Page 163 of Breathe Like Hell

Anxiety began to jam itself back into my veins at lightning speed, overcoming the numb state I’d slipped into during the meal. No longer was my mind tucked safely below the cold water, but battling massive swells above the surface.

Nobody would believe me.

I knew I didn’t need to worry about that because I was going to keep my mouth shut, but the threat of impending doom still crashed over me in foamy rivulets, sucking me down and tumbling me in its waves. As if this potential future was inevitable and it was already hurting me.

My brain got like this sometimes. It latched onto something horrible and convinced me that it was imminent. I hated how real it felt to me.

I squeezed my hands into fists below the table, my jaw clenched tight. Everyone was getting up and clearing their plates now, but all I could do was keep picturing what would happen if I told. The disgust and judgment. Crushing me into a tiny, minuscule, outcast thing.

Somehow, I was able to stand up from the table and bring my dish to the sink.

My father had returned to the couch—with Anthony and Samantha this time. The TV was too loud. My mother was rinsing dishes and not looking at me.

What am I supposed to do now?

I left and went down the hallway to my bedroom, unsure of where else to go. As I walked in, I glanced over at the makeshift wall still splitting the room in half. My side of the room was the side with the exit door. Anthony always had to go through my space to leave.

My bed was untouched. I sat down on the edge, hanging my heavy head forward.

Everything about this trailer felt loopy and dreamlike, but in the nightmare way. Like I couldn’t tell how long I’d been here, or what I’d even been doing half the time. My memories were eroding—or maybe they never existed in the first place. All my thoughts made no sense, jumping from anxiety to anxiety, cycling through all the things that made me miserable.

The smell of the air was sticking to my clothes, my hair. Voices from the TV carried down the hall to my bedroom, punctuated by sharp whistle blows and marching band music, but I couldn’t make out a single one of the words. It was all bullshit.

And on top of everything else, I was exhausted.

Already drained from a night of restless, feverish sleep, and now drained further by the torments of my lucid brain.

I stared at my dresser, at the bottom drawer.

I’d missed my period at the beginning of this month, which wasn’t unusual for me on this birth control, but I’d been thinking about it. Now that I was here, the thoughts were stronger, more irrational.

What if?

What if? What if? What if?

What would happen if I didn’t listen to everything my brain said?

Something bad. Exactly what I’m afraid of will happen.

I knelt on the floor in front of the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer, feeling around under piles of thrifted t-shirts for the stash of dollar-store pregnancy tests I’d kept in here growing up.

My heart started pounding harder and my palms were clammy as my fingers brushed one of the boxes.

There had been so many nights where I’d tiptoed to the bathroom with one of these hidden under my pajamas, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes as I peed on the stick to make sure I wasn’t pregnant. I’d take it to school the next day and throw it away there so neither of my parents would find it in the home trash can.

Someone at school saw me stuffing the box in the trashcan once, but I didn’t care about that. I had bigger problems—the actual pregnancy test. There wasn’t space in my brain to care about one of my classmates seeing me throwing out a pregnancy test when my brother was fucking me every weekend he came home from college.

I slipped quietly into the bathroom and tugged down my skirt and tights and underwear, then sat down. Holding the box with trembling hands, I searched for the instructions, even though I already knew what to do. It’d just been a while. I noticed the manufacturing date, which made me pause and pull my phone out. Per the internet, this pregnancy test was now shit and wouldn’t give me an accurate result. It was expired.

Whatever.

I peed then capped the test and laid it flat on the counter.

There was no reason for me to do this, really. Mason said he couldn’t get me pregnant, and neither could Micah. Missing a period would be for another reason. But my brain was beyond irrational, running in the most insane nonsensical loops, triggered so strongly by Anthony’s presence that I was incapable of thinking logically about anything else.

The sight of the shower in my peripheral vision was only adding to my anguish. I remembered trying to scrub myself clean each time after Anthony dropped me off back at home, then getting screamed at by our father for increasing the water bill. I just had to stand there and let him yell at me, wet hair soaking my t-shirt and making my teeth chatter.

As the timer on my phone counted down to zero, I grabbed the cheap pregnancy test and stared at the tiny window.