Compulsion

by Heidi Ayarbe

  But they’re back.

  Three The Script

  Wednesday, 7:41 p.m.

  Seven forty-one. Seven plus four is eleven plus one is twelve divided by four is three. OK.

  Light spills from the kitchen window onto our front lawn. I rub the flamingo’s beak and work my way up the front porch. The door’s unlocked. Mom’s washing dishes. Kasey’s watching TV and jumps up when I walk in the door.

  “Jacob?” Dad says, coming in from the garage on cue, coveralls coated with a film of sawdust. It’s like he has some freak sonic hearing. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

  I look down at my phone. Eight missed calls.

  I swallow. “Dad, I swear, I didn’t even see the calls until now.” I deliberately turn away from the grandfather clock and try to focus, but I can hear it. I can hear the tick and the motion of the pendulum, back and forth, back and forth.

  Just focus.

  I know, though, if I can work out the numbers, the numbing pain will go away and I’ll be able to hear what Dad has to say. The world will become clear again. So I turn, slightly, and glance at the time.

  7:43

  Seven forty-three. Seven plus four is eleven minus three is eight plus seven is fifteen minus three is twelve divided by three is four. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  7:44

  Seven forty-four. Seven minus four is three plus four is seven. OK.

  Kasey nudges me and pushes me to face Dad, the clock just out of sight. Mom comes out of the kitchen and leans against the doorframe. Kasey sits in the chair in front of me, like that will shield me from one of Dad’s sermons.

  I can hear myself saying, “I’m sorry. I went out with Luc and the guys after practice. To In-N-Out. It’s the team tradition since we won a few years ago. I just forgot it was today, forgot to call.”

  “With what money?” Dad asks.

  “I had a few bucks. And I borrowed a little to cover Tanya’s dinner too.” And Luc’s. And Amy’s. Christ.

  “From whom?”

  “We’re just short five or six bucks.” I can tell from the way his eyes have that glazed-over look he’s a step from going Jack Torrance on me.

  “And how much do you have left?”

  I pull out the bills. “Like thirty-five?”

  “I can give you some money, Jake,” Kasey offers.

  “Kasey, stay out of this.” Dad says.

  Kasey shrinks in her chair and crosses her arms in front of her.

  “It’s just a few dollars. And it’s not like I can be the only guy that doesn’t invite a chick out—” I pause and rub my temples, trying to push the gray away just so I can get through this conversation. “I’ll take care of it, okay? After soccer season, I’ll get a job.”

  “They waited. They were expecting you to pick the order up.”

  “I’ll pick it up tomorrow. After school.”

  “When I’m doing double shifts, I expect you to pull your weight here. I don’t feel like I’m asking too much of you, Jacob. One errand to pick up the meat so we don’t have to eat tuna fish every night.” Dad’s doing that clench-jaw thing that makes him look like he stepped right out of a Testosterone Nation infomercial.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  “I’ll get it tomorrow. After practice.”

  “Mr. Hartman said they’re expecting a shipment in the morning. Somebody will be there by six thirty.”

  I stare at the crisp bills in my hand, creased perfectly down the middle. “Do you, um, have—” I inhale and immediately regret it. My clothes, the money, my hair—everything smells like fast-food restaurant grease.

  “He’ll give us credit until the end of the month.”

  “After this weekend, after the game, everything will be taken care of.” My voice sounds clear, like what I’m saying really matters.

  That stops Dad from pawning my soccer gear to pay for our Hartman Family Meat Pack Number Five with a turhamken sampler included.

  The game.

  Scouts. Scholarships. Future.

  That’s something he wants more than me. A future. I hate playing that card, but tonight I just need to get to my room. Tomorrow I’ll figure out how to make up for it—for being the total asshole son. Tomorrow I won’t screw up.

  “UCLA, Maryland,” the school names slip off my tongue. My thoughts come slowly through the heavy fog. I have to choose my words carefully. And I wonder if anybody’s head ever got so full of lies, it just snapped off and rolled away. It’s so easy to lie, to pretend everything is okay when the only things that matter to me right now are getting to my room; the numbers; getting down the clocks; clearing up the fucking mess in my mind.

