, not really. This was the therapy he’d been reading about and pretending to do on his own. Confront the fear. Ride through it. Don’t use a compulsion to make it go away. He’d thought about trying it. He’d imagined trying it, but no, he hadn’t actually tried it.
Because it was
hard.
He felt like throwing up. He felt like a flu was starting in his stomach and tearing through his body. Like any minute he’d have period stains on his pants—or worse, poop.
He folded himself farther over and put his forehead between his knees. He took a few breaths. His face went hot and red. His heart pounded. His brain snagged on one thought:
Don’t cry in front of Amy. She’s seen a lot, but that would be too much. Just breathe in and out. Calm down. Find your voice. Say something so she knows you’re not going to cry.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His tongue was dry as if all his saliva had turned into the sweat pouring from his armpits. He couldn’t speak. He coughed, which made the silence worse.
He felt like they’d been there for an hour when her Pathway started up again. “YOUR FEAR MAY SEEM REAL BUT THE DANGER IS NOT. YOU’RE SAFE. YOU’RE ALL RIGHT. YOU’RE HAVING A PANIC ATTACK. YOU DON’T NEED TO WASH YOUR HANDS OR DO ANYTHING AT ALL. JUST RIDE IT OUT.”
He remembered a suggestion he read in one of his books.
Make a tape of your own voice telling your brain to relax. Replace the compulsive thoughts with reassuring ones.
Oh sure,
he’d thought when he read it.
That won’t seem crazy at all.
Now he understood.
Replace one voice with another.
Teach your brain which one to listen to.
After it was all over, he felt light-headed and dizzy. The first words he said to Amy were, “I hate you. I really do.”
“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.”
I
N THE BEGINNING
, A
MY
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?”
“MY MOTHER WAS. I DON’T KNOW IF I WAS SO MAD.”
She finished the story that night on email:
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.
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.”