I’m in love with Ryan Samuels. It’s been two months since we started seeing other, and I couldn’t be happier. Every Tuesday at 3:30 pm, I go the 15th floor of that shiny gray building on West 18th Street. We just started going out on the weekends, but we don’t really go out—if that makes sense. I mean, we’ve eaten at restaurants and have gone to the movies together, but most of the time we just stay in his apartment. I prefer to stay inside anyways. Whenever we’re out together, Ryan gets anxious about running into someone he might know, and he always wants to get home as soon as possible. He’s so weird. It’s one of the things I love about him.
The first time I met Ryan was last July. I was working as a salesgirl at my aunt’s clothing store on the Upper West Side, which is just a couple of blocks away from Ryan’s place. My friend Miranda was supposed to meet me for lunch, but she had to cancel at the last minute. I ended up eating by myself at a local cafe. The seating area was pretty empty since it was already two o’clock, so I sat down and started reading The Sun Also Rises. Moments later, there was a beautiful 26-year-old sitting next to me.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Oh, just some Hemingway,” I said, trying to seem more intelligent and more worldly than a typical high school junior.
He smiled, and I was instantly smitten. “Are you still in school?” he asked.
“Well, what do you think?”
“I’d assume so because you look pretty young, but you could also be some extremely intelligent and beautiful dropout who’s going to become a millionaire without going to college.”
“I’m actually sixteen. Haven’t even started thinking about college yet.”
He looked surprised, and there were a few seconds of silence that followed.
“How old do you think I am?” he asked.
“Twenty-eight?”
He laughed. “Pretty close. I’m actually twenty-eight.”
“Are you still in school?”
“Yeah, I’m in med school at Columbia. I’m working for a psychiatrist downtown right now.”
“Seriously?” I choked on my sushi when he said that. He was the whole package.
“Yeah, I just finished my first year there.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ryan Samuels. What’s yours?”
“Ari Hall.”
Ryan and I talked for the next hour about everything from pasta to homeless people. As I was getting ready to go, he wrote down his number on a napkin and put it in my purse. I think the napkin must have fallen out as I was walking back to my aunt’s store, because I never saw it again.
A lot of things happened during my junior year. Most notably, I was caught planting pack of cigarettes in Sophie Jacobson’s locker after she called me a pimply pighead. My school didn’t expel me, but they did make me seek medical attention.
On a Tuesday in February, my parents took me to the practice of Dr. Peter Larson, one of the best psychiatrists in New York City. My parents filled out the paperwork and had a word with Dr. Larson, who asked if he could use me as a “trial patient” for one of his psychiatrists in training who hoped to specialize in adolescent development. My parents had gone through hell to get me an appointment with Dr. Larson, so at that point they were too frustrated to argue. They sighed, patted me on the head, and left me with $15 for dinner.
I was led in to another office and introduced to Dr. Larson’s trainee who, of course, turned out to be Ryan. For the next two hours, I talked to Ryan about what a witch Sophie Jacobson was and how strange it felt to see him again. I told him that I now believed in fate. In my head I also told myself that Ryan was my soul mate, but I kept that comment to myself because I didn’t want to seem like a creeper. Ryan was an attentive note taker, but he didn’t say much until the last couple of minutes. He told me that framing someone isn’t an ethical thing to do, and that there are ways to release anger without harming the person or thing that I’m angry at. Needless to say, this pissed me off.
“It’s not about releasing anger. It’s about getting revenge,” I said.
Ryan had a concerned look in his eyes. “What did you expect to get out of Sophie’s expulsion?”
I glared at him. “For starters, I wouldn’t have to see her stupid face around my school.”
“You wouldn’t have felt bad? I mean, you said yourself that she’s the kind of person who wouldn’t even touch cigarettes. Didn’t her grandfather die from lung cancer last year?”
“Why does that matter? Acting like an uptight snoot is worse than being a nicotine addict.”
“That’s your opinion, Ari. And your opinion isn’t always right,” said Ryan sternly.
