Sky Swimmer

Panic, Part 2

She steadies herself against the hallway wall and wonders if her heart will ever slow. She could never understand it. Why her? For as long as she can remember she was a victim to what appeared to be random panic attacks. She always figured they were caused by whatever she was seeing or doing at the time of the attack. When she was five she was brushing her teeth over the bathroom sink. The panic set in out of the blue and suddenly the hole in the sink seemed to grow till it was a giant, gaping mouth, the shower curtains started to flutter as if a wind was rushing up out of the drain and Floe saw in the mirror her own hair undulate and float about her as if she was underwater. That was the first Panic attack with a capital P that she remembered. Over the years hundreds had followed, too many to count. And she had learned two things about them. One, that they ushered in strange phenomena, and two, that she was scared to death of them. They made her ill to her stomach and worse, they made her different than everyone else.

Her eyes were closed, but she could feel a breeze starting to rush through the hallway; the empty hallway that had all the doors closed!

"Cool it, you are going to give yourself away. Here, you forgot these." Floe is startled by Livia and drops the pile of folders and books that Livia shoved into her arms.

A ton of small, cutout photos fall from one of the folders and flutter in the breeze. The pictures are all different portraits of women.

Livia looks down on the scattered photos. "They all look like you."

The breeze dies down. What does she want from me?

Most of the photos have thick red "X"s scrawled across them, some circled.

Floe looks up. Livia towers above her, a slight smirk on her perfect face. "If you want to find her, you've got to pull yourself together."

"What?" Floe can not believe her ears. How could this girl know anything about her?

Livia offers a hand to help pull Floe up from the floor. "The real question you should be dealing with is not who your biological mother is, but who are you?"

Floe doesn't take her hand. She gets up on her own. "Leave me alone, I don't need your psychoanalytic bullshit." Floe starts walking away.

"You have to be more careful," following her, Livia says in hushed tones, "Don't draw attention to yourself. And stop acting like you don't know what's going on."

Mrs. Burdock calls from down the hall, "Floe, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Mrs. Burdock."

Floe turns back with a quick glance over her shoulder, but Livia has vanished. And strangely enough, so has her Panic attack.