set me free

one

The screaming wouldn't stop.

I shut my eyes against the sound of it, leaning my head against the cool brick outside the school.

Maybe in a minute it would go away.

When did you start lying to yourself? The devilish voice in my head asked, and I could feel the smirk in its tone.

After another moment I breathed in deeply, my eyes still tightly closed. Maybe if I felt it all at once it would leave me alone for a minute.

God, this lying thing is sure getting old. The voice again, even more smug this time.

"Hey, are you okay?" A voice asked, cutting in to the screaming, which stopped abruptly.

I opened my eyes to find a random freshman in front of me. A girl with two pigtails, clutching an algebra book and even though she asked me if I was okay, looking altogether frightened.

I forced a grin onto my face, "Yeah! I'm good, thanks."

She nodded, obviously relieved that I wasn't about to throw up, or start crying, or maybe both, and scurried away.

I shuddered against the wall, rolling my lips into my mouth as the wailing in my head started back up again.

It wasn't normally this bad.

God, it was so bad.

-------------------------------

"Ms. O'Malley, are you with us today?"

My gaze swiveled from a tree outside to the teacher who had just called my name.

I looked around at the dozens of eyes on me, and realized I had no idea what the teacher had said in the last five minutes.

I shook my head, fast, all at once. "May I go see the nurse?"

My teacher looked at me sideways, before turning around to retrieve a hall pass.

I took it eagerly and slid out of my seat in precalculus, walking as fast as I could out the door and into the hall.

I was on the verge of a panic attack, I could feel it. In the way my hands were shaking, the way my breathing had quickened to a heart racing speed. My heart physically hurt in my chest, and I slid down the lockers in the hallway, pressing both hands to my heart in an attempt to stop the pain.

I am losing my mind. 

And maybe I was. 

Maybe this was finally it, finally when I was going to just going to shrivel up and go insane, and maybe they'd lock me up somewhere, in a padded room where i couldn't hurt myself or god, anyone else and maybe then -

"Are you okay?" 

How many times a day does someone ask you if you're okay, and then you look them in the face, smile and say you're fine and they move on without a care in the world? How many people ask because they have to, because it's socially appropriate to? How many people actually care and which are the imposters?

I looked up, still breathing like I was standing on a train track and there was a train headed right for and God, I couldn't move no matter how hard I tried.

"Do you need me to get the nurse?" 

And right then I didn't care that this kid in front of me didn't know me, didn't care that I knew he didn't give two shits about me, not really, and I shoved my pride so far down my throat I could have puked on it and I nodded.

"Yes, please." 

Two words in between gasps, two words that said Oh my God can't anyone see me, can't anyone see the mess I've become, someone just put me out of my fucking misery.

--------------------------------

The kid ran down the hallway, having dropped his backpack on the ground next to me, the contents spilling out of the top of his bag where it hadn't been quite been zipped up all the way.

I looked at the spiral notebooks, the five notebooks on the floor next to me and began counting the spirals. Began counting the number of times that the wire wrapped around itself, the number of times that someone or something had coiled the piece of wire.

Once, twice, a dozen times.

I was counting the third notebooks' spirals when the nurse ran up to me.

She knelt down next to me, her little nurse bag sitting on top of the spiral notebooks, completely deterring my counting game. 

"You're having a panic attack," she announces as if this was the biggest shocker of the entire world. 

"No," a pant from me, a clutching gasping breath, "Shit."

The kid behind her, the one who ran down the hallway to get her, the one whose spiral notebooks I was counting to calm down, laughed. He covered his mouth as soon as the snort escaped his mouth, obviously embarrassed.

The nurse looked at me, "You need to try and take deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth."

I pressed my hands harder into my chest, the pain almost unbearable now. 

You're dying.

The voice in my head again.

God, don't I wish, I spit back at the voice. 

The nurse sat back and looked at me, her eyes darting nervously from my shallow breaths to the hands almost literally inside my chest. She was a new nurse, a young one. I wondered briefly if this was her first day.

The kid behind her looked worried, and that's all I noticed before he darted forward, grabbing one of my hands from where it was pressed against my heart and slipped between his own.

"It's okay," he said, and I focused on how green his eyes were, how they were the color of blades of grass in the springtime, the color of the green crayon in a pack of crayolas. 

He squeezed onto my hand tightly, "Breathe slowly. In through your nose," he breathed in, "And out through your mouth."

And then I was doing it with him.

Slow, deep breaths. 

In through the nose. 

Out through the mouth.

Again, and again, and again, until I was breathing on my own. Until he let go of my hand and I stood up, shakily, leaning onto the locker. Until he scooped up the fallen spiral notebooks and slung the backpack on his back. Until the nurse quickly walked back to her office, surely to probably cry and regret her life decisions. Until I felt okay again.

But the screaming never ceased.

-----------------------------------------------------