I pause. The anxiety is still eating at me, and I have to take care of it, one way or the other. “Do you have my key?” I ask.

He glances around, then bends over and scoops something else off the floor and tosses it to me. I catch it in my right hand: smooth silver surface, cool metallic teeth, tiny hole at the top. Familiar as breathing.

I check the door to make sure the padlock is open. Then I step to the top of the stairs, crank my arm back, and hurl the key into the darkness. It arcs away, the gleam of silver tumbling end over end and then vanishing in a split second. After a moment I hear the distant clink of metal on stone.

My hands are balled up so tightly they hurt. I instantly want to go down there and comb through the whole cavern until I find the key. Part of me—most of me—wishes I hadn’t thrown it, but I have to deal with my OCD and I have to do it right now. I can’t let it overtake me again. I can’t afford to put it off until our current crisis has blown over. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to myself that I’m okay, that I’ve got my OCD under control. Throwing my key, which I won’t need after today anyway, seems like a good place to start.

But even with it gone, I still have the urge to go check the padlock again. The ache to lock it—even though I know I wouldn’t be able to unlock it, now—is almost physically painful. I’ve thrown the key away, and it hasn’t helped at all, and I need it to help.

Elliott’s voice startles me. “You’re a very all-or-nothing guy, aren’t you?” he asks.

I glance over at him and try to loosen up my shoulders, which are hunched and tight. “What?”

He’s got a careful, contemplative sort of look on his face. He nods at the cavern. “Why did you throw the key?”

I hesitate—but he already knows about my OCD, and telling him might help get it off my chest. “Because I couldn’t stop worrying about it. I thought if I threw it, I could prove to myself that I really do still have all my compulsions under control,” I admit. “But now all I want is to go down there and find it.”

He nods, more to himself than me, then searches through the desk’s drawers until he finds a pen. He scribbles a few lines on the paper. I should be helping him compose the speech, but my anxiety is too high now and I can’t think straight.