It’s a question I’m used to being asked, but it’s not something I usually answer. The reason for that, I suddenly discover, is that I’m not entirely sure. Normally, I can just shrug my shoulders, wink an eye, and say, “I just do.” Most people don’t press any further than that – there is no real reason for love, after all.

The shrink isn’t letting me off the hook, though. And I can either give him an answer and go home after my hour’s up, or I can get put into the mental ward of the local hospital because I’m a danger to myself and others.

When I was in my freshman year of high school, I dated a girl named Jen. Jen was perfect – at least she seemed that way to me. She was beautiful, smart, and funny. And, for reasons I never understood, she was interested in me. She had broken her leg skiing, and she still wanted to dance with me at our class’s winter ball. We stood in the corner, her swaying on her crutches and me trembling with my hands on her hips while the music played. I’m not the kind of guy who attracts women. I’m skinny and I wear glasses. I stutter when I get nervous, and I’m so uncoordinated that I trip over my feet when I’m walking down the sidewalk.

Those things didn’t matter when it came to Jen. She found my foibles endearing, and kept saying she saw a lot in me that I was trying to hide. I’m still not sure what she meant by that; I’ve never tried to hide any talent of mine. If I actually had qualities in me that made me special, why would I try to mask them?

I eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was so convinced that Jen couldn’t actually love me that I drove her away. After all her attempts to penetrate my quiet, somber exterior failed, she finally had it out with me. She called me pathetic, and said I hadn’t made any effort to actually connect with her. I was supposed to meet her half way, but I had spent all my time hiding from her. And while she said these things, I just nodded. After all, she was right.

I briefly consider wandering around my shrink’s question by telling him about Jen, but I decide not to bother. There’s a lot of annoying teenage angst right there that I don’t like to think about in connection with myself. I like to pretend I’m above the crowd who listens to slow songs in their bedrooms and cries because nobody understands them. I’ve got a good imagination – I can pretend I don’t do something even if I make a nightly habit out of it.

The one thing my experience with Jen did was help me learn from my mistakes. If I ever fell in love again, I was going to make sure I showed it. I wanted to take the stupid emo kid inside me outside and shoot him behind the woodshed. And when I saw Lil, I figured I knew exactly how to do that.

I had known Lil through most of high school, but I only really talked to her when we were both seniors. She was about five feet tall, and already weighed over 200 pounds. She was awkward and shy, mostly because everyone picked on her about her weight. The more people picked on her, the more she ate, and the bigger she became. I didn’t really know her all that well, but I knew she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. So I started hanging around with her. We didn’t exactly have a lot in common except that we were both outcasts, but that was enough of a bonding point to start with.

One day, when we were both skipping out of study hall early, she let slip that she liked me. Her face turned all beat red, and she looked down at the floor like someone had just caught her masturbating. I didn’t want her to feel too awkward, so I told her I liked her, too.

This is a girl who has had nothing her entire life. Her parents were both drunken perverts, and she’s been moved into and out of foster homes since she was a kid. She’s shy and plump – a combination that becomes a living hell when you’re a girl in high school. As a general rule, I hate the high school crowd. So if I laugh at her when she flirts with me, or turn her down, or make her feel any worse than she already does, then I’m becoming what I hate. Why not give her some kind of hope? Maybe I’ll find something in there that I do love eventually.

With those thoughts as my guiding star, we started dating. This time around, I took what I had learned from Jen and tried to put it to good use. Love is hard work. In order to make it matter, you have to put a lot of work into it yourself. Whenever we got into a fight, which eventually became a weekly thing, I wouldn’t leave until we had worked it out. Twice in our first month of dating, she tried to break it off and go back into her hiding hole of being lonely. I didn’t let that happen. I made any compromise I needed, gave up anything necessary in order to make it work. I wasn’t going to be pathetic anymore. I was going to be the steady force in this girl’s life. I was going to be her rock.

