Things I Shouldn't Think

by Janet Ruth Young

  144

  Malcolm Pinto, his head and neck bandaged, observes Dani and Shelley from the edge of the school property, near the TV trucks. The summer doesn’t look promising. Because he’s suspended from school, he will have to take summer classes with young violators his father calls “hardened.” He’s been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and has to stay five hundred yards away from Dani for the next six months, which will mean missing all the best concerts and the Fourth of July bonfire. His father is trying to get the charges reduced, while Dani’s lawyer is suing both the PD and the newspaper for revealing too much information. Michael Pinto wants to persuade the local media that Malcolm was well-meaning but misguided, caught up in a frenzy that gripped the entire town. That he made some mistakes but he genuinely believed he was protecting someone. Malcolm believes that, in private, his father has to be a little bit proud of him.

  Malcolm’s father has some choice words for Dani and her rich mother, even her father out in Colorado. At the very least, this incident will damage Malcolm’s chances of getting into the police academy. But Malcolm has no regrets. Throwing a rock through a window, even holding a knife to someone, is nothing compared to the murder of a little kid. And murders are prevented every day by ordinary people who carry no badge. Maybe with the connections Malcolm has now, the opportunities will come knocking.

  145

  “So,” Dani says, dipping corn chips into cream cheese, “did you tell Meghan or anyone else what I said about Mr. Gabler?”

  “No.” Shelley’s been staring up at the third-floor windows, but she looks straight at Dani. “I said I wouldn’t tell, and I didn’t.”

  “Thanks,” Dani says. She offers Shelley some banana slices with honey. “So what ended up happening between the two of you?”

  “My feelings got really intense. But it turned out she had a boyfriend back where she used to live.” She waits to be drawn out.

  “In Pennsylvania?” Dani asks.

  “That’s right, Hartswell, Pennsylvania. So any time she was with me she would be texting him on the side. And now she’s going back to Hartswell for the summer. She’s going to spend it with her boyfriend. But she keeps saying she’s going to miss me.”

  Shelley looks at the third floor again and pauses. Dani isn’t sure what to say.

  “She ended up being a big disappointment,” Shelley continues. “But it was kind of great for a while. I can’t even tell you. I’ve never felt so alive.”

  “And I missed it all,” Dani says, dipping a banana slice in honey for Shelley.

  “Toward the end I was on the verge of telling her about me, but now I’m glad I didn’t. You’re still the only person I ever told. Did you tell anyone about me, after that day?” Shelley asks, looking serious, almost frightened.

  Now it’s Dani’s turn to avoid eye contact. She takes a deep breath.

  “I sort of did,” she says.

  Shelley pulls up straight. She has a milder version of the airgun look. “You told somebody I was gay? Why?”

  “I had to tell my doctors so I could get better.”

  “What does my being gay have to do with you getting better?”

  Dani can never tell Shelley about her urge to yell dyke and lesbo. That would be too hurtful. “It’s kind of complicated,” she says. “But my doctors aren’t allowed to tell anyone, so trust me, no rumors will be coming back to you. Look, I’m really sorry. Can we say we’re even and move on from here?”

  “Deal,” Shelley says.

  Dani thinks about the thousand chances a person has each day to cross lines, and how people draw those lines in different places. Shelley is back in Dani’s circle now, and Alex and Mrs. Alex are out. But no one has only one circle. Each person has several overlapping circles like the Olympic rings, with some important others in circles off to the side that you barely see. Dani will always be in a side circle of Mrs. Alex’s, because Mrs. Alex will always keep her eye on Dani. Alex will always be in Dani’s side circle because she will always care about him. In the days since she crowned Malcolm, Dani’s been aware of Alex’s sneakers flashing in the periphery of her sight, pulled into a car or tugged around a supermarket aisle. The flash of his sneakers is like the smile of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. It doesn’t fade away, and Dani feels that the universe is winking at her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I wrote this book because, like Dani Solomon, I left a babysitting job because I had unwanted and persistent thoughts about harming the children. Also like Dani, I had trouble finding a therapist who recognized my symptoms. One counselor I phoned was afraid to meet me, and another asked whether I heard voices in my television set telling me to kill people (he thought I was psychotic).

  Fortunately, I found a therapist who used a variety of techniques to help me in all areas of my life over a two-year period. We discussed some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as a possible reason for my symptoms, but we considered other causes as well. Not until ten years later, when my librarian sister came across the book The Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts by Lee Baer Ph.D. (Dutton, 2001), did I see my symptoms framed definitively as OCD.

