Page 54 of Under Locke & Key
I wish I could respond, but I’m choking on the lack of air and my shaking fingers grasp at my neck in desperation. On the verge of clawing at my throat, she grabs my hands with a strength I wasn’t expecting.
“I’m here. You’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here,” she says it over and over, like a mantra that I try to cling to but everything is fuzzy.
“I need you to sit down. We need to get your head between your legs.” She tugs me and my body complies, nothing left in me to fight when the overwhelm has taken me over.
Concrete that’s only barely colder than the hot air around me is a new sensation, one that gives me a shred of something to ground me. It should be counter productive, putting my head down and making myself smaller, but somehow it helps. As if I’m no longer in the space at all.
Rachel’s hand traces up and down my spine, just on the edge of tickling, and I focus on that. On her quiet shushes and sweet tone. I don’t make out the words but this is probably what a wild animal feels like when someone is trying to coax it out into the open.
“We’re going to be fine. We’ll get out of here, I promise.”
I latch onto that, working to slow my breathing to something other than gasps and eventually things calm. My face is wet with tears when I lean back, my head against the wall behind me, and I wipe them away with my forearm.
Little catches betray me, but her hand is on my knee, stroking her thumb back and forth and I am grateful she’s here.
“Rachel,” I croak. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for? If anything it’s me that needs to apologize. If I hadn’t called you over for help, if I’d warned you about the paint can this wouldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t tugged on the handle too hard . . .” she says, her voice glum. “This is my fault.”
I cover her hand on my knee with my own and she gives a big sigh.
“We need a plan but first I have to make sure you’re okay,” she says, concern laced through every word.
“I’m fine. Or at the very least, I will be. This used to happen way more when I was younger. I’ve found coping skills and stuff to help but yeah. Dark plus small space equals claustrophobia and panic. I never did get the hang of escape art the way I did the other aspects of magic.”
“Is the coping skill to avoid small, dark spaces?” There’s a hint of teasing in her voice and I lo—adore her for it. Distraction is a great way out of a heightened state.
“Pretty much. Am I that obvious?” My chuckle is as dry as my throat and I wish we had some water in here.
“Not obvious, but I’ve been around you for a while now. Long enough to learn some of your tells and tendencies.”
“Oh yeah? Care to share?”
It’s intimate in here. Coming back to myself she’s sitting in front of me, her back against the door but her hand is on me and our bodies are so close it wouldn’t take much to touch her.
“You overthink a lot. There are these moments where I can see your mind whirring as if you’re constructing what you’re going to say word for word before it comes out. You doubt yourself and I don’t know if it’s innate or learned from somewhere, because your parents seem to think you are the best thing to walk the earth.”
Emotion sits heavy on my throat, not dissimilar to panic, and I’m not sure I’m ready to be stripped bare like this. But she keeps going, peeling me away like she’s the paint stripper and I’m being exposed for the first time in thirty years.
“You care deeply about the people in your life, just from the way you talk about them and seeing you with your friends. You’re courteous and considerate, sometimes to the point that I worry it’s at your own expense.”
She takes a deep breath before she dives into the next statement and I brace for impact.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to make you smile so big the corners of your eyes crinkle. I’ve come close. When we first met, that was my first thought, that you looked like you’d forgotten how to smile and how badly I wanted to be the one to make you do it.”
Her nervous huff of a chuckle slips between us and I know she intended it as a way to release the pressure between us, but it’s done nothing to quell the feelings rising within me.
“God, it’s so hot in here. I’m not . . . I might have to shed a layer because it’s getting a bit unbearable in here.” She’s rambling and she tugs her top over her head, exposing the tank top she’s wearing as an undershirt. It clings to her, a bead of sweat highlighted by the flashlight, meandering down her neck and between her—no. I cannot think of that right now. We’re stuck in here and I need to get my shit together.
“Distract me, please? I don’t do well with heat. Hopefully something breaks it soon.” Her hand returns to my leg and the first day of scouting locations comes to mind, when I divulged my fear and she reciprocated.
I find my own voice, wanting to be seen by her but wanting to escape too. If I’m talking about her then she’ll stop talking about me.
“I hated how beautiful you were. It hit me in the stomach when you walked through that coffee shop door and I wasn’t prepared for it. That whole first meeting I kept trying to find ways to focus and not screw it up so that you’d stay,” I say. She says nothing for a moment so I fill the silence. “You’ve got your own quirks, too.”
“Oh, been studying me?” Her voice is kind of breathless and I love that I’ve affected her even a little.
“I study everyone. It makes it easier to know what response they’ll be expecting from me and how to convey myself correctly. So yes, in a way.”
