One More Little Problem

by Vanessa Curtis

  ‘Hmm,’ said Stella. ‘The thing is, Zelah, that none of the things happening in your house should really be your responsibility at all. I’m not surprised that your rituals are getting worse.’

  After a bit more of her looking doubtful and me pleading that everything at home would soon be normal again (ha!) she let me go home on the condition that I ring her up if it all gets too much.

  Like I’m going to do that. I might as well just ring social services direct and volunteer myself as a homeless foster child.

  ‘It’s fine. It’ll be fine,’ I said as I backed out of her office and made a run for the bus.

  Saturday dawns all wet and horrid.

  Great. I won’t even be able to wear my favourite silver flip-flops unless I want to make weird squelching noises all around Shepherd’s Bush.

  I’m up in the bathroom doing some extra rituals to prepare.

  I turn the taps with a tissue wedged between the cold metal and my warm hand.

  I put a piece of paper on the toilet seat before I sit on it.

  If I forget to wash my hands at any time I have to do each hand an extra thirty times, with the nailbrush and a load of white soap.

  The soap has to be a brand new fresh bar and not an old slimy brown one.

  All my pocket money (when Dad remembers to give it to me) has been spent on soaps in cellophane wrappers over the last few weeks.

  Other kids are going to the cinema or lying in the park eating ice creams or hanging around clothes shops with their friends or going to Disney Land or going up to London by train to see a show.

  And me?

  I’m sitting on the toilet trying not to touch it with any bits of my skin and I’m worried about going on a date with a strange boy who could turn out to be some creepy old man for all I know and my ex-best friend probably pities me because I’ve made such a mess of things and she hates my other sort-of-friend Caro, who hates her, and she regards Dad as a bit of a weirdo and I’m not sure Dad’s all that happy in his new job and Sol’s somewhere out there in the big wide world and I’m all unsure what to do about Alessandro and . . . and . . .

  ‘OCD!’

  Caro is banging on the bathroom door. Not again.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t produced more blood,’ I shout. ‘If you have then you’ll just have to drown in it. I am not coming out until I am ready.’

  ‘Your little friend Fanny is here!’ she yells.

  Fran’s nearly an hour early.

  Great.

  ‘Make her some tea,’ I yell. ‘And be NICE.’

  I hear Caro’s evil little chuckle and my heart sinks further towards the bottom of the (very clean) toilet bowl.

  How on earth do I get into these situations?

  I dry off with a nice clean white towel and do fifty jumps on the bathroom mat.

  By the time I’ve finished scrubbing my face, brushing my hair and cleaning my teeth Caro has been up twice to complain.

  ‘Jeez, OCD,’ she hisses through the bathroom door. ‘Can’t your sodding rituals wait? I’m stuck downstairs with Frigid Fanny.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I hiss back.

  I need to finish off by cleaning my teeth with my left hand. Don’t ask me why. I’ve already done them with my right, but somehow my brain is telling me that I can’t say I’ve completed my rituals until I’ve done them with the left hand too.

  Another weird moment in the life of Zelah Green.

  When I get downstairs I ban Caro from following me upstairs with Fran by bribing her with money.

  Then Fran and I tip all the contents of my wardrobe on to the bed and Fran starts rifling through them with a frown on her smooth brown forehead.

  ‘Zelah, you like, so need to update your capsule wardrobe,’ she says.

  I ignore the insult and allow her to hold a long red flippy skirt in front of me and team it up with a white vest top.

  ‘Yeah, that’s nice,’ she says. ‘Kind of girly but casual.’

  My heart does somersaults of guilt ’cos Dad bought me that skirt last year and it’s my favourite and now I’m lying to Dad about where I’m going today.

  Dad looked a bit suspicious when Fran said that we were going to the cinema and then out for pizza.

  ‘You two girls seem to be getting on very well again,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you have some major bust-up a few weeks back? Didn’t I hear you say, Zelah, that you’d rather plunge your hands into an un-flushed toilet than ever clap eyes on Fran again?’

  I went puce with embarrassment.

