Saving Blue// h.s {HOLD ON}

10.

~Skye~
(Grow Up- Paramore)

He's going to die. Tanner may actually die. He's sitting and shaking on the bleacher next to me.

I shouldn't have brought him here but I had no one else. Rikki needed me to take pictures for the damn year book because she was babysitting and James said he was 'busy' with no excuse so I call bullshit.

Tanner and I are currently sitting watching the schools and first home game of the year and he's about to combust. I forget how bad he gets in public. Poor Tanner wasn't going to say no to me and I knew that. I just couldn't come alone because I'd be a dysfunctional little girl with a familiar face.

I guess I'm paying for my selfish decision now as I watch his eyes gloss over and as he sits on his hands so they'll stop shaking. He was perfectly fine until a group of assholes from biology decided to sit next to him.

Is that a big deal? No. Is it a big deal when every once and while they glance at him and whisper? Yes. Should Tanner ignore them? Yes, but he can't.

I put my hand on his back,"T, are you okay?"

I know he's not but it's better than letting him get sucked into his mind.

He looks at me and shakes his head. I feel a wave of empathy when I look him in the eyes. He looks completely and utterly petrified, as if someone had given him 24 hours to live and he was chained to the ground.

"Can you stand?" I whisper, not wanting to attract attention.

He nods.

I lead the poor kid out of the stands, behind the bathrooms, and to where we now stand, facing the tennis courts. Tanner lends his back against the wall of the bathroom building and slides down, hyperventilating.

I act quickly putting my hand over his mouth so he's forced to breathe through his nose. When someone is having a panic, or asthma, attack it's better to slow breathing and this isn't the first time this has happened with Tanner so I've learned.

He grabs my forearm and pushes my hand harder to his mouth, I think to focus on something else. I don't talk because he's told me that it makes him even more overwhelmed. Being friends with Tanner has taught me the difference between being an anxious person and having anxiety.

I consider myself an anxious person. Certain things make me uncomfortable but I can pull through with a certain mind set. Tanner has explained his anxiety as a buzzing of thoughts always in his head. He can function at times but sometimes, during the most inconvenient times mostly, the thoughts completely take over and it's like his lungs will collapse with the weight of everything around him. He's also said these anxieties are normally just that, anxieties. They normally aren't actual things going on in his life just his brain telling him it's not okay. Now that he's actually had a trigger, the guys from biology, his brain is in overdrive.

He finally let go of my arm and I let my hand drop. His head hung low between his knees with blue eyes wide and face flushed. He has his hands tangled into his short wavy hair, lightly gripping the strands as his elbows rest on his knees. I kneel beside him and put a hand on his shoulder .

"Tanner, you there?"

He's always described himself and his panic attack self as two separate beings because he's too embarrassed to be associated with such a weak part of his mind. He told me to disassociate the two by treating the situation like he had left his body so the embarrassment doesn't trigger a second attack.