  My voice sounds calm.

  I know the script. “Saturday everything will work out with the game, winning our third championship. My grades are good enough. . . .”

  Mom sighs and squeezes Dad’s shoulder. Her hands are chapped, fingernails gnawed to nothing. Dad reaches up to her for a second, but a shadow crosses his eyes and his hand falls lamely at his side.

  Mom doesn’t notice and comes to me, wrapping me in her frail arms, saying, “Get some rest. You’ll need it. Don’t worry about the groceries. I can help take care of it too.” Dark shadows circle her bloodshot eyes, and she walks upstairs, pausing at the entryway, staring at the car keys that jangle in her hand. When Mom gets like this, it’s like watching a stone pelt glass. At first there’s a slight imperfection, but soon the whole thing is covered with cracks until the glass shatters into jewel-size pieces. Since Mom lost her job and can’t get another one, Dad’s working overtime and a half. So Kase and I are the ones stuck picking up and gluing the pieces back together.

  Not this week, Mom. Just keep it together this week, I think, and push back my anger. I turn to Dad, but he looks away, his jaw clenched. He’s checked out. “I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Dad says. He rubs his temples, nods, and heads to the garage. We hear the roar of the sander as it comes to life. The high-pitched shrill gives way to a dull hum as it slides across the wood. Tiny dust particles of winter-smelling pine float through the air.

  I swallow the ball of what ifs that has formed in the back of my throat. What if I hadn’t been able to control the spiders tonight at In-N-Out?

  What if I’d said more crazy shit out loud?

  I’ll call Luc before bed.

  No.

  That’s even crazier—retracing thoughts and conversation. It’s like unraveling the knotted webs in my brain.

  Impossible.

  What if . . .

  Thousands of spider legs scratch the inside of my brain like they’re burrowing holes into my cranium. Blinding pain.

  I wait for the auras and hope to get to my room to get the numbers organized. I can’t get a migraine today. Not today. Not this week. I think about the game, the team; the magic; the numbers; the time.

  Once I get the numbers worked out, I can see the real world. It’s not so confusing anymore. They keep things in order.

  Our team wins because of them. Mom, Dad, and Kasey are safe because of them. Maybe Luc and my other friends are safe too. Because of the numbers.

  Because I have the magic.

  Five Aberration

  Wednesday, 8:05 p.m.

  Eight-oh-five. Eight plus five is thirteen. OK.

  Kase trails after me with three sandwiches and a glass of milk that teeters on the edge of a tray. When she makes sandwiches, they are perfect towers of order: Everything lines up with the bread; lettuce, cheese, and ham don’t flop and dangle over the sides; no mustard goops out when I hold the sandwich in my hands. Then she cuts them in symmetrical triangles, like she knows I need the sides even or something.

  Light spills from under Mom and Dad’s bedroom door, and the muffled sound of hammering comes from the garage.

  I shiver and pull a sweatshirt on. Kase sits next to me, wrapped in my ratty blanket. We sit in silence, leaning against the foot of my bed, while I chew seven times on the left, six on the right, swallow, then switch.

>   The searing pain in my temples ebbs in the comfort of my room. When I finish eating, I get up to open the curtains, cracking the window just a touch. The crescent moon glows. It’s one of those crisp nights when the sky looks like a silver colander with light pouring through its holes.

  Kasey’s unusually quiet. Quiet is not her modus operandi. I think half her caloric expenditure comes from talking. She usually uses up all her cell minutes within the first week of each month and begs to use my phone because she knows I never use any minutes because I never call anybody.

  Ever.

  I turn away from the night sky and ask, “Did you do your homework?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Tell me about your day.”

  It has to be done this way. We do this. Every evening. And if she’s not home, I call her.

