My brain. Isn't working.
"Skyler," a voice says. The teacher.
My mouth won't work.
"Skyler, what's the answer to number 2?"
My eyes won't work. They won't blink. They won't look at the page.
Someone turned down the temperature, but only in my body. I'm cold, and I can't move. My eyes hurt from staying open. But I can't close them.
"Skyler," the teacher says again.
My heart is working too much. My hands don't. But my ears do, and I can hear students behind me, whispering... laughing? At me.
I'm weird.
I can't escape her question, or the eyes glued onto me, or the whispering. I can't escape my own self, I can't understand the words or the thoughts crashing against the inside walls of my head. Everything's too fast. Too fast.
My mouth begins working again. But too quickly. And with a buildup of too many words behind my lips. I stammer. I sound so weird, so weird—
"The answer's 1/4," Liam says for me, and my shoulders drop. Feeling come back into my feet. Heats returns to warm my frozen body. Relief. Relief.
"Liam, I asked Skyler, not you," the teacher scolds. I've forgotten her name. Liam shrugs beside me.
"Sorry Miss," he says, speaking casually, yet not disrespectfully. Speaking perfectly.
My hands shake as I place them back on my lap, which feels stiff and heavy—
Liam subtly grasps my clenched fist.
And my hearts swells.
"You okay there?" he whispers, like nothing is wrong.
Because it's not. Not anymore.
I nod. Slowly. Meet his grey eyes. Mine begin to water.
"Blink," he smiles. And I do: it stings. But he pats my back like I've done a good thing. Like I'm good. So the stinging is okay. It's good.
After school, we run away.
"Run!" he yells, and I do. I whizz across streets behind him, our legs still too short to be all that fast, but I follow. I follow, my breath rattling in my chest like an animal raging in an aching cage, but I keep running.
Soon, streets and pavement become trees and autumn leaves. We zoom head first into a park that turns into a forest, and only nature surrounds me. Nature, the pain in my legs and in my jaw, and him.
"Where are we going?" I shout, becoming afraid. It's a different fear from the one I feel everyday in class, in the halls. When I wake up and it's dark in my room, in me. It isn't any better. "Liam!" I shout again.
He only laughs, and zooms ahead of me.
Everywhere around us, the brown and green and red and yellow blurs, and I try and focus on the back of Liam's jacket. It's somewhere between bright blue and navy, and I reach out for it. He runs: I run.
It almost feels like flying.
When we finally slow, the flight and the pain fading into woody silence as my body struggles to breathe, we skid to a stop in a small clearing. Dead leaves stick to my baggy pants and muddy boots. I look at Liam; he's looking up at the grey sky like there night be something up there.
There are bruises circling his neck.
"Liam—"
"What are you gonna be when you grow up, Sky?" he asks, curious eyes turned down to me once more. His mousy brown hair sticks out and upwards from the run, yet he isn't out of breath. He's never out of breath.
"I..." I start, and find myself unable to speak, unable to find an answer, and anxiety takes me, fills my body with water—
"I'm gonna be a superhero!" he shouts, and the whole forest hears it. He crosses him arms and makes his chest all puffed and big. And he looks like Superman. All he needs is a red cape.
I can see him already, once he finishes growing and learning how to fly and shooting lasers out of his eyes; he'll be a real superhero. With villains, and comic books, and movies.
