Survivor Stories

by J P Barnaby

  As he stood against the wall outside the computer lab where his first class was to be held, he took several deep breaths, trying to calm the panicky, out-of-control feeling in his chest. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, and he focused on a single tile on the floor. When he could breathe again, he turned and opened the door. Just as he had hoped, there were no other students in the lab yet. Walking to the very last row of computers, he took the one on the end. Dropping into the ugly fabric chair, he rolled up to the desk and turned on the machine, bringing up a free gaming site once it had booted.

  One by one, students began to file into the large auditorium-style rows of tables and computers. Aaron started to get nervous when people sat in the row right in front of him. The class was going to be near capacity. He had been almost comfortable with the empty rows serving as a barrier between him and the rest of the people in the room. Just a few more students, and someone might sit right next to him. Could he deal with that? Would he have to change sections? Would he have to drop? Aaron didn’t see the fucking point of going to college anyway. It’s not like he’d ever be able to hold down a job. He knew he would be a burden on his parents, and then his brothers for the rest of his life, which he hoped wasn’t drawn out.

  He noticed the empty seat next to his was marked “RESERVED.” He wondered if his instructor, Dr. Mayer, had done that to give him the chance to sit alone. The panicky feeling in his chest started to loosen when his instructor came into the room and dropped a worn leather backpack on the table at the front. He was a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties, with shaggy brown hair and glasses. He looked fairly at ease in his khaki pants and solid blue polo. It was casual classroom attire. He dallied at the front of the room for several minutes, pulling things out of the backpack. It seemed he was waiting for the students to settle so class could begin. Dr. Mayer had just put up the syllabus on the computer projector when the lab door opened and a teenage boy entered with an older woman. His long brown curls were windswept as he climbed the stairs, walking right toward Aaron, who prayed silently they would take the seats across the aisle from him.

  The boy, who Aaron now noticed had a strong build and probably a day’s worth of stubble on his face, sat down right next to him, pulling the reserved sign off the monitor. He looked over at Aaron with hauntingly deep hazel eyes, smiled shyly, and then turned to watch the woman sitting next to him. Aaron wondered why he was paying more attention to the woman than to the instructor until she started moving her hands. The boy took the vibrant blue messenger bag off his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the woman as she kept using sign language to communicate to him.

  He was deaf.

  His black T-shirt stretched tight over his shoulders as he crossed his arms, still watching the woman as she relayed the content of the lecture. With each successive line of the syllabus or announcement Dr. Mayer made, the woman repeated it in controlled, practiced gestures. It became apparent to Aaron why they made him sit in the back. The boy may have been able to read lips from the front row, but his companion’s signing would have been distracting to the rest of the students in the hall. By putting him in the back, the distraction was at least minimized.

  The first class was all about the syllabus, expectations, et cetera, and Aaron sat quietly, mostly listening. He found himself increasingly distracted by the boy on his left as he listened to the lecture through the hands of the woman. A sense of familiarity or similarity gave Aaron pause, because he understood all too well what it was like to have to rely on others in order to survive. Unable to imagine what it would be like to be deaf, to have the hardships the guy had to suffer through, he felt a surge of empathy as he turned back to the lecture.

  Just as he caught up to what Dr. Mayer was reading from the syllabus, his breath froze in his lungs. A quarter of his grade would depend on a partner project. He couldn’t do a partner project. Just the thought of being that close to someone, of the time it would take to complete while they stared at him with horror and revulsion, made him shut down completely inside. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples as the panic took over, and the room started to get smaller.

  It was all he could do keep it at bay until his mother arrived.

  “Mom, you need to talk to the instructor. I can’t do a project with someone,” Aaron pleaded with his mother as soon as he had shut the car door. She had arrived right on time, and was waiting for him when he exited the building at a run.

  “Take a deep breath and calm down, Aaron. Whatever it is, we will work it out. Now, tell me what happened.” Her calm was unnerving him. How could she be so calm when he was falling apart? He hadn’t wanted to go to college in the first fucking place, but now that he was there it gave him something to do. It allowed him to think about something else, focus on something other than the miserable reality of his life. His college career was about to end before it ever really got started.

  There was no way he would be able to graduate without this class, no matter who his mother talked to. It was the prerequisite for the next course in the series. He’d be stopped in his tracks if he couldn’t take it. The problem was, there was no way he would be able to work so closely with someone else. What the fuck was he going to do? His hands automatically tightened into fists, as they always did when the panic attack started. Whoever he was paired with, they would pity him, stare at him, maybe even request another partner because they were repulsed by him. Oh God.

  “Aaron, you need to calm down. I will talk to your instructor. What is the worst that could happen, honey? Think about it. You drop the class, or you split up the work with someone and never see them again. Maybe I can get him to let you do the project on your own. It will be okay.”

  Aaron looked into his mother’s worried face and nodded, taking a deep breath. She was right. The worst thing that could happen is that he was done with college. He had already lived through so much worse. Sitting back in the passenger seat, he closed his eyes, trying to work through the fear, work through the panic. His mother would take care of it; she always took care of it. He would be okay. He didn’t have to go to college. It wasn’t a matter of life and death. He was okay.

