Now my own lips thumped from the blood speeding into them. Guy tilted his head a bit, grinned cheekily and leaned in further.
I closed my eyes and felt the dappled sunlight burning through my eyelids.
SMASH.
My entire hand reverberated from the impact. Splinters of demolished conker rained down on my fingers like hailstones. My string swung emptily.
Guy whooped in delight.
“HE’S DONE IT. HE’S ONLY GONE AND BLOODY DONE IT. THE CROWD GOES WILD. THE CONKER CHAMPION IS GUY SMITHFIEEEEEELLLD.” He ran a victory lap around the copse, his arms raised above his head.
My body parts didn’t know which was more confused – my brain, my heart, my empty lips, my shaking hands. In my humiliation, all I could do was laugh. “Rematch!” I yelled, loudly, hoping the noise would bury my disappointment. “I demand a rematch.”
“NEVER.”
He rugby tackled me, scooping me up and holding me upside-down over his back, repeating his victory lap.
“Put me down,” I squealed, in a voice so girly I should be thoroughly ashamed of myself.
Guy flung me down and I landed with a thump on my back on the soft grass. He landed on top of me – catching his body weight with his hands. His face was directly above mine, his body pinning me down. I could feel every blade of grass on my back, every beam of light on my face; I could see every pore of his open sculpted face.
His mouth was even closer than before. This time though, I didn’t dare close my eyes. I looked at him, asking him questions with my stare.
What are we doing? Do you want to kiss me? Are you going to kiss me?
Guy looked lost. He readjusted his weight onto an elbow and used his spare hand to very slowly brush my face. From my temple, trailing down my cheek, lingering at the side of my mouth. My breath deserted me…
Was he? Was he?
Guy sat up. “Told you I would win.”
Disappointment seeped through me, like I’d wet myself with too much hope. I blinked a few times then I got up too and brushed my jeans off. “You just got lucky.”
“I better be going.”
With a quick gathering of his stuff, a “see you at college” and a wave, Guy stopped being the boy who was about to kiss me and became the spot in the distance.
I shouldn’t have messaged him. He was two-up. I was two-down. It wasn’t my turn. I sat in the copse for a while, watching the sun set, the day draw to a close. Reliving what’d happened. I could message, I supposed. After what had happened, surely it was fine.
Before I overthought it, I fired one off.
Hey, Conker Champ, I had fun today.
No kiss. I purposely didn’t leave a kiss – well he hadn’t.
As I walked home through the chilled air, I had a thought.
New thought
If I touch every streetlamp on the way back, he’ll reply.
I brushed each one with my hand as I passed, regularly checking my phone as I did. No message. So I started brushing each street light twice.
My phone remained undisturbed.
By the time I’d got through my front door I’d been tapping each post six times, muttering “message message message message message message”. I don’t know why it was six. But six just felt…right.
Rose was in the living room when I got in, watching TV.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
I evilled her. I hadn’t forgotten her betrayal just yet. “Why? Want to tell Mum about that too?”
Her face crumpled. “I told her about the cleaning box for your own good, Evelyn. I’m worried about you. You seem…a bit wired.”
“I’m fine.”
“Want to watch a film together? It’s still early.”
I did, I really did. I was just about to suggest a few titles but I stopped myself. I wasn’t quite ready to stop being mad. “Not tonight.” I said it kindly, and sisters being sisters, she understood. She still looked sad though.
“Okay.”
No message by dinner. No message after dinner. Nothing at bedtime.
All the goodness that had been bubbling in my belly fizzled out. All the haze in my brain cleared. The bad thoughts launched themselves at me as I sat in bed, trying to read my book.
BAD THOUGHT
You touched leaves. Leaves! A dog could’ve peed on them!
BAD THOUGHT
He didn’t kiss you because you stank of dog pee from the leaves.
BAD THOUGHT
Conkers are poisonous. You held them and then you had dinner and you only washed your hands once, and you may have passed some unwashed-off poison from your finger to your mouth.
BAD THOUGHT
You’re going to get sick. You’re going to get sick. You’re going to get sick.
I got up and clambered desperately into the shower to wash the sweat bucketing from me. My legs were too shaky to stand so I huddled in the corner, the scalding water pouring down my face, smudging my make-up into my eyes. I grabbed my loofah and scrubbed and scrubbed my hands. I kept retching up tiny bits of nothing and watching it spiral down the plughole.
I was crying so hard I was surprised my family couldn’t hear me over the drone of the pouring water. There was no knock though. They can’t have heard. I knew I didn’t have long to pull myself together – I couldn’t stay in the bathroom for longer than twenty minutes without raising suspicion. I forced myself to stop blubbing and started to work on brushing my teeth, flossing my teeth, using two types of mouthwash.
As I padded back to my bedroom, cleaner than I’d been in ages, it really hit me.
WORSE THOUGHT
Oh, Evie, it really is coming back, isn’t it?
Twenty-nine
The next day. No message. No sighting. If Guy was at college, he wasn’t hanging in our regular spots.
The next day he sat with us at lunch but said nothing. He just slumped next to Joel, who was loudly discussing their set list and droning on about boring amps.
Guy didn’t look at me once.
Next day. Two days before the gig. Another day of stony silence.
Then, at exactly 1 a.m., my phone buzzed and woke me.
You are still coming, aren’t you?
I didn’t reply. I did smile at my phone.
Maybe my mental health condition was chronic stupidity.
That, or delusion.
That, or plain old hope.
Hope is a mental health condition, right?
Thirty
I was touching every street light I passed six times – glad Jane kept flaking on walking to college so I could do it in peace. I’d started having to leave the house twenty minutes earlier to fit it all in.
I raided my purse and bought a vat of antibacterial hand gel which I hid in my college locker.
I was twitchy, and uncertain and within days I’d lost weight as I worried away all my calories.
I should’ve rung the emergency doctor person. I should’ve told my family. I didn’t even have to tell them in person, I could’ve left a note on the kitchen table.
Dear family,
It’s back. I’m not coping. Send help.
Evie.
But I didn’t.
Rational reasons I didn’t tell anyone
1) Er…
Irrational reasons I didn’t tell anyone
1) They were all so proud of me, of how I was doing. The other morning, when I was carefully pouring my medicine onto the spoon, Dad actually slapped me on the back, making me spill some down me. “You’re doing so well, Eves,” he’d said. “Not long to go.”
2) Maybe it wasn’t “back”. I was still functioning. I was still going to college, seeing my friends, doing my coursework. Yes, okay, I washed a bit more but I was still living an outwardly normal life. Like a swan gliding on a pond, from the surface I was a regular person – swimming through life – it was just my feet paddling madly under water, pummelling hard to stop me drowning. If I was still doing stuff, then the OCD wasn’t really back, was it?