(18+) RED (Complete)

Ch. 17: Fumbling

I moved out.

Thanks to a special deal between the dean, my therapist and I, I was allowed to do most of my exams from home, or from my therapist's office to make sure I couldn't cheat. I wouldn't. I was just relieved and so incredibly grateful to avoid running into Gabby. Then, when school was done, my family and I went to Europe for the summer, and we visited both Italy, Greece and Turkey during the month we were there. And when we got back home, I packed my things...

And moved out.

My aunt in Sacramento welcomed me with open arms, grateful to get company after being alone for two years after her husband, my uncle Tony, died from cancer. I started at a new school but isolated myself from my fellow students, completely uninterested in starting new friendships. It hurt too much. Even though a part of me hated what Gabby did, I still missed her like I was missing an important limb of my body. I missed Michael too, of course, but in a different way.

Both of them had tried to contact me in several different ways, but I couldn't speak to either of them. So when I moved, I told my parents and DeeVana to keep it a secret where I was. I'd already deactivated all my accounts on social media and got a new phone number. Everything to distance myself from what happened. I even donated my teddy bear, Jake, to charity, and threw Big Daddy in the garbage where it belonged.

I was officially done with my old life.

My faithful, but oh, so unwelcomed friend 'anxiety' kept giving me a hard time, though. That was one of the reasons I avoided talking to other people. It was too embarrassing. Also, it was too exhausting trying and explain my issues all the time, on top of actually dealing with them enough to get through the day. Luckily, both my mom and my aunt had spoken to the dean at my new school, who again informed my teachers. So if I suddenly got up and left class in a hurry, they knew why.

In psychology class I was even allowed to sit next to the exit, in case I got triggered by something. Strangely enough that didn't happen very often, even though the topic touched some of the traumas I'd been through. In many ways it actually felt somewhat therapeutic to learn about it from the objective side. It became a little easier to understand myself and my mindset, sort of. Adding certain techniques Tracy taught me, I did pretty well. But coping strategies or not, today was one of the bad days.

"Excuse me. Excuse me. Let me through. Please. Excuse me," I mumbled weakly, while I tried to make my way through the crowd of students that entered the cantina all at once. I always made sure to buy my lunch before the majority of the students were done with their classes. Because I knew that the fuller it got, the more suffocating it felt, and before I knew it I would have another meaningless panic attack, just because of my stupid social anxiety. The days when I was late and the place was packed, were the days I chose to go hungry. A growling stomach was simply easier to deal with than all the stares.

Today I'd spent way too much time deciding on whether I should pick strawberry or vanilla yogurt, and I realized a little too late that I was surrounded by a steadily increasing amount of people. They were laughing or discussing topics they had during class, they teased each other and cracked jokes, and everything else that's normal when you are a student. But compared to them, I wasn't normal. I was the weirdo that didn't handle the simplest tasks, except for school work. My grades showed that I could do something right, at least. Just not dealing with people.

I was already close to hyperventilating when I finally managed to squeeze through the doors and out in the open hall. The world echoed like a verbal buzzing scarier than the one that comes from a thousand bee swarms, and I was frantically blinking tears away to keep my vision clear as possible. Still, it took a while to pull myself out of flee-mode before I was calm enough to sit down on a bench. It was first then I looked around and found myself in the park next to the school.