jace

May: Medicated Anxiety

This story recently won a Dormer for Best Plotline, yay. As a thank you this chapter is dedicated to the ladies that run the Dormers account. Thank you again, I really appreciate it :)

wednesday
There was a class and club and fair at my school, it was in Gym 1 during Mr. Searly's class and I just wanted to sit on the bleachers and finish his exam review, but he insisted that I sign up for clubs or "something to fill up your free time jace."

"Were you in any clubs in school?" I asked as I looked at the booths that were set up along each side of the gymnasium. Things like Engineers Club and Fashion Society and Video Game Design Club were displayed proudly and I just didn't see myself fitting into any of them.

He thought about it for a second, "Chess Club, Music Club, Science Club."

"What's the point of a club again?"

"You make friends, you learn new things, and you get to put it on your resume."

"I don't really want any more friends; I can barely keep the ones I have."

"...just try it out."

"Alright."

I signed up for marching band, it would give me something to do during the summer--plus, Jacob and Garrett had signed up for it too. I'd also signed up for four Advanced Placement classes. Mr. Searly said that they would get me college credit and that they'd "be a great deal more intellectually stimulating."

I had started studying for finals that night, they were about three weeks away and I figured that left time for enough studying to earn A's on each exam. I studied History and English for two hours each, Chemistry and Trigonometry for one hour each and made my mom dance with me each night in preparation for my P.E. exam.

"Mom, I have to lead."

"But it's easier if I lead, I won't step on your feet that way."

"Mom--"

"Fine, you lead."

"Good."

friday
My sister was driving me home when it happened and I'm still not sure what sparked it, but I started screaming in the passenger seat of my sister's 1988 Volkswagen. And she slammed on the breaks so hard that I smacked my head on the glove compartment, narrowly avoiding my newly healed nose. A certain numbness spread througout my forehead as I looked back up at the road and I continued to scream and I heard my sister saying "jace, what's wrong?" And cars were blaring their horns and the road was white and Courtney's 1988 Volkswagen was white, and everything was white.

And then I wasn't screaming anymore, "I need to study for exams, did you know that Courtney? I'll just go and study."

"jace-"

"I need my books, have you seen them?"

"jace, calm down."

And I thought I was calm up until that point. And then I heard Eli say, "jace, can you hear me?"

"Eli, I just wanna go and study, why won't she let me study?"

And I tried to get out of the car, but Courtney yelled "No!" And for the first time, I realized that there was a cell phone pressed into the palm of my hand and the car was moving faster than it ever had before and that I was crying and everything was blurry. And that's when the hallucinations began, the noises and the people in the road and I would've closed my eyes, but they found a way to stick to the backs of my eyelids. That was when I knew that something had snapped within me, because my hands were shaking violently and I had to fight with all of my might to keep from attacking the person on the hood of Courtney's 1988 Volkswagen.