Fear Can Break ↠ Liam Dunbar [Book 2]

✧In A Disorderly Fashion✧

Chapter 17 ✧In A Disorderly Fashion✧

Walking into the school with the others, I tried not to make it blatantly obvious how nervous I was beginning to feel. When the miniature book club Scott had pulled together was over and I had started getting ready to fall asleep, I'd looked into my journal to the page I had been sure to stick the necklace of Genevieve's, only to find it was no longer there. I had immediately dumped out the contents of my backpack to look for it and when it wasn't there I had scoured my room. I couldn't find it anywhere. 

A part of me hoped that it might be in my locker, and so the same part of me wanted to sprint through the hallways to see if that was true. The more rational part of me, though, knew that would probably alert the other's that I was having a mental breakdown, which with Dread Doctors around they probably didn't have time to deal with. This was my own mystery that I had to get to the bottom of, I didn't bother them with any of it. I also didn't want to find out what they would think of me if they did figure out that what was going on in my head could actually make Beacon Hills look near perfect. 

Absent-mindedly, Scott put a hand on my back as if he was going to guide me through the doors into school and, having not expect him to do so, my breath caught as I flinched because, well, getting scared and jumping seemed to be my most unshakable traits. Instinctively, Scott withdrew his hands as he looked at me with wide eyes. His face held a look of guilt which in turn made me feel guilty for causing it. 

"Sorry," Scott said hurriedly. "I-I forgot. I didn't mean to scare you or anything, it was just kind of instinct." 

For a second, I almost asked what he had forgotten. Then I remembered who I was. I was a girl who came from an abusive household and for years wasn't able to look a person in their eye. I was the girl who didn't have any parents, who's brother died in combat, and was thrust into the supernatural world when she was already terrified of everything in the regular world. I have changed a lot over the years and I've learned to function more like a neurotypical person without anxiety or voices in their heads, but there were somethings you can never unlearn, that your body can ever really be untrained to reacting too.

Flinching at sudden movements happened to be one of those thing. For years my body had learned to cave in with any kind of pressure in hopes to relieve some of the pain from it, and so as a defense mechanism it still did so. Just like my anxiety had been trained to be triggered by anything that made me feel like the people that I loved or I was in trouble. It expected the worse possible outcome of every outcome and I had no control over it. Maybe that's why I was having so much trouble come clean about myself and what was going on. Nothing could ever fix the fear that had been hard-wired into my brain. Maybe sometimes it could fade away into the background and the new qualities I have strengthen can mute it out from time to time but at the end of the day, it would always be there. 

And perhaps that's exactly what's going to be happen with the voices and visions. There are some things you just can't escape. 

Scott kept his eyes trained on me when I didn't respond to him. Kira and Stiles, who had also been walking with us, had also quieted. Scott must've picked up on the fact that there was nothing I could say to that and cleared his throat so the others would start back up the conversation that they were having.