Square Roots
144, 121, 100, 81, 64, 49, 36, 25, 16, 9, 4, 1….after a while my breathing starts to calm down and I can stand up. First, I go and get a drink from the water fountain to my left. Then, I walk down the hall to the guidance counselor, Ms. Mills’ office. I knock quietly and enter when she says to come in. When she looks up from her computer to see me she does a quick analysis and figures out this isn’t a check in. Ms. Mills gives me a soft, but questioning look. “Class presentation,” I mumble and she understands. I spend the last hour of school in her office.
You can’t really call it an office though. There is a desk, but everything else says otherwise. There are three massive bean bag chairs scattered around the room. Against one wall there is a ceiling to floor bookshelf not filled with self-help books, but with teen and adult fiction and some non-fiction.
I pick off the book I left off reading and turn to the page I marked even though Ms. Mills hates it when I fold pages. “It hurts the book!” she claims. Yeah right. Books don’t have feelings. They can’t feel pain, anger, embarrassment. I can. I’ve felt all of the above. 256, 225, 196, 169, 144, 121….I try to focus on my book.
Character makes mistake. Character learns lesson from mistake. Character is forgiven. That's not how real life works. In real life you make a mistake and the whole world wants to diagnose you, figure out what's wrong with you. Say they forgive you when they don’t.
BRINNNNG. What's that? Oh just the bell. Time to go but I don’t. I wait. Wait until the halls are flooded with people. People who will mock me for earlier in class. Ten minutes later I race out the door and to my mom’s car. “Tell me what happened.” Calm. Because it’s happened many times before and she’s used to it by now. I stay silent because I know Ms. Mills already called and told her.
I put in my earbuds and let the music absorb me. I try not to think back to today and to all the other times too. I close my eyes. Then we’re home. I go straight to my room and under the bed. In the back. When I was younger, maybe 7 or 8, I found a hidden room in the wall underneath my bed. Over time I’ve brought in pillows and blankets. I even have a mini bookshelf in it. My parents just think I’m hiding in all the clothes. They don’t know and I don’t want them to.
Every day same routine. Something happens at school. Go to Ms. Mills. Go home. Go in my hidden space and read. Sometimes I do homework but normally Ms. Mills lets me do it in her office.
Once I’m in I pull my face into a blanket and scream. Why am I like this. Why do I have to have this barrier. Life is already difficult and I have this huge disadvantage holding me back. I scream again. But it does nothing. No one hears me. No one understands. No one wants to understand.
Nothing I can do. I just open my book and try to read. I can’t think about what I can’t change. I will always have anxiety. It will never go away. 1,600, 1,521, 1,444, 1,369, 1,296, 1,225, 1,156, 1,089, 1,024….