74 pages • 2 hours read
Wesley KingOCDaniel
Fiction | Novel | Middle GradeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-4
Chapter 1 Summary
Daniel introduces himself as a “gangly, eccentric thirteen-year-old social oddity” (1) and believes that he is “crazy.” He is the backup kicker for the school football team and is writing an adventure story called The Last Kid on Earth. He has a best friend named Max and a crush on a girl named Raya. Daniel believes that he is “crazy” because of what he calls “zaps”—feelings of profound anxiety triggered by the appearance of certain numbers or taking a certain number of steps. For example, he gets zapped by the geography teacher writing the date of a test, which is the 19th of October. Further, these feelings can only be assuaged by immediate action. In this instance, they are only dealt with by stopping writing, or scratching out, the number 19.
In geography class, Principal Frost announces over the loudspeaker that there will be a dance two weeks from today. This causes much excitement; there is a discussion between Max and Daniel whether they will go, and whether they will ask one of the girls to go with them. Daniel notices Sara in the corridor with her teaching assistant. He recalls how she hasn’t spoken in eight years, and that she screamed during her last appearance in a regular class. As a result, she earned the nickname “Psycho Sara” (14). However, as he is walking past her, she unexpectedly says hello to him.
Chapter 2 Summary
Daniel talks more about his book, the writing of which helps him deal with the “zaps.” The story is about a boy also named Daniel, who accidentally wipes out the human race and has to put it right. The book forms part of the content of OCDaniel, and the reader gets to see firsthand what Daniel is writing. In his book, the extinction of humanity has been caused by Daniel switching on a device in the attic.
Daniel’s family is introduced via a description of a typical family dinner. His 16-year-old brother, Steve, is very different from Daniel; he is popular, has a cheerleader girlfriend, and has little time for Daniel. Steve often argues with their mother. Daniel also has a 9-year-old sister, Emma, whom he is close to, and to whom he reads. Their father, who gets home from work late, is not present. After dinner, Daniel finds a note that was placed in one of the pockets of his backpack. It reads “I need your help. —Fellow Star Child” (25).
Chapter 3 Summary
On reading this note, Daniel does some research to establish what a “Star Child” is and into who could have left the note. He discovers that a Star Child is a pseudoscientific idea about “children who are believed to possess special, unusual, and sometimes supernatural traits or abilities” (26). Daniel reveals in more detail, in the context of a math class, how specific numbers create pain for him, and how he cannot bear to write them down. The numbers four and six are particularly bad for him, but nine is the worst, and inevitably this means he struggles with math. Daniel feels sick in the class because of this and has to leave for the bathroom. There he meets Sara again, who tells him to splash water on his face. Daniel feels a strange connection with her.
In the last class of the day, geography, the teacher puts Daniel in a group with Raya to work on a project. They have a brief conversation in which she reveals that she finds Daniel smart and funny. However, the day ends badly in football practice when burly Taj violently tackles Daniel.
Chapter 4 Summary
Going home after the tackle, and nursing his head on the couch, Daniel describes the “routine” he must perform before he goes to bed. Daniel has practiced this routine for five years, and it developed out of a number of other habits. It involves taking 10 steps from the bedroom to the bathroom, brushing his teeth with 10 vertical strokes and five horizontal ones, and washing his hands “with ten overlapping squeezes to either side” (41). Finally, he must take 10 steps back to his bed, and flick the light switch on and off five times. This routine must be done perfectly otherwise Daniel believes he won’t wake up in the morning. If he makes one mistake, he must restart the entire routine.
Daniel cries at the end of that night’s routine and has a nightmare where Max’s eyes become totally black, and he turns into something demonic. At school the next day, Raya comes over to speak to him by the basketball court. She asks whether Max likes her friend Clara, and it seems as if this is his chance to ask her to the dance. Unfortunately, he hesitates, and Taj asks her instead, a proposition she unenthusiastically accepts.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
“Zaps” are the traumatic feelings of anxiety that Daniel experiences, caused by seemingly arbitrary occurrences of numbers, or by performing certain actions a “wrong” number of times. Difficult to understand from the outside, they are an immense and recurring source of pain for Daniel:
Think of the worst you have ever felt in your whole life—like if you got a bad flu or your dog died or you just got cut from a team you really wanted to be on—and imagine that happens when you take nine steps to the bathroom instead of ten (9).
“Zaps” support one of the novel’s key themes: the suffering that can be caused by living with a mental illness, and OCD in particular. Daniel feels a deep and catastrophic fear, the “[r]ealization that you may die or go crazy or never be happy again if you don’t do something fast” (8). Daniel believes he must complete his nighttime routine perfectly, or else he won’t wake up in the morning. In addition to his emotional distress, he also feels physical pain and symptoms—“like being punched” (28)—including pains in the stomach, sweating, and difficulty breathing. Daniel’s routines are time-consuming and often reduce Daniel to tears, as seen in Chapter 4. Though Daniel’s routines are designed to control his anxiety, he still suffers as a result of the rituals.
Beyond the explicit symptoms of the disorder, it also causes a more ubiquitous, if indirect, sense of anxiety related to social acceptance. Because of his disorder, Daniel fears that his peers will believe he is “crazy” (1) and not accept him. Sara symbolizes this fear in the opening chapters of the novel. Her mental health issues, not explained at first, render her literally mute, unable to communicate with any of her peers. Her only form of expression is a scream. She is thereby objectified and dismissed as “Psycho Sara” (14) by others in the school, making her isolation total. The question of acceptance creates conflict for Daniel. It is more difficult for Daniel to cope with his suffering when others cannot or do not understand his condition. The secrecy of his suffering exacerbates his pain, but he is terrified of anyone discovering it. The kind of emotional support that might make his condition more tolerable is ruled out by a deeper fear of what would happen if anyone found out about his condition.
This problem is especially grievous in the context of middle school, where the pressures to fit in and be “normal” are intense. Daniel is surrounded by images of apparent normality and success in the form of the football team and his brother, Steve. He fears that he will lose his best friend, Max, if his true state is revealed. This is reflected in the dream he has in Chapter 4, where, “Max looked at me and his eyes were totally black like his pupils had taken over everything” (44). In this instance Max has, symbolically, seen who Daniel really is, transforming into something other than his friend, into a “demon” and an enemy. The public spectacle of the dance represents an institutionalized, and concrete, expression of this demand to be accepted: One is either accepted as someone’s date to the dance or accepted as one’s dance partner at the dance.
However, despite all this, there is hope. Sara’s fleeting interactions with Daniel suggest that she can now communicate with people and that Daniel may have found a source of potential understanding that could assuage his pain. He mentions that Sara might be the first person “who had ever actually seen me” (16). Daniel’s connection with Sara foreshadows that he might gain acceptance for who he really is, rather than for something he is expected to be. In Daniel’s book and in the image of the “Star Child” there is an indication of hope and the sense that his condition might be part of what makes him unique, and what allows a creative and redemptive journey to begin.