  She pauses, then seems to forget about me squandering all of our food money on a burger joint, animatedly telling me about the freshman talent show. But I can tell she’s holding back. I close my eyes and lean my head against my bed. My teeth chatter. Goddamn it’s cold.

  Kase leaves and comes out with some cash. “Here. This should cover it. And keep what’s left for this weekend.”

  “Where’d you get this?” I ask.

  She shrugs.

  I shake my head and shove the bills back into her hand. “No. This is for you and the theater classes you want to take at the Brewery Arts Center this summer. I’ll get a job after soccer. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Then pay me back,” she says.

  “No.” Because I know I won’t. I never get around to paying anybody back, which does not bode well for a degree in business or economics—the two top careers that came up when we had our career-day meetings with Counselor Lafer and some other college counselors. My third choice, though, turned out to be water-treatment worker.

  Go figure.

  Kasey peels off half the bills and gives them to me. “You’ll pay me back. This time you will.” I so appreciate Kasey’s eternal faith that I’ll change into somebody worth something. But it only reminds me of the fact that it’s my job to make the world right for her—easier—not the other way around.

  “Thanks, though, K,” I say. “I owe you one.”

  “Um, no. You owe me fifty.”

  “Yeah, Miss Literal. Got it.”

  “And a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “It shouldn’t matter.”

  “Well, it does. Like are we talking digging-shallow-

  graves-in-the-backyard kind of favor or cover-for-you-when-you-want-to-go-hang-out-with-friends kind of favor?”

  “Can’t you just say you owe me one?”

  “I owe you one.” I close my eyes again, welcoming the silence.

  “You know how much work this takes?”

  “Huh?” I open my eyes.

  “Maintenance, Jake. High maintenance to keep the edge—to keep with the right crowd.”

  “Aren’t you the leader of the right crowd?” I ask. Kasey always has a following.

  “Today. But it doesn’t come for free. My popularity is inherited, you know.”

  “Inherited?”

  “Look at me.”

  I look.

  “Look real hard.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Let’s be real. Mousy brown hair—a bit frizzy. Skinny. No talent.”

  “Kase—”

  “Aunt Marian.” Kasey does a Vanna White hand flourish, head to toe, then slumps back against the bed.

  “Aunt Marian?” Aunt Marian is Mom’s sister who wears wooden clogs and pilly sweaters that smell like a weird mix of mall animal store, Vicks VapoRub, mothballs, and vinegar. She wears her frizzy hair tied back in a loose ponytail and raises ostriches in central Nevada. “Now that you mention it—”

  “Ohmygod!” The tears well up in Kasey’s eyes. I forget that Kasey’s prepubescence is gone, hidden under this power-hungry popularity shell.

  “Just kidding, K. C’mon.” I try to get her to settle down. “It was a really bad joke.”

  She chokes out the words, “Never. Been. Kissed.”

  I squirm. “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to hear about it if you have.”

  “That’s not the point. Everything about me is average. Except for you.” She wipes her hand across her nose.

  I hand her a Kleenex and try to focus on her, not the line of glistening snot in her arm hair.

  Kase throws back her shoulders and says, “Maintenance, Jake. If I want to stay at the top, I’ve got to start doing things to show I deserve to be at the top. You leave this year, and then I’ll be left to swim the social waters on my own. I’m just saying it’s all about keeping it together, being with the right people at the right time.”

  “Wouldn’t it just be a lot easier to have friends you like?”

  “Nobody has friends she likes in high school. C’mon.”

  And I think about it, about my friends. Friend. Luc. Sometimes I don’t know if we’re friends because we’re friends or because we’ve known each other so long now, we have to be. Because there’s too much shit there—too much history. We’d probably get our asses kicked if anybody knew that Luc and I used to swipe his mom’s tights to play superheroes. I was always the Green Lantern and Luc was Aquaman. You see, nobody calls the real superheroes flaming when they wear tights. But the day Luc’s dad found us playing, I seriously thought that thick vein on his forehead was going to explode and spurt blood all over us major manga style.

