Hi! Thanks again to all reviewers: keep up the good work! Here are the next couple of chapters... I hope you like them. ;o)
Chapter 12.
I got through most of the morning without too much trouble. For once in my life, I actually felt glad that my teachers were strict about not talking. It meant that nobody could ask me questions, which I could tell they were all dying to. Word gets around very quickly in schools. Everyone already knew that I'd fainted. I got concerned looks from all of my teachers as I walked into every classroom, and there were whispers and rumours everywhere I went.
At first it didn't bother me, but after a while I started to feel panicked again. I snapped at anyone who asked me a personal question, I yelled at six different people when they asked me about the rumours they had heard, which were completely ridiculous, as anyone who has been subjected to a middle school rumour mill will understand, and I completely ignored anyone and everyone who didn't speak to me. I did find a brief moment to calm down and thank Logan for his help, but I must have looked dreadful, because even he looked worried about me. By lunchtime, I was back at square one, actually feeling worse than I had before I'd come to school.
I headed to the cafeteria with Mary Anne, who is in my Social Studies class, right before lunch. She looked as if she wanted to ask if I was okay, but was terrified of the outcome. I suppose my bad mood must have spread all over the school as quickly as my fainting episode had.
We walked into the cafeteria, and I swear to God the whole place quietened. I have never felt so many people looking at me in my life. After a couple of seconds everyone seemed to go back to normal, and Mary Anne and I bought our lunch and went to sit with the whole group.
When we got there, everyone glanced up, nervously said hi, and then busied themselves with their food. I sighed. I was going to have to say something. I thought carefully for a moment, and then spoke up. I told them I had been having a really strange weekend – not bad, just strange (I saw Abby hide a smile). Then I told them that I had only got mad at the whole school because I had got sick of being questioned. They all visibly relaxed. Finally, I reassured them that my fainting episode had been nothing to worry about, that I was fine, and if I wasn't, the nurse wouldn't have let me go to class, would she?
Everyone calmed down, and went on with their eating. After a minute or two, I started to relax. After all, these were my friends. What did I have to worry about?
I soon found out. We were about fifteen minutes into lunch when they decided that I had relaxed enough to be questioned again. If it had been one at a time, I may have been able to handle it. But it wasn't. It was all of them at once. When I got angry, or gave evasive answers, they got louder, and our table gathered more and more attention. People from all around us began to join in. I could hear Abby's voice getting lost in the noise around me, begging everyone to leave me alone. No-one was listening to her. I wanted to tell them all to shut up, but for some reason I couldn't. My brain tried desperately to process all of the questions and all of my thoughts, and eventually it gave up. I put my hands over my ears to block out the noise, and shut my eyes to calm myself down. I tried to take long, slow breaths, and found that I was way past that. I could hear the voices around me change from nosy and probing to worried and concerned. I wanted so badly to just be okay. But as the noise drifted away and everything started to go dark, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening all over again. I felt completely and totally powerless. My last thought before I blacked out completely, was that it was a surprisingly relaxing feeling.