TW for anxiety
Fitz and Trip were already at the melted picnic table when Skye and Jemma walked up. The boys were waiting for them with enormous grins on both their faces, and Trip bounded over, closing the last few steps between them and wrapping them up in a giant hug.
"You're back!" He was exuberant. His bear hug took both Skye and Jemma a little by surprise, although Skye didn't really mind it, except for the place where Trip's hug pressed too close on her still-healing cuts.
"Watch the stitches," she warned playfully. She was still working hard to keep the anxiety out of her voice, but it was hard not to let Trip's warmth melt away some of her nerves. Trip took a small step backwards.
"Sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't think about that. I was just so glad to see you, and that you're okay and everything."
"It's all right," Jemma assured him, while Skye overlapped slightly:
"You really missed us, then?" she asked with a smile. "You didn't forget about us while we were gone?"
"Come on, girl," Trip grinned. "You know I could never forget about you."
Fitz had shuffled over to them then, somewhat encumbered by his bulky coat and snow boots that, if Skye had to guess, were probably insisted upon by his mother. He hung back a little bashfully, but his face was just as electric as Trip's to see them. "Welcome back, then."
"Hello, Fitz," Jemma smiled. "Good to see you."
"It is," he nodded. He paused for a second, his face flushing. "Good to see you, I mean. Not to see myself. It's good to see you. Lance told me… he said some of what happened. I'm glad you're… that the doctors…"
"They had to remove a piece of my liver," Jemma said, with perhaps more excitement than the average person might have at delivering that news. "Just a little bit, near the injury site, the doctors told me. But it's all right, of course, since the liver is the only organ in the human body—"
"—that can regenerate itself, yeah," Fitz finished, a little green-looking. "Amazing, that is."
"I've got a surgical scar, and the sutures are the neatest I've ever seen," Jemma continued. "Skye's got stitches, too, but hers aren't quite so tidy."
"Yeah, well, you got cut with a scalpel, I got cut with broken glass," Skye huffed in teasing indignation. "It's probably harder to get a neat stitch on a cut like mine."
"Of course," placated Jemma kindly.
"Can we see your stitches?" Trip asked. "Not out here, obviously, it's way too cold. But later? Inside?" Fitz wheeled on Trip with a look of abject horror, like he couldn't believe Trip would ask something so preposterous, but Jemma lit up at the question. Privately, Skye felt like she might be on Fitz's side in this, but she didn't want to dampen Jemma's enthusiasm.
"I didn't know you were as big a medical nerd as Jemma," Skye teased, in an attempt to redirect the conversation ever so slightly. "I thought she was the only person I knew who got excited about stitches and cuts and stuff."
"My mom's a doctor in the army," Trip explained with a sheepish shrug. "And I've got an uncle in Indiana who's an EMT. Pretty cool job, if you ask me. Plus, scars are cool. I've got this one on my knee from playing pickup football over at Gracey Park that I swear looks like Argentina."
The first bell rang then, signaling that it was time to head inside and, mercifully, in Skye's opinion, warm up a little. She loved a good snow, of course, but standing around on the icy blacktop while the wind whipped and kicked around the brick of the school building made for a chilly start to the day. Of course, going inside also meant that she had to face the reality that she was, in fact, really going back to school for the whole day, and her insides took a small swan dive as she crossed over the threshold into the main hall of the middle school.
Jemma must have sensed her hesitation, because she took Skye's hand again and squeezed tight, tapping on the back of her hand lightly. "We can do it," she whispered. Skye swallowed hard and nodded, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other and follow behind Jemma and the boys. The hallways felt narrower than she remembered, and there were too many people bustling around, jostling them as they passed. Still, when she focused on the people in front of her – the pattern weaved into Jemma's sweater, the little curls in Fitz's hair around the nape of his neck, the green and yellow football keychain that dangled and danced from the zipper on Trip's backpack – it wasn't quite so bad.
They parted ways with Trip in the hallway shortly after, and when she, Jemma, and Fitz filed into their homeroom, Miss Hill greeted them all warmly with a big smile.
"Good morning, Leo. Jemma, Skye, it's very good to have you back." She paused for a moment, letting Fitz pass through on his way to his desk, then lowered her voice slightly. "I've been emailing with Phil the past couple of days to make sure we had everything set for you two, but if there's anything you need during the day, anything at all, just let me know, okay?"
