“Morning Love, where are you?” Her mom´s voice rang up the stairs, cheerful and unreserved. 

“Coming mom.” Logan walked downstairs with the air of someone approaching their death knell. Lucille didn’t notice. Her face was stained with paint and she waved a brush wildly. 

“Hi dear. I've been so excited to read your story. Just like everyone else will be one day.” She wiggled her eyebrows conspiratorially. 

Logan quivered at the expectation in her raised eyebrows. “Yeah, I know. Mom, I’m really sorry-I, well I deleted it.”

“What? Why? Did you not want me to read it for some reason?” Lucille asked. 

Logan thought she detected a note of annoyance in her voice.”No, I just realized it was too dry.”

Her mother sighed. “You know, every artist has a period where they feel like their art is bad. You have to push through it, or you won’t ever finish anything. Sometimes you have to tell yourself “hey maybe this is really bad and nobody will appreciate it but me, but at least I’ll still believe in it.” You won’t always feel great about your work all the time, which is okay. My paintings do bomb sometimes, you know.” 

Logan shivered. Was her mom giving her friendly advice, or was she telling her that she needed to hurry up and finish something all ready?

“Yeah, I know. I just don’t feel confident about my stories.”

“Sign of your age. You’re 15, you’re not supposed to feel confident about much. It’ll come.” Her mother kissed her cheek and then went into the kitchen and started making a bowl of cereal, humming. 

All of a sudden, Logan felt sick. Like, truly sick. The smell of the cereal, the grating humming of her mother’s voice. The feeling of explaining that she had yet again failed to finish a project felt like admitting a dirty secret. She needed to get out. Away from Katie, her mother, her dad, her story, her, well, everything. The only place she could think of was Nora’s. Since she was away on college tours, Logan had been looking after her outdoor plants. She supposed she could grab breakfast, stop over there, and then maybe head back to the coffee shop? Drink a strong black coffee, read, see if any ideas presented themselves to her. She quickly found a loose sheet of paper, scratched a note, and left it lying unassumingly on the sleek countertop. 

“Hey, guys, just remembered I forgot to check on the plants for Nora! See you later, 

Love, Logan”

Nora was a junior, while Logan was a sophomore, so she was much more entrenched in the college hunt then she was. She would be gone for two weeks, flying around the country for tours. Logan had really been dreading to go over there. Nora’s sister Dahlia always made her feel very uncomfortable. She didn’t mean to, it was just that Dahlia always invoked quite a lot of pity. Usually when the family went away on vacation a relative would stay with Dahlia, but this tour had been planned at the last minute. And as Nora had said while breathlessly wheezing and pressing down on her trunk to close it, “We asked Auntie Emily but she´s going through another end of life crisis. This time she's convinced she’ll die of smallpox in two months. Apparently there was another premonition involved. So she has embarked on a trip to Spain before she dies. And Grandpa Bennett is having a tooth removed. Which if you know my grandpa Ben, means he will claim a need for bedrest for at least 3 months. But we can’t not go. These colleges are really important, and it is the only 2 weeks I have free for 6 months. Please check in on her when you come over to water the plants, if it’s not too much!” Logan had nodded in wordless, overwhelmed agreement, but now she was dreading it. She hadn't been alone with Dalia often since the incident. But she knew it wasn’t Nora or her parents fault she was left all alone in the house. And it wasn’t really Dahlia’s either. Dahlia had not received the luckiest hand in life’s game of cards. 

She strapped her bike helmet on, and tooled across the streets, flicking a chip of peeling paint off of the rickety bike. The bike had been through many things, not least of which included rainstorms, teenage temper tantrums, spectacular falls, and years of time, to slowly curl the paint up from its body, dim the noise of the bell, and shred the rubber grips on the bars. The seat chafed uncomfortably so she was grateful when she saw the lighted sign of the coffee shop in front of her. 

She bought a little bag of mini donuts. But they were small and there were only four of them. The rest of the drive wasn’t nearly as bad, knowing that she had a warm breakfast, just waiting to be eaten, in her pocket. She stopped at the bus stop, pulling her bike up swiftly and settling down. It wasn’t a long bus ride (only about 20 minutes) to Nora and Dalia’s small suburban neighborhood on the edge of town. She pulled up to the quaint little cottage style home. It was painted cheery yellow, with pale blue roofing and shutters, and a stark white door. There were not really that many plants to water but she took her time, mentally kicking herself for depriving Dahlia of company but dreading going in. She finally could procrastinate no longer, so she unlocked the door, chewing on a doughnut.

“Oh hey, how are you?” Dahlia called from the kitchen. 

“Oh, you know, #blessed and all that crap, how about you?” She answered. Dahlia was sitting at the kitchen table engrossed in a book, and drinking what looked to be Ovaltine. 

Logan felt a twist in her gut. Maybe being around someone with agoraphobia tends to do that to people, she thought to herself. It reminds them of their own loneliest inclinations? Logan wondered if Dalia’s personality was different than it would have been had she not suffered from it.

  She thought back to when she had first found out. Dahlia had always been anxious and a little on the quiet side. They had both been more introverted than Nora. But a few months after Dahlia´s 13th birthday, things had changed. She had started to wall herself off from people. It was almost a flip of a switch. One day she was fine, the next she was acting like she was a mouse and everyone around her was a really hungry cat. And then all of a sudden she was gone, and Nora would not talk about it. She’d just said she had agoraphobia, and was afraid to leave the house. That her parents thought it was a phase. Then moved on.

“Oh my gosh I love those doughnuts so much! It’s such a cute little shop too. I used to go in there and study, and read. I’ve always loved how their tables have a little donut hole in them.” Dahlia exclaimed, starting up.

“Oh, I love it too. But actually they got rid of the donut tables years ago. Have you not been in there recently?” She said. Immediately after she put her foot in her mouth, her cheeks felt like they had been set on fire. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t know. I mean, it’s okay. I like to know how things have changed, so don’t feel bad. It’s really... fine,” Dahlia said awkwardly. Logan just nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. Dahlia cleared her throat then pushed a few papers under the table out of view. Logan was very aware of her own desire to see what they said, but she didn’t want to pry. 

“You know, you and I have similar tastes. I feel like we’re both pretty literary and boho. Maybe you can tell me what’s going on in the places you, Nora and I used to hang out at a lot?!” she smiled. Logan was floored. It was a question that carried a lot of weight. She hoped that the places she wanted to know about hadn’t changed much. She imagined it would probably be pretty shocking to hear about if you hadn’t seen it happen. She was starting to regret her choice to come here. But it was less stress inducing then window side conversations with Katie or judgemental breakfasts with her parents. 

“Geez, I’m trying to remember the places you liked to go. Oh, wait, didn’t you also like that ice cream place downtown? Okay, well, get this, it closed down and they opened a salad restaurant called, “Kale Me Baby.”

“No! You’re kidding me! That’s weird, Nora loved that place. I wonder why she didn’t mention it. Well that’s depressing. Who the heck wants kale instead of ice cream?” Dahlia´s voice sounded fakely cheerful suddenly. Logan worried for a moment that telling her all of these things that she had missed would make Dahlia too uncomfortable, but then she didn’t want to make it awkward by stopping the conversation. 

“Yeah, I know. Oh, and that coffee place that Nora used to make us go to stopped being open in the morning, which was, you know, the best time for it to be open. I’m not complaining though because their lattes taste like sour milk and ground up sand together!” She thought for another second.  “Honestly though, I don’t have that much news that you wouldn’t already know. Not much happens.”

“Does school look any different? With homeschooling I don’t know any school gossip. Nora’s a whole year ahead and in a school as big as the public one, well, you know. You go there too. The grades don't mix a whole lot.” Dahlia asked. Her hunger for knowledge crept into her faux casual tone. 

Logan actually had an answer for this. “Well, you know Mrs. Danvers? She was the one that always used to assign us homework over breaks. Well, she just had all this scandal because Principal Gonzalez figured out that she was completely lying about having a PhD. It was a huge deal because they kept promoting her and she was paid really highly in comparison to pretty much everyone else. They thought they were getting one of the best educators in the state. But turns out she forged all the certificates with the help of some loser boyfriend. I’m pretty sure Principal Gonzalez was pretty pleased, if only secretly. I mean, you heard all the jabs she used to make to the other teachers:
“Oh, Mrs. Raymond, you’re such a good teacher. I love how you answer all the students’ questions so thoroughly. But you know dear, I myself am very partial to the idea of letting children discover for themselves, instead of giving them all the answers-I find it promotes learning. I could pass along a few articles on the theory from the teacher magazines I subscribe to if you like? ” she laughed. Dahlia laughed too.

“Uggh, she always used to say the most passive aggressive things to me about Nora. She’d be like, “Oh yes, I remember your sister. She was the volleyball player right? She certainly gave me a challenge!” ¨ She said, rolling her eyes. “I wish I could have been there to see her kicked to the curb.” The words came out jauntily, but the sentence left an aftertaste like a sour apple. Logan pursed her lips, feeling awkward. Dahlia rushed on, “I hated her. I never had her as a teacher, but she subbed for an elementary school class once, and, it’s just one of those things that stick in your mind. We had free reading time, and she told me the fantasy book I was reading was too easy and that I needed to challenge myself more. I thought it was a bit presumptuous considering she used to fold People magazines into the newspaper and pretend she was reading the news” she said, grinning. 

Logan nodded. She could relate, but she felt like it would be rude to continue talking about herself. “So what have you been doing?” She asked. 

“Well, I finished my summer vacation packet work a long time ago, and I have read a lot. I’ve been coloring some, you know, to pass the time. I write stories, just to amuse myself. Once she gets back we'll start our Summer Sister Book Challenge.” She said cheerfully. Logan looked at her, thinking about all the things that she was missing, sizing Dahlia up, trying to see past her clear, heavily featured face; the nervous, almond shaped eyes, and thick, curly red hair. To her utmost horror, words came to her lips before she could think better of them. 

“Why?” The word was short, and concise, but she knew that Dahlia was fully aware of what she was asking. “I’m sorry, don’t answer that,” She hastily took it back. 

