I screamed, they watched (solangelo)

I screamed, and they watched

Nicos pov
I sat on the buss on the way to school from the dentist. My head jerked backwards, and a yelp escaped my mouth. Some people on the bus turned and stared at me, I should have gotten used to it by now, but it still made me uncomfortable.

It was about three years ago now, that I had been diagnosed with tourettes (if you dont know what it is go check the description, its explained there). The tics had been there since I was very young, but since I had been moved around so much, none of the foster families had really noticed. The tics got much worse pretty fast after my sister died.

I guess you could say that my life had ben pretty crappy this far. My parents died when I was five, so I was left alone with my older sister, Bianca, who were eight at the time. (I dont know he exact age difference between them from the book so I just took a guess) She worked really hard to keep us both alive, or she did in the start.

After a little while, I can't remember exactly how long, it was probably just a few weeks, but it felt like years, child protective services took us in. They placed us in different foster homes, but no one wanted to adopt us, so we moved around a lot. Neither of the homes were directly mean, nor abusive, but it just never felt like we fit in there. It was also often way to many kids there at the same time for the guardians to handle. They could forget to feed us, being to poor to give us lunch money, or not having enough resources to give us what we needed.

Then the day came when Bianca got into the accident. She was on her way home from school, I was at a friends house. It was a few months before her tenth birthday, her school bus crashed into a truck, I don't know exactly what happened, but most of the children were injured, and three died. Bianca was one of them.

I didn't get the message before the next day 'cause I was sleeping over at my friend's place. I was eight when I walked through the doors of the place I had called home for only a few months when I got the horrible message. My foster mom was all over me the second I came in the door, she had been crying, and she kept saying how sorry she was, but I still had no idea what had happened.

She sat me down on the couch and took a deep breath, then she told me, the words are still ringing in my ears; "Nico, your sister got in an accident, the bus crashed on the way home from school yesterday, she didn't make it." I wasn't able to react right away, it was all a blur, I think I cried, I think I screamed, the next thing I remember isn't before a day later.

I had been lying in my bed, face and pillow soaked in tears, but I wasn't crying anymore, I was all out of tears, all out of sadness, I just felt completely empty. Things weren't the same after that, the foster parents were of the few that actually seemed to like us, it was a nice home, but after her death I wasn't the same. I wasn't the same likable person as before, I wasn't cheery, I was mad, aggressive, and eventually they figured it was for the best to send me to someone else.

I had gone past caring, it didn't matter to me where I ended up anymore, I didn't care if I lived or died, but I didn't have the energy to do anything more about it. But then one day, pretty suddenly, after I had moved to about, I don't know, ten foster homes? I ended up in a place where the guardians actually seemed to care, they asked me why when I nearly suffocated in rage, they talked to me when I couldn't get out of bed, they didn't force me to anything, but they believed in me.

I was 12.

Through all of the sadness I hadn't given it much thought that I no longer had control over my body, I noticed, but I guess I just figured it was just something I imagined of whatever. But when I slowly started getting better, it started really bothering me. When I started going to school again, I hadn't ben able to before, it just ended up with me getting into a fight, so I had to stick to online classes. But then, when I got back for real, with an actual wish to stay there, I started noticing the way I had trouble walking because of my legs moving in their own way, I noticed small whines escaping my mouth, and soon after the teachers and students started noticing too. I was sure that something was wrong when a teacher dragged me out in the hall in the middle of the class to talk to me, he had asked me if I made those sounds and movements on purpose, I had answered that I didn't and that I had no idea why I did them.

He had just nodded and told me that it might have been a good idea to tell my parents. So that's what I did, as soon as my foster mom got home, I sat her down and asked her if she had noticed anything, she answered yes, but had wanted to wait for me to bring it up myself.

At the time I had no idea what was wrong with me, I just wanted it to be over. I started getting tired. The movements and sounds just got worse and worse. Every day after school I just collapsed in my bed, slept till dinner, did my homework, and went back to sleep. My weekends were only sleeping, all day, except for when I was eating. So my foster mom had to get me to a doctor, I was so exhausted all the time.

When I sat in the waiting room my normal small yelps had been exchanged by loud screams and barks, I couldn't help it, but every single person in the room kept staring at me, but for once they didn't look at me like I was a freak, they looked at me with pity in their eyes, like they actually could understand. It was just an ordinary doctors office, but they understood why I was there.

When I met the doctor and told him what was bothering me ha knew what to call it right away. "You have some form of tics," was what he told me, it didn't really help that much so I made him explain. "Tics are involuntary movements or sounds, often connected to the diagnosis Tourette's syndrome, how long has this been going on?" I told him that I wasn't sure, but that it had gotten worse after my sister died.

After we had been talking for a while and he had asked me several questions he decided that I was qualified for the diagnosis. He told me that the only criterias for it was that I'd had both verbal and physical tics for over a year. So he sat the diagnosis and gave me a prescription for some meds that might help a bit. We thanked him and left, I felt a bit spacey, this was a whole new identity for me.

He had also told us that you often got other sorts of mental issues with tourettes, such as adhd, bipolar, ocd or depression, luckily enough, I don't have any of those, not a lot anyways.