Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Fret ❯ Chapter 3

Chapter Three

 

Deeply he breathed, counting to fifty breaths. Opening up his brain, he allowed himself to compute his options. He couldn't pay the full amount, the house payment, and survive on the limited amount of food he had. The electricity was going to be shut off. Numbly, he walked to school, the only thing keeping him sane being the monotonous counting of the steps he took. As soon as he arrived at his school, he bypassed his friends and went directly to sit in his first period class.

“This cannot be happening,” he repeated in his head. He remained oblivious to the bell pinging above his head, or the multitude of students that filed into the classroom. The sheer fact that he could no longer live in his own house and that there was nowhere to go but a friend's was a concept his brain was so unwilling to grasp that he created scenarios of him going to visit his mother and live worriless with her in Canada.

Dizzily, he saw his teachers and his friends looking at him with the distinct looks of someone who wanted to help but was slightly afraid of the situation. His monosyllabic answers caused them all to refrain. All that is, but Mel.

“Hey Josh, snap out of it!” She waved her hand in front of his face. Distractedly, he pushed it away and continued to contemplate the patterns of wood on his desk and how exactly he could fix his life.

“Josh! Is there anything seriously wrong right now? Did you hear from your mom?” She asked concernedly. Josh shook his head. She asked some more questions, but they only rewarded a few headshakes, a few more quick answers, and eventually a tight jaw.

Class ended and Melanie roughly seized him and marched him out of the door, half shoving him and half dragging.

“Josh, you're frustrating me! What is supposed to be happening here? I thought you didn't take drugs! I don't know what to do. You either need to tell me what's wrong or how to help you. This isn't like you.”

In response, Josh just looked blankly ahead of him, counting people. Melanie frowned at him, then stormed off. Josh wandered around, finally making it to his class. When he opened the door, the entire class and the teacher stared at him. The twins sitting in the corner mouthed a sentence to him, but he didn't even bother trying to decipher it.

“You're late,” stated the teacher bluntly. “Do you have a note?”

“Nope,” Josh said just as bluntly.

And that was that. He heard the bell ring, and he went out to break. Jackie and Derek each took him by an arm and dragged him to their normal rendezvous. Mel met them, and then they started their onslaught. As he slouched against the planter, they hammered him with question after question. Finally, he stood alert suddenly and they paused and stared, surprised with his abrupt change in attitude. He walked to the bus stop, then walked out of school and to his house on the curb. He entered his house and checked his mother's room. Seeing the empty shelves gave him a sickening feeling. Then a slight dizziness hit him.

Josh knees fell through and his lungs seized up. He felt a foreign wetness pouring down his face but couldn't quite comprehend that they were his own tears. He lifted his hand to his face, and then spasms wracked his body. Jerkily, he leaned backwards and stretched out to breathe. After an hour, his extremities started to turn numb. His forearms and lower legs followed shortly after. His lips and fingernails were darkening and his skin was paling. Still twitching on the floor, his body quashed the tears and sobs, insisting that he breathe. The horrible sense of aloneness instigated his attempts to cry, but his body spurned them.

When he could almost breathe normally, he crawled into his bed and wrapped the covers around himself as if he was digging as far away from the world as he possibly could. When he woke up, he was looking straight into a blaring morning sunrise. He squinted in pain, then wobbled up to shut the shades. He curled up in bed, but he couldn't quite get to sleep. He walked to his medicine cabinet. Chasing three Benadryl with a half bottle of cherry NyQuil, he laid on his bed, waiting for the blackness to envelop his mind and release his need for thought.