  Dad’s not great at being tactful.

  Fran got her revenge straight away. She looked him right in the eye – she’s a fabulous liar – and said, ‘Yeah, but I’ve forgiven Zelah now. After all, she does have a lot to put up with.’

  I felt like murdering her when she said this.

  Her forgive ME?

  It wasn’t me who confessed that rituals made her feel ill.

  Or me who said that everyone at school thought I was a weirdo.

  But Dad seemed to swallow the lie so I bit my tongue and said nothing.

  Fran sits me in front of the mirror and plugs in her portable hair straighteners.

  ‘There,’ she says, smoothing my strands of black frizz into something sleeker and less wiry.

  I look at her reflection. She’s biting her lip with concentration as she coaxes and twists my black locks.

  ‘Fran,’ I say. ‘Why are you doing this? I mean – you made it really clear at Forest Hill what you thought about my rituals and everything.’

  Fran continues her careful straightening of my hair but her eye catches mine for a moment in the mirror.

  She finishes what she’s doing and unplugs the straighteners.

  ‘Well, actually,’ she says, running a brush through my new smooth hair, ‘I’ve kind of – missed you. A bit.’

  We both turn the colour of purple grapes and Fran turns round and begins to sort through my flip-flop collection.

  ‘I’ve missed you too,’ I say. I busy myself applying lipgloss with a small sticky brush. ‘In fact, I’ve got a brand new word for you.’

  I always used to come up with a ‘word of the day’ for Fran when we were friends before.

  Fran turns round from the wardrobe.

  ‘Yeah?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Renaissance,’ I say. ‘It means you can do loads of different creative things.’

  We exchange cautious smiles.

  It’s a start.

  *

  By the time I’ve finished getting ready it’s nearly time to leave for the tube.

  I stand in front of the mirror.

  ‘Not bad,’ I say. In fact I look pretty good.

  I’m wearing a white vest top, the long red skirt, brown boots, and Fran has lent me her cut-off denim jacket to put over the top.

  I hook a pair of long red sparkly earrings through my ears and spray a nice new clean can of shine spray all over my sleek hair.

  ‘You look really nice, Zelah,’ says Fran in a soft voice.

  I smile, although I’m a bit worried about my red cheeks.

  Maybe scrubbing my face wasn’t such a good idea. Like I have any control over it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  We shout goodbye to Caro and Dad and head off to the bus stop.

  This Marky boy better be good.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘He’s not coming,’ says Fran.

  We’ve been standing under her pink sparkly umbrella outside the Central Line tube station for about fifteen minutes and there’s no sign of Marky.

  ‘Hmm?’ I say in a distracted fashion.

  I’ve drifted off into a sort of sad dream where I’m back with Sol.

  Sol.

  My scowling, olive-skinned First Love.

  So far, anyway. I realise that life is quite long and I might have other boyfriends one day.

  But I miss him. He made me feel small and girlie and quite normal, like I didn’t really have OCD.
r />   How is it possible to miss someone you only knew for a few weeks?

  The rain plops all over my feet and my denim jacket is damp at the sleeves.

  People stream out of the tube station and huddle under umbrellas and deep inside coats.

  It’s not even like a real summer.

  ‘Let’s just go home,’ I say to Fran. ‘I think I’d rather watch Caro slice up her arms than stand here waiting for some bloke with a stupid “y” on the end of his name to turn up. Bet that wasn’t even his real photo.’

  There’s a sort of coughing muttering noise behind me and I turn around to find a tall, handsome fair-haired boy gazing down at Fran.

  ‘Zelah?’ he says. ‘Hi! I’m Marky.’

  Fran stares up at this vision of gorgeousness with a smile beginning to spread over her face.

  ‘She’s not Zelah,’ I say. ‘I am. And feel free to look really disappointed.’

  Marky has fantastic manners.

  He turns away from Fran and holds out a hand to me.

  Yikes. Major Germ Alert.

  ‘She doesn’t do handshaking,’ says Fran, helpful as ever. ‘She’s got OCD.’

