“I accept,” I say, and across the circle, Forrest smiles at me, slowly, hesitantly.
“I do too,” he says.
In sixth period, I pull out my phone under my desk and open my text thread with Forrest.
Can we talk after school?I type and send it before I can think twice.
He doesn’t respond during class. When the bell rings, I head to my locker and take my time, gathering the crumpled papers and candy wrappers from the bottom and throwing them in the trash, tidying up the magnets and pictures I’ve stuck on the inside, slowly putting the things I need into my backpack. Every few seconds, I glance down the hall, but he doesn’t come to his locker.
By the time the hall is mostly cleared out, I’ve run out of ways to stall. I shut the locker and close the combination lock, spinning it a few times, then pull out my phone to check my texts one more time.
Nothing.
I blow out a heavy sigh. My eyes are stinging. This is what happens when I put myself out there. I should have known better. Forrest doesn’t want me. He hates me now, and he’s right to, because I’m—
“Sidney!”
My head jerks up and there he is, walking toward me.
“Hey!” I croak out, my voice breathy. Oh god, don’t cry in front of him. I was already awkward once, I can’t make it awkward again.
He stops a few feet away, hands curled around the straps of his backpack. “It was good to see you in Queer Alliance today.”
“Yeah. I. Um. I wanted to come back.”
“Are you OK?” he asks. “You’ve been out all week, and you seemed really upset on Tuesday...” He trails off, biting his lip. Everything he isn’t saying about what happened last week looms over us in that word.Tuesday.The day I freaked out.
No. I didn’t freak out. Tracy said there’s nothing wrong with having a mental illness.
“I have OCD,” I blurt. “I see all these things in my head—well, I don’t SEE them, exactly, they’re not hallucinations, they’re just, like, mental images, about bad things happening to me, to other people, people I love, or my relationships, and they were getting really bad, and I do these things, these rituals to stop them, like saying phrases, but it wasn’t working anymore, and I really like you, and I was scared that it would all end badly, likereallybadly, with you hating me and all my friendships falling apart and I couldn’t risk that, and that’s why I was so weird last week, and I’m really, really sorry. I really like you. And I want to date you too.”
He stares at me, eyes wide. The hallway is utterly quiet, and somewhere in the school a door slams. I clasp my hands together tightly as I watch his face.
“You have OCD,” he says.
I nod.
“My cousin has that,” he says.
“They do?”
“Yeah. She has the stuff about germs—”
“Contamination OCD,” I say, remembering what Tracy said.
“But you have a different kind?” he asks.
“Yeah. I just started seeing a therapist for it.”
“Wow.”
The silence stretches, and I get that itching sensation in my chest, in my head, and I need to ask him—
“Are we OK?” I say. “I’m really sorry. Like, so sorry.”
“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s like an arrow to my heart. “I mean. When we kissed, I was stoked. I’ve had a crush on you for ages.”
“You have?” I don’t know what he means by that. How long is ages? This year, or even longer? Have I been missing more than I thought, this whole time?