"Thanks." Skye stretched the sides of her mouth out wide in the best smile of gratitude she could muster, although she had a sneaking suspicion that her expression came out more like a grimace than a grin. She appreciated Miss Hill's discretion, and she was glad to know that Miss Hill was in the loop about her role in the safety plan that she, Phil, and May had worked out, but Skye knew that if she lingered here to talk with Miss Hill about the details of their absence or of their return, she might not make it to first period, much less the end of the school day.
It didn't escape Skye's notice that Miss Hill left the door to their classroom open once the remaining students had trickled in. Normally Miss Hill snapped their door shut once it was time to settle down and listen to the morning announcements, Skye remembered, but she made no move to pull the handle shut this morning. A tiny fragment of stress chipped away from Skye's ribs, making it feel like there was only a 40-pound weight on her chest, rather than the 50-pound one she'd felt earlier, and when she settled into her desk next to Fitz and Jemma, she positioned her backpack so that she could feel the hard outline of Bobbi's baton poking through the fabric against her good arm. That helped a little, too.
Mrs. Henry's door also stayed open, Skye discovered, as she trailed after Jemma and Fitz towards their social studies class. They spent most of their time in class working on their ancient Egypt projects, which meant she got to pass the hour side-by-side with Trip as he caught her up to speed on the progress he'd made while she'd been absent.
"…And I found this book that talked about all these cool ladies who had been pharaoh," Trip told her excitedly.
"Like Cleopatra?" Skye asked, cocking her head to one side. She scrunched her nose slightly. "Didn't she fall in love with the Roman guy and then get bit by a snake or something?"
Trip laughed. "Something like that. She was in the book, but there was another one who I really liked that I thought we could do our report on. Her name was Hatshepsut—"
"Don't make me spell that," Skye joked. Trip grinned and rolled his eyes at her.
"I'll write it down us," he promised. "She was really awesome, though, I think you'll like her. She was one of the most successful pharaohs in Egyptian history and – get this – she wore a fake beard."
"You're making that up."
"I'm not," swore Trip. "I guess it was, like, a thing for pharaohs to have this certain kind of beard, plus they had fancy headdresses – a khat and an uraeus – and kilts called shendyts that pharaohs wore, and Hatshepsut basically said that if she was going to be pharaoh then she should have all of the usual things that pharaohs had, including the beard. She wanted people to take her seriously."
"Okay, you're right, that is kind of awesome," Skye conceded.
"So I was thinking," Trip continued. He got a little hesitant, like he wasn't sure Skye was going to like what he had to say next. "What if, when we have to do our presentation before winter break, we made a fake beard for you to wear?"
Skye raised her eyebrows, incredulous. "You want me to be Hach… Hat-sup… Hat—"
"Hatshepsut, yeah," Trip nodded. "Only if you want to, but I thought it would be fun. And we'd get bonus points for creativity, I bet. We could do our presentation like it was a talk show interview or something, like I was the reporter and you were Hatshepsut, and we could present what we learned about her that way, instead of a regular, boring, oral report. You know Mrs. Henry would eat that stuff up."
Skey thought for a minute. Mrs. Henry did like it when kids did that kind of out-of-the-box stuff for their projects, and Skye knew she could certainly use the extra points. "Okay," she finally agreed. "But only if my beard is really good."
"Come on, girl," Trip grinned. "You know I'd never give you a below-average beard."
That got a laugh out of Skye, and soon she and Trip were hard at work sketching out how they might make a beard and pharaoh's headdress out of the art supplies Mrs. Henry kept stocked in the back of her room.
"So what else has been going on while Jemma and I were gone?" Skye wondered. She stuck her tongue out between her teeth slightly as she worked to cut a strip of blue construction paper that they could wrap around her head to hold her khat in place. It was hard to maneuver the scissors with her arm in a cast, but she wasn't about to try and cut with her left hand. "Besides you learning about fake beards and pharaohs, I mean."
"Not much," shrugged Trip. He was doing his best to draw a cobra for the uraeus, but so far it was looking more like a lumpy peanut than a fearsome snake. "School's been school. Most classes have been reviewing stuff since it's almost break, or finishing projects like in here. Alex Braun said his dad was going to let him get a tattoo of a squid for his birthday, but then he said the place was closed when they tried to go, so he couldn't get it. Personally, I think he was making the whole thing up, but I don't know for sure since I haven't really been hanging out with him and the other football guys since… well, you know."