Dahlia looked directly at her. She felt a quick flash of anger as she took in Logan’s anxious eyes, the dark circles painfully visible. “No, I’ll answer…... I presume for a reason that you can probably relate very personally with” was her jarring reply. She was looking at Logan appraisingly, like a cat cocking its head at a bright flashy toy. Logan looked at her in confusion. What the heck was that supposed to mean? A sliver of annoyance pricked the back of her mind. Was Dahlia trying to be funny, or mysterious? “ Let me go get something. I’ll be right back.” Logan watched her leave, and wondered what kind of stories she wrote. She desperately wanted to see them, but she knew more than to ask. She waited for her to come back, drumming her fingers on the table. She was taking forever, it seemed. Desperate to do something, Logan crossed the room and pulled up the window, breathing in the quiet, calm of the noontime sky. She smelled the last vestiges of a campfire from the night before, and knew that somebody had been roasting marshmallows. She could almost see the powdery white puffs, fresh from the bag, being held in the chubby, clumsy fingers of a child for the first time. In her mind, she pictured a peeling grey twig puncturing it’s voluptuous side, and she imagined it slowly singing, becoming imbibed with the smoky quality of the fire. The freedom of summer. The freedom of the flames.

  “Would you mind shutting that?” Dahlia asked, standing in the doorway. She was holding two glasses of water. “It makes me a bit anxious, even from over here…”

“Sure, sorry,” Logan grimaced and quickly pulled down the window. Freedom apparently did not mesh with Dahlia’s life. Suddenly the phone rang. She threw a quick apologetic look at Dahlia and brought it up to her ear. 

“Honey, I got your note. Make sure to hurry home; I’m making grilled cheese for lunch! Listen, I wanted to tell you, I am so proud of you for all the writing you’ve been doing. I hope you know I don’t care whether you become a writer, or whether your stories are any good, I am just proud that you found something you love, something that’s constructive, not like all the mess that your class-mates do with their free time. Don’t be too hard on yourself. It's completely normal to play around with different ideas. Anyway, just wanted to tell you that, and tell you to come home soon,” She chirruped. Logan held the phone to her heart, chewing herself out in her mind. Her mom was being kind, but somehow the thought of her parents, her house, was paling in comparison to the quiet house she was standing in. She was finding that, while Dahlia herself was a bit disconcerting, her world was blessedly free of expectation.  But unfortunately that was impossible. She had to rejoin the real world. She couldn’t stay in this quiet house with this strange girl and her limpid eyes that were still somehow guarded. 

Dahlia was sitting at the table, picking at her fingers. She suddenly looked so morose. So alone. Normally it would have broken her heart. But at that exact moment, all she saw was herself. Another confused, exhausted, sad girl. And she suddenly wanted desperately to know why. Why she was the way she was. Why Dahlia was the way she was. She wanted to stay here, in this haven. It was a depressing haven, but it was a haven nonetheless. Here there were no Katie’s who glared accusingly. There were no parents who didn’t know your secrets. There were no parties you had to figure out how to avoid. 

“Dahlia. Your parents aren’t coming back for another two weeks, right?” 

“Yeah.” Dahlia looked inquisitively at her. 

“That’s kind of a long time. I don’t have anything else to do-do you want me to stay with you, at least for part of the time?” She asked desperately, pressing the phone to her chest. She had tried to phrase it like a charitable act, but the question had come out tinted with a shade of pleading.  

Dahlia looked for some reason, less taken aback than was to be expected. In her head she wasn’t really surprised.  Logan had been over a few times before already to check on the plants, and each time she had shut the garden gate behind her she had looked like she was shutting out the depths of hell. 

“...Sure?” she said, sounding cautious, and nervous. “That’s kind of a lot on you though, I’m really fine. Only if you’re bored and want to hang out in a really boring house," she said. 

“No problem,” Logan said in thanks. 

She put the phone back to her ear. “Mom, Dahlia wants me to stay with her until her parents get home. I know it’s kind of a while, but I don’t have much else to do, and I mean, I'm right around the corner if there’s an emergency." She asked with bated breath, because if her mother said no, she would have to walk into the other room and pull out the "poor Dahlia" card. It was a low move, and she knew that Dahlia would be able to guess exactly what she was doing.

“Honey, are you crazy? You can’t just spend two weeks with someone without any notice! You’d be getting involved with her problems! Look, I think it’s great that you aren’t shying away from her like other people do, but no, I’m sorry.” Lucille answered. 

  “Mom,” she sighed. To Dahlia she said, “Sorry, it’s a private family matter," while walking out of the room into the plush carpeted hallway, so as not to be overheard. Dahlia nodded politely, as one does when one is being lied to cordially.

“Mom, I know this comes across as crazy. But mom, I’m so stressed out. I just finished end of year exams, which I’m still recovering from, and you know I’m introverted. All of my friends keep wanting to hang out, and I just need a break,” she lied. “It would make me feel better to make her happy. And she’s not a stranger; we used to hang out all the time with Nora. Plus, she’s Nora’s sister. You remember Nora mom? You once said she was a better daughter than me!” Logan said sarcastically. 

“That was in jest!” Her mother retorted, but her voice had softened. “Well, I’ll have to talk to your dad, but for now stay where you are.  And if we agree, that doesn’t mean that you can just live over there for two straight weeks and hole yourself up with fast food. You’re like me. When things get to be too much, you just shut down. I know Dahlia won’t leave that house, but you sure as heck better-get some sun, relax! Enjoy the first couple weeks of your summer! And I’m calling Nora’s parents to confirm” Lucille said firmly. 

“Of course! Geez mom, give me some credit. Anyway, thank you so much” She hung up the phone. Her chest heaved a bit. 

Slowly she walked back into the room. “You don’t have to---” Logan held up her hand to Dahlia’s weak protest. It was weak because Dahlia didn’t feel guilty, or an imposition in the slightest. On the contrary, she knew that Logan wasn’t doing this for her. She didn’t know the hows and whys, but she could recognize fear and exhaustion in another person, and Logan radiated waves of it. She wanted to know why though. Like most people, she felt she needed to know the darkest secrets of everyone else, while jealously guarding her own. 

“So, what the heck are we going to do for two weeks? I’m not exactly a scintillating conversationalist.” Dahlia said wryly. 

“I don't know. But we never hang out any more. You used to do stuff with me and Nora all the time, and now that… that we can’t really do that anymore we haven't really done anything together in a long time. Life just gets so busy, ya know?” Logan said. That wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was that it became difficult to be with someone who insisted on staying in the same 4,000 square foot space at all times. 

“I don't know what we’ll do for the next two weeks, but I know what we can do now! Do you remember that time when we were like 6 and we had that prank where we kept taking Nora’s wall art and hiding it!? Let’s do it again and see how long it takes her to notice!” She suggested. Logan agreed cheerfully and followed her up the stairs to Nora’s room. She was relieved at having a lighthearted diversion placed in front of her. Almost every square inch had a painting, or a drawing or something. Some were by her, but most were funny looking flea market purchases. Logan pointed to one to the right of her.  It was the size of a coffee table book, and right in the center was a picture of a girl serving a volleyball on a sunny beach shore. They crossed the room and lifted down the painting in question. It came easily, but, just as Logan tucked it under her arm, the corner ripped a good sized hole in a sheet of paper sitting behind her on her desk that said “calculus study guide unit one” across the top. It then promptly drifted over to a half full glass of water on the side of the desk, which through some feat of bizarre physics, tipped over at just the right angle to drench the rest of the paper. 

“Dang it! She’s taking an online class this summer to get ahead in math and she has a test in a couple of weeks!” Dahlia moaned. “Well, she already gets mad if I come in her room, I don’t want to see what she does now that I’ve actually messed something up!”

Logan broke into a cold sweat. The general idea of math made her nervous, as did the idea of telling one of her best friends (other than Katie, though that was looking a little shaky these days) that she had messed up what looked like a very thorough study guide. She had no idea how to fix this. Nora was ahead of her in math by two years, and she was in the honors class. Dahlia’s hands were shaking as she pulled out her sister’s math textbook. 

“Okay, this makes sense, uh huh, yep, NOPE… What are we going to do?, this looks like it was written by Stephen Hawking! I am not even planning to take calculus, I hate math!” Dahlia laughed, but her eyes looked worried. There is no fear greater than that of the younger sibling anticipating the fury of the older. Especially when that older sibling has such a powerful overhand serve. 

“Okay, calm down. Let’s do this the old fashioned way,” Logan said. She ripped out another piece of paper and began to forge her friend’s handwriting. 

“No, I can do it better, she’s my sister,” Dahlia pointed out. She began the laborious process where Logan had stopped, squinting to see the watery words. 

“What do I do about the hole though, I can’t see what it said?” she conceded. 

“Make stuff up,” Logan parried back. “It’s easy. Just throw in a couple of y’s and z’s and infinity signs.” Dahlia furrowed her brow in concentration.

“I know the pythagorean theorem. Does that work?”

“I would say not, considering that’s mainly used in geometry, but I also haven’t taken calculus so who the heck knows. Just write a bunch of stuff and then pray and it’ll be fine,” Logan said.                 

“Wait, maybe we can figure it out by looking at the edges of the wet part…”

The two girls hunched determinedly over the paper. 

“Do you think that says 2, or 3?” Dahlia asked after a few minutes. 

“No earthly idea.” Logan rubbed her brow in annoyance and bent closer. Another few minutes passed. 

“What do you think this sign is?”

“No idea but it looks like a word….lo...something. Let me look it up…..”

“Okay, I think we’re done.” The relieved words issued from Dahlia’s mouth a few minutes after they had started. “Well that was miserable! What were we even doing before? Oh, yeah, hiding that painting!”

The two girls brought the painting and the limp remains of the study guide with them as they scurried out of her room, both eager to put as much distance between them and math as possible. They stashed it in Dahlia’s room. As they were walking back past her room on the way to the kitchen Logan saw something on the side of the calculus study guide. She backtracked. 

