"It's all right. You're all right." A lie. A straight up, bloody lie that's as flimsy as a measly old sheet of paper.

Ryan usually doesn't like to lie, instead preferring to blatantly showcase what horrors he's accomplished in both high school and in my neighborhood where he knows the residents can't identify him yet still unfortunately link the scoundrel to me, proving to be quite consequential, and it's paying off for him so far, having yet to be caught by the haunting Principal Hall by some mythical luck, some mythical power of Ryan Ross, and he's continued to pull pranks on every person he stumbles upon.

On one rainy day in fifth grade, he decided it would be a sound idea to classically condition the people in his advisory by tapping his pencil on the edge of his desk seven times right before the bell rings for third period, and it is through Ryan's impeccable motivation that he perpetuated this psychological discovery against his class to the point where he considered his work to be enough to test out how it operated, at which time he tapped his pencil on his desk seven times but earlier than his original mark on the clock, and many of the students responded by packing up their papers prematurely, and while I watched Ryan, knowing full well what he was doing, all I saw was that wide smirk poised towards our teacher's utter bewilderment, and that's definitely not the strangest thing he's achieved. Not even close, but now something that is perhaps stranger than that is the fact that he's lying to me by telling me that I'll survive this restless fucking panic attack, which I won't, but it's nice to see Ryan attempt to save me from the flames of my own heart, a heart that's engaging a war against me while simultaneously endeavoring to convince me that it's not.

I've trudged through a panic attack before, many of them without a warning or a diagnosis of anxiety, because I'm persuaded that I don't have it (it's improbable, to say the least), yet I've driven through the symptoms, the dripping palms, the heart palpitations of a kick drum, a voice chipped by an earthquake, all of it concomitantly berating me for not being fortified enough to sustain my life.

But on this occasion, it's just me and my thoughts, me and my demons, me and my ruthless nerves that won't ever stop brandishing swords that they locate in my own hands to remind me that it's just myself doing this, just myself to blame, just myself wasting Ryan's time by hiring him to calm me down, guide me through this, and I can recognize that he's trying, and he's trying well, but I'm so fucking disorganized, so drowned in the sea, that I'm not sure if I can ever be consoled, especially not after the loss of someone with whom I've vigorously spent my past week and don't know how to carry on without, because we've always been together with each possibly illegal excursion, all of them and more, and now that Dallon Weekes, the one person who was always there for me, has deserted someone I thought he loved just as much as I love him, and what is to make of me now? What am I anymore? Why have I trained myself to feed off of his existence like I've recently contracted Stockholm Syndrome, like I've recently contracted Stockholm Syndrome and no one gives a care?

Because no one ever did, and it is from the pain this affliction birthed that Dallon found himself in an unavoidable pitfall, in a dark tunnel, in a hollow abyss, the same hollow abyss he rescued me from, and it's terribly ironic that it had to be this way. It's as though he recovered me from the void, beheld me only for a moment, and relinquished his balance to dive into the darkness, and it's as though I had no idea that this was transpiring so close to me.

I never do, because I'm ignorant and selfish and completely unaware of what's around my body in a replacement of what's around my mind, and that's chains, plain and simple. Chains. Chains constricting my thoughts, my affected actions, my outlook on life, everything that comprises my brain in a neat little goody bag of terror and pandemonium, of not being quite positive on whether or not my counting has become a natural, healthy reflex or the curse of an inescapable obsession, of feeling unsafe around people due to the paranoia of how they'll rather react to me; it has nothing to do with them, no correlation whatsoever, and that's because no character of my brain is logical in any way, shape, or form, and I've regrettably just accepted that as a doctrine like it's the only medicine to cure me.

Dallon already has his medicine where he likes it, has nestled it adeptly into his brain and allowed it to speak for him in claiming that they're placebo pills when they're more familiar to nocebo and all of its monstrous effects, but now he's gone to some undisclosed area, and I'll bet he's still with those creatures, acquiescing them to wreak havoc on his limited expanse of a life while they permit no information to me, who's back here in Las Vegas, in Palo Verde High School, in the bathroom with a Ryan Ross who's trying to help me but can't, and this is all I have now. This is my reality.