"Yeah," Skye hummed. "I know. How… how's that been? With Ward and Fitz and everything?" It felt like a million years ago that she and Trip had fought Ward in the hallway, that Fitz had gotten his concussion, and they'd all been punished for their stupid plan. Of course now, knowing just how stupid some of her other, later plans had turned out to be, the plan with Ward didn't seem quite as foolhardy in comparison.
"Fitz won't admit it, but he's still kind of having a hard time," Trip said quietly. He flicked his gaze over to the space a few desks down where Fitz and Jemma were huddled, heads pressed together as they poured feverishly over a pile of books on mumification. "He gets crabby by the end of the day; I think it's because of his headaches mostly. Well, and probably because he missed you guys, too," Trip added, smiling. "And I had to read the board for him a couple times in math. He's all stubborn about it though, so I kind of had to trick him."
"How'd that work out?" Skye smirked.
"Better than you'd expect," Trip said. He puffed up with small pride. "I saw him squinting at the board, so I acted like I didn't get the problem and read it out loud like I was asking him for help. Once he didn't have to read it, he solved it in basically two seconds, but he didn't even realize I'd already solved mine before I asked him about it."
"You're like an evil genius," laughed Skye. "But for the powers of good."
"So, like a regular genius?" he teased. Skye stuck out her tongue at him.
"You might be a genius, but you don't have to be smart about it," she teased back. It surprised her a little how good it felt to be playful here. She had tested the waters a few times at home, dipping her toes back into being silly and rambunctious with Jemma and Bobbi, mischievous and lively with May and Phil, after weeks of feeling like she had no life left in her at all. But she hadn't expected to find herself able to crack jokes and exchange easy ribbing away from the one place she felt comfortable these days. Something about Trip made things like that seem possible, though.
"Things with Ward have been… I don't know, weird, I guess," Trip continued, once they'd let the roll of levity wash back out to sea. That sobered Skye faster than she'd have liked.
"Weird how? Is he bothering you guys again?"
"No," Trip said quickly. "No, he's been keeping his distance for the most part, which is part of why it's been weird. It's like, he's trying to reestablish control over the school, but he doesn't really know what he's doing anymore. I half expected him to pummel Fitz the first day you were absent, but he didn't even try. He missed a couple days after we lost our football game and got knocked out of the playoffs, and he called me a couple names in the cafeteria a few times as I walked by to go sit with Fitz, but other than that, he's been quiet."
"What kind of names?" Skye asked. The back of her neck grew hot as she imagined what kind of horrible things Ward might try to sling Trip's way. She remembered what kinds of things he'd had the gall to say to her face, and she didn't feel like letting him get away with talking that way to other people.
"Nothing worth getting mad over," Trip soothed. "Mostly lame stuff like traitor and loser. I honestly think he's still ticked off that he didn't realize I wasn't on his side all along, and those are the best things he can come up with."
"He's the loser," Skye grumbled, flumping back in her seat and picking up her scissors again. She cut out the next piece of her khat a little more aggressively than maybe she needed too, and between her flaring temper and the awkward grip she had to take because of her cast, the paper came out looking pretty ragged.
"He's totally the loser," Trip agreed with a mischievous glint sparkling in his eye. "And I think the fact that he's backed off means it might be over for good. We won, Skye. That's a good thing. Let him pout and lick his wounds. If the worst he's got left is to call me a traitor, then I think we can take the W on this one."
In spite of herself, Skye felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "You sound like such a jock when you talk like that."
"I am a jock!"
"'Take the W,'" she laughed. "What does that even mean?"
"It means take the win, girl," Trip grinned. "And you should. Let something be good right now. God knows you've earned it."
For all the normalcy and lightheartedness that she'd mustered in social studies with Trip, it steadily slipped from Skye's fingers as the morning wore on. Mr. Bennett kept his door closed, and Skye had butted heads with her math teacher enough times to feel like asking him to open it would be deeply uncomfortable for both of them. She spent the entire period doing her best to stay calm, practicing her grounding phrases under her breath and trying to focus on the breathing May had taught her during their now ongoing tai chi lessons. She stared hard out the window, locking her eyes onto the movement of tree branches in the wind and the occasional blustery puff of snowflakes that flurried past as they were blown from resting places on top of roofs and cars. Anything to help her remember that there was a world outside of the room she now felt trapped in, that there was movement and life and fresh air just a few feet away from her, even if she couldn't feel it right then.
