Chapter 5: Andrew/Ryan

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Andrew glared out the window at the overcast sky and the autumn leaves still wet from last night's rain. He held a puzzle piece in his hand and his fingers flipped it over and over. Dr. Greene had suggested they do a puzzle at the little table by the window in her office, and he had readily agreed. The last thing he felt like doing today was talking. Of course, the puzzle was just a way to make the silence less awkward between all the questions he struggled to answer.

Today's topic was yesterday's debacle.

"Your mother called yesterday, saying you'd had a panic attack. Would you like to talk about that?"

"Not really," he mumbled.

"Maybe you could talk about what was going on when it started."

He sighed. Part of him wanted to snap, "Why don't you ask my mother?" The other part knew that if he started getting belligerent in therapy, Dr. Greene could call his mother and make things even worse than they already were.

"Mom decided I needed to learn how to drive," he said finally.

On Tuesday, when he arrived home, his mother had a package in her hands and a big smile on her face. "Guess what came in the mail today!" she sang.

"What," he said.

"Here, open it!"

Dread pooled in his stomach when he saw the company logo on the box. He used scissors to cut off the packing tape and unfolded the flaps. Then he stared at the device inside.

"It's called a spinner. It's so you can learn to drive!" his mother said, pulling it out from the packing peanuts. "It gets mounted on the steering wheel, and it holds your prosthesis in place so you can hold the wheel steady while you use turn signals and all."

He tried to smile, he really did. Just a few minutes ago he'd been wondering about the car that was parked in Ryan's driveway, and thinking maybe Ryan hadn't had time to get his license with his mom dying. And then he'd thought about how he hadn't breathed a word to his mother about getting his own license.

"We'll go down tomorrow and get your learner's permit, okay, honey?" She ruffled his hair and kissed his forehead while he just stared at the spinner.

He barely slept that night, flashes of shattering glass and headlights bearing down and that sick awful feeling of being trapped and only semi-conscious and pressed up against the body of his father. He stopped and bought a Red Bull on the way to school, which only made his mind race all the more. Maybe she'll forget, he hoped, and repeated that like a chant throughout the day. Maybe she'll forget, maybe she'll forget...

She was already in the driveway when he rolled up on his bike. "I got it installed!" she said, waving the screwdriver. "I figure we can head over to the DMV and you can get your permit, and then you can have your first test drive over at the old mall."

For some reason, Andrew thought he'd be okay. None of it really felt like it was happening.

"Why are you so quiet?" his mother asked more than once.

He passed the learner's permit test no problem, even though he hadn't studied. He glared at the woman who took his photo for the paper permit. "The whole parking lot is going to be empty," Mrs. Jennings said as she drove the car into the old mall. "See? You don't have to be nervous, Jacky."

All around the pavement spread, cracking and invaded by weeds. It all felt surreal. The sun beat down unseasonably and Andrew wished he wasn't wearing his flannel shirt, but he had his Edward Scissor Hand strapped on and he wasn't about to have the whole metal monstrosity exposed, not even to his mom. The pavement shimmered as he got out of the passenger side, crossed around and got in the driver's seat.

"Now, first, you want to adjust the seat so it's comfortable for you."

Andrew said nothing, just looked over his left shoulder where the seat adjustments were. His mother made a little, "Oh!" sound and then started pushing the different buttons so that the seat moved forward, then back, until she asked, "Is that good?"

He hovered his foot near the gas pedal. "Yeah," he said.

"Okay." She helped him fit the prosthetic claw into the spinner. "How's that?"

He shrugged. He didn't know how it was supposed to feel. He was feeling like the air was too thick and like a cloud of insects were buzzing around. While his mother shut the door and walked around the front of the car to get in the passenger seat, he tried to put his seatbelt on.

"Oh, hon, I'm sorry. That should have been the first thing you did. I'm not doing so well as a driving teacher, am I?"

He had to detach his prosthesis from the spinner to put on the seatbelt, which his mother buckled for him like he was five years old. After about a billion more adjustments and his mother pointing out the turn signals and how to shift, the air in the car stifling and the collar of his shirt already a little damp, she finally gave him the key.

Dr. Greene's voice brought him back to the present. "And how did you feel about that? Learning how to drive?"

"I didn't really want to do it," he mumbled.

"Did you talk to your mother about that?"