  Ten more years have gone by, and the bad-thoughts form of OCD is still not on the map of people’s awareness. Why? Because the public, and even most doctors and therapists, continue to understand OCD in terms of germ phobias, counting, and hand-washing. In fact, of the approximately eighty people to whom I told the book’s premise (“It’s about a babysitter who’s tormented by thoughts of harming the child she cares for”), only one person asked, “Is it about OCD?” If I had said, “It’s about a teenage girl who can’t function because she’s constantly washing her hands,” nearly everyone I spoke to would have asked that question.

  This book is intended as more than bibliotherapy. Dani’s situation contains tensions and paradoxes that simply make for a great story. I had been able to go away and heal in private. But what if a teen girl’s most horrifying secret thoughts became public . . . were talked about at school . . . were broadcast on the TV news and in national newspapers?

  The dramatic treatment Dani undergoes in Boston with Dr. Mandel is real. It’s called exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. Kimberly Glazier of Yeshiva University, a therapist and researcher who advised me on the technical aspects of the novel, told me that ERP is “the gold standard” for treating OCD. The best way to overcome this illness is by exposing oneself to the triggering situations rather than avoiding them, and that’s what brings the story to what I hope is an exciting climax.

  I hope too that teachers and readers will use this book to discuss whether thoughts are equivalent to deeds and whether people should be punished for their thoughts. Laws and religions attempt to answer this question, but perhaps teen readers can answer it even better.

  Readers who want to know more about obsessive-compulsive disorder and its treatment should read Baer’s book Getting Control (Plume, 2012) or visit the website of the International OCD Foundation (ocfoundation.org).

  J. R. Y.

  Can love be real if you’ve never met?

  An exclusive look at Janet Ruth Young’s next powerful novel.

  she was

  She was a girl talking to me in the dark.

  Everybody knows what happened with my parents. Everybody I talk to when I call.

  “You can turn your life around,” I had told her. “Starting today, you can be free. You can do anything you want. Don’t you see that?”

  I’m down, but I’m not out. I’m a fighter. On my good days, few can defeat me.

  “I admire that about you,” I had told her.

  I remember every compliment you ever gave me. Especially when you said I was strong.

  “I have to go. Will you be okay?”

  I’ll handle it. I always do. Good night, sweet Hallmark prince.

  new directions

  Where is everyone?” Dad asked when he got home. It was October 25, and he
had just come from his therapy appointment. Dad looked good these days, like someone who had a purpose. He shaved in the morning and dressed for work in a jacket and tie and Rockport loafers. He stood straighter and was no longer bony. His felty red hair was cut short, so that it verged on stylish, and he wore a sharp, arrowlike goatee. He worked as a draftsman at Liberty Fixtures, a company that made shelving for department stores. He looked a lot like me, if I were fifty and had accepted that I would always hate the job I needed.

  I was just in from a bike ride. Mom and Linda were making pizza and salad for supper. Dad dropped a bag marked ART SUPPLIES on the dining room table. You could hear the rush-hour traffic going by out back; the highway ran right behind our house.

  Drive past our house: the bright orange door, the brass knocker in the shape of a salamander (unnecessary because we have a functioning doorbell), our name and house number (Morrison 32) painted in black Gothic lettering on a white rock at the end of the driveway—that’s all Linda’s work. And Mom directed a museum. We might as well have a sign outside saying Artistic People Live Here. Right now Linda and Mom were laying the pepperoni slices in overlapping circles to look like a chrysanthemum. The art supplies could have been for almost anyone—anyone but me.

  “I’m going to paint again,” Dad said. He looked quietly fierce, like a gladiator before the lion is let out.

  “Yippee!” Linda danced around, wriggling and elfish. She switched from teenager mode to little girl mode when she wanted to feel closer to my parents.

  Mom dried her hands and wrapped her arms around Dad’s middle.

  “That’s exciting, honey. But you’ve always painted.” “I mean get serious about painting. I want to be in the art world again. I put my art aside. Because of the needs of making a living and raising a family.”

  Excuse me for being born, I thought.

  “That’s a sad story,” Linda said. Linda’s style reworked droopy clothes that had belonged to an elderly person, which made her look younger than thirteen. She came up to Dad’s armpit, and she had a wormy way of sharing his space. Now she slipped her hand into Dad’s, and he held it in the air like it was a prize. I was as tall as he was, so he never looked at me, or my hand, that way.

  “I never stopped you,” Mom said. “I never told you you couldn’t paint.” Like Linda, Mom worked to separate herself from the run of humanity. She wore her black hair perfectly straight, wore dark lipstick, and owned only necklaces that were one of a kind. Usually they were made for her by someone noteworthy, such as a blind sculptor, a poetry-writing shepherd, or a male nun.