“Oh my God! Dahlia, look.” She was pointing at the back of the notes sheet where the words, “Nora-10th grade” were written. “These are a year old!” Then she glanced over and saw the open window right behind an open chest of drawers next to her desk. Inside the drawer, a folder of old papers blew in the breeze. It was obvious now. The wind had made the paper float onto the desk. It was just some old schoolwork, nothing useful…

“Oh my God!” For a second Dahlia’s eyes flashed in annoyance, but then the two looked at each other and burst out laughing. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the joke wouldn’t have been funny to anyone else. But they were laughing because the incident resembled something from their past. When they were all about 6 or 7, Nora had lost her favorite stuffed animal. It was pink and soft, and she had named it Cuddles (because that was the name that came on the tag). With the wrath of a 7 year old, she decided that Dahlia must have taken it, and wouldn’t speak to her for a week. Logan had been woefully caught in the middle. The punchline was that Nora eventually found the bear curled up in the bottom of her backpack from show and tell, forgotten and neglected. It showed the strength of their sisterhood that the two girls were able to laugh about it almost immediately. Now, the situation may have changed, but they were still just as careless and clueless as Nora had been. Finally, when there were no laughs left in them they lay there on the floor, a dappled ray of sunlight filtering in. 

Dahlia’s smile dropped looking at that sun ray. It reminded her of the outside, which reminded her of why Logan was actually here. Or rather, why she was not here. Because she was not here to help Dahlia, or to become friends again. People who wanted to rekindle a friendship, or make a kind gesture planned it, they didn’t just thrust themselves into the situation desperately.  Suddenly, she was filled with a squirmy uncomfortableness. She couldn’t stand Logan believing that she had been fooled into thinking this was a kind gesture to a pathetic basket case. It felt too much like accepting pity to let Logan think she was such a good liar. “Hey, Logan. You know you can always tell me anything right? You´re Nora’s friend, and so you’re my friend-so if there´s something going on, something at home, or I don’t know, anything, just tell me. Running away from things, it doesn’t work long term,” Dahlia said, in the back of her mind, aware of how hypocritical that sounded and was. 

“What?” Logan asked, sitting up suddenly. She looked startled. It was like one of those nightmares where someone reads your mind. 

“I know you’re not just here to help me feel less lonely while my family is gone. I know that you are running from something.” Dahlia said, a little bit of unjustified anger creeping in. Why did people have to be so difficult? Couldn´t they ever just say what they were really thinking?

Logan breathed out an angry snort. She looked at the ground next to Dahlia and spoke. “You can’t say that. I’m sorry if this is rude.” (She wasn’t). “But you’re literally hiding out from the whole world.” She knew she would regret saying that later but she didn’t care, Dahlia had no right to analyze her when she was doing something that benefited her. 

Dahlia looked suddenly very cold. Her eyes had become very wet. “You wouldn’t understand. I’m doing what I have to. I’m doing the world a favor. Look, it's fine. Let's just move on. I need to go get some homework done,”  she said, forgetting that because it was summer this excuse was paper thin. She walked out of the room wiping her eyes. Logan looked after her angrily. Somehow she had managed to come out of this feeling in the wrong, even though Dalia had started it. Logan knew deep down that Dahlia did not want to be stuck in her home day after day, never leaving, but she was having a hard time remembering it now. Her cheeks were burning. Her eyes blazed with anger, more at herself than Dalia. Why was she running? Why couldn’t she go to a simple movie with a friend, or talk to her parents about her hobbies? Why was it so hard for her? After a minute of furious stalking she noticed a wetness around the corners of her eyes. She passed a mirror, and glancing at it momentarily was appalled at her appearance. She looked a combination of exhausted, furious, and terrified. What had she become? What was wrong with her? It was not like Dahlia was wrong. She was clearly hiding from something. Her parents, her friends, her life….her failure. That was precisely what made Dahlia’s analysis so galling. It was true. She took a few deep breaths, and then calmly mounted the stairs and knocked on Dahlia’s door. 

“Come in.” Dahlia’s voice was so calm, so tranquil, considering the scene that had just ensued that Logan immediately wondered whether she had made the event seem worse than it was. 

“No, you know you will feel better if you just check that she’s not mad at least ” she chided herself. She’d almost opened the door when a sudden sense of foreboding stopped her cold. The room suddenly looked dangerous. She tapped the side of the door 3 times, then 3 more just to make sure. An immediate relief flooded her. She didn’t really have the door tapping fear that much anymore. It was more of a thing from when she was little. But sometimes vestiges of old worries would creep back into her head. She walked into the room. 

Dahlia was sitting at her window, gazing out with a numb expression. She looked glued to the window, unable to tear her eyes from the sparkling sun on the panes and the fresh breeze ruffled lawn. Logan felt the embers of guilt erupt into flames. She looked around the house that was not hers. The house that she was only staying in for 2 weeks, and not even all the time, and imagined being stuck in it every day, never even touching the soft grass of the lawn. No matter how ignorant she was of Dahlia’s situation, she knew one thing. Dahlia was not here for kicks. This was not a life she had chosen. And she also knew that nobody liked to be pitied. Logan had chosen to keep her company, to stay with her while her family was gone, pretending it was kindness for a former friend, but so far all she had done was scrutinize and isolate Dahlia, and push her further into her shell. 

“Dahlia, I was totally out of line. I know…I know you’re not here because you want to be, and I know that you probably don’t want to talk about it, and that’s totally fine. I just wanted to apologize for being a total idiot.”

Dahlia gave a watery grin. “ It's okay. If you don’t ask me about my life, then I won’t talk about yours. I shouldn’t assume that you’re only here because you’re avoiding something. I don’t know your life,” She replied apologetically.

“No, I mean, we can talk about our lives, and everything. But maybe let's avoid too deep conversations. And I get that I kind of started it. I’m sorry, it was a real foot in mouth kind of thing. Anyway, I didn’t decide to stay because I feel bad for you. I decided to stay because we used to be friends, and I think we should be again.” Logan looked out at the beautiful summer's day, the dappled sunlight, and the blooming trees, teeming with life. Is it a lie if you just leave out a couple levels of complexity?

“Please don’t stay inside on my account. It doesn’t hurt my feelings or anything. And also, don’t skirt around mentioning the agoraphobia. I mean, you know, let’s maybe not try to plumb the depths of my soul again, but you don’t have to feel awkward about talking about school and stuff. It’s not like you’re going to remind me or anything.” Dahlia continued, trying to make a joke at the end. She thought for a second and then added. “People always seem to think that talking about pain will make it worse. But, in the great words of the worlds best YA author John Green, 'Pain demands to be felt.' How do you remind someone of something that, by definition, has to be constantly felt to be present?” She mused. 

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t sure. Actually, I was gonna grab us lunch from the café where I got my breakfast, but I was avoiding mentioning it. I know its stupid, but I didn’t want to seem like I was rubbing it in your face by going out.” Logan winced at the words as they came out. Outside her head they sounded really stupid.

“Oh my gosh, please don’t feel bad! Don’t go hungry on my account! Oh, and go grab a sandwich for me!” Dahlia laughed. 

“Okay, yeah, I’ll see you later!” Logan nodded in answer and hurried downstairs. Once outside she breathed in a sigh of relief. She thought about the white lie she had told Dalia. Was it really a lie? She did want to be friends with Dalia again. It just wasn't why she was all the way across town staying in an old friend’s house for 2 weeks. 

  She walked the block and felt her nerves calm a little bit. The honeysuckle bush she passed on the way wafted a fresh, sweet scent her way. She wondered how anyone could be so afraid of the world that they missed out on beautiful things like honeysuckle. The bush looked tantalizing. She stopped and grabbed a flower, sucking the golden elixir as she walked into the cool quiet of the store. She browsed the shelves quietly, filling a plastic bag with fruit, staples, and other things that she had noticed were running low. 

“I’m back,” she called, walking into the kitchen a half hour later. A spare honeysuckle fell from her hand and onto the floor. 

“What’s that?” Dahlia was looking at the honeysuckle on the ground with a strange expression. 

“Oh, a honeysuckle. I found a bush on the way.” Logan appraised her expression carefully. Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. “How long has it been since you ate honeysuckle?” 

“Three years,” Dahlia said. Then she caught herself and revised, “I would assume. It’s kind of something you only eat when you are outside.”

Logan smiled triumphantly. “I’ll be right back. Let me go get something.” She ran down the steps excitedly and dashed across the street to the edge of a thick forest area in the middle of the neighborhood. She walked a couple of yards into it and looked around for a honeysuckle bush. She found one fairly quickly. It was peeking out from some underbrush, the petals of the succulently sweet flower glaringly visible due to their distinctive yellow petals. She snatched at it, revealing a whole branch of honeysuckle, hidden by the all encompassing green foliage. She gathered as much as she could hold and jogged back towards the door. Dahlia sat at the table. She had a confused expression on her face, but a little sliver of...excitement? hid just behind her eyes and she was absentmindedly wringing her hands. Logan knocked on the door and entered. Holding the bunch of honeysuckle in her arms, she exclaimed, 

“You have at least five bushes in the woods back there!” She dropped the bundle at Dahlia’s feet. 

“Oh my gosh, it smells strong!  I used to eat these all the time! Nora and I would go walking in the woods behind the house and we would collect these and eat them, and I swear I could eat a hundred all at once. I’m not sure I remember how to do it!” She started peeling back the leaves of the honeysuckle. She smiled as she squirted the nectar past her lips. She looked up at Logan, standing by the table.    

“I’m savoring, so it might take awhile.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just steal one of the Pepsi’s I saw in your fridge if you don’t mind,” Logan said teasingly. She pulled the top, heard the satisfying fizz, and sat down. 

“So, tell me more about the kind of things you and Nora used to do. I know we used to hang out together, but I just feel like she never talks about what you all did just the two of you, ” she said. She really was truly interested. Dahlia thought for a minute, sucked another honeysuckle and then replied. 