  After ten minutes of deep breathing and talking himself down, he finally opened his eyes to see his mother smiling at him.

  “Why are you smiling?” Aaron asked, genuinely curious. The moment didn’t seem particularly happy or amusing to him.

  “Even as recently as six months ago, you wouldn’t have been able to calm yourself down when you started to panic. You would have to have taken an Ativan.”

  He thought about that for a minute. She was right, but he pushed the idea away immediately because he didn’t want to hope. If he started to hope things were getting better when they weren’t, that would devastate him further when his parents finally sent him away. No, he wasn’t getting better. He would continue to have to rely on his mother, to not have friends, to merely exist. While he was medicated, he could dream about having a normal life, but when the drugs started to wear off he’d remember it could never be possible for him. So, when his mother insinuated that he was getting better, he filed the comment away to study when he could once again dare to hope. His mother seemed to understand.

  As soon as they arrived home, his mother called Dr. Mayer’s office to talk to him about the project, even going so far as to suggest that Aaron work on it alone. However, since the point of the project was collaboration, he wouldn’t budge. Programmers, he reasoned, often had to work in teams to accomplish their objectives. Dr. Mayer wanted them to start working on their team-building and professional social skills. By the time the conversation was over and she hung up the phone, Aaron wanted to vomit.

  Okay, twenty-five percent of his grade. If he aced the rest of the course, he could pass without doing the project at all. That raised his spirits. With a renewed sense of hope, he headed upstairs to start reading his first assignment.

  The next day in class, Dr. Mayer started to lecture about program struct
ure. Aaron watched him over the top of his flat-panel monitor, making sure to pay closer attention than he had ever done in any class. High school, from what he could remember, had been easy. He would listen to a lecture, do his homework, maybe study for a test or two—mostly in history—and then be done. Finishing high school through homeschooling was altogether different. Even though there were no other students and Aaron was sitting at his own kitchen table, he felt restless and anxious. Focus, memory, everything seemed to be a problem for him like they had never been in the past. His mother had a rough battle just to get him to the point where he could meet the state’s requirements for graduation. At the time, Aaron didn’t see the point in continuing his high school education, much like he didn’t see the point in going to college. The two positive things that had come out of both finishing high school and going to college were that the gestures seemed to give his mother a purpose, like she was making a real difference. It also kept his mind off the horrible images that continued to torture him.

  Aaron checked his watch as the instructor paused, to see there were still nearly twenty minutes of class left. He waited, but it seemed the lecture was over for the day. The woman two seats over sat quietly, and the boy next to him looked around curiously. Since they didn’t have lab work, maybe that meant they were getting out early. Aaron was fairly excited by the prospect.

  “Okay, guys, I’m going to end there to give you time to get to know your new project partner and maybe start work on your plan,” Dr. Mayer said, bringing up a class list on the overhead. Aaron felt the sweat begin to bead on his forehead, and the room was suddenly much hotter to him, his shirt collar suffocating him. The instructor was going to assign their partners. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t stand the look on some poor girl’s face when she saw he was her partner. Taking a deep breath, he tried to force himself to calm down.

  “As I call your name, stand up so that your partner can find you.” Okay, fuck calming down. When his name was called and everyone turned to look at him, they would all just stare. Everyone fucking stared. He was a sideshow freak. Grabbing his laptop bag from the floor, he bumped the boy next to him by accident as he threw his notebook, textbook, pen, and recorder haphazardly into one of the pockets and nearly turned over the chair in his haste to get out of the room.

  “Mr. Downing!” The instructor called after him as he reached the door and took off at a dead run toward the parking lot, not even stopping to call his mother to tell her he would be early. When she arrived, nearly fifteen minutes later, she found him sitting huddled into a small ball at the top of the stairs to the lab building with his arms wrapped around his bag, staring at his shoes.

  “Aaron, honey, let’s go home,” his mother prompted a third time when her first two responses were met with a terrifying silence. Finally, Aaron looked up, blinking in surprise to see his mother standing there. Slowly, he stood and followed her to the car on deadened legs. He sat in the passenger seat, still as stone, until they reached the driveway in front of their house. His mother pulled her keys from the ignition, removed her seat belt, and turned to him. Before she had a chance to ask, he answered her question.

  “Dr. Mayer assigned our project partners today,” Aaron said in a lifeless voice.

  “You don’t like your partner?” his mother asked.

  “I never found out who it was.” Aaron spent the next ten minutes explaining to his mother why he had felt so trapped and why he needed to get out. She nodded, like she understood, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

  “I’m just going to have to drop the class. I can’t let another student fail because of me,” Aaron sighed as he got out of the car and walked up to the house. Each step felt like he was dragging himself up the walk. He couldn’t wait to get upstairs so he could lie down. It seemed as if, lately, he had been the poster child for lethargy. In the afternoons he would get a soda from the fridge, use it to wash down a few pills, and chase unconsciousness.

