"Trav, it's not like that. You know it. It's not. I swear."
"John," he sighed, shaking his head. Large locks of his red hair fell in front of his eyes, and he did the best he could to brush them back. "Look. I know you think you have it under control. And maybe you do, I don't know. But I'm just telling you that we're all really worried about you."
Something moved inside my stomach. It was cold, and it was creeping up towards my heart. I shivered and took a deep breath, trying to calm what felt like shaking in my stomach.
Travis was watching me intently, observing what I was doing. "John."
"I'm fine," I said, sounding a lot harsher than I meant to. I looked down at my hands. "I can't breathe," I muttered.
"It's okay," he said calmly, moving closer to me and putting a hand on my arm. He was still watching me closely, looking at my eyes.
I ignored him.
"John," he said after a moment, "I can see that this is bothering you-"
"What makes you say that?" I asked shakily.
"Well, to be honest, you look like you're about to have an anxiety attack."
"How would you know that?"
"Shadow," he said simply, referring to his younger sister.
"What about her?"
"She has agoraphobia."
"What the hell is that?"
He sighed wearily. Obviously he'd explained this to a million different people. "Basically she gets freaked whenever we're in open places or somewhere where there are a lot of people. She gets scared if we have to leave home for some reason." He sighed again, took his hand off my shoulder, and looked down at his bare feet, which he kicked back and forth subconsciously. "But it doesn't matter. We're not talking about her; we're talking about you."
"What if I don't want to talk about me?"
"Well that sucks, cause this is serious, John."
"What is this, some kind of intervention?"
He was quiet for a moment, thinking about what I'd asked. Then he looked me dead in the eyes.
"Yeah. Yeah, John, I guess it is."