Read Say What You Will for Free Online

going better than he’d expected. The strangest thing of all: last night he worried for hours about hearing the voice while he was walking next to Amy. And then—surprise, surprise—no voice at all! This whole day, it stayed silent. Perhaps because he had other things to think about: Amy’s cooler, her books, the battery pack. He had his own schedule and hers, two sets of classrooms to walk quickly between. After seventh period, his legs were tired but he’d never felt more energized. One half of his brain had taken an all-day vacation. It was possible! He was free! He wished he didn’t have to wait four days to be her peer helper again.
    “SO I HOPE THIS WASN’T TOO AWFUL FOR YOU,” Amy said when they were outside, waiting for her mom in the parent pick-up circle. On the other side of the road, he saw Bus #12—his own—pull away. He didn’t care. Easy enough to walk the mile and a half home.
    “Awful?” he said. “Hardly. I’ve had a great time.” He laughed, though neither one of them had made a joke.
    “YOU HAVE?”
    Did he sound overeager? Was it wrong to like a job you were getting paid for? “Yeah.” He swallowed. “I mean, yeah. You’re interesting, Amy. You always have been.”
    Her head flopped from one side over to the other. Her ear looked like it was listening to a secret from her shoulder. “HOW SO?”
    He saw her mother’s car pull in. “Well, I can’t tell you now; your mother’s here.”
    All at once he remembered his biggest failure of the day: he’d introduced her to no one.
    Lie, the voice said. Don’t be stupid. Just lie. It sounded angry. As if it had been watching him all day, waiting to remind him of all his failures.
    “Hi, Aims! Hi, Matthew! How did it go?” Nicole got out of her car to open the trunk.
    “I don’t have many friends,” he mumbled to Nicole as he loaded her walker and her backpack into the trunk of the car. “None Amy would want to know. I’m sorry.”
    Unable to look either one of them in the eye, he turned quickly and sprinted away.
    That night after dinner, Matthew stood at the sink washing pots and pans. He’d told his mother very little about his day. It was fine, he’d said. Amy was nice. His mother told him a story from work as she sipped her wine. As he finished the dishes, his mom touched his shoulder and asked why he checked the faucet so often. “It’s off, honey. I promise.”
    He tightened the faucet again. He couldn’t help himself. “I know.”
    “So why do you keep checking?”
    He couldn’t look at her. She’d never asked him about the faucet thing before. She’d asked about other things, but not this one. “No reason.”
    She took a deep breath. “I see you do these things that I never used to see you do. I worry that it’s taking up so much of your time.”
    He wanted to tell her the truth; he really did. It’s taking all my time, Mom. I don’t understand. I hate it but there’s nothing I can do. He heard a noise—like water moving through pipes, only it was blood in his capillaries, rushing to his face, up the back of his neck.
    “Can you tell me why?”
    He should tell her. He wanted to. His throat grew tight. He couldn’t speak. He feared for a minute that he couldn’t breathe.
    Don’t tell her, the voice hissed. It will make her cry and she’s sad enough as it is.
    “A woman at work—Cheryl, you remember her? She has a sister she told me about. Apparently she has these—oh, I don’t know—routines, she calls them. Where she checks on things before she can leave the house. The stove, the coffee, her hair dryer, all that. She has to go through the house over and over. Checking and rechecking. Some days it’s so bad she leaves work at lunch and goes home to recheck.”
    That wasn’t his problem. He wanted to laugh and say, She sounds crazy , Mom.
    “Is it a little like that for you?” She waited. “Where you try to calm your worries with these routines?”
    “No,” he said. “It’s nothing like