Compulsion -- Heidi Ayarbe
In just four days, Jake Martin will play in his third state soccer championship. It's the day that his future will be secured. Not, as everyone assumes, because of the college scouts who are dying to recruit him, but because all of the numbers have lined up exactly right:
After Saturday, it has to end. Because Saturday is the magic number three. Everything I've done has built up to this because it's my thirteenth year of school, third championship, the end of the cycle, the beginning of real life. We're playing the game on Saturday, November 5. Saturday is the seventh day of the week. November is the eleventh month. Seven plus eleven is eighteen plus five is twenty-three.
On that magic day, once his team has won the game, Jake knows that he'll no longer need the primes or any of his other rituals. After the game, his family will be safe, and the spiders will have been forever cleared out of his brain. That'll be the end of it. No more counting. No more tapping. No more pouring shampoo down the drain until the level is exactly even with the conditioner.
Right?
Wow. Compulsion made me so hideously tense that my shoulders and neck are still sore. Not because it's scary or because the storyline is fraught with suspense, but because this poor guy is always one wrong number away from complete panic. Keeping up the appearance of normalcy would be hard enough for anyone, but Jake also has to deal with the intense scrutiny that comes with being the star player on a winning team.
It'd be impossible to not feel for someone under that amount of stress, but he's also a good brother and and good son—his father's always working and his mother's pretty much checked out, and he's just trying to keep it all together. But for me, he was especially likable because when he's wound so tight you'd think his skin would start to split, he blows off steam by telling some girls off for picking on the class freak:
"Like, are you guys friends?" Amy asks.
Before I can answer, Luc says, "We all grew up together." He runs his fingers through his damp hair.
Amy says, "Sorry. I didn't know she was your friend."
"Should it make a difference?" I say.
Tanya and Amy look away. Tanya scuffs her shoe across the pavement.
It was just... a tiny moment made of awesome. It wasn't remotely the core of the story, but for me, it made me love him.
It's a sports story, a family drama, and, of course, a portrait of a guy struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder. Recommended to those who like books along those lines, and to folks who like books that Deal With Issues that aren't Issue Books, if you know what I mean.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.