  Maybe because the blue ones Luc wore had some lacy shit on them. I dunno.

  “Anyway . . .” Kase keeps talking about how she needs to carve her niche in the social hierarchy of Carson City before I leave; how once I’m gone, she’s the only one left to keep this family looking half normal. “It’s like you have an aura about you—this cool, mysterious thing that attracts people to you. You get away with being weird. And next year you’re leaving. And I’ll be here. Stuck. With them.” She hisses them like we’re being raised by inbred Appalachian hillbillies. “It’s gonna be a nightmare without you. What if Mom has a freakout?” Kasey pauses. “Let me rephrase that. How long before Mom has another total freakout? And Dad just—”

  “Does nothing?” Our family lives by Dad’s philosophy: If you can’t see blood, it doesn’t hurt. So how can you fix a make-believe problem?

  “Exactly,” Kasey says.

  My head really hurts, and all I want to do is get organized—bring order back to the day. “I’m not weird,” I say.

  “Jake, weird can be good, too. Your kind of weird. All I’m saying is that being your sister won’t cut it anymore. I need to act. Move forward. Maintenance. Remember that. You owe me one.”

  “From the sound of it, you owe me.”

  Kase scowls.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll deliver. I promise. All good?”

  “All good,” she says. “Night, Jake.”

  I walk her to the hallway and watch as she eases her door shut. The soft sound of sweeping comes from the garage. Mom’s room is dark. I stand alone in the hallway, cloaked in gray; the only slit of light that slips through is the tear in the blackout blind covering the upstairs hallway window. It disperses unevenly, tentacles of light disappearing into the shadows, yellow turned to gray, blurring the lines, until everything’s distorted like an optical aberration.

  It’s like we’re all suffocating in blackness.

  There’s something not right about not being able to see the night sky, dawn, the light of the moon and stars and sun.

  I retreat to my bedroom and exhale. The only room that’s soaked in starlight—the only room that makes sense. I open the closet feeling a rush of relief as I look up at the clocks on the top shelf. Forty-three, including a ten-hour clock Kasey found for me at an antique sale. I reach up to pull one down, then hesitate.

  Not this week. I don’t need them.

  My neck tenses, and I bite down to hold back the wave of pain.

  Not this week.
>
  I run my fingers over the boxes and shut the door, turning to the clock on my nightstand, taking off my watch. I focus on the glowing numbers of the clock.

  9:37

  Nine thirty-seven. Nine plus three is twelve plus seven is nineteen. OK.

  I stare at the time, watching the second hand on my clock with the Indiglo light, then turn away just as it’s about to be 9:38. The spiders retreat to wherever they came from. I can feel the webs dissolving in my brain.

  I sleep.

  Seven Sanctuaries

  Thursday, 5:06 a.m.

  I open my left eye, count to three, and watch as the blurry numbers take form. Then I open my right eye. Too early. It’s still middle-of-the-night black outside. Coach shouldn’t have called this early-morning practice.

  This isn’t right. It won’t work.

  It breaks the routine.

  It messes everything up.

  My cell phone beeps. Luc.

  DntBL8

  I squeeze my eyes closed but feel the glowing numbers from the clock through my thin lids.

  It’s no big deal.

  But it’s dark. No light of dawn.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Everything matters.

  My phone beeps again. Luc’s on a message frenzy this morning. I open my eyes and stare at the glowing numbers on the clock.

  5:08

  Five-oh-eight. Five plus eight equals thirteen. OK. Eight minus five equals three. OK. Three plus three equals six plus eight equals fourteen plus three equals seventeen. OK. Seventeen plus eight equals twenty-five minus five equals twenty plus eight equals twenty-eight. Fuck. Minus five equals twenty-three. OK.

  Five-oh-eight 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.

  It’ll be okay.

  Up.

  5:09

  It’s black outside except for the soft glow of the corner streetlight. The light sputters for a second, and I hold my breath until the blinking stops, counting the seconds for it to steady.

  That’s new.