“Oh, I don’t know. We were, are, pretty close. I remember she used to teach me volleyball. She was amazing at it, and we would go on bike rides to this little picnic spot, and she would teach me after we ate. I actually played on a club team for a while, and the coach said I had a chance at a college scholarship, so I guess she was a good teacher!” She smiled, savoring the memory. “You know what, I think those were the happiest times of my life. Oh, I remember something else. We used to go to the library after school, and the librarian there let us sit underneath an empty desk and we would read the same book over each other's shoulders. Sometimes that librarian would even bring us homemade cookies.” She looked down at her honeysuckle and sighed.  “Ugh, I’ve almost finished.” 

Logan looked at her pointedly. “Tell me if I’m overstepping, but I have a question. So, will you just not leave the house, or will you also not open the window or anything? Like, where is the line?” She was genuinely curious. 

Dahlia  shook her head vigorously. “I can’t come that close to the outside. Sorry.”

“Don’t you want things to change?” The words slipped out before she could think better of it. Gosh, it had just been one slip of the tongue after the next today.

Dahlia averted her eyes. “Of course I do. But, I can’t be selfish. I have to stay here, it’s the right thing to do. I want to explain it to you, I really do, but I just don’t want you to tell anyone at school why I am here.  Even though I will never see any of them again. I don’t want to know that they know.” 

Logan furrowed her brow, and fought down a look of extreme confusion. She wanted to be helpful, she just wasn’t sure she knew how to. Something she did know, however, was how to use someone’s own words against them. She did it all the time to characters in her stories. Revealing secrets, and deepest desires through humiliating foot in mouth mistakes, unwitting words that cast powerful spells, mysteries revealed by a slip of the killer’s tongue...

“Okay, I understand that you don’t trust me right now, and I understand that I don’t understand. But what I do know is that, it is never selfish to do something for someone else. And if you went to the window, and confronted your fear, even a little, that would make me happy. So how is that selfish?” She really wasn’t trying to push Dahlia, it was more that she was truly curious. She wanted to learn how she ticked. She was afraid to ask, but insatiable curiosity drove her forward. All the questions she had had for three years about Dahlia and her sudden change balanced on the tip of her tongue.               

Dahlia looked up resignedly, “I know that makes logical sense, but that is not how my brain works at all. I don’t know why. But, to prove it to you, I will try my best. You’ll see, I can’t control it. But whatever. Go get more honeysuckle. Put it on the windowsill. Watch this fail completely.”

Logan’s eyes lit up and she dashed out of the door, slamming it behind her. She let her hands fly behind her in the wind, dragging her finger tips against the wind. After a minute, her mind conjured a cool solid surface that her fingertips were dragging against. She knew it was really just air, but she let herself enjoy the feeling, let herself live inside of her mind, falling into the sensation. She felt like something very exciting was about to happen. She knew Dahlia could do it if she put her mind to it. 

She found the bush quickly this time, and yanked off branches vigorously. She pulled as many as she could hold, the biggest, yellowest honeysuckle she had ever seen, and ran with them, tripping over her own excitement. She neared the window.

“Okay! You can do it!” She yelled, and threw the window open.

Dahlia was hunched in the corner, breathing rapidly, and looking terrified. 

“I feel paralyzed.” She whimpered. Logan wracked her brain for any advice to give her. 

“Just trust me. I promise you’ll be okay. Okay?” She asked. 

“Okay,” Dahlia said in a hoarse whisper. 

“Stop focusing on your mind, disconnect completely from why you are doing this, from what you are afraid of, and just connect completely with your emotions. Feel the weight of your arms, and legs. Your whole life you have been walking. I know you know how to do it. So pretend that is all it is.” She was rambling. Trying to remember every meditation app she had ever listened to. 

“Okay,” she said, her voice quavering. Dahlia slowly put one foot in front of the other. 

“That is amazing, you’re doing it!” Logan shouted proudly, thinking this would help Dahlia. Instead, to her utter confusion, the second the words left her mouth, she shrieked and scurried back to the corner, rocking back and forth and sobbing. Logan’s grin vanished, and she worriedly clambered though the window. Halfway through her leg caught and she went tumbling down and landed splat on the floor. In her haste to reach Dahlia she clambered on her hands and knees. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to set you off!” She said fearfully. 

Dahlia looked grim. “It’s not your fault. It was an accident that I got scared just as you were speaking. It’s just, you know how I said that I would find a flaw in your argument? Well, I did. I can’t explain it, I don’t want you to think I am crazy. Explaining Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is like trying to explain the concept of color to someone who can not see,” she said seriously. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth, horrified. “Sorry! Forget I just said that!”

Calm by now, Logan nodded her assent, though secretly she was still very confused. In her mind, she had always assumed Dahlia had Agoraphobia. After all, that was what she had been told by Nora. What on Earth did OCD have to do with Dahlia? She didn’t organize things, or wash her hands a bunch of times as far as she could tell. Her room was actually fairly messy. Dahlia’s disease was more confusing than she had thought. She racked her brain for a while trying to find a way to make the situation a little less awkward. 

“Hey, you know I have some writing to do, so maybe you should go calm down, and I could write, and then we could make something good for dinner?” She asked. Dahlia nodded and picked herself up off of the floor. She left, and Logan looked around. The window hung open, the pile of empty honeysuckle lay on the table, next to a fairly large honeysuckle stain. Dahlia’s sobs still rang through the room, shrill and desolate. Guilt scratched at her. Her curiosity had caused this. 

Back in her room, Logan sat down at her desk. Her heart felt heavy in her chest as she looked at the blank piece of paper in front of her. There had to be a story in her. Something creative and new, and funny and emotional and perfect. She liked to write, so she should be good at it.

People should be good at their hobbies. Fear wracked her chest just thinking about failing. Why did it matter? It wasn't like she had to be a writer. 

“But you do. It’s the only thing that will make you worthy to yourself and your parents. You have to continue what they have started. You have to show that you inherited their talent,” she thought to herself. All of a sudden she remembered what Dahlia had said,

 “I will find a flaw in your argument. I always do, no matter how logical. My brain doesn't think logically.” How true that felt to her. Her brain didn't think logically. Logic mattered naught when it came to fears. And then she really stopped cold.

Something else Dahlia had said rang in her ears. “I can’t be selfish. I can’t go outside because I can’t be selfish.” The words reminded her of the first time she could remember that thoughts had crystallized inside her head into a fear. Like a poisonous flower blooming in her brain, petals unfurling and taking up more and more space as the years had passed. It had all started with Storms (always with a capital letter, like a person). But not the normal childlike fear of Storms. Thunder made her shake, and lightning gave her chills, but not because she feared electrocution, or loud noise. No, she had thought for a while that her own bad thoughts were causing the Storms. That some supernatural power was taking all of her bad ideas, mean thoughts, and secret evils and turning them into a Storm that would desolate the earth, and hurt people all around her. It was terrifying. And when her mother told her not to worry about it she had said, “That would be selfish.” Selfish to let the Storms rage if they were somehow her fault. Her limited 7 year old vocabulary reached for the only word she could think of that even remotely described how she viewed herself. Selfish. Bad. Evil. Guilty. 

“OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,” she said. Then…”No..no..no way. Not you.” She shook herself. Opened her notebook. And went back writing compulsively due to her obsession. The phone sitting near her contained answers. She could look it up. But she didn’t have OCD, so it didn’t even matter, right? Right. Because anxiety was a part of life, and people had weird fears all the time. She just needed to focus a little more on controlling them. It wasn’t that hard. Certainly not hard enough to warrant a full blown diagnosis. 

“Maybe I can write historical fiction,” she said, turning to a clean page and scribbling furiously. “Yeah, it can be set in the 1960’s maybe. Let’s see, the characters would be… the teacher who taught that girl. What was her name? Ruby something, who was one of the first people to integrate at a school? Oh yeah, Ruby Bridges!” She scrawled as she wrote. 

“Okay, now, a plot. Well, I’d have to do some research, but maybe I can show how the teacher’s family reacted to her teaching a black student, and she kind of discovers herself?” She wrote down the words with gusto, then sat back to look. It had all the trappings of a good story. Emotional, creative, a new take on a story told in school’s across America.  

She pulled out her laptop and looked up “Ruby Bridges’ teacher.” She began to research, finding pictures, and articles, reading first hand accounts, newspaper clippings, and all she could find. It was fascinating and she became easily lost in the story. After she had gotten just some initial information, enough to start sculpting a voice for the young woman, she flipped to a clean page and just dove into writing from her perspective. She wanted to see if she flowed well in the story. If it seemed like something she would be able to write, and write well. This was where she hit a block. As she started writing, the words came out stiff, almost as if they didn’t want to stay on the page properly. Her excitement at the idea didn’t translate to the mass of white in front of her, and she felt like she was wading through thick mud as she struggled to write an opening scene. Creative? A new take on a classic civil rights story? What was she thinking? The story no longer seemed like a stroke of genius, but yet another dry, derivative idea. It was such a well known story, probably hundreds of people had had this idea, and executed it better than she ever could. She pulled at her hair in frustration. Another idea, surely there would be something? She turned to another clean page in her journal. A horror story? A college religion professor whose teachings displeases the devil, so he sends demons after the man who hunts him down and kills him? No. Stupid. A fantasy story about two sisters at boarding school who discover they are descendants of an ancient king who was supposedly magical, and who then go on a hunt to find his powerful magic wand? No. Obvious. A mystery where everyone who borrows a certain Agatha Christie book at a library in London dies? 

“No!” She finally yelled. She looked down at her journal. She had marked up the last 10 pages, writing in huge messy letters each idea, and then subsequently marking it out, flipping to a new page, and starting all over again. Her dark red pen ink had bled onto her hands and her hair had come out of its braid. She stared at the desk in front of her. It was a mess. 

