The Art of Breathing

by TJ Klune

  I never thought it could get to be this bad. I never thought it would actually get this far. I don’t know how it happened. One minute I’m hearing Dom shout my name through the phone as my delusional, self-centered world comes crashing down around me, and the next, it’s four years later and I’m coming home for the first time. I haven’t spoken to Dom since, though not for his lack of trying. The daily phone calls went on for a time. He showed up in New Hampshire a few times, not that I ever saw him. He was always intercepted by Bear, who would come out with teeth and claws bared.

  Therapy started up again shortly after that phone call. Getting an official diagnosis of panic disorder was both a relief and a disappointment. The relief stemmed from the idea that finally whatever was wrong with me had a name, because sure as shit it was something more than just panic attacks. The disappointment came from the fact that whatever was wrong with me actually had a name, that it wasn’t something I’d manufactured in my head or simply a product of my overactive imagination. No, I, Tyson James Thompson, am afflicted with panic disorder, which explains the panic attacks themselves.

  If you don’t have these attacks, then it’s kind of hard to explain them so you can understand what exactly happens to me when they hit. The best way I’ve heard of describing them is that essentially it feels like you’re drowning in a vast ocean, and you can see the surface but it’s too far away and so you just drown, drown, drown.

  Again, the irony of my life is not lost on me.

  But it’s also the earthquakes. Times a billion.

  With the therapy came the drugs, and with the drugs came Drone Tyson, the one whose eyes were slightly dead, whose thoughts were muddled and murky. Drone Tyson didn’t have the panic attacks, at least not as many and nowhere near the intensity, but Drone Tyson didn’t have much else either. Those are a hazy six months that I don’t quite remember, to the point in which pills started disappearing at a rate faster than they should have, because the high I got was better than the encroaching panic. Part of me knew what was going on, knew I was drowning in an ocean just the same, but I could find little reason to care. I woke up, took a pill. Three hours later, I’d take another. And then another. And then another.

  Sure, Doctor, I’d say during the therapy sessions. Let’s talk about my feelings. Let’s discuss how betrayed I feel, though it’s not my right. Let’s talk about how embarrassed I am about my actions. Let’s talk about how he belonged to me, though he never really did. Let’s talk about how smart I am, how I can solve almost every kind of mathematical equation put before me, how I can tell you the chemical formula for caesium acetate (C2H3CsO2). Let me tell you that one day, I want to find a definitive intervention for strokes so no one can ever be taken from the ones who love them the most ever again.

  But honestly, Doc? Let’s really talk. Let’s talk about how naïve I really am. Let’s talk about how there was this guy, this boy I knew. This boy I’d met when I was nothing but a Kid, who I thought was going to be there forever, who I thought was going to be mine forever. Can we, Doc? Can we talk about how, other than Bear and Otter, Dominic was the only other thing I needed in my life? I love Anna. I love Creed. I love JJ. They are my family. But Bear is mine. Otter is mine. Dominic is…. well. Dominic isn’t.

  He belongs to Stacey. Sweet, innocent Stacey, whose last name I never bothered to learn until it was on a wedding invitation, because she wasn’t permanent. She was just a phase. I knew I was young. I knew that. But I also knew that one day, Dominic would look at me like I looked at him, and he would just smile and say, There you are. I see you now. I see you for what you are to me. Thank you for waiting. I’m sorry it took so long.

  I would go to school. I would become something grand. I would change the world for the better. Animals would live! The elderly would live! PETA would become something other than the joke it has devolved into today (I never thought I’d see the day when PETA would be accused of killing animals. Fascists!).

  And Dom? Dom would be by my side the whole way. We’d conquer the world together, and no one would stop us, no one could tell us no. I have Bear and Otter, because they are mine, but they also belong to each other. Dom? He belonged to me. I knew this. With whatever clear-eyed, rosy view of the world I had, I knew this. With all of my heart. With all of my soul. As a kid (Kid), he was my best friend. When I got old enough to understand such things, it became something more.

