AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After l had lost it on Neil, the clenched fist that lived within my chest had eased, as it usually did, after I had one of my…episodes. Usually, after I had one of my outbursts, I would feel calmer and less on edge for a while. This time, the itchy build-up had already begun, demons clawing at the inside of my skin to get out. The feeling gave me anxiety, especially once it occurred to me that I could possibly lose control around Conrad. I furiously shoved the thought away.
I would not.
I would not.
I would not.
I chanted to myself as I got out of bed and headed for the shower. I stared at myself in the foggy mirror as I got out from under the hot stream. My silver ring of ravens glinted in the steam, and I ran a finger over it, an old habit of mine. There were dark smudges under my eyes from lack of sleep, and my brow had set into a permanent scowl.
I hated that I was like this. Why did I always feel like there was more underneath my skin than just me? It felt like being stuck in an over-packed streetcar, but the streetcar was my own body. It was too much sometimes. I shook my head to try and dislodge the suffocating feeling and left the bathroom to get dressed.
I threw on a pair of black jeans and a matching t-shirt before heading downstairs to make myself a coffee. As it was brewing, I glanced at the clock. It was almost 11:30 am. It seemed like a reasonable time to message Conrad about our library trip. Even though he had been the one to invite me, my hands still shook as I opened a new message conversation on my phone.
My inbox was depressingly empty. Jeremy and Clair were pretty much the only people who texted me. Now, my two open conversations had a third one to hang out with. I smiled, despite the pressure that had been building in my chest since I had woken up.
‘Hey, what time do you want to go?’ I typed the message and hit send quickly before I lost my nerve. I put the phone down and forced myself to leave it alone while I poured some milk into my coffee. Leaning on the counter while sipping the hot heavenly goodness that was caffeine, I stared at my cell phone and willed it to vibrate. Ten minutes went past, fifteen, next thing I knew it was noon, and I still hadn’t received a response. Maybe he was still sleeping. I didn’t let myself consider the other possibilities.
Finally, I left my phone on the counter and wandered upstairs. I headed towards Jeremy’s office and stopped in the doorway to eye down his neat desk. It would be an invasion of privacy to go through his things. I would hate it if he went through my belongings. But…he was hiding something from me. I could tell by the tone of his voice the night before that whatever he was hiding was something big and for whatever reason, it had something to do with me. I had a right to know. Yeah. Said a mean little voice in my head. Keep telling yourself that.
That fist around my heart clenched tighter and that thing that I harbored inside me was slamming against my ribs as I took a step into his office. I clutched a hand to my chest, forcing myself to breathe past the pressure. Whatever it was that was wrong with me seemed to be getting worse.
Neil had been one of three fights this month, though I’d managed not to put any of the other kids in the hospital. I usually got about a week’s worth of a break between episodes, but the pressure had been building more and more frequently.
God, it hurt.
I did my best to ignore the building discomfort and sat down in Jeremy’s black swivel chair. I sat down putting my coffee down on the desk and reached over to the top drawer of his filing cabinet. Locked. I swore vehemently. I had no idea where he kept the damn keys.
I glanced around the office quickly, that pressure in my chest building with each passing second. As the stress mounted, my knees began to curl involuntarily into my chest and I buried my face in them, wrapping my hands around my head to try and dull the throbbing. I wasn’t sure if it was from the locked cabinet, the lack of response from Conrad or my impending expulsion, but I couldn’t get a grip on myself. The pressure built to a breaking point, and I let out an exasperated scream.
The entire world stopped spinning.
So much energy erupted from me that every drawer in the office shot nearly clean out of the filing cabinet, crashing against their stoppers. My coffee cup exploded, and picture frames dropped off the wall. Whatever had come out of me rattled the house to its foundation, traveling through the walls and to the trees outside the window. Startled birds took off from the branches before falling to the ground…dead.
Like in the aftermath of a sonic boom, the air around me seemed to hold its breath. I sat in the wrecked office, staring at the open drawers with my mouth open. That forever-present fist slowly unclenched itself from my heart with a sigh. The prowling beast in my chest quieted.
The world started spinning again.
Just as I thought I would throw up, I heard my phone vibrate downstairs. My head snapped in the direction of the noise, but I couldn’t move.
My first thought was that I needed to clean this up before Jeremy came home. If they thought I needed therapy before, they would lock me away in an institution for this. How I was supposed to explain this was beyond me.
Surveying the destroyed room around me, I shakily got to my feet. Still in shock, I bolted for the laundry room. I grabbed cleaning supplies and spot remover for the coffee-stained carpet. High on adrenaline I cleaned up the mess as quickly and as efficiently as I could. I wrapped the broken pieces of my mug up in a cloth and stashed them under my bed. Each picture frame was hung back up and I breathed a sigh of relief once I was sure none of them were broken.
It was the drawers that would do me in. The bolts that kept the drawers closed were warped beyond repair. Not one of them would close properly. I swore over and over again. What was I going to do?
As I sat there staring at the wrecked cabinets, panic seeping from my pores, they suddenly seemed to straighten out. I watched in terror. I couldn’t be doing that. This wasn’t happening. This was a goddamn nightmare… this was like a scene out of a freaking horror movie. But…once the locks were straightened out, they slid to the side of their own accord. The cabinet doors closed themselves, and the deadbolts slid back into place. I gaped; my eyes so wide I felt like they would drop right out of my skull. With a pounding heart and shaking limbs, I glanced around the office.
It was like I hadn’t even been there.
6
My phone buzzed again in the kitchen. The house was still so quiet that the vibrating sounded like an alarm. Instead of going to it, I ran to the bathroom and vomited my morning’s coffee right back up. I could hear my phone buzzing on a loop as I clutched the toilet bowl, tears stinging in my eyes. They had taught us breathing exercises in anger management class and for the first time in the year and a half that I had been going, I used them. In through my nose, out through my mouth. Count to ten. Repeat.
Finally, I got to my feet. I returned the cleaning products to the closet before walking down the stairs. I felt like I was moving through something thicker than water. Shock. I was in shock.
I picked up my phone to three missed calls from Conrad and a dozen missed messages. I’d barely opened the first one when my phone started buzzing again. I nearly dropped it. My nerve endings were on fire and the vibrations were overwhelming. I slid the bar to the side and answered, more to make the device stop moving than anything.
“Ray-ven!” Conrad nearly bellowed on the other end, his Jamaican accent thicker in his apparent panic.
