His Dark Words

02 | Pressure

I remember the exact day the panic attacks started. I was twelve years old and my dad had just left us, like that day. I remember just standing on the grass outside the house and feeling totally numb. I didn't cry, but I couldn't move. I waited so long out there I saw my grandfather's car pull up. He got out of the back seat and walked right up to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "you're the boss now, kid. You better make damn sure you don't turn out like your father."

Right then and there I started to have my first panic attack, I was literally fighting to breathe, and then I felt his hand come crashing down on the side of my face so hard I fell down in the grass by his feet.

"That's enough, you hear? You stop that. You're a man now."

It was raining, that sideways kind of rain that gets in your eyes no matter how you duck your head down. His driver ran over with a big, black umbrella. I remember looking up into the guy's face and his little brown eyes just darted away as if I wasn't there.

I don't know what made me think of that today. Maybe it was the rain, or driving to school in the back of that same car, but I just can't stand it ... I can't stand any of it ...

I put the journal down and rub my eyes with the back of my hand. "Poor kid!" I say, unintentionally out loud.

I have the book wedged beside my cereal bowl at the breakfast table.

"Huh? Did you say something, sweetie?"

"Did I?" I blink up at my mom.

She's just coming off a twelve-hour shift but somehow still found time to iron my school uniform and make my lunch. Her curly, red hair is still bunched up into a bun and she has a big, comfy cardigan pulled over her nurse's uniform.

"I was just reading something. You really don't have to do that Mom."

Steam hisses out of the iron obscuring her oval face for a moment. I have her large, dark eyes, but she has this fierceness to her features that I don't have. A stubborn set to her jaw and a way of looking completely terrifying when she wants to. But just then, through the mystical mists of the iron, she just looks dead-tired.

"You've got to look nice for that fancy school of yours. And I hope that's a textbook you're reading and not one of Vanessa's vampire books! You've got to keep your grades up for your scholarship."

I roll my eyes and quickly close the journal so Mom can't look over and see its contents. I was up all night battling with myself over whether or not to carry on reading it ... It just feels like such an invasion of privacy! I've never written a diary but the idea of someone else reading my inner most thoughts is unbearable ... this is different, though, isn't it? This boy is clearly in trouble. What if he's suffering alone in silence and planning something awful? Those words I read scared me.

Finally, I decide it's my duty to read it, to help him if I can. That's if I can even find out who he is.

"Harlow!" My mom's voice makes me jump.

I must've dozed off, my head resting on my hand dangerously close to falling out from under me and sending my face down into my fruit loops.

"Huh?!" I sit up straight.

"I saaaaid: you're going to be late for the bus!"

I drink a few gulps of cereal-milk, grab the boy's bag and make for the door. In front of the stairs I pause, then race back and kiss my mom on the cheek. "Love you Mom! Have a great day off!"