  Nice one, Fran. Why not just get a huge flaming bomb and throw it into the middle of where we’re standing?

  Marky’s grin fades just a little bit but he continues to smile down at me.

  ‘OC what?’ he says. ‘Sorry. Don’t know what that means.’

  I want to say a lot of things at that moment.

  I want to say, ‘It means that my life is rubbish. It means that I can’t even hug my own dad. It means that Heather, my next best thing to a mum, has to air-kiss me. It means that I have to put sheets of paper on my chairs before my bottom touches their germ-encrusted cushions. It means that I spend a lot of time at the day care centre in the hospital. It means that I ended up in a weird home in Dorset where I met a bloke I really like but who’s vanished off the face of the planet.’

  But of course I don’t say that ’cos Marky is still looking at me with that puzzled look in his blue eyes and Fran is still gazing at him with a faint flush on her smooth cheeks.

  ‘Fran,’ I say. ‘Thanks for coming with. I’ll be OK now. I’ll text you later. OK?’

  Fran gives Marky one last, lingering look and then backs away to the bus stop.

  ‘Kebab?’ I say. I don’t even like kebabs but the area where we’re standing has about fifteen kebab shops all in a line and I don’t want to go too far – I just want to get this horrid moment over as soon as possible so that I can go home and ‘amuse’ myself with Dad and Caro.

  Marky glances up at the sign creaking back and forth over our head.

  There’s a faded drawing of a big brown kebab on it and a long streak of pigeon shit splattered across the front.

  It says Ali’s Kebabs. Hot, tasty food while you wait.

  I don’t understand how you’d get the food without waiting, but somehow it’s just another confusing part of my crazy life.

  ‘Lovely,’ Marky says, opening the door for me.

  A blast of hot, greasy, animal-entrails air sucks us both inside.

  We sit in the corner next to two bald old men in leather waistcoats who are smoking something dodgy from a large glass bowl with a winding red tube coming out of it.

  ‘I thought Shepherd’s Bush was all full of television people and trendy clothes markets?’ I say before I can stop myself.

  ‘This bit isn’t,’ says Marky. ‘But I live in the other bit. I’ve only come here because this is where you suggested that we meet.’

  Fair enough.

  ‘So,’ says Marky when we’re settled with two slimy kebabs flopping out of some limp pitta bread along with tiny shreds of wilted lettuce and watery tomato.

  ‘Tell me what this OC thing is, then.’

  I wrap my hand in a tissue so that I can pick up the horrid meat and to give myself a few extra seconds to work out a reply.

  I don’t know how to put it. The face opposite me isn’t a face that will understand scrubbing and jumping and blood and counting and grease phobias and ducking to avoid bonfires.

  The face opposite me kind of goes with healthy outdoor pursuits like tennis and swimming and sailing and horse riding.

  Marky is VERY handsome. So handsome in fact that he doesn’t look real.

  I don’t feel anything when I stare at him. Nothing at all. Well – perhaps a vague curiosity to know what product he uses on his skin ’cos it’s amazing. But other than that, nothing.

  I pick at my vile food for a moment and then I look him straight in the eye.

  ‘It’s kind of a control thing,’ I say. ‘Like if I don’t do certain things, then other bad things might happen.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ says Marky, squirting what looks like the thick dark blood of a wild boar into his kebab and eating it with a pained expression on his ultra-tanned face.

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Scrubbing is one of the things. I scrub my face thirty-one times on each cheek in the morning and at bedtime and sometimes in the middle of the day if I’m stressed.’

  ‘OK . . .’ says Marky in a calm, polite sort of way but a hint of doubt has crept into his posh voice. ‘So like it’s an obsession thing?’

  Now we’re getting somewhere.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It stands for “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”.’

  Marky lights up like Oxford Street at Christmas when I say this.

  ‘Hey, David Beckham’s got that!’ he says. He looks around in amazement as if expecting to see his football hero skulking in the corner of a kebab shop and dissecting a rank piece of dead meat into neat pieces. ‘That’s really cool, Zelah!’ he says, biting with vigour into his kebab and ignoring the squirt of red ketchup that flies across the table and lands by my plate.