  So, Doc. I may be smart, smarter than someone like me probably should be. I know things other people don’t. Hard facts. Science. Math. I know these things, but for the life of me, I believed in something I felt was real, that turned out to be anything but.

  And when I found this out, I did the worst thing of all.

  I ran away.

  But that’s not all, Doc. That’s not all it is. It’s unfair to put this all on him. I may have mommy issues too, but that’s another story for another time. Suffice to say, Doc, I may have a hard time trusting people. I am, after all, a product of my environment.

  Just give me the pills, Doc. Make it all go away.

  Wouldn’t you know? The doctor did.

  And it did go away. For a time. I didn’t need the bathtub because I didn’t need anything.

  Dominic tried to call me. I ignored him.

  He came to New Hampshire. He was sent away.

  “I know what you want,” I heard Bear say to him once. “Believe me, I do. I probably know better than anyone else. But you can’t, Dom. Not now. He may not be a kid anymore, but he’s my Kid. He’s hurting right now, and even though you didn’t do anything wrong, I find myself having to stop from reaching over and bashing your head in. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. You’re family, big guy, but right now, you’re not what he needs.”

  I took more drugs and drifted away. Benzodiazepines are great when you don’t want to care.

  Then came the day when Bear and Otter sat me down, and I noticed, for the first time in a long time, the tightness around Bear’s eyes, lines that hadn’t been there before. The thin stretch of his lips. The anger and the worry warring in his eyes. I hadn’t seen that in such a long time. Not since Julie came again to the hospital where Mrs. Paquinn died, where Otter almost died.

  And I’d put it there.

  “I think I need to stop taking the pills,” I said.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Otter said.

  “You better fucking believe it is,” Bear said. “Can you do it?”

  It turned out I could. It was hard, but I could. The panic disorder reared its ugly head after a while, and I’d be sitting in class, the youngest person there by two years, when I’d think of the most random thing. It wouldn’t even need to have any weight, any meaning, or be anything bad.

  Once, I thought about how Dom and I had once sat on the hood of his car after Bear and Otter’s wedding on the beach. The sun was setting, and we watched as Bear and Otter danced in the sand to a song only they could hear.

  Another time, I wondered (though I tried to stop myself) what life would have been like had Julie taken me like she said she was going to.

  That one was bad. That one was all-encompassing.

  That one brought me to Corey.

  I’d been sitting on a bench outside the science library at the start of my second year, taking in the fall air, the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, and I thought, What a gorgeous day. What a gorgeous day, and what if she’d taken me away? What if she’d taken me away and I never saw Bear again, and I never saw Otter again, and I never got to meet Dominic and I lived with her in a shitty apartment with people I didn’t know with a life I didn’t know, and what if?

  They can hit like that sometimes. Most of the time, I can feel them coming after a particularly stressful day or if something truly awful happens. Those are the days I can batten down the hatches and psych myself up for them.

  But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they come out of nowhere. And those are the bad ones, the ones that are hard to get out of the way from.

&nbs
p; I didn’t get out of the way of that one.

  One moment it was sunny and smelling like wet leaves, and the next I was gasping for air, unable to breathe because all I could think about was her and what if and oh, God, I’m dying and drowning and I can’t catch my breath. These attacks aren’t rational things. I may be smart and a little bit naïve (okay, okay, delusional, as well), but when I’m in its grip, I am sure it will be the last time.

  Breathe, I thought in a panic. You know how to breathe.

  I fumbled for my phone to call Bear, to hear his voice, to tell me she couldn’t take me now, that I was seventeen years old and we hadn’t heard from her in years, but it slipped from my hands and I couldn’t find it, I couldn’t find him.

  “Hey, you’re okay,” I heard a voice say, a calm, soothing voice that somehow cut through the storm. “You’re okay. You’re fine.”