But she didn’t stand up, didn’t stretch her legs, or get water, didn’t go off and take a walk or read a book or watch a movie. No, she stayed right where she was. She was tired. So, so tired. In fact, she suddenly didn’t feel like she could move. Didn’t feel like she could, and didn’t want to either, honestly. Her eyes drifted to the clock in front of her, 5:18. She looked at the little numbers until they weren’t little numbers anymore, but instead a neon blur. Time slid by, and even though she was looking at a clock, she was unaware of its passage. In her head she was telling herself to move, to get back to work. But she couldn’t. The stress was exhausting. She…

“Ding dong.” The ring of the doorbell roused her and her eyes slid back into focus to find it was 6:45. She had spent well over an hour staring at nothing, thinking nothing, feeling well, not nothing. That would have been nice. She had felt miserable.

“Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.” The unsympathetic doorbell continued to chime. 

She somehow managed to rouse herself, mainly because she would have done anything to get the obnoxious ringing sound to go away. 

“Here’s your pizza,” a lanky, bored looking teenager at the door said, shoving a warm box into her hands.

“What?” 

“I ordered a pizza,” Dahlia called from the next room. 

“Oh, okay,” she said, spotting a $20 Dalhia must have left for her to use on the table and handing it to the delivery boy. 

“Thanks, have a nice night,” he said, loping back to his car. 

Logan brought the pizza in. 

“Hey, I thought pizza was a good answer to our problems,” Dahlia smiled. Logan smiled back and handed her a gooey slice. 

“Hey, you know what’s really fun?” Logan asked. 

“No, what?” Dahlia sat up straighter. 

“Let’s eat pizza on the floor and play ''Truth or Dare''! That’s what I do with all my friends at sleepovers,” she said, blushing a little. Dahlia’s eyes widened, so she knew that she hadn’t missed Logan calling her a friend. It wasn’t a lie. She felt as if they were still friends. Not in the same, uncomplicated way they had been before, where they just enjoyed each other’s company because they both liked Nora and they were all little kids. But they had talked, laughed a little, hung out a bit so that it was clear that they were heading in the right direction. They certainly didn’t fully understand each other, or, more like, Logan didn’t feel she fully understood Dahlia. She was still incredibly curious about the girl who liked the same books, talked the same way, thought the same way, and had fears like her. But they were definitely friends. 

“Okay, but I hate 'Truth or Dare',” Dahlia shivered uncomfortably, laughing a little. 

“Why?” 

“Because, you have to agree to tell the truth before you know what the question is. I mean that’s kind of the point of the game,” she said.

“So? Let’s change the rules,” Logan said easily. 

“No, not unless you want to. It’s scary, but that’s kind of the point of the game. Trust. Don’t people unconsciously play two kinds of 'Truth or Dare'? There’s the kind with people they only kind of know. So they unconsciously know that if one of the questions is too embarrassing they will lie through their teeth to preserve themselves. Then there is the kind of 'Truth or Dare' you play with the person you trust most in the whole world. You know you will tell the truth because you know they won’t judge your answers, and you also know they won’t ask questions you can’t answer,” Dahlia said, her pizza limp in her hand as she talked. 

“Which category do I fall into?” Logan asked, a little nervously. 

“Hmm. Somewhere in the middle, I think,” she said, raising her eyebrows. 

Logan wasn’t offended. She didn’t fully trust Dahlia either. “So then we play the first kind until we know each other better. But...how ‘bout we only ask open answer questions, not yes and no’s, so that way we can say if we lied about an answer?”

“Okay, I start. 'Truth or Dare'?” Dahlia said. 

“Truth.” 

“Are you afraid of anything stupid?” 

“Yes, rain” she said. 

“Why?” Dahlia leaned forward. 

“Because it makes me sad, but you can’t change it. It just keeps falling no matter how you feel.” Logan didn’t tell her that a lot of things made her sad that she couldn’t control. She didn’t explain that sometimes she would be overwhelmed by feelings of sadness for no reason. 

“Interesting. That’s kind of like the phrase, “nothing to fear but fear itself.” Emotions are the most terrifying things because everything we say we are afraid of is really just all in the category of things that make us feel bad,” Dahlia’s philosophical words rolled right off her tongue, as if she was just commenting on a football game, or complaining about the weather. 

“Woah, too deep for 'Truth or Dare'. You’ve always been such a philosopher. Like, even when we were five and playing grocery store. You were always the one that was like, “What really is the difference between me and this imaginary piece of fruit I'm selling? Wait, what if I’m imaginary?,” Logan said, laughing. 

“Yeah, I like to talk about important interesting things. I don’t waste time on small talk,” she said in response.

“We don’t have to do small talk but we also don’t have to probe the depths of human nature!” Logan chuckled. “'Truth or Dare'?” 

“Truth.”

“Have you ever stolen anything?” Logan asked. 

“Yes. I stole Linda Patterson’s lunch money when I was in the 2nd grade because I didn’t have enough to get cookies,” she said, perfectly seriously. 

Logan relaxed, glad they had passed into a more fun, lighthearted conversation. The game continued. Logan felt like she was getting closer to Dahlia, but at the same time, only on a surface level. They had both pulled back a little after what happened with the honeysuckle challenge. Logan wasn’t anxious to be in that situation again. She wanted to be close to Dahlia. She felt curious about her. She could tell there was so much more to her story, and odd though it may seem, she felt like somehow Dahlia could help her. If she wanted her help that was. She still shivered as she remembered Dahlia’s hauntingly familiar words. 

“Well, I don’t know about you but I am exhausted. I think I’ll go to bed!” Logan said after a while. 

“Okay,” Dahlia said. “Oh my gosh, I just had the best idea though! We should write a story together!” 

Logan’s heart clenched. Dahlia would see that she was a horrible writer! What if she laughed at her, or made fun of her ideas? 

“Come on, it’ll be fun. It doesn’t have to be the next great American novel! Just something funny and lighthearted,” she said. 

Logan opened her mouth to object, but then she thought about how little Dahlia had to look forward to. She didn’t have any other friends to do this with, she just wanted to spend time with Logan. It would be selfish to deny her that. 

“Okay, but show me some of your writing first,” Logan said. She wondered what tales a girl like Dahlia liked to tell. 

“Maybe later. I’m a little self conscious about it. I was thinking we could write a comedy.”

Logan clapped her hands. “I love comedies. We should do one based on this! Like, where two girls get stuck in a house together. Oooh maybe they are exploring somewhere and they get trapped in a house that they think is haunted, and it starts out like a scary story. But then,”

“It turns out to be a comedy! Cool.” Dahlia cocked her head. “Wait, how does it turn out to be a comedy?” She asked. 

“Who knows, you give me some ideas!” Logan ribbed. 

“Fine, let’s say the house is almost collapsed and they can’t get out and they don’t have their phones, so they keep trying increasingly stupid ways to send a signal for help. Like, maybe they light a fire and it almost burns the place down and then they send morse code but they don’t know it well enough and accidentally send some really ridiculous message. Then maybe at the end there could be a twist and it’s really some prank their family set up!” Her eyes lit up as she got into the story.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea, and it could be so totally funny,” Logan agreed excitedly. She was completely past being sleepy now. She was too excited. She padded across the hall to get her laptop and hurried back, her eyes glinting. She lost no time in opening up a word document and immediately began tapping the keys. 

“Hey, what are you doing?” Asked Dahlia, concerned. 

“Oh sorry, I’m not much for pre-writing. I like to just dive in,” she said. That was partially true, but the reason she avoided prewriting was because she always felt a sort of feverish need to get words on paper. To capture the excitement of a new idea before her self doubts could get in the way. 

“Oh, okay that’s fine, I’ve just never not pre-written before,” Dahlia said, a little nervously. 

“Well, I don’t want to mess up your style. How about we meet halfway?” Logan felt awkward. Co-authoring was a completely new and weird dynamic that she had never experienced before. Almost like her whole life she had been speaking English, and now someone was demanding that she break out her French. 

“Well, we don’t have to pre-write but would you mind if we at least had some structure to the way we wrote together? Like, I do a sentence, you do a sentence?” She asked. She was even more nervous than Logan. Cortisol had flooded her limbs, but the fear for once had nothing to do with the outside. It was pure social anxiety. The fear of embarrassing herself in front of a friend. It was new. But this only lasted for a minute. The increase in stimulus to her mind, the sudden spasm of fear caused an image to flash across her mind. She saw herself in her mind’s eye, raising her hand and striking Logan across the eye. She gasped and stared down at her hand. It tingled and she clamped down on it with her other hand, determined not to let it move from its spot on the table. Even though the same kind of thing had happened many times before, it still never got less petrifying.

“Dahlia, are you okay?” Logan asked, fear flitting into her eyes. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She smiled unconvincingly. 

“You can do the first sentence,” Logan said.

Dahlia nodded, and began. It was an interesting experience. An awkward experience. Both girls became silently more and more frustrated. It felt clunky, weird, incorrect somehow, to have to take turns writing, to have to run words by their partner before jotting them down. Both were used to solitary writing, and this new kind felt incredibly odd. It took forever to get even a page down and once they did, they looked back over it with dismay. It was like they had taken two different books, and mashed them together. Each girl wrote with such a different style that it was glaringly obvious who had written what sentences. It was as if Jane Austen and J.R.R. Tolkien had decided to write a novel together, it would not have been more clunky and just plain wrong than the off beat mashup of styles they had created. 

Dahlia laughed. A delighted, tinkling sound. “I think we both learned that we prefer writing alone. It certainly gives me an appreciation for books that have been co-authored,” she said. Looking at the page of text in front of them, she read aloud,”The lapis lazuli sky above gave no hint of the fear that was to come, no signal of the terror that would strike two hearts, no forewarning of the screams that would pierce the sweltering Alabama summer silence.” This was Logan´s line. The line directly after read, “What is fear, but the manifestation of our humanity?” This was Dahlia´s line. And on and on it went, switching from the wordy imagery of Faulkner, to the philosophical musings of the Buddha. It would not have sold well. 

Dahlia smiled at the hilariously pathetic attempt. Her fear from a few hours ago had abated. She was grateful, but she didn’t know when it would come back. Her fears had never included Logan until now. 

Logan did not laugh. “You’re brilliant. You are so much better at this than me. I write like a 5 year old next to you,” she said, looking at her fingers, still resting on the laptop, with disgust. 

