by Wesley King
“You sure your mother is okay to come get you later?” Erin’s mom asked.
I nodded, and she drove off without another word. Erin grabbed my arm and started for the entrance, practically skipping along. She had her hair curled and done up, eyebrows drawn on. She hadn’t been able to come over an hour early, since her mom wanted to drive us there and not home, so only she had any makeup on. I was just wearing a hoodie with my hair in a ponytail.
“I haven’t been out with a friend in, like, two years,” she said. “This is awesome. I’m going to eat ten bags of popcorn. I bet there will be cute boys everywhere. How do I look?”
“Nice.”
“Nice?”
I paused. “Beautiful? Transcendent? Radiant—”
“Thank you,” she said, giving me a queenly nod. “You may continue once we sit down.”
The lobby was busy. There were a lot of kids, some close to our age and most older, and I felt my breathing go shallow as we picked our way to ticket machines.
As Erin bought tickets, I glanced around, my skin prickling. So many people and eyes and voices and all of them strangers. Maybe this was a bad idea. We could still head home.
I felt Erin’s hand slip over mine.
“Come on,” she said. “I already got your ticket.”
She led me to the snack counter, and I gave her my twenty. She got us two drinks and two popcorns and quickly led us toward the theater. She kept shooting me reassuring looks, shifting her fingers on mine, clammy as they were. I was reprimanding myself. This was stupid. I shouldn’t have come. I was going to have a freak-out and everyone was going to stare and—
“Let’s just get seated,” Erin whispered, pulling me into the darkness.
We found seats near the back, in the corner, and she turned to me.
“You’re doing great. We’re in now.”
“I don’t know—”
She squeezed my hand and turned to me. “Just try. If you need to go, we’ll leave.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath. She was right. We were tucked away in the corner now, in a dark theater, where no one was supposed to talk anyway. I focused on Erin’s voice, making sure I nodded and smiled and did all the right things to show my brain we could relax. I could almost hear Dr. Ring: Ground yourself. Breathe. Don’t drift. Stay focused.
The lights dimmed, the previews started, and I focused on the movie. It was a romantic comedy, and not very good, but Erin laughed and we spilled popcorn and I didn’t panic once.
When the lights came on, I was still in my seat. A sense of relief swept over me. Pride, even. I had gone out to a movie theater. No breaks. No calls home. Not a single panic attack.
Erin sighed and stretched, yawning. “What did you think?”
“Good,” I said. “It was really good.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she replied, laughing. “But I know what you mean.”
I noticed that some of her makeup had smeared. One of her eyebrows was mostly gone. I kept quiet.
We were leaving, and I didn’t want to upset her.
We filed out at the tail end of the crowd, and I sent a text to my mom to come pick us up. We made our way to the front doors of the lobby and waited there. It was late November and the temperature had dropped sharply.
Of course, everyone else who needed a ride was waiting there too. It was busy and loud, and most of the people there were groups of kids like us, all bunched into little, noisy circles. A group of older boys was standing a few feet away. One of them looked over at us.
“Ugh, does every boy have to look at you?” Erin said, grinning.
I had quickly looked away. He went to my school. An eighth grader named Kevin. The others went to my school too. They knew about me. I tensed, stomach clenching right up again.
“Of course, they may be taking in my perfect eyebrows,” she added.
She touched them subconsciously, and I hoped we could leave soon. Then I heard the laughter. I tried not to listen.
“Psycho Sara is here?” one of them was saying. “And she has a friend!”
“I got to take a picture.”
“Think she talks to her?”
I decided we could deal with a bit of cold. But it was too late. Erin was watching now.
“Are they talking about you?” she asked quietly.
“No,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
“We need to get her face in the photo,” one of the boys said. “Psst … Sara—”
Erin stepped toward them, hands planted on her hips. “Can we help you?”
They burst out laughing. I felt my insides curling up. Her eyebrows. The makeup.
“Her face is falling off,” Kevin said, snorting.
Erin flushed a brilliant red, her hands going to her eyebrows. “What are you—”
I grabbed her arm to go. I couldn’t talk. Not with them watching and laughing.
But she was already feeling her face, her fingers brushing over her last few eyelashes.
“They’re both nuts,” Kevin muttered.
“Quiet, man—” one of his friends said, even though he was laughing.
“I’m just saying—”
“Saying what?” Erin shouted. She took another step toward them. “Go ahead!”
Everyone was looking at us now. My throat seized up.
“Nothing,” Kevin said, waving her away. “Go hang out with Psycho Sara, freak.”
“Stop calling her that!” Erin snapped.
“You’re missing a spot,” a boy said, tapping his eyebrow. “Got a pen?”
I tried to grab Erin’s hand. The wheel was spinning fast now. A Game was coming.
But Erin just folded her arms and glared at them.
“Sorry if it offends you,” she snarled. “I will remember that next time I get ready.”
One of the boys had the decency to blush. The others didn’t.
“You got cancer?” Kevin asked.
“No, I don’t have cancer,” she snapped. “I have a disorder. And stupid people don’t help.”