  I shook my head. I most certainly was not fine. I was dying. Clearly.

  “I’ve seen you around,” the voice said. A hand began to rub my back. “You’re that big to-do smart kid everyone seems to talk about.”

  I wondered, briefly, if this person was so completely and utterly insane that they couldn’t see I was about to die.

  “It’s good to know even the geniuses have meltdowns, I guess.”

  “Fuck… you…,” I managed to wheeze.

  The voice laughed. “Maybe. If you’re lucky. I am saving you, after all. I feel like such a superhero! I need to get me some kickass boots. And a cape. Oh, hey, you dropped your phone. Need it?”

  I nodded as lights flashed over my eyes. My chest hurt.

  “Call someone?”

  I nodded again.

  “Smartphone. Of course. Isn’t it weird to think that twenty years ago, if we wanted to know something about the world, we’d have to go to a library to look it up? Now, you can just pull this little machine out and google it.”

  How absolutely fascinating, I wanted to say. Please, continue on with your inane meanderings while I suffocate to death, you weird fucking asshole!

  “Call…,” I said.

  “Call someone? Like 911?”

  I shook my head. “First… contact.” My skin felt slick with sweat.

  “Hmm. First is…. Bear. Bear? You know someone named Bear? How ridiculous is that? It’s ringing. I can’t believe I’m calling someone named Bear.” A pause. “Yeah, is this Bear? Cool. Wicked name, by the way. You sound like a barrel of laughs. I’m—What? Yes. Kid? What kid?” A hand on my arm. “You Tyson?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, it’s him. He’s having some kind of attack. Do I need to—You sure? All right, I guess.”

  The phone pressed against my ear. “Kid?” I heard him say. “You listen to me. I know you can’t talk, but listen. You know what to do. Calm yourself. Stop doing anything but hearing me. You got me? Just. Stop.”

  “Hurts,” I said.

  “I know it does. I know. But you are stronger than this. You are better than it is. You fight, you hear me? You push through it and you fight. What do we do?”

  “Breathe.”

  “That’s right. We breathe, Kid. Just breathe.”

  And I did. For him, I did.

  Eventually I calmed. Eventually the haze went away. Eventually the panic receded, the tide going out, like it always did. The aftershocks were there, those little earthquakes that screamed IT’LL BE BACK! IT WILL COME FOR YOU AGAIN! I ignored them. For now.

  “You need me to come get you?” Bear asked me once I was able to breathe again. “Say the word, Kid. I’ll get someone to cover class for me, and I’ll be there. Or Otter can come right now. He’s shooting some old barns today for that travel magazine, but one of us can be there.”

  “No,” I said. “I… I’m okay.” I wasn’t, but I was getting there.

  “What was it?”

  I knew what he meant. What had happened to set this one off? The doctor had told us if we talked about it afterward, it helped to take away its power. Quack psychobabble bullshit, honestly.

  But I did it anyway. I always did. “Julie. That day she came back.”

  Bear sighed. “You know it can’t happen now, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know she’s long gone.”

  “Yeah.” I did. And I didn’t. Panic disorder doesn’t always allow rational thought. Though, being on the far side of it, I always wondered how I ever got there in the first place.

  “You have class?”

  “In a bit.”

  “Maybe you should take the day off.”

  “I have labs.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I am. Bear?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want this to stop. So bad.”

  “I know, Kid. I know you do. And one day, it even might. But if it doesn’t, then you call me and I’ll make it go away.”

  “Promise?”

  No hesitation. “Promise. We’ll get through this. We will.”

  It was only then I became acutely aware that I was having a Touching Hallmark Family Moment brought to you by my older brother while a complete stranger held my phone to my ear. Neat.

  “I gotta go,” I said as my face burned.

  As I pulled my head away from the phone, I heard Bear shout, “Whoever your friend is, he sure sounds cute!” Quite loudly. For all to hear. Within four city blocks.

