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Which hadn’t been a problem when she’d put it on that morning. In fact, she’d liked the way it hugged her body and showed off her curves. She’d been working out for more than a year and the sweater had fit *chef’s kiss* perfectly.
Paired with the navy skirt, wool tights, and ballet flats, she had looked like she’d walked out of Teachers of Autumn Magazine.
If that were a thing.
But shortly after lunch, she’d become aware of a light scratching between her shoulder blades. It felt like something between an itch and a poke, and the longer it went on, the more bothersome it became. No matter how she’d twisted and contorted her body, she couldn’t reach it.
By the time she made it to XY Studios for her last student of the day, she was heavily distracted by the bothersome sting. She’d been stopping in doorjambs and rubbing her back against corners all afternoon like a bear on a tree.
It had become the sole focus of her every thought.
Have you ever had something in a sock or your waistband that was relentless in its torture? Because that’s what this was.
At lunch it had been a nuisance, by the afternoon she was convinced it was trying to kill her.
So, when she’d entered the upstairs lounge where she was to meet the eighth grader and it was empty, she dropped her bag, took off her coat and tugged the sweater over her head.
But she’d been so hasty in her desire to remove the offending garment, she’d made the mistake of pulling the sweater over her head with both arms instead of one arm at a time. It caught under her armpits and stopped moving.
Thus, she was standing somewhere in the lounge with her arms stretched above her and the sweater bunched around her head. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. And she couldn’t move.
“Help,” she whispered to no one.
Again, the panic threatened to take over.
She wasn’t an overly anxious person. She liked to think of herself as fairly Zen.
But whatever piece of plastic or thread or glue that had tormented her all day long had driven away her sensibleness and she was now gulping for air, trapped in a jumper.
A prison of her own making.
New fear unlocked: small, confined spaces.
No.
Nope.
She would not die here.
Not like this and not this day.
The studio wasn’t devoid of human life. She’d passed at least two sound engineers on her way to the lounge.
Sure, she didn’t know their names, but she could ask them to help her. Maybe Nikki was working. Nikki seemed nice those two times they had almost interacted. Maybe she would rescue her.
She took a tentative step in the direction she hoped was the door. Another step.
Okay, so far, so good.
Another step and her hip bumped into the edge of the table.
Or was it the counter in the kitchenette?
She tried to rub her hip and butt along the edge to orient herself.
The sound of a door opening spun her around and she almost lost her balance.
“Hello?” she called, hearing the tremor in her voice.