"No." Outside, Andrew watched pedestrians hurry across the street. He thought he might see Ryan hurrying toward the building, late for his appointment. The big guy hadn't shown up by the time Dr. Greene called him in. Ryan not being there, a big silent hulk in the middle of the waiting room, had thrown Andrew off.

"Was there something stopping you from telling her how you felt?"

The ridges of the puzzle piece pressed into the pads of his fingers. "I guess... I thought she should have known how I felt."

She had told him to just ease his foot off the gas pedal. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt too tight. Hands gripping the wheel, he had followed her instructions. When the car lurched forward, he slammed back down on the brake, and his seatbelt bit into his chest.

"Just breathe, Jacky, baby. Take a deep breath. Then ease your foot off."

Breathe. Like it was that easy. After a couple of attempts, he managed to gulp some air into his lungs. "Okay," he said. "Here I go."

The numbers on the dashboard clock flipped a couple of times before he finally moved his foot. The car rolled forward slightly.

"Good. See? This isn't so bad. Just keep the wheel steady, that's it."

There must have been some slight incline, because the car began to roll faster and faster, bumping over the frost heaves in the pavement. He saw a pretty big one coming up. He wasn't sure if he should try to turn or stop, and found he couldn't do anything. His hands had frozen on the wheel. Finally his mother said sharply, "Brake. Brake!"

He slammed his foot down, only it hit the gas, and the car lurched forward. Panicking, he pushed his foot down harder. The seatbelt was too tight against his chest. He couldn't breathe. Vaguely, behind a buzzing in his ears, he heard his mother shouting, "Brake! Stop, Jacky!"

The car hit the bump. In retrospect, it wasn't that big, but the impact startled his foot off the gas pedal, and he managed to flop it around and hit the brake. This time, the car rocked on its shocks and both he and his mother flew forward. The seatbelts locked.

He really couldn't breathe now. The sound of his own desperate breaths scraped in his ears but his chest wouldn't expand, wouldn't let them in. In the far distance he felt his mother shift the car into park and turn off the ignition, then she unbuckled her seatbelt to face him. All he could see was the narrow strip of pavement glimmering in the afternoon sun. Her hand pushed through his hair, and that was when the band around his chest broke free and he gulped in fresh oxygen as fast as he could.

"Baby, it's okay. It's okay. Just breathe, okay?"

"So far you haven't struck me as the kind of person who doesn't speak his mind," Dr. Greene observed.

"Yeah, well, I don't like living up to other people's expectations," Andrew said.

When the fifty minutes were up, and Andrew escaped the office building, a Xeroxed piece of paper with some bullshit "Steps to Overcoming a Panic Attack" shoved into his pocket, he flipped up his hood and climbed on his bike and pedaled through the drizzling rain that needled his face.

He thought he was just in a hurry to get out of there, but when he rolled by Mill Street, Andrew found himself slowing down and turning so that he ended up in Ryan's driveway.

Ryan might have had a really good reason for not showing up to therapy. Like, his mom had died. But although there was no car in the driveway this time, there was a light on in the kitchen, and just like that Andrew found himself at Ryan's door, knocking.

"Jacky? What are you doing here?" Ryan asked.

He hadn't been expecting anyone. It was a rare day when the church volunteers hadn't found someone to come sit with his mother in the afternoon, so Ryan had called the office and explained that he couldn't make his appointment. Just as well. He was sore from football practice yesterday, and tired as usual.

He most certainly had not been expecting Jacky to show up at his house.

"You weren't at therapy," Jacky said, looking beyond him, into the house. "I was worried."

"Why? I'm not allowed to have a day off?"

"I, uh... I thought..." Jacky scraped the toe of his black converse sneaker along the welcome mat. "I got worried that you were gonna try to off yourself or something."

"Oh." Ryan couldn't think of much response to that. "Well, I'm not."

They didn't look at each other for an awkward period of time. Ryan started to get the feeling that Jacky wanted Ryan to invite him inside. Ryan kind of wanted to.

"Okay, well, I'm glad you didn't kill yourself today. See ya at school."

Jacky took off on his bike like a shot.

Slowly, watching Jacky pedal away, Ryan closed the door. He found that, once the door was closed, he couldn't quite bring himself to push away from it. Instead, the door propped him up while the living room turned blurry.

Why the hell was he crying? Oh yeah, because the kid who seemed to hate him most of the time had cared enough to notice when he wasn't there.

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