  When Aaron got inside, he headed upstairs first to change into a long-sleeved T-shirt and sweats. He knew from experience that the more comfortable he was, the easier sleep would come. Well, except they were hot as hell. All his clothes, every piece was designed to cover his skin—from the long-sleeved shirts to the full-length pants. He never wore anything, not even in midsummer, that showed the scars on his arms and legs. They sickened him. It was enough that he couldn’t hide the ones on his face and neck. They were all a constant physical reminder of his nightmare, haunting him through every waking moment.

  When he came back down for his soda, he heard his mother talking. Since they were the only ones home, he had to assume she was on the phone. Feeling faintly guilty about listening to her conversation, he turned to go back upstairs, but stopped when he heard his name.

  “No, Aaron is all right. He was just… uncomfortable with the method you chose for pairing your students. He didn’t want a room full of people staring at him as he stood up to find his partner,” his mother said, and it sounded like she was starting to lose her patience. “No…. No… you couldn’t have known.” God knows his instructor could not have predicted that Aaron would run out of class. Most of the time, Aaron really had no idea what would set him off, and he’d been living with his neuroses for over two years.

  “Yes… I will talk to him about it. Thank you for calling.”

  She would talk to Aaron? Not that she would talk to Dr. Mayer for Aaron? Talk to him about what? Mildly irritated, he walked into the kitchen as she set the cordless phone on the counter. Continuing on to the refrigerator, he grabbed a soda from the bottom shelf. Should he just stay and talk to her now, or go up to his room? Sleep sounded really good right now. Unfortunately, his mother had made the decision for him.

  “Aaron, could we talk for a minute?” she asked in a voice that left little question she wanted to have a serious discussion with him. Her posture was almost rigid and her expression determined. He opened his soda, considering, and finally resigned himself to the inevitable. Taking a seat across from her at the table, he braced himself.

  “I’m going to drop the class,” Aaron told her, trying to beat her to the punch. He had no idea if she knew he’d heard her conversation, but he hoped she would take that decision and leave it at that.

  “I agree that is one option,” his mother said, surprising him. He didn’t think she would take that as a viable option. When she did, he relaxed, just a little. “There are other alternatives too.”

  “Such as?” Aaron asked without any real interest.

  “First, I want you to think about something. Dr. Mayer doesn’t generally assign partners in his classes. This is the first time he has ever done so. Usually, he lets students pick their own partners, but he did it to save you the anxiety of finding one on your own.” This did surprise Aaron. He knew that Dr. Mayer would probably be a lot easier on him than he needed to be, but to go out of his way like that just to make one of his students feel more comfortable…. It wasn’t just the mark of a good teacher, it was kind.

  “Why do you feel like you can’t do a project with another student?” his mother pressed, bringing one hand up to cup her chin as she prepared to consider his answer. He just wasn’t sure he could give her one. She wanted him to reason out his fears, to justify his panic when there was no logic to it. If he could act rationally and logically control his emotional responses in the first place, none of this would be an issue. So, rather than trying to explain the fear, he tried to describe it.

  “When I think about having to spend the amount of time needed to complete this project with a stranger, to see them stare at me, to feel their judgment and their pity, I feel panicky,” he said, trying to articulate the feelings as well as he could.

  “Okay, I can accept that. I cannot say that I understand, because I don’t, and I won’t patronize you by saying that I do.” It was one of the first times in his life that his mother had spoken to him like an adult. He found he appreciated it, more than he could say. It was mildly disconcer
ting, though, because he was so used to her trying to placate him. “So, what if you and your partner did a majority of your work through instant messaging or texting or e-mail?”

  In his head, Aaron started to protest, but since he couldn’t find a logical reason, he closed his mouth. What if all the work could be done over the computer? He could e-mail his instructor when he had a question, and that was okay. The better question was, why hadn’t he thought of it? He had been so preoccupied with the thought of having to interact with someone that it never once occurred to him that it wouldn’t have to be in person.

  “I… I guess I could do that,” Aaron admitted, but his mother’s expression did not change. It didn’t brighten as he expected it to.

  “Are you sure that’s all you’re worried about, Aaron?”

  “What do you mean?” Aaron asked, mildly confused. What else would it be?

  “Now, you can certainly tell me I’m wrong, and maybe I am. I’m wondering if there’s another reason you don’t want to work with someone, why you avoid people in general. Your best friend was murdered, and I’m wondering that you think maybe if you let yourself get too close, too invested….”

  Aaron stood up abruptly and left the room. He was afraid of what he might say if he opened his mouth. He was afraid of what he might feel, what he might relive if he allowed his mind to go there.

  Making sure his mother hadn’t followed, he stopped briefly at his parents’ medicine cabinet to grab one of his anxiety pills. After a moment of thought, he changed his mind and took one of the tranquilizers instead before going into his bedroom. His mother would not let him keep the medication in his room for fear he would kill himself with it. Downing the pill with the soda, he set the can on his desk and then threw himself onto his bed. Aaron lay on his stomach, his face buried in his pillow as he tried not to think about Juliette. Even now, he couldn’t remember the good times with her without hearing her scream.