Elizabeth and Ed don't meet under the best circumstances, and every interaction that follows seems to go wrong in unimaginable ways. Amidst struggling with her mental health and moving schools, Liz has no time nor does she have the energy to deal wi...
List five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can...taste? Smell? Hear? Elizabeth doesn't know anymore but the trick her therapist told her to use when having a panic attack or preventing one is lost in the jumble of thoughts inside her head. It doesn't matter. It doesn't work.
She looks at the clock on the wall and panics even more when she realizes her toilet break has lasted almost ten minutes now.
"It's fine," she tells herself. "Maybe I have a stomach bug. Maybe I have explosive diarrhea. Who are they to know?"
Is she even having a panic attack? Quite frankly, she felt on the verge of one the past hour.
"Okay, focus." She slaps herself on the face and winces. "You can do this. There's only...one bloody hour left. Fucking brilliant. No, okay, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. You're a big girl. Come on."
After the embarrassing pep talk, she gets up from the bench and checks herself in the mirror. Once she figures that she looks decent enough – no signs of a mental breakdown, that is – she heads back into the gym. She sits by a wall, next to a group of girls that look the least intimidating, and brings her knees up to her chest.
A few minutes pass before someone's shadow obstructs her view. She looks up to see a small girl smiling down at her.
"Hey, my friends and I are playing badminton and I kinda need a partner. Do you think, maybe... Do you want to join?" She looks at Liz hopefully.
Say yes, say yes.
"I don't-I don't know." Stupid.
"That's fine." She turns to leave, but Liz springs up to her feet.
"Actually, wait. Badminton sounds fun."
The girl claps her hands together and takes Liz's hand, dragging her to the other end of the gym, right by the basketball court, and introduces her friends.
"I'm Vanessa, by the way."
"Elizabeth."
And then they play. Elizabeth is bad. Like, really bad. Whoever invented badminton must be looking down at her and yelling profanities up in heaven. But that's okay, because to be honest, none of the girls on the team are good, so all they end up doing for the remaining hour is laughing and having fun. It feels so nice, that for a moment, she feels okay. She is okay. Finally.
It's her last lesson of the day, so when they're done, they all start making their way to the changing rooms. She can't wait to her back home, where her mum promised she'd make cream tomato soup. Elizabeth swears she could win Gordon Ramsey's heart with that dish alone.
When she's about to leave the gym, she feels someone's hand at the small of her back and hears, "Not to be a stalker or anything, but I swear Ed Orlando was just checking you out. Like, for the whole last hour." She looks back but the girl is not Vanessa. "You didn't hear me say anything, though." And the girl scurries away.
Liz looks back towards the basketball court, and locks eyes with the boy himself. In less than a second, she breaks the eye contact and hurries out of the gym. She doesn't like the way he makes her feel.
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