I could feel my heart pounding now. I put my finger to my pulse. False Alarm for sure. My breath was short, stomach clenched, skin fiery. I could feel myself drifting away. Maybe it was real this time. Maybe it wasn’t a False Alarm. Maybe I really was dying this time. This is how it always went. I always forgot why I called it False Alarm when the panic started. My heartbeat was going much faster now.
“Leave her, man,” one of the boys said. “She’s nuts.”
“I am nuts!” Erin shouted. “We both are! Happy? At least we’re not jerks!”
“You do belong with Psycho Sara,” Kevin said.
The words started echoing around in my skull. Psycho psycho psycho. Why was I here?
I could feel the sweat beading now and tears forming. I had to leave. Otherwise I might just curl up on the spot or scream or maybe die right here, and my daddy would find me, and and and … I went for the glass doors. I had to get out. I didn’t say anything to Erin. I just ran.
“Sara!” Erin shouted.
I could hear the laughing as she chased after me. I kept running. I didn’t know where I was going. Anywhere but here.
“Sara!” Erin caught me by the curb, looking around for my father’s car. “Hey!”
“Why did you do that?” I demanded, hand at my neck, trying to count my pulse.
It was so fast. Too fast. Heart attack. No. Relax. Just a panic attack.
“What?”
“Make a scene! Tell them we’re … we’re crazy. We could have just gone somewhere else.”
She frowned. “They were insulting us. I could have used backup, if anything.”
Erin turned away, muttered something to herself, and then turned back.
“No, I’m sorry … I know you don’t talk in public,” she said. “I’m just all worked up right now. Hey, are you all right?”
She tried to grab at my arm, but I wrenched it away, falling down into a crouch.
“No,” I managed, gasping. �
��I can’t breathe.”
“It’s a panic attack. Just take it easy—”
“We were doing good,” I said, my eyes watering. “We were so close.”
“To what?” she asked, crouching down beside me.
“A normal night.”
She snorted. “Normal. I forgot your big goal. Being normal. Whatever that means.”
“Not this!” I said, and pressed my finger to my neck, counting heartbeats. Too fast.
She grabbed my arm. “We are not normal.”
I pulled away, trying to breathe through my nose, trying to think of something happy, trying not to feel the weights that were suddenly strapped to my arms and legs, pulling me down.
“I am trying,” I said.
“And it’s going great,” Erin said. “Really. ’Cause it’s normal to not have eyebrows and eyelashes because I pull them out every time they grow. It’s normal that I cry in the mirror every morning and swear I won’t do it again but I do every single time. We are Star Children, Sara—”
“There’s no such thing as Star Children!” I snapped. “It’s a game. Make-believe!”
I was talking, but my brain was screaming, “I want to go home! I don’t want to die here!” and it all seemed so loud. There were cars pulling up, kids coming out, and I fell silent. That was smarter. Speaking had taken me here. Out of my shell before I was ready. And now I was dying.
“It’s about us being special,” Erin said quietly. “It’s not a game.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “It’s about us lying to ourselves. We have real issues, and we’re not helping each other by pretending we don’t. I just want to be better. Normal—”
“Stop saying normal!” she shrieked. “What does that mean? Huh? What is normal?”
My eyes flooded with tears. “Like everyone else here. You know what I mean.”
“Not like me?” Erin said. “Is that it? More like James?”
I wiped my face. I didn’t want my dad to see me crying. I just had to breathe.
“I just want to get better.”
She stood up. “And that means you don’t need Star Children around, I guess? Huh?”
“No,” I said, taking deep breaths, trying to slow down my heart. “Maybe I don’t.”
Erin stared at me for a moment, nodded, then wiped her eyes. We waited there like that. She stood and looked at nothing, and I crouched until my heart started to slow.
The ride home was quiet, and my dad stopped trying to talk after a while. Erin said nothing when we dropped her off, besides “Thank you, Mr. Malvern.”
Then she was gone, and when we got home, I said I was tired and no, nothing was wrong, and I sat on my bed and panicked again.
When it passed, I was too tired to brush my teeth. I just lay in bed with my clothes on, pulling the blanket over me. I had no texts. No missed calls. I was too tired and angry to write one either. Tired of being sick, and angry about it too. Angry that no matter what, the sickness always came back.
I didn’t want to make Erin upset, but maybe it was for the best. I didn’t need stars. I needed normal.
Tomorrow, I will be better, I told myself. Tomorrow.
CHAPTER 19 THE QUEST FOR NORMAL
Sunday was bad. The wheel was spinning all day. Two False Alarms. One Danger Game when I went to the grocery store with my mom. Strong Girl all alone in my room. It felt like a week all in one day, and Erin’s words repeated in my mind: Stop saying normal! What does that mean? Huh? What is normal?
Not this, I thought as I wretched into a toilet. Or when I lay curled into a ball on my bedroom floor, trying to breathe, wondering if I should call for help. Or when the weights got so heavy I couldn’t move.
I had taken my medication. Sometimes, it just wasn’t enough.
