No Strings Attached

Chapter 10

The rest of lunch was quiet, and awkward. We had a few exchanging of words, but that was all.

When the bell rang, I stood up and half-smiled at him. "Well, thank you for the chat."

He stared at me in pity.

"Don't do that," I insisted.

He moved closer to me. "Do what?"

"That!" I cried. "Stop feeling bad for me! It happened, I was unlucky, she's gone, that's it!"

I stormed out of the cafeteria leaving Logan in my dust.

Why is it that I get angry at lunch? I thought to myself as I slammed my locker door shut to go to Mandarin. I was the first one in there, and my cute little Mandarin teacher told me the Chinese "hello" in her high pitched voice. She asked me how I was, and I told her that I was fine, lying a little bit. I really didn't want to be upset with Logan, but I couldn't help it.

Soon after, the rest of the class filed in, and she began her lesson when the bell rang. I absentmindedly took the notes, and the period seemed to drag on forever. Finally, we were released, and I waited for everyone else to leave the room so I could avoid the crowd.

Unfortunately, I was greeted with a flood of students, despite my attempts to keep away from them. I uneasily stepped into the sea, and immediately regretted it. I started freaking out. I didn't know what was happening to me. People were bumping into me left and right, and I couldn't get away. I couldn't breathe. Why couldn't I breathe!? Let me get out of here! I begged, pleading for an escape. Tears were forming in my eyes and I started to get cold sweats. I squeezed through the bodies that were trapping me in hell, desperate for a way out.

The bathroom, I decided, I need to get to the bathroom.

Just yards from the door to the restrooms off the hallway, my vision started turning white at the corners of my eyes. It closed in, and I felt lightheaded. My breaths were becoming really short. My body was so far away, and I thought I was waking up from a dream. But then another boy brushed my shoulder and I nearly screamed. I wanted to yell, and shout, to anyone who could hear me. I needed help.

Suddenly, my legs became Jell-O and I fell to the floor. Everything was spinning, slowly going in and out of focus, into darkness back to blindness. Then I lost consciousness.

--

I woke up in a white room. What the hell happened? I asked myself as I sat up on a cot in the nurse's office.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," a woman's voice rang out from behind me. "Let's not try to sit up yet. You took quite a tumble there."

I faced the voice and a skinny, young woman took its form. She headed over to me and helped me lay back down. That's when I saw Logan sitting at the other end of the room with wide eyes full of concern. I looked back at him, unsure of what to do.

The nurse saw my confusion and filled me in. "This young fellow carried you in and has refused to leave your side for the last half hour." She grinned when she said the last part, making me blush.

Logan looked away in embarrassment and scratched his head.

I couldn't help but smile a little at his kind act and then his shyness. It was cute. Oh, God. Did I just say that? I stared up at the ceiling. Nope. Not getting a crush. No, that won't be happening today.

I cleared my throat as if I had actually verbalized that awkward thought. "Can I ask what happened to me?" I quietly told the nurse.

She glanced at Logan. "You don't know?"

I shook my head, flabbergasted. "Am I supposed to?"

"Um...well, there was a...Let's see..." she stuttered.

"Excuse me," Logan piped up. He came over to the side of my cot and sat on the end. "I'll tell her."

She gladly obliged.

Alright, by that point I was getting nervous. What the fuck is wrong with me? I stared at Logan in expectation. Tell me, already.

He took a deep breath. "You, um...You had a major panic attack. Ms. Tucker—" he gestured to the nurse, "thinks that you have an anxiety disorder. It's pretty common, but most of the people with social anxiety have minor cases. So much that they hardly notice it. They might feel uncomfortable at big parties and stand in corners to keep from interacting with you, or put off calling someone on the phone. But some people, like you, have panic attacks in the middle of a hallway..." he trailed off, seeing how I was taking it. I was just a little confused, so he kept going. "A lot of people think it's made up. Think it's just introverts blaming their isolation on a medical condition. But it's a very real thing. Cases are most often found in teenagers, and then once their hormones settle down, it dwindles away. It's also kind of like the rectangles-are-squares phenomenon. All people with social anxiety are introverted, but not all introverts are socially anxious." Logan kind of chuckled to himself at his analogy, thinking it was clever. "Anyway, there aren't really meds to 'cure' it, per se—at least, yet—but I know people who have benefited fantastically from counseling." He looked at me again.

"Do you want my job, kid?" Ms. Tucker asked Logan. "That was very well-done. Kudos to you."

He grinned bashfully.

"He's 100-percent correct, Ms. Littleton. Based on the analysis of the situation when Logan saw you collapse, and your condition when he brought you in here, it is extremely likely that you have social anxiety," Ms. Tucker explained. "I'm sorry you had to find out the hard way."

"So, you're seventeen, and you have never had a social anxiety attack before?" Logan asked me.

I finally got to speak for my own case. "Well, I have never had an interaction like that before. I lived in Wyoming, went to a small school, and never went to any huge concerts. Mostly just gigs around town. And when I went to parties I was usually too drunk to..." I stopped mid-sentence because of the look Ms. Tucker was giving me.

"I'll keep my mouth shut," she promised with a sigh.

Logan was stifling a laugh, but he swallowed it and asked me another question. "Well, Tegan, I'm glad I was the one who took you here."

I grinned and blushed. "Oh, come on. I would have been fine lying on the floor," I joked.

Ms. Tucker chuckled. "You have a very caring boyfriend."

"What?!" I exclaimed. "Oh, no. No. We're not—"

Logan broke in. "Yeah, we've known each other for, like, two days."

"Oh," she replied, eyes widening in shock. "I apologize. In that case, Mr. Shang, you should probably get back to class. I'll write you a note saying that you felt ill." She winked.

Logan got his slip and left the office awkwardly, avoiding eye contact with me.

Then Ms. Tucker leaned over to me. "He's a keeper," she whispered with a giggle.