“What? No you don’t! I thought it was super engaging. Plus you basically came up with the plot yourself!” 

Logan wasn’t listening. She was too busy carefully selecting all of her sentences and deleting them, leaving only Dahlia’s. She hit print. 

“There, now I’m just leaving the good parts. You should finish it, you’re a good writer.” She got up and walked into the kitchen. As she pulled out a box of cookies and made her way to the tv room, Dahlia scrambled to her computer and added back in the sentences. Then she hit print. She wasn’t surprised at Logan’s reaction, but it did clear up some of her confusion. Now she had more of an idea of why Logan was here. More of an idea of at least one of the things she worried about. Her suspicions had been confirmed. That shifty, caged look in her eye was all too familiar to her. She wanted to keep the writing though. It may not have been a great novel in the works, but it was a memento of their friendship, the closest thing she had to a signed yearbook, or a strip from a photo booth. She sighed, and went to get it off the printer. As she passed the guest room where Logan was crashing, she was sorely tempted to enter. To see what else she could learn about Logan, about what she was running from. She paused outside the door. It was unbearable, not knowing. But she wasn’t that kind of person. Logan’s business was her business, and they were friends. Friends didn’t snoop. Friends didn’t insist upon knowing everything difficult that was going on in the other’s life. She wanted to earn her trust. She wanted Logan to tell her herself what was going on. Then maybe she could tell Logan her own story. Maybe. The thought was petrifying. She moved on to her room, where the printer was. 

Downstairs Logan stared darkly at the cookie box in front of her. She had made a mess of herself. She was just as crazy as Dahlia. She immediately felt guilty for thinking that. Dahlia wasn’t crazy. Nevertheless, the idea of being like her was not a pleasant one. But her shame at having somehow revealed her deepest fear to Dahlia was nothing compared to the fear itself. Yet again, she had proven herself lacking in talent. She couldn’t write. She was horrible at it, and now she had someone to compare herself to. Someone who was gifted at it. She suddenly felt intense hatred of Dahlia welling up inside of her. In the last three days she had felt like they had become closer. Forced into a deeper friendship by their close proximity. Forced, but not unwilling, she had thought. But now she felt pure shame. She could never tell Dahlia her fears. She could never explain the sudden bouts of sadness, or the constant feelings of inadequacy. The gift of writing was a wall blocking Dahlia from her. Dahlia must have judged her, must have silently noted her lack of talent. On top of that, explaining her stupid fears? Not just the writing, but the tapping, and the ticket boy, and Amanda´s party? It was unbearable. She crossed over to her journal. Looked at the pages that had been smudged from tears, and ripped from the harsh pencil lines she had slashed. 

  “New Story Ideas,” she said and wrote. “A…..a…a fictional story about librarians with magical powers.” She looked in disgust at the words in front of her. The ideas were becoming increasingly cheap and boring. 

Dahlia stood in her room, looking at her hand. The mirror in front of her showed her own pale, clammy face staring back at herself. She breathed in, and out. The hot, fleshy feeling was creeping over her. And with it, panic followed. Panic because she recognized the feeling: that burning, sickly sensation that rippled all over her body so quickly it took her breath away. It was like lightning that suddenly struck her insides, and then left a hot, charred residue behind. Slowly she walked over to the bed. She curled up on the side and held her knees to her chest. 

“You’re not going to lose Logan. You’re not going to lose Logan. You’re not going to lose Logan….” she repeated the words over and over to herself. Was it a mantra? A silent prayer? A command? Some mixed brew of all three, she thought. As she drifted off her sleep, she told herself the visions would go away again if she just acted like everything was fine.

“Cheap, and boring. That’s what it is,” said Dahlia. 

“Really? You are going to sit here and argue that This Side of Paradise was cheap and boring?” Logan asked, shocked. 

“Hey, I’m siding with Hemingway on this. Obviously, not on all of his opinions. But yeah, it’s pretty easy to write a story about a rich frat boy who has a bunch of existential crises.”   

“I’m not saying Hemingway sucks. Just that Fitzgerald is great in his own right.” Logan sighed. 

“Agree to disagree,” Dahlia laughed. The two were sitting on the couch. A rented movie pulled up on the screen but they had gotten a bit side tracked somehow. It was the next evening, and after an uneventful day they had somehow gotten pulled into a literary discussion, after passing by the movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby, on the screen in front of them. 

“We are such nerds. Only a nerd would see a movie and start a discussion about commercialism in the publishing industry,” Dahlia pointed out dryly. 

“We should do this every day. Compare two authors from the same time period.” Logan said thoughtfully, after nodding her head in agreement to Dahlia’s comment. “Nothing wrong with nerds.”

“Oh my gosh that is actually such a great idea!!!” Dahlia said. The two settled back on the couch. It was around 5 pm. 

“Oh, shoot. I just realized I was supposed to go home and help mom make dinner tonight!” Logan said, her eyes flying open. “I better go over there and grovel now! She's already worried enough about this whole thing!” Dahlia shifted on the couch. She was sitting well away from Logan, sitting stiffly upright. Her hand firmly rested behind her back. She let out a little sigh of relief. The talking had been fun, but her mind had been elsewhere. Namely, it had been trying to make sure she didn’t have any more visions. No new ones had come, but the “slapping” one had flashed before her eyes at least three more times. A break would be nice. 

Logan pedaled through the small town, past the picket fences and by the tiny church until she reached the bus stop. She paced expectantly, waiting for the city bus. Finally she made it to the front of her quaint little home. 

“Mom, I’m so sorry!” She yelled, running in. Her mom was setting the table. 

“Oh, hi. Glad to see you turned up. Don’t worry, I forgive you,” her mother grinned. “Oh, by the way Katie called. Something about being sorry and just wanting to talk?” She raised her eyebrows. “Is something going on?” 

“What? No! Well...” Logan was not sure how to lie her way around this one. Already she was missing Dahlia. The look in her eye would have just said that she understood, and that would have been all that was needed. 

“She’s just being overdramatic, that’s all.” Logan walked to the fridge and started to pull out ingredients.

Her mother looked at her appraisingly. “Honey…”

Logan looked up. A small peach sized knot formed in her stomach. It felt uncomfortable. She wanted to take a knife and dig it out. Throw away the pit and just keep the fresh, sweet parts. But she couldn’t. She had never been able to. 

“Logan, I know that you are an anxious person. You can’t hide that from me. And I can see something brewing inside you. It’s okay to tell me about it. I want to help. Why did you really want to go to Dahlia’s? I know you miss her being a part of you and Nora´s little group. I get it. But why spend two weeks there alone? Did something big happen between you and Katie?”

  “I’m not alone, Dahlia’s there,” she huffed and slammed the fridge door shut. She stayed silent all through the cooking process, and then only spoke when asked to pass the potatoes during dinner. Back at Dahlia’s she opened the door and brought her bad mood with her. 

“God, what is that smell?” She snapped. Dahlia popped up. 

“I was baking.”

“It smells too sweet.”

“What’s got into you?” Dahlia didn’t look at Logan as she said it. In fact, she avoided her gaze entirely. 

“What about you? You look funny,” she said. 

“I’m fine,” Dahlia said. Her hand was trembling slightly. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“You’re glad I am here, right?? I mean I’m not annoying right? I had just thought that, since you were alone here these couple of weeks anyway, and I’m bored, and it’s summer, that if you can’t come hang out with me then I can come hang out with you. That’s not stupid is it?” Logan’s words came out in a nervous rush. 

Dahlia risked a quick glance at her. “No, it’s not stupid.” Dahlia didn’t say what she was thinking, which was that “hanging out” assumed a level of casualness that Logan had tried and failed to pretend when she had desperately asked if Dahlia wanted company. 

Logan, oblivious, pressed on. “Do you ever think your parents are disappointed in you?” She thought about her mom’s paintings. Her dad’s statues.

Dahlia thought for a moment. “Not in me...For me. They are disappointed about my situation and sad that I don’t work hard enough to fix it.”

“Fix it? Can you fix it?” Logan’s eyes widened. 

“Never mind.. It’s complicated.”

Logan looked away. Secretly her mind was racing. 

The next few days were fairly uneventful. At least tangibly. But inside both girls’  heads confusion bled into fear so that neither were really aware of where one ended and the other began. Dahlia hadn’t had another vision, but she was sitting on pins and needles, knowing it would come. For the most part, she enjoyed Logan being there. But the threat of the vision, and what it might mean made guilt spike through her. Logan on the other hand was worried about all sorts of things. Her stories, Katie, “OCD.” Being here though, in this house, away from the crushing blow of it all, was no small consolation. They passed the time picking out books for each other, arguing about stupid things, showing each other movies, baking. One night after the two girls had gone to bed, Dahlia in the room, and Logan in the guest, the two both lay on top of their sheets, hugging their knees to their chest, thinking and worrying, thinking and worrying, thinking and worrying.

Meanwhile, the sky above the house was beginning to roil. A storm was brewing. A storm that was completely unconcerned with the girls and their problems. As night fell, the clouds began to break. The sky spit vehemently onto the world below. The wind rushed around the trees and lampposts along the street. 

In her room, Dahlia was lying in her bed, listening to the thunder, trying with all her might to keep her eyes from shutting. Every time they closed, the image of her hand raised to slap Logan plastered itself to the front of her vision. Her eyes itched and stung and she couldn’t stop the inevitable. They had to close. She whimpered, and looked down at her hand. Almost without telling it to, her other hand moved to the handle of her desk drawer, pulled it out and grabbed the duct tape sitting next to her pencils. She started wrapping, binding her hand to her side. Her skin prickled and she knew it would hurt like heck ripping it off later. But maybe it would stop the vision from coming true. Her hand rubbed every time she walked. A constant reminder. She looked at her hand and a tiny sob caught in her throat. 