I was happy for Monday. I wasn’t sure I was ready to leave the house, but schoolwork was a good distraction, and Ms. Hugger always made me feel better. As soon as she saw me, she decided we should play word games and go pick a new book for the week. It was all supposed to make me feel better. Relax me. Still, she had to give me an extra-long break in the morning, waiting as the panic attack passed.
I saw Kevin and his friends at recess, but they just laughed and stayed far away.
I decided I needed something new to focus on. I found him standing alone by the basketball court, counting. Daniel’s friends were all playing, but I gathered he wasn’t very good—he seemed to be the substitute most of the time. Like, every recess.
I was supposed to be avoiding crazy people, but he was so good at hiding it—from most people, anyway. I was fascinated. Maybe I could learn something. So I started to watch him.
I began to notice a few important details. One was that he was in love with Raya Singh. That was easy to figure out. He stared at her in the yard, he stared at her at lunch, he stared at her from the bookshelves. So that was one.
He was also very shy around everyone but his best friend, Max. I could relate there.
And most importantly, he kept his craziness a secret. Like a life-or-death kind of secret.
He counted steps in the hallways. It was so obvious, but somehow no one else noticed. He mouthed things to himself when he opened his locker. When he played basketball at recess, he wouldn’t step on lines, and sometimes he stepped forward and back for no reason. It was no wonder he wasn’t very good. He spaced out bad.
But only if you watched him.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder. I wondered if he knew.
I realized that seeing him suffer made me feel better. I instantly felt guilty. He was trying to keep a secret, and here I was spying on him. I told myself that I would not watch him anymore.
But I knew I would miss it. Because seeing him suffer made me feel less alone.
* * *
After school, I was lying in bed reading when my phone buzzed. I snapped it up.
Park?
James. I had thought about texting him a thousand times, but couldn’t find the courage. Now I grinned and said Sure! and we agreed to meet in twenty minutes.
I was out the door in ten.
I got there first and waited, leaning against the slide. It was cold, and the park was empty, so there was no need to wait out in the grass. I was nervous, but I was also excited. He still wanted to hang out. Maybe he hadn’t heard about the movies. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he liked me.
He showed up soon after, waving as he came close. I smiled. He wasn’t wearing plaid today. Not even underneath. Just a T-shirt and a jacket. His hair was growing back in again.
“Maybe we should walk?” he suggested. “It’s colder than I thought.”
“Yeah.”
We started down the paved path that wove through the park and out into another block of houses. The trees were all bare now, the leaves ground to brown mush or gone right back into the dirt.
“Are we going to discuss the obvious?” I asked.
He frowned, and I stared at his shirt. “Oh. Yeah. Stopped wearing them last week.”
“You’re really making progress.”
“I think so.”
“And your mom?”
“We’re getting better.”
He looked up at the sky and smiled. I followed his gaze. He was probably seeing stars.
“You really helped me,” he said.
I looked at him. “What?”
“You did. I always thought of what you said when it got bad. I tried to be calm like you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but he kept looking at me. He needed a response.
“I’m glad I could help,” I said.
He glanced at me. “So we can keep doing this?”
“What?”
“Going for walks. Hanging out.”
This time, I couldn’t hold the smile back. “Yeah. Sure. If you want.”
“I do. And thank you. That’s what I was trying to say earlier. Thank you.”
He reached out and squeezed my hand. It sent tingles up my arm.
; “You’re welcome,” I managed.
But for a moment, I felt sad, too, because it sounded like he didn’t need my help anymore.
We walked for a while. The sun was starting to get low, and it got colder.
“We should probably get going,” James said at last.
“Yeah.”
He walked me to my door, said good night, and started home. I went in smiling.
I didn’t like hurting Erin, but I had been right. I needed normal. I needed to start again. I went to my desk and crumpled up the Star Child tenets and put them aside. I took out my notebook instead.
For the next hour I read the rules and wondered if I would need them for much longer.
CHAPTER 20 BETTER YET
On Thursday night I was back in group therapy. Erin came in after me. She refused to look in my direction, sat down diagonally from me, and crossed her arms. I just stared at the floor. Peter was looking between us, and I could see Dr. Ring taking it in as well, frowning.
“Welcome,” he said, tapping his pen on his notepad. He cleared his throat. “Does anyone have anything in particular they want to discuss? Erin?”
“Nah,” she said.
He paused. “Are you sure?”
“Well, just that some people are jerks and you can’t trust anyone including or maybe especially friends.”
“I see,” Dr. Ring said, glancing at me. “Well, we can talk about that—”
“No need,” she cut in. “I have it all figured out. Ignore everyone.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying for months,” Peter agreed.
Dr. Ring sighed. “We all know that is not an effective strategy. Erin, why do you—”
“Ask Sara,” she said. She almost spat my name out.
Everyone turned to me. I just fixed my eyes on the floor and said nothing.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Peter said. “She’s a mute.”
“She’s just very selective,” Erin replied. “Apparently, we aren’t good enough.”
“Figures,” Peter muttered.
