All in my Mind

XXIII.

TW: Gun violence in schools. Death. Shit that only happens in America.
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As you might be able to guess, things get a bit disorganized from here. I'm predictable. Sue me.

There's nothing in the world I wouldn't pay to stop the way my hands were shaking by the way. They were afflicted with a tremor of epic proportions. I probably looked like I had nerve damage or something.

I suppose maybe there were some things I wouldn't actually pay though. The prior statement was a little dramatic. I had a pocket full of pills that could have easily helped. I'm not a doctor, so I guess I couldn't really tell you for sure. I had thought about taking one at random to see what happened, but I'd never been a recreational pill popper and I just didn't see a point in starting.

So I'd pay almost anything, but not that.

It had been at least a full 48 hours now. I'd skipped the meds two nights in a row. I'm not a doctor but I can still tell you one fact about antipsychotics: you really can't stop them abruptly like that.

Did I mention I'd been sweating profusely all day? Nausea? The return of old friends?

"Tell O'Conner," the boy demanded.

He was back. Was it embarrassing if I admitted that I kind of missed him? I was actually embarrassed.

I was sitting in the dining hall with Lily. He was sat next to her which made it easy to pretend I was looking at her as she spoke and not at him. It helped to tell myself she wasn't noticing. Honestly I was trying not to look at him anyways. He was unsympathetically pissed at me.

"Are you gonna bother eating that?" Lily asked me, gesturing down to the shredded sandwich on the table infront of me. "Are you finally getting tired of the same thing everyday? I've been wondering about that. It seems like it would get old fast."

I looked down at it. Truthfully, I hadn't eaten any of it because of a delusion that had returned in full force sometime within the past 24 hours. I hadn't expected it to be so dramatically present, but like I said, I struggle with foresight.

"Poison."

"No," I relented, pushing the mess away. "I'm not."

She made a face. Lily had gotten significantly more annoying in the last hour. To be fair, it was the first time I'd made it into her presence since she'd hit me. I'd not made it to lunch the day prior and nobody had found me until well into the afternoon due to falling asleep briefly in the library. She'd been very accommodating of my abandonment, but she was also taking it as a sign that I was suffering.

Like i said, she was getting annoying.

"You have to eat something," she started.

"She has a very valid point," the boy said needlessly.

"Come off it," I answered to the both of them. Then I looked directly at Lily. "I don't come at you when you organize vegetables into oblivion and then eat none of them. It's fucking wasteful."

Lily looked unfazed. "You're being defensive."

"She's got you there," the boy said.

"Will you shut up?!" I snapped in his direction. That was an impulse move. Not a conscious one.

Lily flinched a little bit, until she saw I wasn't looking at her. I watched her follow my gaze from my peripheral vision. I was still staring at him hatefully in a way he didn't deserve. I was being quite rude for someone who had been grateful for his appearance less than an hour ago when he'd showed up at my side to escort me into the lunch room. I really wasn't in a position to be walking in alone. He was currently giving me the same sympathetic look he'd given me in the doorway.