“Crazy girl...crazy girl... crazy girl...crazy…..” she remembered the taunt. Flung, not at her, but at some girl named...Katie, was it? In fourth grade. Katie had waking nightmares about her grandmother after she had died that year. The other kids had jeered at her, thinking she was stupid, crazy. Not really understanding, in fourth grade, the effect of what they were saying. The taunt had lodged itself in Dahlia’s brain somehow, and reappeared three years ago, when she realized that she was the new crazy girl. She had no leg to stand on, couldn’t argue with what people probably said about her at school and now she’d literally tied her hand to her side. She almost laughed. It was so pathetic. 

     Nora had wanted to explain to people what had happened, when Dahlia had first left school. To help them understand her OCD, and what it was. But Dahlia had refused. 

“Agoraphobia will make more sense to them. I don’t want to go into detail, that will only make it worse,” Dahlia had said. Nora and her parents had reluctantly agreed. She still couldn’t imagine people knowing. But did Logan really count as “people?” Could she be trusted with the secret? The smart, creative girl, so scared of her own demons? Who had really listened to her explain her fears, who had brought her honeysuckle, who had tried to treat her normally? 

The storm whistled around her. She felt lonely. She wanted to see Logan, but she didn’t know how to explain the hand. Not without explaining it all, which still seemed daunting.

“Ice cream will cheer me up,” she said too cheerfully to herself. It was a total lie. It wouldn’t cheer her up, but it would take her mind off of the sensation of her hand, as well as the confusion of trying to figure out Logan. She made her way down the stairs. 

“Oh..hi,” Logan said awkwardly. She was sitting at the counter, staring at the table, the storm outside reminding her again of the “selfish” comment from Dahlia, and its similarity to her old fear. 

“Hi,” she said. She felt a wave of...relief, along with the inevitable fear of the vision. She realized that she had been holding her breath, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t be alone when she came down the steps. She wondered if that meant that she and Logan were officially on good friend terms. 

“Hi.” 

  Silence. 

“What happened to your hand?” Logan asked, startled.

“Nothing. Just a little cut.” 

“Are you sure?” Logan wasn't fooled. Mainly because it was an awful lie. You can’t heal a cut by taping your hand to your leg. 

Dahlia looked at Logan’s eyes. They were bloodshot, but despite that she could see what lay just beneath. Terror and exhaustion were submerged just below the surface. Dahlia wondered if her eyes had looked like that the months before she became too frightened to leave the house. Maybe they had that same pleading look. She thought about what it meant to be called crazy. What it meant to feel alone. She suddenly had an almost overwhelming rush of empathy for Logan. 

  “Let’s play 'Truth or Dare',” she said, her heart pounding. 

  “What kind?” Logan asked nervously.  

“The real kind,” she said, swallowing. ¨If you want to…..You can ask me first,” she said, swallowing. She didn’t know where it had come from, only that she cared in that moment about making that bloodshot, terrified look go away, more than she did about keeping up the illusion of normalcy, which honestly, was not convincing anyone. As she stood there with duct tape keeping one hand stuck to her side, it suddenly occurred to her how little she had to lose. She wasn’t scared of Logan telling her secret. Not really. She had known Logan long enough, even if from a distance for the last few years, that she realized she would never do that. What really frightened her was the chance that Logan would be scared of her and she would lose her only friend. But if she really cared about Logan, and thought that she might suffer in a similar way, wasn’t this the only way to help her? And if she could stop someone else from ending up as bad as her, shouldn’t she do her best?

In that moment understanding passed between the two girls. Logan knew that this was Dahlia’s way of saying that she wanted to share. That she wanted to be asked the question Logan had been scared to voice. But she was also saying that to get answers, Logan had to give them too. Was Logan ready for that? She realized that her biggest fear wasn’t that Dahlia would think she was weird. It was that by telling Dahlia her fears, all of them, and opening up to the possibility of Dahlia understanding them, meant that she was finally telling something that she had never told before. She wasn’t sure she had the capacity to admit that she had a problem. But she was so tired. And she wanted someone to know. Really know. And most of all, she wanted Dahlia to know that she trusted her with her secrets, because Dahlia needed someone to tell secrets with. 

  “Okay.” 

BANG. Right outside the window a tree branch had fallen. It hit the window and then careened to the ground. It lay there, a giant disruption, the rain falling on its leaves. 

  “You know how in movies right before the characters are about to reveal a dark secret, or kiss, or apologize, there's always something that happens to interrupt them, and then it’s like, the moments over? I mean, like, oh, whoops, I’m about to apologize for stealing your boyfriend in the bathroom, but, oh no, someone walks in to get a towel, and it’s like, I guess we can just forget completely about that apology! I don’t believe in that at all. If people are about to say something important, there’s no reason a tree branch should get in their way!” Dahlia said indignantly. 

Logan laughed nervously. “I think they do that for purposes of the plot, and suspense and stuff,” she said. 

“Well, whatever, its stupid.” Dahlia said. 

Another laugh and then...silence. 

“Well then, I guess we’ll play 'Truth or Dare'.” Logan said. She licked her lips. They were dry. “'Truth or Dare'?” 

“Truth.”

Logan screwed up her courage and opened her mouth. “Why won’t you leave the house, and what does that have to do with OCD?” 

Dahlia’s heart pounded, but she pressed on. “I won’t leave the house, because I have visions of hurting other people. I’m scared that I might be one of those people that, when they’re around a lot of stressful triggers and things, get violent. I feel like if I go outside, where there’s so much noise, and stress and movement, then maybe I’d do one of the things I’d had visions of.” She looked down, ashamed. Her face burned red. What would Logan think? She would be afraid. She would think Dahlia was dangerous, or a freak. 

But Logan was looking at her with a tender expression in her eyes. This is not to say that she had fully grasped Dahlia’s words. Or that she knew what a good school counselor would do in this situation. No, her reaction was deeper than that. Logan by no means understood Dahlia’s situation, but, with the empathy that only friends have, she felt the pain behind the words fully. She did not shrink back from her like Dahlia was some dangerous animal. She knew better. She knew that even if her words sounded frightening, unnerving, jarring, that she could trust Dahlia. “What does that mean exactly? Is there something that happened in your past? Some incident? You can tell me. Whatever it is I won’t judge. I swear,” she needed Dahlia to understand that she didn’t want to know out of some perverted curiosity. That she wasn’t like the rest of the world. That she didn’t hear those words and draw closer out of want of drama and intrigue. She had started out that way, she could admit. At first, she was a little bit curious about Dahlia’s life in the way that a gossip columnist was curious about the Kardashian’s latest scandal. Behind her want of an old friend regained, and an escape from reality there had been a hint of Pandora. Dahlia had been a box that she needed to open. But now, only concern and fear for her friend fueled her questions. 

Dahlia was anxious to explain. Now that she had started she needed to get it all off her chest. Thunder clapped and lightning struck outside, and she felt safe and cozy on this couch, with Logan. “No, there was no incident. That would make sense, but that’s not how OCD works. I woke up one morning, I walked outside, my neighbor’s dog walked up the street and I suddenly had a vision that I was, that I was…” she buried her face in her hands. 

Logan gently rubbed her back, not saying anything. The act calmed Dahlia. She continued, “that I was going to break his leg,” she gasped. “I was so scared. I thought for sure I was crazy. I didn’t know, like, what if I did it? What if I lost control and hurt an innocent animal? I couldn’t risk it, but I thought the vision must have been some weird fluke. It wasn’t. That whole week; it got worse and worse. First it was just visions. Then it became nightmares. By the end I swear I could feel my hand moving, about to do whatever the vision said. I didn’t want to tell my parents, but I knew that I had to do something. I couldn’t risk becoming a danger to others. I researched, I tried to diagnose myself, and I found two things. Schizophrenia, and OCD. Schizophrenia can express itself as when you imagine that someone or something is telling you to do something, and I felt like I might do the things the visions said. But OCD was more confusing. Intrusive thoughts, a kind of OCD are the obsessive part. You get disturbing images that won’t leave you alone, and then you feel like you are a bad person for seeing them, or that you will somehow carry them out. The compulsions can be anything you do to try to get rid of the obsession. I didn’t know if I had OCD, I couldn’t be sure. So I cut myself off from the world just in case I really was dangerous. I know now, logically, that it was my OCD that told me that I had misdiagnosed myself, that it really was schizophrenia and that I was a danger to others. I read about schizophrenia being triggered by stress and I thought that maybe stressful situations, like school, crowds and stuff would trigger me. So I thought maybe being inside would make the visions less frequent, and also stop people from getting hurt. Now I see that OCD strikes when I already have more cortisol pumping through my veins. At the time I knew none of this. I thought I was sheltering the world,” she stopped a minute, remembering. 

“I did finally tell my parents and my sister. I was diagnosed by a therapist virtually with OCD, and we started meeting by video chat. But even knowing in my head that I won’t actually hurt people, that it is OCD, not schizophrenia, I can’t get rid of the thought, that maybe just maybe, I’m wrong. That’s why OCD is called the doubting disease. Little kernels of doubt plant themselves in your mind. But it starts out as a seed. You notice it in the back of your mind, and you silence it. After all, it’s just a seed. But OCD waters that seed. Suddenly it’s a weed, and it keeps growing and growing, until you’ll do anything to make it go away. And then OCD says, 

     “This will help. Just do this one little thing and you’ll feel all better.” You do it because you are desperate, and then you feel relief for a moment. But then there comes another seed. And another, and another,” she was lost in her mind, plumbing the depths of her memory, drawing upon the vast experience she had to explain the doubting disease. When she finally stopped, she had to draw a huge breath because she had run completely out of air.

     Logan swallowed with difficulty. She still wasn’t worried about Dahlia. Even if Dahlia had doubts, she didn’t. She knew that Dahlia would never hurt her. No, that was not the problem. The problem was those seeds. They were in her mind too. The way Dahlia had described them was exactly the way Logan felt when she wrote. Like she had a perfect, shining idea in front of her, and then black clouds slowly rolled in, and suddenly it didn’t look perfect, it looked flawed, and warped, it didn’t look shining, it looked bland, and tasteless. She ignored it at first, but her mind always convinced her in the end, that it wasn’t good enough. The doubt blossomed. The same with the storms, and the tapping, and all the other stupid little fears. 

