Anathema

thirty three - constant confrontation

It was snowing lightly as Tyler and his mother walked back home. Tyler kept his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and kept his eyes on the ground, shivering violently in the cold. His mother wrapped her arm around his shoulders as they walked, and he forced himself to hold still instead of flinch away. She was warm, and he liked that.

She had come after him the moment he'd run from his room, and asked him what he needed. He told her he was afraid, though he didn't say that one of his imaginary friends had assaulted the other multiple times, and he didn't say that he was afraid of the forest and afraid of loving Josh and afraid of Nico in general. And he told her what Nico had said about his medication, and then her eyes grew very sad.

"I hope you don't believe him," she had told him. "Taking medication doesn't mean you're overreacting or dumb or stupid or any of that. It just means you need a little help, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you needed a math tutor, we wouldn't think you were stupid or messed up. We'd just get you the help you needed to succeed. That's all we're doing."

He had just nodded and pretended to understand.

"Are you ready to go inside?" his mother asked as they climbed the step to the porch.

He nodded, even though he was terrified of what he would find when he went back upstairs. The terror rustled like wood chips in his stomach.

The house was warm, but it smelled weird, and he didn't like it. It made his palms sweaty and made him feel like a gas pump, even though it didn't smell like that. He didn't know what it smelled like.

"Do you want to go back upstairs?" his mother asked.

He shook his head wildly. "I can't," he whispered. He slumped over at the table, his hands shaking and both knees bouncing with anxiety. Just think about Josh, he told himself, but when he did, he remembered what Nico had said. How am I supposed to do that? And then he'd kissed Clancy hard. Tyler couldn't get the image out of his mind, but instead of Clancy, it was Josh, and he had to watch Nico kiss his best friend until he couldn't breathe.

Josh is okay, he insisted, but he didn't know that. Nico's not gonna hurt him. I'm not gonna hurt him. And yet he had, somehow, and now he might never get a chance to apologize.

"What do you need, Tyler?" his mother asked softly, rubbing his back.

"I - I'm gonna throw up," he stammered.

She helped him to his feet and to the bathroom, but no matter how he tried, he couldn't actually throw up. He just knelt there shivering violently, his heart racing. He knew he was having an anxiety attack, but he didn't know how to stop it. What had Dr. Ann told him to do? He couldn't remember. Deep breaths. Something about grounding. He couldn't think. He couldn't remember. He couldn't - he couldn't -

"I need to see Dr. Ann," he stuttered.

"I'll see if I can get you in sooner," his mother said gently.

"Call - call her or something? Ask her to help -" He finally gagged and threw up in the toilet, coughing and lurching until he physically couldn't move. He wanted to cry, but the tears didn't come. All he could see was Nico hurting Josh over and over again.

"I'll call her right away," his mother said, pulling out her phone.

He vaguely heard her voice as she spoke to his therapist over the phone, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. He couldn't hear anything but his horrible retching and the sound of Nico kissing Clancy. Then she gave him the phone, and he pressed it desperately against his ear, barely able to hold it up.