Page 48 of My Heart to Find

“Do you need to sit down?”

“It’s fine,” I say.

Riley—apparently suddenly aware that Damien is here—barrels out of the kitchen and straight at Damien, who nearly falls over as fifty pounds of dog hits him. Damien makes anoofnoise.

“Careful, boy.” He laughs, but his laugh doesn’t ring true. He looks up at me as he pacifies Riley. “Is it...is it serious? This illness?”

I take a deep breath. I hate this. Hate this conversation. Because it’s where I’ll just get an extra level of confirmation that he’s not interested in me. I mean, he clearly isn’t anyway, as he’s taking Jana on dates.

Jana.

Suddenly, I picture the two of them kissing. It feels like a punch to the gut.

I swallow hard.

“Cara?” Damien prompts.

“I’ve got brain inflammation—because of Lyme disease.” I look at my feet, then up at him when he doesn’t say anything.

His eyes are wide. In my hallway, they don’t look as blue. They look duller somehow—or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m sucking the life out of him, just like this illness is sucking the life out of me.

“Isn’t that serious?” he asks.

I nod. “It affects pretty much everything.”

“What is it then? Like, if I look it up, what do I google? Just brain inflammation?”

He wants to look it up? I frown a little. The roof of my mouth is suddenly too dry.

“Well, the brain stuff is autoimmune encephalitis,” I say. “Encephalitis means brain inflammation. And I’ve got Lyme disease. Borrelia is the bacteria that causes Lyme. The encephalitis developed because the Lyme was treated.”

“En—what?”

“Encephalitis.” I swallow hastily. “Um, it’s also known as PANS—that’s easier to remember. Though it’s mainly in children when it’s called PANS. The P in Pans stands for Pediatric. Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome—but it’s pretty much the same thing as encephalitis. And PANS and encephalitis can have a lot of causes, not just Lyme.”

“Neuropsychiatric?” Damien takes a step back. Riley whines at him because he’s stopped fussing him.

And here it comes. The fear. The backing away. Because no one wants to be taking to a crazy girl. Much lessbewith one—really, what was I thinking anyway? As if Damien’s going to profess his love for me when he’s seeing my best friend.

“Yeah,” I say. “As in the symptoms it causes are neurological and psychiatric—because the brain is inflamed. So, I fall over, struggle with handwriting, and on bad days I can’t speak. And I have OCD because of it.” I decide not to mention my hallucinations. There’s too much stigma around those.

“OCD.” Damien nods. “Right. Okay. Like wanting to be neat and tidy?”

“No. As in a severe anxiety disorder that causes so much mental torment.” My tone is blunt. I hate explaining the OCD. “I panic with touching anything. Anyone.”

“Anyone?” He raises his eyebrows. “Oh.” His eyes do a jumpy little thing, like he can’t decide where to look. “So, it wasn’t thatyoudidn’t want to hug me before? Just that it scared you, with the OCD?”

I nod, and I feel stupid and embarrassed, and I always feel like this when people try and talk about it to me. When I’m making my cartoon, it’s different—I’m in control of the conversation then, and yeah, sometimes I do include stuff on chronic illness then. But not now. Now, this conversation could go anywhere, and I’ve got no warning.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

“I had no idea.”

I shift my weight to my other foot. “Like I said, you’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

He clears his throat. “So, um...” Then he pulls his hands through his hair. “Can I ask you something? Like, without sounding crazy?”

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