Laura Monn
Compulsivity by Laura Monn
“Why do you always have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Cara, every time we walk anywhere, you look back at your house a million times—like you’re checking to see that it’s still there.”
“I only look back four times,” I grumble quietly. “Why do you care?”
“It’s just weird. And today is our first day of high school,” Jenny whines, stopping our walk to the bus stop to look me in the eye. I hate when people look at me directly in the eye; it’s so…menacing. I realize we aren’t going anywhere until I meet Jenny’s gaze. I clench my hands, nails to palm, four times and then look up. Jenny and I have been best friends and next door neighbors for our entire lives. I often wonder if we would be friends if we weren’t neighbors and didn’t have the same birthday—“Are you listening to me? It’s just that, you’re… weird sometimes. Like, I don’t get you.”—my guess is no.
THE FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL has been marked on Jenny’s flowered calendar in pink pen for six months and today, she is finally realizing her dream: to go to high school and become popular. Of course, we have been discussing for months how our popularity will be achieved, but we both know that my “weirdness” will hold me back from achieving “our” goal. Jenny has plead with me countless times to be more “normal” and stop touching “everything, like, all the time” but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t touch everything, and not all the time. I touch certain things (like the now worn patch on the back of the couch, the hem of my curtain, and light switches) but not others (like wet towels, glasses just out of the dishwasher, and washed silk). Besides, touching things isn’t nearly as important as counting things.
I know not everyone has the quirks that I do, but they’re just something l have to do everyday, all the time. I don’t walk on anthills because how would you like it if someone squashed your home just because they could? I always have to know where a light switch is in a room or I panic. I memorize other drivers’ license plates in case on the news there’s a robbery and I saw the getaway car. My closet is in color order from left to right and the hangers are all one finger apart. I alphabetize my CDs by artist. I constantly count everything around me—magazines on the table, letters in the mail, vowels on signs, desks in a classroom, cars at an intersection. These are the things I do, things I have been doing for as long as I can remember, but they aren’t habits that hurt anyone. And I don’t think I’m weird…just a little different.
“You’re going to be, like, normal today, right?” Jenny implores, emphasizing her key word (Jenny would be a great kindergarten teacher).
“For heaven’s sake, I’m not abnormal! Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you on the most important day of your life.” Jenny looks like she might emphasize her point to me once more, just for clarification, but luckily the bus pulls up and we are really about to go to high school. I glance back at my house once more, and board the bus.
I know this route well…only seven stoplights, three right turns, two left turns and we will be there. I check my bag once more, just to make sure I have all five notebooks, four pens, three highlighters, two pencils and one bottle of white-out. That verified, I glance at my watch (which I had already synchronized to school time at orientation last week) and am reassured that we are on time. Well, as long as we made the light on Coulter Lane. I look over at Jenny, who is in turn looking into a mirror, gazing at her blonde took-forty-five-minutes-to-look-like-she-just-got-out-of-bed hair and glaring at a would-be zit, daring it to ruin her FIRST DAY.
Deep breath, Cara. Only one more stoplight. It will be okay. It’s just high school—a necessary evil. As we pull up to the entrance, I assess my outfit once more. I didn’t want to stand out, but I didn’t want to look like it was just any other day. The first day was important to me, too, after all. Okay, jeans, pink Lacoste t-shirt (“everyone will be wearing Lacoste in HIGH SCHOOL”), my hair didn’t freak out this morning, so it’s looking okay…good. You can do this, Cara.
I avoid the anthills on the sidewalk, trailing Jenny who is beaming and scanning the crowd for which football player will whisk her off her feet and give her all the popularity she desires. Hm, seven bushes on one side of the main entrance and six on the other…who should I contact about that oversight?
“Cara! Come on, I told Alison and Katie we’d meet them before our first class!”
Snapped out of my stupor, I join Jenny and suddenly a boy flies by on a red bike right in front of us, making me trip and grab onto Jenny to avoid falling on my face. But Jenny reflexes, and I fall anyway.
“Oh my God, Cara, are you okay? That is so embarrassing!”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say, pulling myself up and trying to assess the crowd and see if anyone is laughing at the freshman who just fell on her way into school. A couple people are looking and smirking, and I panic a little. There are four red cars in the first row of the parking lot, the Lakeview High School Entrance sign has 10 vowels in it, there’s a girl going in the front door wearing the same shirt as me but it’s green…
“Cara, stop spacing out! We’re going to find him and make him apologize!” Jenny brings me back to the task at hand of searching out the boy on the bike. “I think he went inside,” she says more to herself than me. She is really on a mission now, like a hunter on the savannah, looking through the antelope herd to see her real prey—the elusive tiger.
We plunge through the throng of antelopes and into the building where we find ourselves face to face with the boy with the red bike, who is arranging chairs around a deserted table.
“Hi,” says Jenny, ‘You just almost killed my friend on our way into school.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I was running late. I’m Brian. Are you two freshmen?”
“Yes, we are, Brian. I’m Jenny, and this is Cara,” as Jenny introduces us I can tell that she, like I, realizes Brian’s pretty cute; cute enough to forgive for nearly killing me. I can also tell that her anger is melting the more she realizes how cute he is and is now putting on her flirty face. I’m trying not to stare at Brian, who is becomes engrossed in conversation with Jenny about classes and teachers. I count the number of kids passing instead, because I know that Jenny is in control of this situation. Ten, eleven, twelve wearing the same shoes as ten, thirteen… “Um, Cara, are you excited for high school, too?” Brian asks, snapping me out of my trance.
“Oh, sure, yeah it should be fun” I stammer, meeting meet his eyes, briefly, and then mumble something to Jenny about having to get to homeroom.
“Right, that school thing,” Brian says with a chuckle. “I’ll see you around.”
