Breathe, I thought in a panic. You know how to breathe.
I fumbled for my phone to call Bear, to hear his voice, to tell me she couldn’t take me now, that I was seventeen years old and we hadn’t heard from her in years, but it slipped from my hands and I couldn’t find it, I couldn’t find him.
“Hey, you’re okay,” I heard a voice say, a calm, soothing voice that somehow cut through the storm. “You’re okay. You’re fine.”
I shook my head. I most certainly was not fine. I was dying. Clearly.
“I’ve seen you around,” the voice said. A hand began to rub my back. “You’re that big to-do smart kid everyone seems to talk about.”
I wondered, briefly, if this person was so completely and utterly insane that they couldn’t see I was about to die.
“It’s good to know even the geniuses have meltdowns, I guess.”
“Fuck… you…,” I managed to wheeze.
The voice laughed. “Maybe. If you’re lucky. I am saving you, after all. I feel like such a superhero! I need to get me some kickass boots. And a cape. Oh, hey, you dropped your phone. Need it?”
I nodded as lights flashed over my eyes. My chest hurt.
“Call someone?”
I nodded again.
“Smartphone. Of course. Isn’t it weird to think that twenty years ago, if we wanted to know something about the world, we’d have to go to a library to look it up? Now, you can just pull this little machine out and google it.”
How absolutely fascinating, I wanted to say. Please, continue on with your inane meanderings while I suffocate to death, you weird fucking asshole!
“Call…,” I said.
“Call someone? Like 911?”
I shook my head. “First… contact.” My skin felt slick with sweat.
“Hmm. First is…. Bear. Bear? You know someone named Bear? How ridiculous is that? It’s ringing. I can’t believe I’m calling someone named Bear.” A pause. “Yeah, is this Bear? Cool. Wicked name, by the way. You sound like a barrel of laughs. I’m—What? Yes. Kid? What kid?” A hand on my arm. “You Tyson?”
I nodded.
“Yes, it’s him. He’s having some kind of attack. Do I need to—You sure? All right, I guess.”
The phone pressed against my ear. “Kid?” I heard him say. “You listen to me. I know you can’t talk, but listen. You know what to do. Calm yourself. Stop doing anything but hearing me. You got me? Just. Stop.”
“Hurts,” I said.
“I know it does. I know. But you are stronger than this. You are better than it is. You fight, you hear me? You push through it and you fight. What do we do?”
“Breathe.”
“That’s right. We breathe, Kid. Just breathe.”
And I did. For him, I did.
Eventually I calmed. Eventually the haze went away. Eventually the panic receded, the tide going out, like it always did. The aftershocks were there, those little earthquakes that screamed IT’LL BE BACK! IT WILL COME FOR YOU AGAIN! I ignored them. For now.
“You need me to come get you?” Bear asked me once I was able to breathe again. “Say the word, Kid. I’ll get someone to cover class for me, and I’ll be there. Or Otter can come right now. He’s shooting some old barns today for that travel magazine, but one of us can be there.”
“No,” I said. “I… I’m okay.” I wasn’t, but I was getting there.
“What was it?”