And I found, as time went on, that there was something in her that I loved. I loved the fact that she loved me. Being a skinny nerd with glasses is hardly the way to win friends and adoration in high school. My odds of finding a girl who would actually hang around me without it being some kind of sadistic bet were just about at zero. Lil embraced my quirks and let me keep my hobbies. She pointed out to me again and again that even though nobody else found me attractive, she did. Every time she did, I told her how beautiful she was. It was the best way I knew to make her smile.

The shrink taps his pen against the front of his notepad. I’ve been stammering and hedging for almost a full minute now. I open my mouth again to say something, but clam up at the last second. Why the hell should this guy get a window into my past? He’s a complete stranger who thinks he can sit down and judge me within half an hour. Screw him. I might be forced to sit through this crap, but that doesn’t mean I have to lie down on the couch and spill my guts to someone who won’t give a damn about me once my insurance stops paying off for him.

I close my mouth, lean back in the chair, and say nothing.

“Why do you love Lil?” the shrink asks again.

“I love her,” I answer.

“You’ve already said that. But why do you love her?”

I take a long breath and look this pie-bald pudgy Sigmund Freud motherfucker straight in the eyes. “I just do. Go ahead and write that down.”

The rest of the session goes about as well as that little exchange. I could make it easy for him. As a mental patient, it’s pretty easy to give your psychologist the run-around if you want. You just need to know what they want to hear. This guy’s office sports a certificate honoring a huge donation he gave to a charity for domestic violence prevention. Going off that, I can wind up a nice long story about an uncle who abused me or something and have him eat it up for the next hour. But like I said – he’s got no business looking into my past. He doesn’t know me, and I’m not going to let him get to know me. I give him a few bread crumbs, like the time I accidentally saw my mom naked and the time in fourth grade when I played Barbie dolls with the girl next door. I give him enough to let him think there’s progress – just enough to keep him from sending me to a padded cell. But he’s never going to really know me. I won’t allow that.

Once the hour is up, I bid him adieu and sit in the lobby, waiting for Lil to pick me up in our puke green El Camino. From both a mechanical and aesthetic sense, those cars are about the most hideous things in existence. That’s probably why I was able to pick one up at a used car lot for only 300 bucks. It drives like a cow and sounds like an old-fashioned railroad engine, but as long as it manages to hit sixty on the highway, it does the job okay. It does hit sixty, but only just barely. On a windy day when you’re going downhill, it can even top 70 without stalling.

The doctor takes a phone call in the other room, leaving his other patient waiting. The woman in the lobby is a brown-haired girl about the same age as me. She’s dressed in black and gray, and wears a frown on her face. Her sleeves don’t quite cover up a long scar along her right wrist. It’s about a six-inch cut, and deep. Vertical, not horizontal, which means she really tried to kill herself, and probably would have if someone hadn’t stopped her. The fact that she’s not a faker impresses me, although it probably shouldn’t.

“This is stupid,” she says to me when she notices me staring. “I don’t even need to be here.”

I smile nervously and shrug my shoulders.

“I could be doing a million other things right now,” she continues. “For starters, I was going to have some friends over to play some D&D this afternoon.”

D&D? As in…?

“Dungeons & Dragons,” she clarifies, expecting me to be completely freaked out by her nerdliness. I catch her off guard by smiling.

“Cool,” I say, taking in her surprised look.

“Then we were going to watch Fight Club,” she adds.

My jaw hits the floor. Wow. This woman might just be the sexiest person alive to me right now.

The sickly mew of the El Camino’s horn outside lets me know that Lil is here to pick me up. I stand around awkwardly for a second, then bow to her, all smooth and Japanese style and shit. “My name’s Chris,” I blurt out in the middle of my bow.

“Amy,” she says curtly. “With a Y.”

I fumble for some words to say. Then Lil lays on the horn again, letting me know I’m tarrying too long. I smile awkwardly again, shrug my shoulders, and leave, silently cursing myself for the thoughts of infidelity that trickle through my brain as I approach the green rust bucket.

“What took you so long?” Lil asks with a bit of a snap in her voice as I open the door and climb into the passenger seat.

I don’t answer. Despite myself, I’m suddenly thinking that maybe there are perks to being crazy.