“Oh definitely, Brian,” Jenny coos as he departs. “Oh my God,” she squeals to me when he’s a safe distance away. “He is so cute! And he’s a sophomore—he’s, like, older than us! I’m so glad we met him!”
“Yeah, I’m really glad he almost killed me, too.”
“Oh, that’s no big deal anymore,” says Jenny, tossing her hair and the rest of her anger she had had just a few minutes ago.
Perfectly, the bell rings and Jenny and I rush off to our FIRST DAY. On the way to my homeroom, I try and think of possible conversations I could have instigated with Brian—why had I let Jenny get him? Was it just natural she would always win? Unfortunately, it is only 87 steps to my homeroom, so I arrive without an answer. After locating and touching the room’s light switch unnoticed, I find a seat.
The other students, 12 of them, trickle in. There are six boys and six girls. Well, I am the seventh girl, which makes 13 students in Ms. Johansen’s homeroom. Thirteen is a good number because the numbers added together, one and three, are four and four is my safe number. This will be okay. I may have made a fool of myself already this morning, but it will be okay. High school will be okay because I can get to the number four in my homeroom and the safe number is always safe.
Safety aside, I still feel anxious throughout the day, especially after I drop a beaker in Chemistry. By my last class, my palms are red with nail marks because I have been clenching them so much. I saw Jenny at lunch, and that was reassuring, but I have mostly been on my own, as I am in the advanced classes with mostly upperclassmen (“Think of all the cute older boys you’ll meet!” Jenny consoles). As I walk to my last class, Calculus, I trail my hand along the wall in the hallway, lifting for the doorways and trying to count how many days there are until winter break.
I walk into the room, and there he is: Brian. He is lining the desks into neat rows. As I go to the light switch, I summon all my courage.
“Hey,” I eek.
“Oh, hey,” he replies “How’s the first day going?” he asks, still arranging the desks into what appears to be four rows of five desks.
“Good, and your day?” I reply, rubbing the light switch as indiscreetly as possible and then hovering by the desks, unsure if he’s done arranging them.
“Oh, same old. You can sit if you want, I just wanted to clean them up a little, you know? I like stuff a certain way.”
“I understand.”
Brian looks at me a little skeptically but moves to the chalk board where he moves the three erasers to one side and spaces them equally before doing the same with the five pieces of chalk on the other side. When the other students start to come in, he stops with the chalk and erasers and sits down at the desk next to me.
I spend the next fifty minutes in ecstasy, with Brian sitting next to me. Then he turns to me and busts my bubble by asking, “So you and Jenny are good friends?”
“Jenny? Yeah, we’ve known each other for our entire lives.”
“She seems really…nice.”
We talk about Jenny until class is over. “I guess I’ll see you around,” I say to Brian, trying to not betray my disappointment that he is so fascinated by Jenny.
“Yeah, good luck with the homework.”
He flashes me his gorgeous smile and then he leaves, turning the handle on the wall-mounted pencil sharpener down as he exits.
“So how was Calculus?” Jenny asks.
“Not so bad. Brian is in my class.”
“Cute Brian? You’re so lucky!”
“I guess.”
The first week flies by. Brian still sits by me in Calculus and I start to see him around more. He’s usually with a group of guys, and I see him arranging chairs and counting the lead in his mechanical pencil and it makes me wonder if he does these things for the same reasons I do. I would mention something about this commonality, but he still mostly wants to talk about Jenny, so I leave it be. I can take a hint that he’s more interested in her than my compulsive nature.
In the middle of the next week at lunch, Jenny is practically hysterical with the news that there’s going to be a Fall Ball that weekend and that we have to find dates. “I think I should ask Brian!” she exclaims, making me practically choke on my sandwich.
“B-Brian?” I stammer.
“Yeah, he’s so cute. And we would look so cute together at the Fall Ball! He’s in your Calc class, right? Will you ask him if he’s going with anyone yet?” she asks excitedly. Then she trails off, talking to herself, “If he’s not available, I suppose I can see if Charlie is available, or Adam…hmm.”
On the 164 steps to Calculus, I am not excited at all at the prospect of getting Brian and Jenny together. She asked me to ask him, so I have to because she’s my best friend. As I trail my hand along the wall I contemplate what I should do and decide that I may as well just do as she asked and get it over with.
I am early, as usual, and so is Brian, arranging the desks.
“Hey, Brian.”
“Hey, Cara, how are you?”
“Fine, um…” I try to gather my courage as I clench my palms. “Have you, um, heard about the Fall Ball?”
“Yeah, it’s this weekend, right?”
“Friday I think. Are you going?”
Brian moves to the chalk board, and moves the erasers to their side. “I think so, I don’t have a date yet though.”
“Really? That’s great. I mean, I’m surprised you don’t have a date,” this is going downhill fast. Luckily, he chuckles. Then he turns and looks at me seriously,
“Do you want to go with me?”
“M-me?” I am going to faint.
“Isn’t that what you’re trying to ask me?”
“Well, I mean, I’d love to go with you, but Jenny actually asked me to ask you if you were available because I think she wants to go with you.”
“Jenny?”
“Yeah, I mean, you ask about her a lot, so I thought you liked her.”
“You thought I liked Jenny?”
“Don’t you?”
“She’s nice, but not really my type.”
“Oh.”
“That was just small talk because Jenny is pretty much all that I know about you. And that you’re preoccupied with the light switch.”
“I don’t think someone who arranges desks can really talk,” I retort, surprised at my own quickness. Brian laughs and walks across the room to where I’m standing.
“So do you want to go with me? We can arrange chairs and count people all night.”
“How did you know I counted people?”
“Lucky guess,” he replied, moving toward me. “So, do I have a date?”
“Looks like it.”
And he flashed me that big gorgeous smile for exactly five seconds.