  “Of course not, sweetie,” Dad said. He crinkled his eyes at Mom, like he was winking to make her admit a lie.

  “Don’t forget, Bill, I fell in love with you over Inverted Horizon.”

  “I’m not forgetting.”

  Inverted Horizon was the ocean-on-top sunset painting of Dad’s that was shown by a Fifty-Seventh Street gallery in New York City when Mom was in graduate school and Dad was working at a paint store. He ended up selling that to a collector, as well as his vertical sunset painting Perpendicular Horizon. He once told me that they were the best things he had ever done—part technical exercise, part making fun of the sunset cliché, and part, he said, “Just something great to look at.”

  At the opening reception, Mom stood in front of Inverted Horizon for a long time. A tall guy in an army fatigue jacket and tuxedo pants came along and stood beside her, and without his saying anything, she knew he was the painter. Although I don’t like to view either of my parents as a love object, I always felt that was a good way to meet someone: nothing flashy or obvious, just a meeting of the minds and a sense of being immediately understood.

  “Well, for the record,” Mom continued, “I completely support your painting. As of today, as of right now, and for the future. Completely.”

  “I completely do too, Dad.” Linda scurried away from Dad and emptied the bag: tubes of paint, brushes, brush cleaner.

  “Why all of a sudden?” I asked, leaning on one end of the table. I didn’t touch Dad or his art supplies. I knew enough to see that he had about three hundred dollars’ worth.

  “Dr. Fritz and I talked about it. Art is my missing piece.” Dad pointed to the paints, then tapped a spot somewhere between his heart and his gut. “The missing piece of my emotional puzzle.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I finally said.

  “Why not?” he asked. A distinctive painting of a chicken, done by someone at Mom’s museum, hung on one wall. Anytime people came for dinner, they commented on the chicken. Dad’s gaze drifted to it, then back to me. A year ago he fit into my clothes. Now he had put weight on, even had a little belly forming.

  “I would hate to see you get all excited and set yourself up . . .”

  “Set myself up?” Dad pressed. Was he challenging me to say it?

  “He’s fine now, Billy,” Mom said.

  Dad spoke at the same time. “I painted thirty years ago.”

  “I don’t want you to get too involved in it and then get upset. That’s all.”

  “What would upset me? And even so, why can’t I get upset?”

  Mom and Linda wouldn’t say it. But I didn’t want a repeat of last winter.

  last winter: a memory

  I’ve brought a new friend home after school. It’s only two thirty, and I see Dad’s car in the driveway. He must have come home early. I walk into the living room with my friend, expecting to introduce him to Dad. Gordon is so superb that I really want to impress him. He’s new in town, and though some of the other new kids are snobby, Gordon isn’t. He plays French horn and has played on the White House lawn with the All-State band. He seems confident and relaxed in every situation, and his hair seems exactly the same length every time I see him.

  I hear Dad moving at the other end of the house, and call his name. In the past he’s always had a story or joke for my friends. Sometimes he’s played an aria from his collection of opera CDs. But this time he doesn’t come.

  “Just a minute,” I tell Gordon. Finally Dad walks into the hall, but he doesn’t look at Gordon or me. He goes past us, toward the den, rubbing his hands and whistling tunelessly. Now he’s coming back again.

  “Dad, stop a minute. I want you to meet someone.”

  “Are you looking for something, Mr. Morrison?” Gordon asks. “Can I help you find it?”

  Gordon watches Dad with that game smile: relaxed, confident. But I begin to realize that Dad’s walking and his whistling are involuntary, that some kind of worry is driving Dad from one end of the house to the other.

  After a few minutes Gordy also realizes something is very wrong, something I haven’t told him because I didn’t know and I wouldn’t know how to explain it if I did. He walks back to the bus stop with his instrument case and his backpack, and that is the last time I bring a friend home.

  Janet Ruth Young is the author of acclaimed teen novels The Opposite of Music and My Beautiful Failure. She lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Visit her online at janetruthyoung.com.

  Cover design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  Cover photograph copyright © 2012 by Peter Nicholson/Getty Images

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Simon & Schuster, New York

  Ages 14 up

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  ALSO BY JANET RUTH YOUNG

  The Opposite of Music

  My Beautiful Failure

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition November 2012

  Copyright © 2011 by Janet Ruth Young

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.

  Previously published as The Babysitter Murders

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  Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

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  ISBN 978-1-4169-5944-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-5107-0 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-5925-0 (eBook)