      But she didn’t have OCD. She couldn’t. She---

      “Logan? Logan, are you okay?” Dahlia had shaken herself out of her own reverie only to find Logan nose deep in one of her own. 

     “Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Logan glanced up. “Dahlia, I don’t know much about this disorder, but I do know that you are struggling to handle what others can’t even imagine. And you’re doing it alone.” She frowned. “Wait, let me go back on that. You were doing it alone. I will be there for you. I’ve known you for a long time, but I´ve only known you closely for a little while, and I can already tell we were meant to be friends. I feel like I can talk to you,” she said, searching to explain the deep connection she felt.

     “Thanks,” Dahlia said. Her voice broke. “Thank you. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me” she said, wiping her eyes. She sucked in a breath. Reminded herself of why she was doing this. To help Logan. “Let’s get back to the 'Truth or Dare',” she said, grinning a little. 

     “Wait, I have more questions. I want to know more so I can help!” Logan said, brushing a tear from her eye as her words brushed away answering any uncomfortable questions, about herself. 

      “Uuh Uuh,” Dahlia wagged her finger. “No way. We have to play the game right. It’s your turn, missy. 

     “Fine.” She crossed her fingers, and said, “Truth.” 

      Dahlia thought about how to phrase the many questions she had about Logan into just one sentence. Finally she looked up. “Okay, why did you come here? I know it wasn’t to help me. What were, are, you running from?” 

     Logan wasn’t sure how to answer it without sounding stupid. “Okay, do you ever feel like if you tell people about your struggles they will just think it’s ridiculous?”

     “Of course! What kind of a question is that? That’s how everyone feels, all the time!” Dahlia laughed. 

     “Ok, well, you really are going to laugh because this is such a stupid thing to be afraid of….I’m afraid I’m a horrible writer. And I know it sounds stupid, but you’d be afraid too if you had my parents. They’re both renowned artists! Of course they are going to expect a lot of me, and I feel like all I’ve done is let them down. Mom wanted to look at my new story-she called to tell me so when I came over a few days ago, and I had literally just deleted the whole thing because I was too ashamed to show it to her.  That may sound like such a little thing. But I feel like my whole life has been a disappointment, and my whole life to come will just make it worse. I thought that having 2 weeks away would give me time to come up with a new idea, and have something to show to her. That maybe it would give me inspiration. But also I just wanted to get away. I'd been having some...issues with a friend. I was just done. And there are other fears too. I feel like I have to tap things a certain number of times, or something bad may happen. And sometimes storms, and germs, and that I've been rude to people." She paused to take a breath, remembering her fear of Jodi's. Or really her fear that she'd somehow been incredibly mean to the ticket guy. And her fear of Amanda's restaurant, because it had suddenly popped into her head that they might give her food poisoning by accident.  "And it's not often that a way out comes along.” She looked down at her lap. “Clearly I’ve failed again.” 

   Dahlia had to pause and think a minute. All of Logan's words had rushed out so quickly, like a fierce wind on the beach blowing off her metaphorical hat. After she had had time to process the words however, she said, “That’s not a stupid thing to worry about. Well, it might be, but it's understandable. But tell me one thing-when I just said that sentence, did you suddenly get worried because that meant that it could be true then, that maybe you are a bad writer because I said it wasn't a stupid worry, and maybe it’s not all just in your head?” 

     Logan started. “How did you do that?” She asked in amazement. 

     Dahlia shook her head, smiling a little to herself and continued. “Do you ever just check out for 30 minutes, or longer, just staring at a wall?” 

     “How..What?” the answer was breathless. 

     “Think back-have your parents ever expressly said that you need to be a writer, or that you have to be as good as them in any field?” 

     Logan’s brow furrowed as she thought, and her eyes widened-surely they must have said it at least once? Surely! 

     “Do you feel like writing is the most important thing in the world and you are worthless unless you are good at it?  And then when you don't do "good"  you snap at people? Do you feel like you are obsessed with it, like you don't have control over what you do?  Oh, wait, then do you do things to make yourself feel better? Like little ticks, or ways to reassure yourself, that only feel good for a few seconds and eventually just make the whole fear seem worse?” Dahlia was ticking things off on her hands, growing excited, not necessarily in a "yay" way, but more a "eureka I proved it" way. 

    Logan backed away from her. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I’m not like you!” She started to stand up, but felt Dahlia’s hand grab her wrist. 

     "No, you’re not like me, you’re like you- and I think you have a disorder that I have also struggled with. And geez, you´ve got like all the different manifestations...intrusives, scrupulosity, germs, perfectionism… But you don’t have to be ashamed of it. It's more common than you think,” Dahlia said. 

     “God, this is exactly your problem though isn’t it! You think you’re entitled to act like a therapist when you don’t even listen to yours!¨ Logan reacted without thinking. All the new words, flung at her, Dahlia´s confidence, it was too much. 

      “Hey!” Dahlia reached out and as if to slap her, also reacting suddenly, her hand pulling painfully out of its bind at her side. 

      “What the heck!” Logan reacted immediately, shielding her face, but Dahlia had pulled back anyway, clearly catching herself. 

      “That’s what you get for being unnecessarily nasty! I get that this is difficult, but don’t accuse me of not trying hard! I do! I do things everyday to help myself-just because I haven’t gone outside yet doesn’t mean I’m not trying!” 

       Suddenly Dahlia looked down at her hand, as though she was seeing it for the first time. 

     “Did I just? Did I almost hit you?” She lifted her hand-looking at it with hatred and fear. Then letting out a strangled cry, she began wailing. 

     In a flash Logan was back at her side- “Dahlia, you didn’t! That wasn’t...Even if you had I would have deserved it! I was way out of line. I'm sorry, I just snapped."

     “But I could have! I could have! Who knows what I’ll do! I-” her words were cut off as another sob ripped through her body. 

     “Shh, Shhh, it’s okay. You won’t,” Logan tried to reassure her. She sighed as she rubbed Dahlia’s back slowly. Dahlia wept into her shoulder, at the same time trying weakly to get up. “I have to go, before I actually hurt you!” 

     Alarmed, Logan reached for anything that might comfort her. “You were right, okay. Probably-I don’t know. I know there’s something going on, beyond just high expectations. There are days when I just think-Oh who even cares, why don’t I just kill myself today. Then there are days when I think-Oh who even cares, why don’t I just stop worrying for a day-it won’t kill me. The trouble is, I never know which day it’s gonna be,” she laughed a little, a tear rolling down her cheek. She continued talking, trying to keep Dahlia in the room: she didn't want to be alone. She had just learned something about herself that she couldn't even process yet. ¨Look, I want to get better. I mess up with all my friends, other than Nora, I guess because she's used to it? Maybe she even guessed that I had the same problem. But my other friends, I live on a different planet than them. I mean, my friend Katie, she hates me now. Just before I came here she said as much, but she doesn't know the full story. She just got in the crossfire of my fear about being rude to that ticket guy, and getting food poisoning from that restaurant. 

     Almost unconsciously, Dahlia was listening to her rambling. It only served to cement her idea that Logan had OCD. All of those fears were common ones. She knew because her therapist had told her at some point. 

     "I don't know if those things are OCD, but they feel the same way that the writing does. Like...it doesn't matter if there is no evidence, or if what I am afraid of is ludicrous logically, I just can't seem to get past the idea that it might be true." These anecdotes, originally recalled from memory in order to keep Dahlia from running away, had caught her own attention. She had fallen into a reverie, remembering things that she had almost never connected before. Things that she had just thought were melodrama, or some weird manifestation of a stressful circumstance, but that now all fit together, like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. 

      She pulled herself out of her mental wanderings. Dahlia’s sobs were still going strong. Logan knew at some point she would tire herself out. 

     “I really want to help you, but I think I might need you to help me too. I’m not okay-I can admit that to you-I can maybe even admit that to your sister, since she knows about OCD and stuff. I just don’t think I can tell my parents.” 

     Dahlia was starting to get a little quieter now. Her cries slowly petered out. 

     “Logan, I want to help you. You're not even as alone as you think. That girl, Katie? You didn't go to the school at this point, but when she was younger, she had a period where she was really depressed. I remember people really made fun of her. They all thought she was crazy, or stupid because she would just blank out for hours. I want to help you feel like it's not your fault that you have OCD, that lots of other people are dealing with stuff. The thing is, I’m too scared I’m going to hurt you,” Dahlia said, getting up now and backing towards the door, still determined to get out of the room, despite the sudden connection to "crazy girl" Katie. 

     “I don't know what to do to help you. I don't even know how to make myself feel better, so I have no idea how to help you. This feels like such a stupid circle, ” She said.

     “I don’t know-they say that’s the worst part of OCD. The circle. You go around and around the same fear forever. I mean, in this very moment, I am afraid I don't even have it, and that I am lying about having it,” she said. 

      “What, what? Oh… wait, this is part of it, isn't it. This is where your fear comes in, that it really is schizophrenia and not OCD…. I don't know how to help with that, but I know it doesn't help me for people to say that I am wrong.. It doesn't convince me for long, and I guess I have OCD too, so I assume you feel the same way?¨  Logan said. 

      Dahlia looked miserable. Logan wondered if there was something she was supposed to do to help . No, she decided-she couldn’t help Dahlia by comforting her. What Dahlia said made sense to her. Reassurance never worked for her. She thought back to the times when she had felt like a failure. She always tried to comfort herself by either having her parents tell her it was okay, or by Google. To cheer herself up, she would look up stories about authors, and how they started out as being told they were bad, or as failing spectacularly. It always made her feel good for a second. Then a little seed would worm its way in-"well, but that author didn’t have encouragement from other people-of course she was bad at first."

    And then the other voice, "I mean, she was in college when she failed, writing probably wasn’t her top priority-she had less time to dedicate to it than me. She certainly made up for it in her later career, who’s to say I will get better-there’s no guarantee.” 

     She knew no amount of comfort had ever stopped her having these thoughts before. Dahlia must be the same. Which must mean Logan did have OCD.