BLOODSTONE ACADEMY

8: Anxiousness

Jade.

"Who the hell is that?!" Mom screamed in my face as I made to move past her and the two security men flanking her sides.

I just wanted to get inside for fucks sake.

"A friend," I crossed my arms across my chest and said, purposely to annoy her even further. "You know, one of those things you forbid me from ever having?"

Her eyes grew wide at my words, and a smug smirk found residence on my lips because I'd predicted her reaction.

Vasilis was not a friend. He was barely an acquaintance even. Hell! He was just a nice kid who had offered to show me the way home because I was lost, and he also happened to go to the same school as the one I was freshly enrolled in.

But it felt nice to say that he was my friend, just to see Mom lose her mind like she was doing.

"A friend?!" She shrieked as her eyes bulged. "You're going about talking to people and making friends? What if...what if he was sent to hurt you? And you foolishly let him follow you home?! What were you thinking!"

I let out a tired sigh and massaged a spot in my temple. I could feel a headache already starting to assault my brain from all the shrieking and yelling my mother was doing.

"Relax, Mom. He's just a harmless teenager." I sighed again. "Besides, the world doesn't revolve around me. Not everyone is out to get me,"

"Oh yes they are, Jade! Believe me, everyone is out to get you!"

I released a long, irritated sigh and resisted the urge to roll my eyes at my mother's disgusting narcissism and paranoia.

The headache was getting worse. I was beginning to feel slightly dizzy.

"Well, as I said, he's just a harmless teenager and he also goes to Bloodstone Academy," I squinted up at her because it was getting too painful to fully open my eyes under the sun.

"Does that ease your fears that he was sent to kill me?" I spread my arms apart, and watched as a few tensed muscles in my mom's face relaxed slightly.

She remained silent for a while as she contemplated. She was probably thinking of sending people to follow the poor boy, or run a background check on him or something.

Whatever. I was exhausted and my head was pounding with a ruthless headache. I just wanted to lay down and...

The world was starting to wobble in my vision.

"Well, if he's a student at that school then I suppose it's okay to—"

I didn't hear the rest of my mother's words. I lost control of my limbs and only felt my body toppling, headed for the floor as I blacked out.

•
•

When I regained consciousness, I was back in the...my room, buried underneath layers of thick blankets and duvets.

I let out a sigh and looked out the windows. Someone had left the blinds open—probably Mom—and the sun was just beginning to set.

Its deep, golden orange rays cast shadows over my face and several parts of the room. I wanted to get up, but I knew I'd probably wobble on my feet and black out again if I did.

The dizziness hadn't completely worn off yet, and I had to sleep for a few hours more before I was back to normal again.

I have an autoimmune condition called ITP. Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. It's a thin blood condition that causes me to have low levels of platelets in my blood, thereby making my blood thinner than normal, and causing symptoms like nausea, fainting spells, easy bruising, random nose bleeds, heavy periods and petechiae—a bleeding in my skin, caused by broken capillaries that comes out looking like a purplish-red rash.