Proving Webster Wrong

Chapter Three -- Chloe

When I'm on stage there isn't fear, there's just this feeling that I can't ever find the words for. It's not happiness. It's like when you know everything is going to be okay, that no matter what happens you can come out the other side with your head held high. It's like in the movies after one of those hard work montages where everything is just right, like nothing else matters. It's a feeling that doesn't make any sense at all but that is what makes it worth it.

Even that isn't it. No one can know the feeling until they've found something they are truly passionate about.

Being afraid of something here is not the same thing at all. I just wish I could make everyone understand that.

I can't even find the words to tell Andrew how wrong he his. All I can do is sit there with my arms crossed looking at him.

Finally the staring contest ends. He blinks and hangs his head as he drags his feet back to the table. "I guess things really haven't changed all that much." I smiled as took his time lowering himself on to the bench of the picnic table.

I could see the wall breaking down, the one that he had built up to keep his emotions from his face. His eyes wrinkled up at the corners and his mouth kept twitching as he fought off a smile. I noticed that the ends of his hair were wet from his sweat. I was sweating too, more than they every like to admit girls do. It was too hot out here.

"Maybe coming here was a bad idea," Andrew said. He reached up and loosened his tie and then unbuckled the cuffs of his shirt so he could roll up his sleeves.

"Too bad. You picked it."

"Always so stubborn."

I popped the lid of my cup, lifted the exposed lip to my mouth, and tilted it back until I felt a piece of ice in my mouth. I pushed the cold cube around in my mouth until it had melted. "I'm tired of all this talk about how things used to be, it's getting boring."

"Okay." And then he just looked at me as if he expected me to come up with the conversation.

"Hey, you're the reason we're here." I shrugged and got another piece of ice.

"Can I ask you something kind of personal?" I could see the wheels turning again. He was blinking a lot, too, and his fingers twitched up and down on the top of the table beside the cooling pizza -- if it was possible for it to cool.

How does one answer that question. Naturally I wanted to say no. This whole situation was uncomfortable. Why should I add to that? But at the same time I couldn't just flat out say no. It seemed too harsh, especially with how hard it seemed to be for him just to say that. I settled on raising an eyebrow in what I could only think of as a sort of "continue but tread carefully" response.

"Is your OCD still really bad?"

It wasn't a surprise that he remembered. Everyone knew about it. He was the first person I told when the doctor officially declared all of my weird habits part of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. That didn't keep me from being surprised enough to bite hard into the ice cube, so hard that I nearly took out a chunk of my tongue and broke a tooth. My fingers started doing the twisting thing as I carefully ground up the ice into fine pieces and then it was just water. I gulped it back and moved my lips as I counted to sixteen. The smallest even perfect square of a perfect square and therefore totally perfect.

I kept expecting Andrew's hand to come across the table and force my fingers to stop twisting, like my Dad always did when ever he caught me. Or to turn up his nose and give a dainty faint cough into his palm like my mom always did, even though we were just alike.

"Mom and Dad are making me go to the doctor again," I choked out once I was positive that I hadn't choked on the freezing water and that my teeth and tongue were still in one piece.

"I thought you had been doing that since the..." He stopped. I could see the word teetering there on his tongue as if he were afraid that saying it would make OCD some sort of terminal diagnosis rather than just some weird way my brain liked to hand stress and fear.

There was that word again. Fear. Why did it seem to be after be today?

"Diagnosis, Andrew, call it what it is." I ground up another ice cube and swallowed the water, making myself aware as every molecule of it slid down my throat. "I had been but after a year I decided it wasn't working and told my parents I was never going back."

"Told them?"

"Okay, I pitched a horrible tantrum about how it wasn't fair that they put me through that when Mom refused to do the same." I had been twelve. It wasn't like I was proud of the way I handled the situation but I didn't disagree with the points I had been trying to make. Parents are suppose to be the example so if it's okay for them to have this habits then it shouldn't be a bad thing for me.

Another ice cube. Another count of sixteen. "They said that the stress of junior year made me worse so they made me start back last month. Weekly sessions, one every Tuesday. Then if I show progress they might make it every other week."

"Did he try to put you on medicine again?"

I wanted to hug him then but it just seemed to awkward to get up and walk around the table to do something I hadn't done in forever. We hadn't even given each other Christian side hugs at church services or youth group activities. I don't even know if we had so much as shaken hands.

The first time the doctor suggested the medicine I ran out of the office. I thought my parents my ground me for it but they didn't say a word about it. Just shoved it under the rug and made me go back. I called Andrew and told him all about it. When it came to things about my OCD I had always been too afraid to tell Terri-Beth or Crystal. Terri-Beth never found out, at least not from me, and if she had she never said anything about it.

Every appointment for the next two months went the same way. Then I decided that I'd had enough and wouldn't be going back.

"No. I made them take me to a different one. This one doesn't like all that medication stuff."

"What about all those natural things?"

I almost wanted to laugh. "Absolutely nothing. She believes in behavior thereby and just talking things through." Another ice cube but no counting. My jar was sore from the grinding and my teeth ached.

"Andrew, can I ask you something."

He was braver than me and actually answered rather then giving a sign that could mean either no or yes. "Go ahead."

"Do you ever feel like you've been defined by something? Like there's something written across your forehead that everyone can see, that everyone knows, and you can never wash it off." I don't know where the question came from. It was something that I had always tried so hard not to think about. Labels were nothing. I tried to make myself believe that no one could ever be defined by just a word or two.

But then, sitting there after asking the question, I knew it was true. For as long as I could remember I had walked around with the words on my face for the world to point at, for the world to classify me with. The worst part was that no mirror could ever tell me if they were the same words I had placed on myself.

Then another thought. Maybe that was how it worked. The world didn't give us these words, these definitions. We gave them to ourselves. And then we believed them so much that we became them. The line of what we thought we were and what we actually were was crossed so many times that it had been erased completely.

"All the time," he answered looking me straight in the eyes.

I took a deep breath. For the first time in a long time I faced a fear off the stage. "Me too." Another deep breath. No ice. "I think I want to change that."