After hearing this, I gathered my belongings and stormed out the door. I was furious, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about Ryan for the next three days. I wanted to tell everyone about how he had hit on me last summer, but I also wanted him to keep his job so that I could have an excuse to see him regularly. I was crushing hard on a mentally unstable 26-year-old. My parents asked me about how the appointment went, so I told them that I was learning how to better control my emotions.
On Friday, I returned to the offices for a ninety-minute session with Ryan. He greeted me with a hug and apologized for the way he had acted on Tuesday. For a moment, I tried to believe that Ryan was just overly affectionate; maybe what I distinguished as flirting was his way of expressing platonic compassion. Then, his face got closer to mine, and he started loosening his tie. By the time we started making out, I had accepted the fact that Ryan Samuels was a psycho.
Two weeks after my first therapy session, I turned seventeen. I began to imagine my future with Ryan. Maybe I’d go to college in the city so that I could see him regularly, or maybe I’d move into his place after high school and have him support me. I think about marrying Ryan pretty often; I talk about it just as much as I think about it. Ryan just smiles and nods whenever I bring it up. He must think that I’m crazy.
  I know that this sounds sappy, but I feel like myself when I’m with Ryan. I can express myself without being judged. Last weekend, I threw Ryan’s keys out the window because he had to take a phone call during dinner. He was upset at first, but we were laughing about it ten minutes later. When I was thirteen, I threw my housekeeper’s keys out the window after she forgot to feed my pet hamster. My parents grounded me for a month, and we had to get a new housekeeper. Ryan isn’t special because he’s a psychiatrist and can understand why I get nutty sometimes. He’s special because he accepts my craziness and loves me all the more for it.
I don't want to share Ryan with anyone else, so I'm more than happy to keep quiet about us. I'd never tell my parents because they’d have him arrested, and I can’t tell any of my friends because they’d probably get jealous and rat on us. I’ve never met any of Ryan’s friends, and I don’t want to. It’s annoying for me to think about him having a social life outside of our relationship.
Secrets stress Ryan out. When we do go out together, he never lets us hang around my neighborhood because he’s afraid that we’ll run into my parents. He has five locks on his front door, and he locks all of them whenever I’m at his place. One time we ran in to one of Ryan’s neighbors in the elevator, so Ryan told him that I was his stepsister. Now, Ryan makes me take the stairs, and he never enters his apartment building with me.
Keeping a secret like Ryan makes my life more interesting. Whenever I'm on my way to Dr. Larson's office or Ryan's place, I get this amazing buzz in my stomach that makes me want to sing and jump and dance. My parents rarely ask about my whereabouts, so sleeping over at Ryan's isn't really an issue. There was one time when I came home at nine on a Sunday morning when my parents were having breakfast. I looked pretty disheveled, so they asked me where I'd spent the night. I made up a story about sleeping over at a friend's house and then going for a morning jog. They totally bought it, and the satisfaction that came from fooling them was priceless.
There have been other close calls. Two weeks ago, I went to get a burger with some kids from my history class after we'd all gotten really drunk. I went to the restroom and left my phone on the table. Of course, stupid Bennie Peters started going through my text messages. Bennie started telling everyone that I had a secret man, but I got back to the table before he could cause serious damage. I sat next to Bennie and pinched his elbow under the table until he started crying, then I called him a wimp and he walked out in tears. Everyone else was too drunk to remember Bennie's outburst. Bennie is also terrified of me now, so I doubt that he'd say anything. That incident was nerve-wracking, but being mean to Bennie was also pretty damn fun.
Being crazy and dating a fellow psycho aren't bad things. They're just made out to be bad by everyone else. Before Ryan, I couldn't accept who I was; I always felt as if I needed to change. Having Ryan as my secret has given me something to live for. He was right when he said that there are other ways to take out your anger, because anger doesn't have to be directed towards the people or things you're mad at. I've taken my anger at the world and put it into a beautiful relationship. This whole time, all that I needed was a good secret.