EDGAR AWARD WINNER FOR BEST MYSTERY BANK STREET BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SILVER BIRCH AWARD WINNER “Complex and satisfying. Written from Daniel’s point of view, this perceptive first-person narrative is sometimes painful, sometimes amusing, and always rewarding.” — Booklist (starred review) From the author of Incredible Space Raiders from Space! comes a brand-new coming-of-age story about a boy whose life revolves around hiding his obsessive compulsive disorder—until he gets a mysterious note that changes everything. Daniel is the back-up punter for the Erie Hills Elephants. Which really means he’s the water boy. He spends football practice perfectly arranging water cups—and hoping no one notices. Actually, he spends most of his time hoping no one notices his OCD habits—he calls them Zaps: avoiding writing the number four, for example, or flipping a light switch on and off dozens of times over. But everything changes when a girl at school, who is unkindly nicknamed Psycho Sara, notices him for the first time. She doesn’t just notice him: she seems to peer through him. Then Daniel gets a note: “I need your help,” it says, signed, Fellow Star Child—whatever that means. And suddenly Daniel, a total no one at school, is swept up in a mystery that changes everything for him. With great voice and grand adventure, this book is about feeling different and finding those who understand. Wesley King is the author of over a dozen novels for young readers. His debut, OCDaniel , is an Edgar Award winner, a Canada Silver Birch Award winner, a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, and received a starred review from Booklist . The companion novel, Sara and the Search for Normal , received a starred review from School Library Journal and was the recipient of the Violet Downey Book Award and the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award. King has also written The Incredible Space Raiders from Space! , A World Below , Butt Sandwich & Tree , Benny on the Case , and Kobe Bryant’s New York Times bestselling Wizenard series. He lives in Newfoundland. OCDaniel CHAPTER 1 I first realized I was crazy on a Tuesday. I mean, I suspected it before, obviously, but I’d been hoping it was just a phase, like when I was three and I wanted to be a fire truck. But on that fateful October day she said hello after the last bell, and it was official—I was completely bonkers. Tuesdays are usually my favorite day of the week. It’s a weird day to like, but for me, a gangly, eccentric thirteen-year-old social oddity with only one real friend, it has some serious perks. For one thing, we don’t have football practice. Most kids probably like football practice, but when you’re the backup kicker, you mostly just sit there and watch bigger, stronger kids run into each other and incur lifelong brain trauma. I know they’re still studying that and all, but just talk to Dale Howard for a few minutes, and you can pretty much put a yellow warning label on the helmets. Sometimes I get the team Gatorade—actually, I carefully arrange the cups into perfect geometric patterns to simplify drinking and reduce potential spillage—but that’s the only fun part. Usually I just sit on the bench by myself and think about what would happen if aliens attacked the field and started laying radioactive eggs in the end zone. Or if flesh-eating monsters that only ate football players emerged from the ground and chased Coach Clemons. Or if we were attacked by an evil supervillain named Klarg who shot fire out of his eyeballs and was strangely vulnerable to orange Gatorade, which of course I had in huge supply. You get the idea. The result is always the same: I save the world and never have to go to football practice again. You might be asking why I go to football practice at all. The problem is that my dad; my older brother, Steve; and my best friend, Max, all love football and may stop talking to me altogether if I quit. I think I’m already pushing my luck with Max, so I just keep on playing. Or sitting on the bench, anyway. I do some other stuff at practice too, but those are harder to explain. Like count the players and tie my shoes a lot and rearrange the cups after they’re messed up. I think those are all fairly standard bored activities, at least for me. I do lots of things like that. Not really sure why. I spend most of my time hiding them from other people, so I can’t exactly ask what’s standard. By the way, my name is Daniel Leigh. That’s like “lee,” not “lay.” People get that wrong sometimes. I did say I was a thirteen-year-old social oddity, which is true. Actually I’m not sure what else to add. People say I’m smart, and I was in the Gifted Program when I was younger, until they got rid of it because it was a bit confusing to tell the other kids that some students were gifted and they weren’t. Also I think they realized that if they continued the Gifted Program, us “gifted kids” would be separated our whole lives, but that happe