  ‘Could you, like, mop that up, please?’ I say. ‘Or else I’m going to have to leave the table. That’s another part of OCD. I don’t like dirt.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Marky. He leans over and swipes the offending sauce away with a tissue and lobs it into a bin that’s about half the shop away. ‘Goal!’ he shouts.

  Honestly.

  ‘So do you do that thing with the labels?’ he continues. ‘Only I was reading about how David Beckham has to line up all the cans in his cupboard so that they’re facing the same way.’

  ‘No, I’m not THAT bad,’ I say, before I can stop myself. Actually I AM that bad – one glimpse into my ordered wardrobe would tell you that – but I don’t line up the cans in our cupboard.

  And even if I wanted to I couldn’t.

  Dad never buys any groceries so the only things in our food cupboard are stale Pot Noodles, some ancient orange-coloured stock cubes and a jar of revolting poo-smelling gravy granules.

  I couldn’t touch them for fear of Germ Alert anyway so I’m never going to get to arrange all the labels to face forward.

  Marky has finished his kebab and is staring at me with new fascination.

  I’m trying to see my wristwatch under the table but it’s too dark and poky in the kebab shop. All I can see is a bit of Marky’s bony brown leg contrasting against his white tennis shorts.

  He’s still staring at me like I’m a rare hothouse plant stuck under a glass dome.

  It’s making me all fidgety and restless.

  I don’t want to go out with this boy so that he can show off to all his mates that he knows somebody who suffers from David Beckham Disease.

  I want somebody to love me for being me. Like Sol did. Or at least, if he didn’t love me, he really, really liked me.

  I want to be home with Dad and his vegetable patch.

  Or even Caro. Gawd.

  But at least Caro accepts me for who I am, OCD and all.

  Marky is making a show of paying the bill for us both and sharing a hearty laugh with the kebab shop owner.

  ‘Thanks, that was lovely,’ I lie. I can already feel chewed-up bits of rancid lamb coming up into my mouth again.

  ‘So – good luck with the
dating,’ I add as I make a rush for the door.

  Marky pants along behind me as I leg it to the bus stop.

  ‘Don’t you want to see me again?’ he says.

  I can tell by this that he’s not used to girls turning him down.

  ‘I’m sure my friend Fran would love to,’ I say. ‘But I don’t think that you and I are destined to be together.’

  ‘Well, I’ll wait with you until the bus comes,’ he says, gallant to the last.

  I roll my eyes when he can’t see.

  There’s really no reason for him to hang about waiting with me.

  ‘Marky’ I say, all innocent. ‘Why’ve you got a “y” on the end of your name?’

  Marky smiles.

  ‘It’s just a nickname,’ he says. ‘When I was little my mother used to call me that. It kind of stuck.’

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ I say. ‘But I find it really annoying. What’s wrong with just “Mark”?’

  At that moment the bus sails into view and nearly knocks us off the kerb.

  ‘I guess I just like to be a bit different,’ says Marky as I join the queue. ‘Like you, Zelah. Your name’s unusual. And you’re certainly a bit different to most girls. But that’s good, isn’t it? I mean – being a bit different to everyone else.’

  I reflect on this as I take my seat and wave Marky goodbye.

  No, I think as the bus weaves its way back towards Acton.

  I want to be just the same as everyone else.

  Chapter Sixteen

  After the date with Marky I get several more emails in the mysortaspace.com inbox but most of them seem to be from nutters and I’m considering closing down the account just to protect myself from further dating torture.

  There’s one from a boy called Stephen who sounds quite nice but then sends me his photo on email and he looks as if he might be about six so I bin that one straight away.

  Then there’s another one from a boy called Sim who sounds really keen and likes all the same bands I do, only then he sends through his photograph and he looks about twenty-eight so I email back and mention that I’m training to be a policewoman when I leave school and it goes dead quiet after that.

  And then there’s someone who’s obviously got a bit confused ’cos they turn out to be a GIRL.