Everyone thinks they know the whole story even when they had no part in it.
This year, Lillian Rose is driven to prove her ex boyfriend's hands aren't wrapped around her throat anymore. She's digging up parts of herself she's long forgotten about...
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Students stumble into the classroom within the few seconds of the bell ringing. They trip over their shoes to keep their tardy marks at a minimum. With today's lab on the board, I copy the set-up plan into my notebook. The chair on my right is empty, and I make it a habit to look up at the door for Ryder to walk in.
The bell ends its ring and Ms. Reyes calls out the names of students now marked late.
"Ryder," she calls, and I search for the boy my knees are bouncing for. The lab we are doing is just a basic review of electrical currents, but I need his part of the paper to get full credit.
"That's disappointing." Being at the front table, I hear her mutter it. My stomach drops, and I glance at the door. I turn back to finish the layout, mentally planning how to do the assignment on my own.
I could draw each part of the model on half sheets of paper and then use index cards to caption it. A dollar store was at the strip mall about a block from the school, and I could buy poster board there. Tomorrow, I could probably write the report, and lengthen my part to make it the required 3 pages. 3 pages that I should be splitting with Ryder.
The door opens and my eyes automatically glance over. His blue eyes look at me first, a breath heaving from his chest. I flinch, writing down the final notes. "You're late," Ms. Reyes says, giving him a blank stare. He only nods, and I catch his Adam's apple moving down in one pitiful swallow. He says something to her, but I don't hear it.
He's out of breath, is the first thing I notice. He moves to his seat next to me, uncaring for the legs scraping the floor. His bag drops to the floor between us and I watch him unzip it. His hands are shaking, fingers fumbling over notebooks until he pulls out a spiral blue one.
I watch him, trying to understand why he's so anxious. I can feel it, my knee itching to bounce. He's not out of breath, I realize, watching him fail to catch his breath.
"Are you okay?" I find myself asking, wanting to reach for his shoulder. I refrain, instead carefully reading his movements.
His thumb attempts to bounce over the other four fingers on his hand. They're shaking and he's trying to hide it, his other hand spinning a ring on his index finger.
"Yes," is his immediate response, "Yeah. Yes. Yeah."
I ignore Ms. Reyes' announcement on the importance of partner participation, turning my body towards him so our knees knock. His hair falls over his eyes as he looks down at his hands. I look down at my own, flexing them open and close.
My brother once wrote in a notebook all the signs I had of a panic attack. He wrote them down in meticulous detail, to know how to help me, how to comfort me.
I know all of my own signs and my grounding tools through months of therapy, but that doesn't mean I know how to help others. I don't like touch without vocalization, I don't like pressure as a grounding tool.
