Check, Please (Book #2)

Four.

Every Wednesday and Friday at 3 P.M., I made the journey to the campus health center where I met with my shrink. These trips were a relatively new part of my weekly routine, brought on by the massive panic attack that I had during one of my finals in the spring.

As it so happened, all semester long, I'd sat in the third seat of the third row in our class' lecture hall. People respected that I always sat there, too. Even on the days that I was late, sure enough, my seat would be open and waiting for me. Call me a creature of habit -- or, superstitious, maybe -- but when I arrived to take my exam and saw some scrawny kid named Patrick settled into the third seat of the third row, I totally lost it. I didn't say anything to him, of course; I didn't want people to think that I was a freak. But, as the professor began passing out the tests, all I could do was stare at the back of Patrick's head and curse his very existence.

Then, I started thinking that maybe he was messing with me on purpose. I'd given him some grief earlier in the semester for always wearing a bow tie to class --and maybe it hadn't been my finest moment when I made fun of the purple rolling backpack that he dragged around campus -- but I hadn't meant any harm. I'd always been joking, just teasing him a bit. I mean, hell, we were in college; hadn't everyone been ripped on at one point or another for being a little weird?

It was downhill from there, though. The more I thought about Patrick and his beady eyes, the more paranoid I became that he had a vendetta against me. He'd smiled when I walked past him to sit down -- was that his way of letting me know that he'd won some sort of imaginary war between us? By the time I finally stopped worrying about my stolen seat and looked up at the clock, nearly half of the ninety minute exam was over. Shit, I thought, opening my response booklet for the first time and uncapping my pen.

Tapping the ball point against my desk, it took me a moment to realize that I had no idea what any of the essay prompts said. It wasn't like I hadn't studied -- I really had... Not that my parents would believe me if I bombed the test. As the letters on the page began to spin in front of me, I heard Dad's voice chanting in my head, "Why can't you be more like Michael?"

The words on the exam sheet began to take on a life of their own, spelling out failurefailurefailure. Sweat coursed down my neck, pooling above the waistband on my jeans. I tried to swallow but I couldn't; the giant ball of nerves in my throat kept growing as I suffocated on my fear. Panting as I desperately tried to fill my lungs, I began imagining myself lying dead on the ground while Patrick stood laughing over my corpse. With that image burning into my mind, the tips of my fingers went numb and the ringing in my ears grew to a brain splitting crescendo. For a moment, I thought death might actually be preferable to the pain that I was in and I knew -- I just knew -- that I needed to get out of that room if I wanted to survive.

Tripping over myself and wiping my brow on my sweat stained sleeve, I fumbled to grab my skateboard as I hurried to the front of the room with my blank exam book in hand. The world was closing in on me and darkness rimmed the edge of my vision. I was in a tunnel, a narrowing tunnel, and my professor stood at the end. If I was dying, would he be the last person that I saw? I could feel Patrick's eyes on me as I passed him and I turned my head to meet his gaze. He was too fast for me; by the time I looked, his head was lowered again, inches from his desktop, as he pretended that he hadn't been firing daggers in my direction.

Cowardly little prick.

My body refused to cooperate and with each step that I took, my legs turned from Jell-o to lead, and then back again. I wobbled up to the collection tray, gulping for air and wondering when the last time was that I'd told my mom I loved her... Dad, too, I guess, even Michael. Would Michael take time off from work to go to my funeral? That thought sent my mind into another spiral of racing images and as I turned in my final and prepared to run, I almost didn't hear my professor say, "Hold on a minute, Scott."