Thursday
27/09/64
-Eleanor Calder-
My younger brother was sitting in the kitchen with my father. Mum was there too, scurrying about to prepare our dinner. Usually I'd join those three for tea after school if I had no homework, which today I didn't, because their topic of conversation kept me in my room, supposedly doing homework. Niall loved to gossip, he loved talking about the affairs of the world. Right now he was talking about the latest game of Irish football, which, strangely, he followed closely. Coming from South Yorkshire, you'd think he would be more interested in our own football competition. The Doncaster Rovers, I think they were.
All my family were supporters of football. Niall and my father were the most invested in sports, but my Mum had been known to join in also.
My family did not own a television like Felicitie's. It was not due to not being able to afford one, or to a disbelief in the technology, but my parents simply decided that the money could be well spent on something else. I believe it may have gone to the fancy radio that sits on the window sill in our kitchen instead. That is how my family "watch" Doncaster versus Manchester games. By sitting around and visualising it from what the commentators manage to have time to dictate.
Whenever someone knocked on the door at my house, they didn't realise it, but they needed only about two steady knocks and we would all be at the door, my younger brother Niall practically wrestling my mum to open it. The sound and vibrations echoed through my wooden place. Since my house did not seem so small, which it was not, but from the front it did seem a lot sturdier than it truly was, so a lot of people would go straight for the knocking rampage.
This time it happened again, someone's knuckles bashing on my front door left the house slightly trembling, in resemblance with a baby antelope learning to walk. No one was wrestling over who was to open the door today. There was more likely to be a wrestle on who had to open the door, if I hadn't of taken the liberty to do it myself.
The knocker was Fizzy's friend, Liam. The bike one, the delivery one that probably still liked her while she had moved onto Calum, or possibly another boy after that. Liam was wearing his white rolled up slacks, white tennis shoes and navy blue shirt that was too baggy in the slightest. A frontwards facing white cap that was part of his delivery uniform was covering his new hair cut, almost completely shaved. Fizzy had described it to me as a 'buzz cut' when she was on a small rampage at school. Apparently it ruined everything and that's why she had to tell him that her phone broke and gave him a different, false phone number.
He was just hand delivering the paper because there was a spot of rain and he didn't want it to get wet. Whilst awkwardly pretending not to recognise me, which he completely did, he managed to enquire about Felicitie once or twice.
"So how is she?" he'd asked before actually handing me the paper.
Friday
28/09/64
"So Liam was at mine last night." I told Fizzy while we were walking to school.
"Why would he be there? Do you have a crush on my boyfriend?"
"He was just delivering the paper." I told her before she got upset with me, though he wasn't really her boyfriend if she is kissing other boys.
"Hey come out with me again on Saturday night."
"Okay I'll come. Where are you going?"
Fizzy didn't reply but I think the fact that she used her finger to 'zip her lips and throw away the key' meant that it was a surprise again.
Saturday
29/09/64
I watched my red lips pucker in Fizzy's bedroom mirror. She had retrieved the key to her sealed lips and told me the destination of our whereabouts tonight. It matched last week's. Though I heard that tonight it would be totally different, Mary was coming too. So Mary was the reason I ended up watching my red lips in the mirror, Mary was the reason I had red lips at all. How she had time to do her makeup and hair, plus mine, was unknown. But she insisted on it, so I let her. Now, I would be worrying about getting it on my teeth all evening.
I was acting like I resented the idea of going to tonight's dance, but honestly, after Fizzy spilled the beans the feeling of resentment were quickly overridden by my butterflies. The ones that flew around in my tummy when I was nervous. Today was more of a rush to get ready quickly because we were going to get some take away for dinner. With all the outfit problems and curlers not working we were a little later than expected. So it worked out that we just drove to the diner round the corner from where the dance would be held, I got out and the girls drove home to then walk to the hall. Apparently it was more stylish for a girl to walk there, while the boys drive.
"Three burgers and fries?" the teenage boy who took my order confirmed, in disbelief.
"Yes please. Two of them are for my friends." I explained, I was embarrassed that he'd thought I was ordering all that for myself.
"A nice friend you are, that'll be nineteen." he put his hand out for the money, an ill-mannered gesture. Nineteen was a lot, I'd only fifteen pounds. So I was subject not to eat or to find somewhere else, hopefully Fizzy and Mary would understand. Usually I'd just get their food for them and nothing for myself, except this time I really needed something to settle my tummy. So I left, down the strip of shops, heading further and further away from the city hall, toward someplace I thought I might come across something I could afford for us all.
As I walked the pain in my heels became more noticeable. I could feel it in every step I took. Blisters in my feet made walking any further unbearable and anxiety made walking back to the shop almost as bad.
My whole body froze up, to me the breeze became a wind, a freezing southern one that blew me in the direction of panic. My thoughts were trying to break through my worries, the false things something from somewhere in my head were screaming at my common sense. How could I not control my own body, which sat itself down near the path and rocked back and forth, slowly. But it felt like I was on a rollercoaster, like my heart was beating 100 miles an hour but had also stopped altogether.
>>>>>
Option one was to stay sat here, focusing on my breath and the feel of the breeze that wasn't a wind. My beating of my heart, which wasn't going at 100 mph, but as steady as the breaths I was forcing myself to take. Why was it so andr, inhale exhale. You'd think panic attacks would get easier everytime you have one, but they have not once eased up since the firs I one I ever had.
Fizzy knew about my anxiety, but she didn't understand that ordering food, the wind picking up, walking down the street alone, could cause me to feel like like dying on the spot was inevitable.
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