back, I can’t tell you why, but from that moment on the way home from the hospital when I double-shut that car door, that was when it began. I did the same thing when I got out of the car at home. I shut the door and then opened it and shut it again. I thought Mum would ask me what I was doing, but she didn’t even notice. I guess she had other things on her mind. Anyway, from then on it wasn’t that I wanted to do it. I had to do it.
Mum didn’t notice at home either when I shut my bedroom door twice. In the morning she told me off because I’d left my bedroom light on all night and I said I’d fallen asleep but really it was because when I went to switch off the light, I had this urge for making things even, just like the car door, and I found it impossible to only press the switch once so I had to switch the lights back on again, and off and on again to make it even, and then the lights were still on and so I slept with the lights glowing and my head buried in Moxy’s fur.
Every time from then on, when I got in the car or entered my bedroom, I completed that double door slam and on the second swing as the lock clicked shut I felt this incredible release. It was like a rush to my brain, this surge of energy that felt solid and real, and in that perfect moment I knew that somehow my actions were making everyone that I loved – Dad and Mum and Gus and Jock and Moxy – safe.
Double-slam, double-slam. I didn’t realise that pretty soon the urge for release would become my prison. That when I tried to stop doing things twice it would throw me into an anxiety attack that made me feel like a swarm of bees was invading my brain, the buzzing inside my head making me want to scream and curl up in a ball and disappear forever.
As the rituals took hold of me over the coming months, I desperately wanted to tell Mum what was happening to me. I mean, I was so scared of my own mind, I really thought I was going crazy. But what if I was crazy? And what if Mum found out I was having all these weird thoughts and she stopped loving me? You know, they have mental hospitals where they lock up kids like me – I’ve seen it in movies.
The more I thought about telling Mum, the more afraid I got. And the more I double-slammed those doors.
I couldn’t tell Moana either, even though we were best friends at school. I told Moana once about how I’d wet the bed on school camp and she told Juanita Wanakore and she teased me about it all term. If I was going to tell someone, I had to know I could trust them to never tell another soul.
I remember when I told Gus, he just held me with his eyes. I sat on the five-bar gate and I stroked his neck as I spoke and I told him everything. I knew he was really listening because the whole time his ears swivelled back and forth and his dark, liquid brown eyes were soft and sad and sometimes he wrinkled his muzzle. And as we sat there together, I very carefully did two tiny braids into his mane at the base of his neck by the wither. And that was when I knew that Gus was a part of my OCD too, and that I needed to do these two braids to make sure that Gus was safe. They would protect him, and even Jock and Moxy too.
When I first got Gus, he came from a farm where he was in a big herd of horses. I thought maybe he’d miss having a herd, but when he came to live in Parnassus, it was like me and Jock and Moxy became his herd. With Gus and Jock, they have this real respectful relationship. Like, when we go for rides across the farm, Jock will always fall in at Gus’s heels and keep in time with his strides. Border collies are smart like that and Jock is super well-trained. He used to be a working dog until he got too old, and I can give him instructions and he does whatever I tell him.
Moxy is the wild one of the group – she always runs ahead, being our trailblazer, sniffing and scouting the way. She’s intrepid for a cat. It’s in her breeding. Cornish Rex are real explorers. If you don’t know what they look like, well, they are almost bald because they have this crinkled-up fur like they’ve been shaved and the skin stretches taut so you can see the bones of her skull through it and she’s super-skinny with a long, ropey tail like a rat. I’m not making her sound very beautiful and I guess she’s not, but she is kind of amazing-looking, like the sort of pet an Egyptian princess would own.
We paid almost a thousand dollars for Moxy, and Dad was furious when he found out because he said he could buy a good working dog for that and you can get kittens for free around here because people are always giving them away. You shouldn’t have to pay for them. But Mum said Cornish Rex weren’t like ordinary cats – they were explorers, more like dogs than cats in their way, and loyal like a dog is loyal, choosing just one master. Also she knew this lady in Christchurch who was a “cat fancier” who bred them and did us a cheap deal. She was a really odd woman – she kept her cats in cages and washed them in special shampoo and wouldn’t let you play with them and when you went round to her house it smelt of cat poo and all her furniture was covered in plastic.
Dad soon changed his mind about paying for a fancy cat once Moxy chalked up the highest kill rate of any ratter we’ve ever had. She’s an amazing huntress. And she eats the rats too. Lots of cats will eat mice but not rats because rats taste gross, I guess, but Moxy swallows them down – she crunches up everything except for the fangs at the front and the tail at the back.
Moxy is supposed to be my cat, but if she’s loyal to anyone it’s Gus. She thinks she belongs to him. Or maybe it’s the other way round and she thinks Gus is her horse. If I’m looking for her then I’ll find her out there in the paddock with him, curled up on top of his rump, purring contentedly.
Gus was the only one I told about my OCD for a long time. In fact, I never would have told Mum at all. I was going to keep it a secret forever. The problem was, the OCD got worse. It got so bad I began to lie about stuff. Like, I would pretend to be sick and just stay in bed all day because I figured if I didn’t move, if I did nothing at all, then I didn’t need to do any of my rituals and I wouldn’t have to try to fight the urges inside me.
Only Mum wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept insisting that if I wasn’t actually sick, I needed to go to school and do my chores. But the OCD made it impossible because I’d developed this complex world of chaos in my bedroom. It looked like a big mess, but it was all part of my plan and I’d lie in the middle of the floor like a statue with the lights as bright as heaven above, unable to switch them off and trying not to think as the bees made my head fuzzy.
One morning Mum came into my room. I’d had the lights on all night and when she left my door open and touched the light switch I started shouting. It all suddenly burst out of me like pus from a swollen wound.
“Mum!” I began sobbing. “There’s something wrong with me!”
It was Mum who looked up my symptoms on the internet and discovered I was OCD. The initials stand for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
“Evie,” she said, “it’s going to be OK. We’ll find someone who can help.”
That was what led us back to the hospital, following the blue line this time instead of the red. Once a week every Tuesday at four.
We come here, to these familiar corridors with their weird, tainted smell that is a mix of antiseptic and blood, and every time I catch sight of that sign in the lift that says “Level 8: Oncology” I feel the tears well up and I get so mad at myself, and I tell myself not to cry. I tell myself all sorts of things. And I count my footsteps. One-two. Even steps between each floor tile, an even number of buttons that must be pressed when I enter the lift, and two whole glasses of water from the cooler in the waiting room before I enter Willard Fox’s rooms to begin our session.