She didn't hear a word Mr. Bennett said all class, although she doubted she would have understood what he was talking about even if she had been paying better attention. Somehow they had already moved on from the probability they had started learning before she'd left and were now on something called a transitive property. It sounded more to her like the name of a lot where busses should park than something that had anything to do with numbers, and the fact that Mr. Bennett kept throwing out letters like x and y and z, like they were supposed to make sense, didn't help things, either.
By the time the bell rang and she clawed her way out of math and over into Mr. DeRosa's science class, she was veering dangerously close to becoming a total wreck, her head swimming with confusing math words and the nervous feeling that something was about to go very wrong echoing around the walls of her brain.
"Are you all right?" Jemma asked quietly as Skye slid into the seat next to her, a little shakily. Skye swallowed hard and nodded her head, although she knew she wasn't fooling anybody at the moment.
"Bad math class," she mumbled. "I'll be okay." She wrapped her arms around her backpack, which was sitting on top of the table she shared with Fitz and Jemma, and squeezed tight, hugging it to her chest so that the shape of Bobbi's baton pressed firmly against where her heart was thudding against her sternum. She wished she could take it out and hold it in her hand, but she knew Mr. DeRosa would probably freak out and send her to the office if he saw her waving a big wooden stick around in the classroom.
"What did you learn about?" Fitz wanted to know. "Maybe we could help you catch up."
"It wasn't really the math that was the problem," Skye told him with a grimace. "But thanks, Fitz."
Jemma gave her a pitying look and stretched out her hand, tapping lightly on Skye's elbow, just above where her cast stopped. "Did you do your breathing?"
"Yeah, I did my breathing."
"And your other steps? You did those?"
"Yeah." Skye left the 'but they didn't help' unspoken, but the heaviness in Jemma's eyes told her that Jemma still heard her loud and clear.
"We can try and distract you," she offered. "Fitz was telling me earlier about what I've missed in astronomy, about planetary compositions. We could tell you about those. Or you could pick an animal and I could tell you everything I know about it."
"That's okay. Thanks." Skye gave her a weak smile. She didn't want to hurt Jemma's feelings, since Jemma was trying so hard to help, but Skye wasn't sure there was anything that could really help at this point. She couldn't get her stupid breathing to go right, and none of the things Dr. Garner had given her to do were working, or maybe she was doing them wrong, because nothing she had tried so far had made the sick, anxious tar pit stop sucking away at her insides, stealing her oxygen and gunking up her brain with sticky, insidious thoughts about how something might have gone wrong at May's job and she might be hurt, or how Phil and Bobbi could have gotten in a car accident on the way to the high school, and she might never see them again, all because she went to school and they weren't together right now.
She might have managed to make it to lunch, might have managed to just sit there and weather science class and force herself to endure the fear that was zipping around her body, if it weren't for the fact that Mr. DeRosa shut his door behind him on his way into the room. One closed door that morning had already been bad enough – a struggle for her, but not totally unconquerable – but a second one, right on the heels of the first, was just enough to really push her over the edge. He probably just forgot; he wasn't paying attention since he was in the middle of a conversation with Cameron Klein, who sat two tables ahead of them, as he came in. But Skye was paying attention, and the world seemed to turn to slow motion as she watched the classroom door ooze into the doorframe. The sound of the handle clicking as the latch slotted into place went off like a bang inside her head, reverberating around her skull, and the last few strands of air she had were snatched out of her chest.
"Skye? Skye, you look ill." Jemma was tapping faster on Skye's arm now, and Skye turned unseeing eyes on her friend's face. "Let's ask Mr. DeRosa to open the door."
"No, it's okay." The voice coming out of Skye's mouth didn't feel like hers, and she shook her head slightly to try and clear the growing fog from her brain.
"He won't mind," Fitz frowned. "I can ask him right now if you don't feel like raising your hand."
"Or we can do the plan," Jemma added softly. "If you're feeling bad, we could—"
"I just need some water," Skye blurted, standing up abruptly and shaking Jemma's fingers from her arm. She stuck her hand in the air to get Mr. DeRosa's attention and requested the hall pass, which he granted her with only a slightly confused look. Skye didn't turn around as she propelled herself out of the room, wrenching the door open with a little more desperation than was probably necessary. She didn't want to see the worry crumpling up Jemma's face behind her or the curious concern quirking up Fitz's eyebrows. She didn't want to do the plan, didn't want to draw any more attention to herself. She just needed to get out of that room.
