I’m having trouble. Help me out here, Theo. You used to be so good at helping me even things out. I’m trying to guess what you would say right now. I look around the room, which you always advised was a good place to start. Most times you’d save me from the landslides of panic; I feel one bouldering through me now.
I don’t know if I’m imagining it or not, but my heart is speeding up faster than usual. I’m desperate for anything, sort of like when two people are having an awkward silence and everything would be slightly better if someone said something . . .
I got it! Today is the first time I will go out into the snow and play as a present to Jackson.
Damn it. You should’ve reminded me I’m meeting Jackson’s friends later for the first time; you know we have dinner plans. I can’t get it out of my head now; it’s clicked as a fifth, registered itself in my head. I need a sixth first now. I’m in a good place if I think up something else after the sixth since I’ll hit a seventh and maybe even an eighth, and, wow, if I hit all those, I will be pretty close to ten firsts today. Hitting that record is tempting.
I can’t.
My heart is rioting, my chest is tightening, my throat is swallowing nothing, and my fingernails are going to war against my palm.
Jackson notices. But he’s in the middle of pulling on his second sock, and he stops. He moves the phone away from his mouth and asks me if I’m okay.
“Put your other sock on, please,” I say.
“I have to call you back, Mom.” Jackson hangs up on his mother and immediately pulls on his other sock. I need the balance of two socks on two feet almost as much as I need a sixth first.
My face gets hot, or maybe it’s been hot for a while. I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m burning everywhere. The heat spreads down to my shoulders and down to my elbows and down to my wrists and down to my thighs and down to my knees and down to my toes. I want to undress and cry a little because I can’t focus on what I should be focusing on—the next and last first—because all I can think about is how you’re not here to help me and how Jackson will never understand what it’s like to live in a head like mine, to be powerless against these impulses.
Jackson, with both socks on, approaches and crouches before me, almost like I’m strapped to explosives and may self-destruct any second now. “Griffin, what is it?” He adjusts himself to be on the other side of my right knee. “Is it an angle thing?”
I found my sixth first: today is the first morning I’m allowing Jackson to help me find sanity. He’s been helping me out with grief. I push him away when it comes to my compulsions. You’ve been there for me since pretty much the beginning, and I’ve turned to you. It’s hard to control something that has control over me. No one understands, but it’s freeing to let someone else in to try.
“I’m okay.” I wipe my forehead with the back of my head. “I got stuck in my head.”
“Was it an angle thing? How can I help you next time?”
His thoughtfulness reminds me of you.
“It was a counting thing. Let’s drop it for now because I’ve spent enough time in my head already.” That’s the nature of having a brain that spins, I guess. I know brains aren’t supposed to spin—minds can, not the actual brains themselves. But there’s a lot going on in my head I don’t understand and may never understand, and it seems silly to cling to the idea that my brain is this fleshy thing that stays in its place, this thing that behaves like other brains.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson says.
“Not your fault,” I lie. I can’t let it slip that this particular train of thought derailed because of him; he’s the source of counting these firsts.
I’ve imagined many easier lives in alternate universes—somewhere Jackson no longer exists and some where he never existed in the first place—but I never counted on living in a universe where Jackson is a welcome and helpful addition to my life. I would’ve never predicted a universe where I’m actually careful about how Jackson feels.
I get up from bed and look out the window. The blizzard is going strong and is expected to reach four feet today, maybe six by Sunday. “You sure you still want a snow day?”
“I’m sure,” he says. “I want to send my parents photos of me in the snow.”
I’m betting Jackson’s father won’t call until closer to noon, though I’m hoping he’ll prove me wrong. Until then, we’ll keep blaming it on work. Maybe he’s up in the air and unable to call. Maybe he’s surprising his son by visiting New York to see him. I have my doubts on that one. I hope Jackson isn’t counting on it, either.
“It’s your day,” I say. We’re definitely waiting until the snow isn’t pounding down like this, but I am determined to honor his wishes. “How are you feeling about seeing Anika and Veronika?”
“I’d be surprised if that still happens,” Jackson says, still staring out the window like it’s the last time it’ll ever snow. “Veronika is always looking for excuses to cancel. She hates leaving the house. I’m sure she cancels everything now that weather is a factor.”