OCD

Elayna Nicole Miller was born on June 6, 2006-and diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder on her sixth birthday. Six has always been safe. Even. Predictable. It makes sense, then, that her tics need to be done six times, that certain numbers feel protective, that coincidence feels like confirmation rather than chance.

Now Elayna is eighteen, in her senior year of high school-year twelve, another multiple of six. Adulthood is supposed to mean freedom, but for Elayna it means disruption. College decisions. New routines. Unfamiliar uncertainty. And OCD does not loosen its grip when life demands change-it tightens it.

The sudden death of one of her best friends over the summer only makes things worse. Her thoughts turn darker, more obsessive, circling around mortality until she takes an after-school job at a funeral home, drawn to the very thing she can't stop thinking about.

Elayna wants what everyone else seems to move toward so easily: a normal life, a normal relationship, a normal future. But when your mind is constantly negotiating safety, normal feels just out of reach.