"I, uh, I've never seen a panic attack before," Ryan admits in the hopes of breaking the ice, but all it does is educate me on the fact that he has no clue what he's doing or what he's supposed to be doing, and that he is cognizant of this and is willing to smolder with me because of his impenetrable pity for this anecdote. Typical of him.

I shrug, the best I can extracate for the tiring circumstances. "Just, like, help me breathe or something."

"How do I help you breathe?" Ryan exclaims, ogling me like I'm a complicated furniture assembly manual. "They're your lungs, not mine."

"You're missing the point."

"Yeah, I guess." A break. "But still, how do I help you breathe?"

"Just make certain that I remember to breathe."

Ryan nods slowly, studying me in silence and suddenly sparking my anxiety back to life with a sharp "Breathe, Brendon!"

"That's not helping!" I negate, and Ryan apologizes only in his body language of springing slightly away from me for fear that I'll reprimand him for being so clueless, which I might, if this oblivious behavior proceeds without a proper cessation...or oxygen, in which case I'll asphyxiate, and Ryan will be even more lost than before. Notice that this is the man who, at age seven, once phoned the police to say that his house was too warm and that he wanted them to cool it down, so trust in his abilities is off the table, most likely for all of eternity.

I don't think he'll mind, though, because I've stored many examples of how heedless Ryan is, and he's concluded from each of them that no one should rely on him for anything anymore, which is less labor and more of an incentive for this, so maybe we're just fueling him by not depending on this wreck.

Just then, Spencer enters the bathroom with a wide smirk plastered to his face (I'm starting to think that it's hopelessly permanent, not that he cares in the slightest, as it accentuates his bossy personality), and that smirk is immediately illuminated upon spotting us. "Didn't know you clowns enjoy hanging out in the bathroom so much."

Instead of my panic attack climbing the walls of my mind towards its zenith, it's quelled by a new emotion called annoyance, and it's mightier than I ever would've imagined. It's always in town when Spencer strolls through my vision with that obnoxious strut of his, passing for as long as it demands for me to rant about how much I hate this guy, and then it dissipates like a gas departing into unmapped regions, but it's everlastingly buried close to the surface of my mind, and it's everlastingly untamed.

"Why don't you just shove off, Spencer?" Ryan groans in lieu of me, hands reclining on the sink suspended on the dull canary wall.

"Where's Dallon?" Spencer's voice is artificialized with a depression, mocking the melancholy I know all too well. "Did he finally overdose?"

Dallon might have, and that's none of my business to know why if he did, though I would be incredibly intrigued to figure out why it is that I was so insignificant to him to just go ahead and do this to himself without considering that I'd be shaken up, and I'd be scarred, and I'd be torn to shreds and left for the starving wolves, but that's somehow okay to me, because if Dallon is happy with what's scouring the world to murder him, then that's not really my place to judge, even if I may be devastated over it.

I find my fists honing each other's rage, but I remind myself that nothing really matters, that Spencer doesn't really matter. "I'm not going to deal with you right now, okay?" I troop towards the door, Ryan a bear trap upon my heels, and Spencer whines and broadcasts the image of that child we all know him to be.

"Aww, you're no fun."

And just before I flee the bathroom, I glance back at him one time and plainly state, "Neither are overdoses."

Ryan just sneers.  

~~~~~

A/N: the fuck was this chapter like it didn't even have plot it's just to increase my word count because I'm lazy

OKAY SO I SAW THIS FUCKING WHITE KID TRYING TO DO PARKOUR BUT HE JUST FUCKING FELL FLAT ON THE GROUND I'M CACKLING AND ALSO WHITE WTF

Quarpcharp: why

AARP: sin

~Dacuppa