The Lies He Spoke

ELEVEN

OLIVIA

Every panic attack Olivia had was slightly different. Whether it was a different trigger, a different intensity level, or a different thought that helped her heartbeat calm down, they varied.

This one, however, was on a different level. It was worse than her previous ones, even worse than the one she had gotten that first time at her school when she saw the detective waiting for her in the principal's office. It didn't start out as an irregular-feeling heartbeat and progressively worsen until it was suffocating her.

This one began with trying to kill her.

She couldn't see Angel anymore. The tiles in front of her were getting a fuzzy edge, the black lines and beige blocks blending together. Her mother's face swam to the surface, something she had tried so hard to block out these past six months.

Dark eyes open but blank, white lips parted, white powder spilled across her dark skin like the beginnings of thick snow that just couldn't melt because her skin was too cold to the touch.

The loud thudding of her heartbeat rose to a thunder, each beat pushing so much blood into her ears she couldn't hear anything else. Olivia blinked at the floor and tried to imagine Angel back in her line of sight so she wouldn't have to see her mother, but try as she might, she kept seeing the dead one.

As if from a distance, muffled from the pounding of her heart, she heard Angel say, "Olivia, what's going on? Do you need an inhaler or something? Is there one in your-"

"They do nothing," she managed, hoping he had heard her because she could hardly hear it herself. It was just her luck that panic attacks couldn't be explained while one was in the middle one, that you had to inhale and exhale and speak all from the same tube. She could barely breathe and now she had to reassure Angel that she wasn't dying as well.

Just her luck.

He opened his mouth to protest and she held up a hand. "Just be quiet - a moment."

But Angel could not take a hint. Or a direct order, for that matter. He didn't seem reassured in the least. Instead, as her breathing got worse, he looked more and more panicked. "Should I - should I get a teacher or-"

She had been sure she couldn't speak anymore, but even worse than that was the thought of a teacher coming and fussing over her and calling Logan to pick her up from school. Then she would have to explain to him she had flipped out over just a rumor and unnecessarily make him anxious.

"Just sit there, Angel," she squeezed out in between painful wheezes. "It'll go away."

It's just a rumor. It's nothing else. Calm down. Get a grip.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I am not afraid. This too shall pass.

Logan had told her nearly a year ago that by thinking the same stupid thing over and over again during every panic attack whether she thought it helped or not, it would help make it second nature. It would make it instinct to slow down her breath if she did it over and over again, committing it to muscle memory whether she thought she could breathe through it or not.

She had never been so glad he had forced it on her so many times, making her practice it when she was perfectly fine. Apparently, it was necessary to practice it when she wasn't having a panic attack, when she was calm and able to breathe, so that when she was actually panicking she would already know how to calm her breaths.

He's been seen working with the Sons of Solomon.

Solomon. Solomon. Solomon.

This was it. It was over. They had caught them again.