Page 37 of Sour Lollipops and Sweet Nightmares
White stove, fridge, small table with two chairs, and a coffee pot.
There was no one else here. It was only me in my solidarity. That should’ve felt safe, but it didn’t.
The room started to spin. I felt the panic attack coming before I collapsed on the floor, curled up in a ball.
It’s okay, Georgia. You got out of there. It wasn’t even that bad… Okay, so he touched you, but you’re okay. It was justtouching… my bare chest, but it was just hands. And he's gone now.
Crack… snap.
What was that? Oh God, he was coming back, wasn’t he?
Tightly hugging my knees to my chest, I squeezed my eyes shut as haunting laughs mocked my torment.
They snickered and cheered, ‘Georgia Pyne thinks she’s fine.’Much like the day when Thomas Jay Munford pulled my skirt off during the eighth-grade play of Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t even want to be in the stupid thing, but our teacher said everyone had to participate. To this day, I couldn’t look at a Shakespeare book without blushing.
I had an anxiety attack that day, right there on the stage. Up until today, having a crowded theater see my daisy print panties was the most mortifying experience of my life.
Pressing my face against the cool hardwood, I shut out the sound of my heart pounding in my ears and focused on my labored breaths.
In through the nose…
Out through the mouth…
In through the nose…
Out through the mouth…
I repeated that action, grounding myself until the room stopped spinning and I could open my eyes without feeling nauseated.
Waiting for my pulse to steady out, I lay there on the hardwood floor, staring at the grains in the wooden legs of the kitchen table, while thinking about how pathetic I was.
Men like Issac and his friends thrived on the misery of others, and I was giving them exactly what they wanted. They were probably carrying on with their day while I was lying here like a broken puppy.
I could hear Mom’s voice saying,“Don’t let them get to you, Georgia. You are better than that.”
But was I?
Yes, I had logic on my side, and I was more intelligent than the average person, but intellect wasn’t going to help me much, not in this situation. The upside of being invisible was that I didn’t get picked on a lot. The downside was that I had no experience or tolerance with aggressive personalities to pull from. I was ill-equipped to deal with Issac and his friends.
Sure, I could duck my head and try to avoid them, but what if they came after me again? What could I do then? How did one deter people like that? Apologizing wasn’t going to work, and I was way too small to fight them. I was an inch shy of five feet, which was the only physical attribute I didn’t inherit from my mother, who was five feet nine.
How did someone my size fend off full grown men? What hope did I have? For all I knew, Issac and his friends followed me here, where I was alone and vulnerable?
Was that a footstep?
I froze, tightened in on myself, and held my breath in anticipation of the dreaded sound of a shoe stepping on the floor. Would I even hear it before it was too late?
Back in the cafeteria, Issac was so fast. How did he do that? I wasn’t crazy. I know what happened. I’d never forget it. We moved a few feet in under a second. That wasn’t possible. It was as if Issac was a vampire or something.
God, did I seriously just think that?
Wow, I was pathetic. I let Issac scare me so badly that I was considering the existence of vampires and ghosts. Maybe I was crazy? Monsters didn’t exist. Yet here I was on the cusp of crawling under the kitchen table to escape some imaginary supernatural force.
But wasn’t that how those stories usually went? An unsuspecting girl was living her normal life, when she suddenly got thrust into a world full of ghouls and ghosts that she didn’t know were there. I wonder if they have self-defence classes for the supernatural? Not that they would do me any good.
They said one never knew how they would truly react to a situation until they were in it. People liked to think that they would fight, but in most cases, they froze, just as I did when I felt Issac’s hand on me. Apparently, self-defence classes didn’t give one courage. The pepper spray was effective, however. I might need to get another can of that.
Alright, Georgia, stop feeling sorry for yourself, get off the floor, and report their sorry asses.
