The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B

The boy inhaled as the door opened. It was as if he knew. The girl stepped into the room, and within the space of a heartbeat, he was lost.

The girl made her way toward the semicircle of chairs, not smiling exactly, but not hesitating either. She was older for sure. Probably. So it was hopeless, of course. She sat down directly across from him, at her end of the semicircle. Without looking up, she crossed her genius, perfect legs and flipped a long black braid behind her. By the time he exhaled, the boy was in love.

It was like he had drowned in a wave of
want
.

Without even knowing how he knew, he somehow did know that if
she
wanted, he would give the girl everything. Hers for the taking as of that moment were his iPad 3 (especially since he himself was no longer allowed to use it), his
first-edition copy of J. D. Salinger’s
Nine Stories
, his Xbox, his autographed Doc Halladay baseball
and
his most prized Orcs from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game—the classic eighth edition, not the other poseur stuff. For
her
he would master his most troublesome rituals and offer up what was left of his sanity.

“Greetings, Robyn, and welcome!” said Dr. Chuck Mutinda, nodding first at her and then into a raggedy file folder. This simultaneously shattered and enhanced the moment. The boy now knew her name.

Robyn
.

“Thank you,” the girl said to her feet, and the boy stopped breathing altogether, so hypnotic was the sound of her voice.

The girl’s eyes were blue. Up until that very second, the boy had never noticed the color of anyone’s eyes, could not have told you the color of his mother’s eyes. But Robyn’s eyes … well, they were the shade of an angry sky rimmed by thick lashes the color of soot. Her beauty—which, shockingly, no one in the room felt compelled to jump up and comment on—was ravishing. Everything in him felt tossed and trampled.

He ached deep inside just looking at her, but he could not look away.

So
this
was what
that
was like?

“Robyn Plummer is a slightly late addition to our merry band, having recently completed the residential program at Rogers Memorial Hospital.”

Residential
. His heart stopped, then started up again. He focused on his breath the way Chuck had tried to teach
him to do—except that he’d never really paid attention, so it didn’t help.
Residential
. They were all freaked by the mere possibility of
residential
.

“Welcome, Robyn, to room 13B and the Young Adult OCD Support Group. Course,” Chuck explained, “there is no room 13A, which makes a 13B a bit superfluous. And you will have no doubt also noticed that there is no thirteenth floor on the elevator. We have to get off on fourteen to get to this floor.”

“Yeah, man, what’s with that? I spent half an hour riding the damn elevator my first time here. I thought it was some psycho test,” said Peter Kolchak, slouching into his chair. A couple of the kids snorted in agreement.

“So,” continued Chuck, ignoring the interruption, “in some blessed existential way we, uh, don’t exist.” He said this as he said almost everything, with the faintest hint of a Jamaican lilt. He was long parted from that country, but not yet from the singsong rhythms of its language. He returned to the file. “Robyn is sixteen and …”

Sixteen! The boy seized on the number. Sixteen was bad. It was an even number, and therefore had to be sterilized. And it was very bad as an age.
Sixteen
—he repeated it fifteen times and tapped it out thirty-three times until it felt “just right.” Okay, so it could have been worse. And then he realized it
was
. There was also the height thing. You could tell even when she was sitting. The height
—her
height—could be and certainly would be a barrier. Robyn was unusually tall for a sixteen-year-old goddess, and he, sadly, irrefutably, was quite short for a boy of almost fifteen. Too young, too short—definitely obstacles.

But these too were surmountable.

The boy would grow, and fast, now that he had a goal. He’d just never had a goal before, not really, or at least not one that he could remember. He would start right away, immediately, this instant. The boy began listing his brand-new goals as Chuck introduced everyone to Robyn. He wrote them in bullet points with his right index finger into the shielded palm of his left hand.

That should do it.

The boy straightened up hard into his chair. The chewed-up plastic bit into his shoulder blades. It was almost his turn.

“And beside Elizabeth Mendoza is—”

“Pretty Boy Ross,” said Peter, who had been providing a running commentary throughout Chuck’s intros. Peter was sitting beside Robyn and facing her all the while, moving ever so slightly closer.
Pretty? What the hell?
Peter was going to be a problem. Or maybe he just needed a meds adjustment. With some in the group it was hard to tell.

Chuck raised an eyebrow, which was about as threatening as Chuck got. “And beside Elizabeth is our youngest member, Adam Spencer Ross.”

Did he actually say that? Between Chuck and Peter, Adam sounded like the group’s pet bunny. Elizabeth was only a few months older, for God’s sake! Chuck had said the same stuff last week during the first round of intros. Somehow, it hadn’t sounded as gormless then. Adam would normally tap or count the tiles, but since, as of seven minutes ago, he was a man with a goal, he didn’t. Besides, they were all looking at him. So Adam Spencer Ross rolled dice he didn’t even know he possessed. He sat up straighter and presented Robyn with his finest “Whaddya gonna do?” smile.

And then a miracle happened.

She smiled back.

His feet got hot. Robyn had not smiled back at the others—who, he had already determined last week, were
way
more nuts than he was. Adam had tracked her reaction to each intro as he’d listed his newly revised life goals. With years of multitasking of a very high order behind him, he could tap, count
and
pay attention to critical information.

“And finally, back to our newest member, Robyn Plummer …” Chuck’s Rasta dreadlocks seemed to wave at her while he searched through his notes. “Robyn is a junior at Chapel High.”

That’s it! Game over! Confirmed as dead-in-the-water! Junior year was deep into high school. It was practically
out
of high school! Juniors dated college boys, sometimes. Even he knew that. Peter Kolchak, who was still ogling her, was in college, or would have been if he hadn’t flamed out. Adam was a sophomore. This was Montague and Capulet territory. That he was in the gifted program at St. Mary’s was no bonus. He got angry with his mother all over again.
She had point-blank refused to let him skip from third to fourth grade, even though the nuns had suggested it rather strongly (for nuns, that is). He and Robyn would have been in the exact same year if it weren’t for his mother. Adam tapped his right foot twenty-nine times in three sets ending with three middle-finger taps for good measure. It was barely perceptible even in this room of experts. The annoyance with his mother receded. She meant well, and he did love her, after all, whatever color her eyes were.