  That fucking jerk.

  I looked down at my hands.

  “You know,” said the guy next to me (because it was a guy, I could tell that now, even if I wasn’t looking up at him), “he’s quite right. I am pretty cute.” He pressed the phone into my hands and I saw dark skin, felt the scrape of thin, soft fingers against mine.

  “You okay now?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Very blunt. I would learn soon that that was his way.

  I scowled. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

  “Of course not.” I could hear the amusement in his voice. “You just looked like you were about to die. Or something.”

  “I wasn’t dying.”

  “Oh. You just crazy, then?”

  I snapped my head up and glared at him, this boy next to me who seemed to say whatever he felt like without even knowing who the fuck I was or where I’d come from. He was a thin thing, taller than me by at least a few inches, but then, most people were. His face was angular and slightly feminine, his eyes big and gorgeously brown. I thought maybe he had some makeup on, but I couldn’t be sure. His long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A lock of it fell down onto his forehead, curving around his eye.

  He was pretty, this boy. There seemed to be no other word for it.

  “I’m not crazy,” I finally said.

  He sighed. “Oh. Well, that’s no fun, then. There is a distinct lack of crazy around here, and I thought maybe you could help change that.” He looked out across the plaza in front of the library as he adjusted the scarf around his neck. “You’re that smart kid everyone talks about, huh? I thought all geniuses were a little bit crazy, at the very least.”

  “I never said I was a genius.” I learned rather quickly that most people here didn’t know what to make of me. I was more of an oddity than anything else, at least to the other students. My professors treated me like some kind of wunderkind, which I suppose I was, but it didn’t help my standing with others. I was too young for them, and too smart by a mile. The first year here hadn’t gone like I thought it would.

  “That’s what everyone else is saying,” the boy next to me said. “And I saw that interview you did with The Dartmouth. Very… interesting.”

  The student newspaper had interviewed me a few weeks ago. I hadn’t wanted to do it, but Bear and Otter said it might look good if I was going to try for an exchange program down the line. “Why ‘interesting’?”

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. You came across… smug.”

  “Smug?” I exclaimed, outraged.

  He laughed. “MENSA?
College at sixteen on a full ride? Schools begging for you left and right? I’d be a bit smug too.”

  “I’m not smug!”

  “Arrogant?”

  “No!”

  “Condescending?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Crazy, then,” he said.

  “You’re a big, gigantic dickhole,” I said.

  He arched an eyebrow at me. “It’s comforting to find out that crazy smart kids can still be reduced to calling someone a ‘big, gigantic dickhole.’ I’m Corey.” He held out his hand and smiled at me. It really was a great smile, and didn’t I feel my heart skip a beat or two?

  I think I might have.

  It took me a moment to understand what he wanted. I don’t think I could have been more socially awkward had I tried. When it finally hit me that he was waiting to shake my hand, a good thirty seconds had gone by and I was pretty sure that sound I was hearing was any pride I had left dying a slow and painful death.

  He started to pull his hand away and a weird look came over his face, so I shot my hand out to shake his. I missed his hand by at least seven inches and ended up accidentally punching him in the stomach instead.

  “Oh, Jesus!” I cried in horror. “I’m sorry!”

  “Do you often hit people who save your life?” he asked with a grimace as he clutched his stomach.

  “I wasn’t dying!”

  “This is why most people tend to mind their own business. They’re afraid of getting assaulted.”

  I put my face in my hands and groaned. “I was just trying to shake your hand!”

  “So is that why you hit me? I didn’t know you had an aversion to hand shaking. You could have just said so. Is it part of your religion? Or maybe you have mysophobia. That’s a fear of germs. Or maybe it’s actually chirophobia. That’s a fear of hands.” He looked down at his hands. “I have very nice hands. Perfectly manicured and everything. Now I feel extraordinarily insulted. You don’t have to be rude, you know. I did save your life, after all.”