Top Ten(91)

She sat back in her seat and looked out the window, half listening as Michelle and Jacob talked about the band’s newest EP; Michelle had sent her a link to listen, but she’d never actually been motivated to do it. Her vision was a little spotty, Gabby noticed as she stared at a poster for a language immersion program. She blinked, then blinked again; maybe her eyes were tired? She hadn’t exactly been sleeping well lately. Maybe she needed glasses before she went away to school.

Shit, she did not want to go away to school.

Gabby squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again: it seemed like maybe it was worse now, things going dark and blurry around the edges of her vision. It occurred to her that maybe this was more serious than just looking at her phone too much. God, what if there was something really wrong with her? She imagined it now, the doctor’s drawn face as she diagnosed cancer or lupus or some tropical disease Gabby had never even heard of. What if she woke up one morning at college completely blind? What if she was going completely blind right now?

“Um,” she said quietly, though she wasn’t sure if she’d actually made any noise or not. She was vaguely aware of Michelle and Jacob talking beside her, but all of a sudden it was like she was trying to hear them from the bottom of a well. It was really, really hot in here. Gabby could feel sweat prickling under her arms and in the dips between her fingers; she sucked in a breath of close, stuffy air, but it felt like her nose and throat were stuffed with gauze. Was the AC broken? Jesus Christ, why was nobody else in here about to suffocate?

Gabby put a hand on the seat in front of her to brace herself, dizzy. “It’s hot,” she managed to croak.

“It is?” Michelle looked over at her. Then she frowned. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Gabby said flatly. How was Michelle even breathing right now? The blotches around the edges of her vision were more pronounced than ever; god, she could hardly see. “I gotta get off the train.”

Michelle’s eyes widened. Jacob sat up straight. “What?” Michelle asked. “Wait, why?”

“Michelle,” Gabby said, loudly enough that the people in front of them turned around and peered over the seat in curiosity. “Please. Now.”

“Okay,” Michelle said, grabbing for her backpack and motioning for Jacob to slide out of the seat. “Okay. We’ll get off, okay? We’ll get off.”

Gabby was all but pounding on the doors by the time the train pulled into the next station at Ardsley; she tumbled onto the platform, bending double and bracing her palms on her shaking knees. Her hands and arms were numb up to her elbows. She didn’t think she could stand up straight. This was it, she thought, surprisingly clearly. Her panic was finally going to kill her, and today was the day.

“Gabby,” Michelle was saying. “Gabby, I’m gonna call 911, okay?”

“No,” Gabby said. “No, please don’t do that.” She didn’t want to see a doctor, to be poked and prodded and diagnosed and examined. She didn’t want anyone to look at her ever again. She thought suddenly of the night sophomore year when she’d called 911 on Ryan, how angry he’d been about it. Ryan, who she’d driven away by being insane. “Please, please don’t.”

She made it over to a set of concrete stairs leading to the parking lot, sat down and curled into a ball against the railing. She wanted to make herself as small as she possibly could. She knew intellectually that Michelle was crouched next to her on the sidewalk, whispering calming, quiet nonsense into her ear, but all she could hear was the sound of her own iron panic, her poisoned blood speeding through her veins. How was she ever going to go to college? How was she ever going to have a life? She’d thought she was handling this; she thought she had it under control instead of the other way around. But she’d been wrong. “My brain is broken,” she whispered as Michelle rubbed her back and confused commuters swarmed all around them. “Holy shit, Michelle, I’m so messed up.”





RYAN


Ryan spent the first two weeks of August pulling double shifts at Walter’s and practicing, for the first time in his entire life, a kind of constant performative fineness: acting as if his heart wasn’t broken. Acting as if his head didn’t hurt. He schlepped to Walmart with his mom and let her pick out a comforter for his Minnesota dorm room; he sent in the measurements for his new, university-issued hockey skates. He went on a couple of boring dates with Sophie’s cousin Shannon. He googled “concussion syndrome” and clicked out the window before any results came up.