The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten Read Free Book Online Page A

pail.
    Sick stuff was attached to those paper shreds, and it got sicker each time his mom brushed him off. Whatever was in those letters was scaring the crap out of her and had set off the tripwire to his not-so-free-floating anxiety. Adam had spent all of last night rearranging his Warhammer figures. There was, of course, an exacting ritual to the rearranging. Each Orc had to be in the correct formation on his shelves, and he also had to replace them all in a particular way, circling down from above, counter-clockwise, thirteen times. If he did it wrong, he would have to start again. It was virtually impossible to do right.
    Adam owned almost three hundred miniatures.
    It took hours.
    Adam hadn’t had to “arrange” for months. He was angry with himself, with the situation … with his mom, but he knew he couldn’t talk about the letters here. The letters were like the inside of the house. Secret. There would be consequences. His mom had laid it out hard a couple of years ago. Talking about the house would be a betrayal. If he betrayed her, they would take her away. Period.
    Yes, the compulsions
were
escalating. But just a bit, nothing to worry about, not yet. And yes, it was annoying that the threshold to the large biology lab had amped up from a negligible clearing to a semi-full ritual. But that was sort of nothing. In fact, maybe he could talk about that. Maybe it would help to get support from his support group, because that’s why one went to a support group, right? Except he would sound way more nuts than he wanted to sound. No one else had a threshold thing as far as he could tell. Everyone in Group seemed shocked by the newuncovering of someone else’s way-weird ritual, each one of which was entirely different from their own way-weird rituals. Thresholds? Too weird. What would Robyn think?
    Adam tapped his right foot on the front leg of his chair for three sets of thirty-seven. He tapped invisibly while everyone settled in and started up. Wolverine whispered something to Robyn. It made her smile, sort of. This called for seven sets up to eleven.
One, three, five, seven, nine, eleven
. He didn’t have a chance. Even though he’d swear that Peter Kolchak was crazier on his best day than Adam was on his worst, Wolverine had that thing that some guys had, the thing that makes you move as if you’re used to being liked. The way he’d just leaned into Robyn assuming she’d
like
what he whispered to her.
    What would that be like? How do you get that? And yet …
    The smile that she had just offered Adam was bigger than the one she’d offered Wolverine a second ago. Adam knew this because he’d counted it out in taps. Wolverine had got two taps, no teeth showing, while her smile for Adam had clocked in at over three beats with a flash of white.
    Captain America came in and punched Adam’s arm. “Batman, my man! How’s it hanging? How’s it hanging?”
    What did that even mean? Jacob was seriously in over his head with his Captain America persona. The guy was normally a nervous, tidy fellow with energetic checking and repeat issues, not an arm-punching, how’s-it-hanging type.
    “Cool, Captain America. You?”
    Jacob puffed up, delighted that someone had finally rememberedto call him by his superhero name. “Cool, man. Cool.”
    Adam watched Robyn as Robyn sort of watched everyone. Something was up.
    Snooki came in looking like a shiny nutmeg and Thor stormed in five minutes late, managing to make them all feel guilty for being on time. The Viking settled into his accustomed seat behind rather than beside Chuck, and glowered his customary glower—or was it dialed down a bit?
    As the session got under way, Thor’s eyes remained relatively calm even as Wonder Woman went on at mind-numbing length about her food or lack thereof. Food discussions seemed to set Thor’s teeth on edge and Adam was right with him on that one.
    “I know I should lay off the laxatives—that way lies madness, et cetera, et