Page 113 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
Karma eyed my empty plate. Trying to act normal, I dug into the nearest dishes at random, slopping a bit of each onto my plate. I even took hummus, which I’ve never actually liked.
When I looked back up, Manuel was staring at me. His eyes dropped to my plate, then raised slowly back up to my face. They narrowed.
I looked away.
The toasts began. Karma and Clarence went first, of course, giving a rowdy speech I couldn’t pay attention to but surely set a high bar. They concluded by saluting the evening sky with their champagne flutes and insisting that the new couple join them in a celebratory chug. Helene giggled and obliged.
As the toasts continued, I started cycling through the memories again. I couldn’t stop. That’s the thing about OCD. You examine yourself from every possible angle—how do I look as a lesbian? A cheater? A heartless bitch? You never thought that you were a lesbian before, but now that the possibility has arrived in your mind, you must examine it from every angle possible. Where logic talks, OCD screams. And by then, you’ve bought so fully into its hollering that you can’t tell which one was the truth and which one was the worry. And you think in circles, and the circles are endless, and they consume you, and you forget that you used to have a personality outside those circles.
Most of the time, the things I worried about were cruel illusions. Not this time. This time, I’d uncovered something truly horrendous. Truly unforgivable. I’d stolen something that didn’t belong to me, and I’d taken my father’s legs with it.
I did my best to eat—a bite of fettuccini here, a mouthful of pulled pork there—but I truly had no appetite. None at all. My body was shaking. My fists were balling into little claw shapes of their own accord, as if I were playing at being a wolf. My heart was hammering in my chest. I felt so oddly aware of my own breathing.Tooaware. I feared, for a moment, that I would forget how to breathe at all.
I couldn’t help it; I glanced up at Manuel.
And immediately wished I hadn’t.
He was watching me shake. Watching my little clawed fists. For all I knew, he’d neverstoppedwatching me. By then, his eyes had narrowed to previously unforeseen levels of suspicion. When my gaze landed on him, his eyes flicked up to meet mine. They narrowed even further. He pushed back his chair—clearly with the intention of coming over to speak with me.
I jerked my chair back and blurted out the word “Bathroom” to anyone who was listening. As I stood, the patio tipped onto its side. I caught myself on the back of Groomsman A’s chair.
“Are you all right?” asked Groomsman B. He grabbed my elbow in an awkward attempt to keep me upright.
“Yes.” I gripped the back of the chair and squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the patio stood upright. I blinked. The men were staring at me. Manuel was staring at me. I smiled feebly at the groomsmen and turned to run away. As I darted around the table and into Sunny Sunday, I felt Manuel’s eyes follow.
I burst through the bathroom door and teetered to the sink, catching myself with one hand on either side of the basin. My legs wobbled. I let go and sunk to the bathroom floor.
The door swung open and knocked into my shoulder.
“Shit,” rasped a familiar voice.
I cringed. The only door on the island with an actual lock, and I forgot to use it.
Dad’s chair bumped into the doorknob. His head peeked around the frame. There they were again—those eyes, both piercing and wrinkled. Careless but wise. Eyes that had seen fifty more years of life than I could even begin to imagine.
“Whoops,” he said. “My bad.”
He wheeled backward, attempting retreat.
“Dad.” I scrambled to my feet. “Dad.”
“What? What, what?” He pulled the door back open, hair flapping wildly.
Vertigo pulsed at the edges of my vision. I steadied myself on the bathroom sink.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I blinked several times to bring his face into focus.
“What, for God’s sake?”
The words bubbled out of my mouth all at once. “Can you fix me?”
“Fix you?” He shook his head, bewildered. “Are you broken?”
You have no idea.
“Yes.”