She swam down the hall in a daze, not exactly sure where her feet were carrying her, just knowing that she had to keep moving otherwise she'd explode into a billion tiny little pieces. A sluggish memory filtered to the top of her brain, of Jemma saying something once about how sharks needed to be constantly moving or else they would die. She was a shark. A strong, intimidating, confident shark. Definitely not a weak, scared, on-the-verge-of-a-total-breakdown guppy who was completely out of her depth.
She stumbled somewhat blindly up to a water fountain and gripped the sides tightly to force her hands to stop shaking. If she could just manage to catch her breath and slow her heartrate down a little, she might be okay. She might even be able to get back to class before Mr. DeRosa realized anything was up. She tried to take a deep breath, the kind of breath May had been teaching her to take in tai chi, but it was like all of the knowledge files about how she was supposed to inhale had been deleted from her memory bank.
"Skye?" Skye's head snapped up at the sound of a woman's voice, and she whipped around wildly to see Mrs. Hinton a few steps away. "What are you doing all the way on this side of the building? Are you okay?"
"Fine," Skye said automatically. There was a threadiness in her voice that betrayed her as a liar, and she could tell Mrs. Hinton heard it. She ducked her head, a little bashful. "Just needed some water."
"And maybe taking a bit of a walk, too?" Mrs. Hinton asked with a knowing look. "This water fountain's pretty far away from your science class."
Skye's ears grew warm. "I didn't mean to go so far." The last thing she needed was Mrs. Hinton turning her into the office for skipping class.
"It's okay," smiled Mrs. Hinton. "I need to get up and walk around sometimes, too. Do you think we could go into my office for a minute? You look like you could use a little break from class."
Caught, and with her options rather slim, Skye shrugged and trailed down the hall after Mrs. Hinton, who led the way back to her office. Mrs. Hinton beckoned Skye in, and while she pulled the door behind them, it didn't escape Skye's notice that she left it part-way cracked, so there was a strip of clear view to the hallway on the other side.
"Let me just send a message here, right quick," Mrs. Hinton said, fiddling at her computer for a moment. "I want to let Mr. DeRosa and the front office know where you are so no one gets worried about you."
She finished after a minute, then came around from behind her desk and sat on the little couch. She gestured for Skye to sit, too, although Skye opted to pull out the single chair from the worktable she had done her reading tests at so many weeks ago, rather than join Mrs. Hinton on the loveseat.
"How's the first day back going so far?" Mrs. Hinton asked kindly.
Skye felt herself hunch over slightly, and she pumped one shoulder up and down listlessly. "Fine."
"The first day back can sometimes be a hard day," Mrs. Hinton said. "It's tough to get back into the swing of things after you've been gone."
"I guess. That's not really the hard part, though."
"No?"
"School's always the same," Skye tried to explain. "When you've gone to so many different ones it doesn't really matter so much about the swing of things. You go to class, you try to listen or do your work or whatever, you go home."
"I suppose that's true." Mrs. Hinton gave her a thoughtful nod. "What would you say the hard part is, then?"
It took Skye a long time to answer her, but Mrs. Hinton was patient. When the answer came, her throat closed up around the words, shame shrinking the space where her admission was supposed to surface. "I don't feel safe anymore."
Mrs. Hinton hardly reacted to her words at all, aside from a small hum. "Tell me more about that." Skye frowned in thought for a minute.
"The whole world's not safe," she said slowly, as she pulled her words together into something at least somewhat coherent. "People get hurt, get taken away, get separated, get… get shot. I know Phil emailed you about…" Skye faltered. "I'm not… Things haven't been good. After all the stuff that happened, I haven't been… I get upset. Scared. I didn't want to come to school today. I wanted to stay home. It's easier to pretend like things are safe there. Easier to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist."
"But here, the world exists," Mrs. Hinton supplied. Skye nodded. To her surprise and embarrassment, her chin wobbled slightly as she did so, and her eyes blurred with a sudden burning.
"Sorry," she said brusquely, grinding the cuff of her shirtsleeve across her eyes to clear them before she did something totally mortifying and started crying for real. "I know this is all stupid. I know I need to go back to class."
"It's not stupid, Skye," Mrs. Hinton assured her. "Feeling safe is vitally important to anyone, especially when there have been instances where that safety has been threatened before. School is supposed to be a safe place, so if it doesn't feel that way for you right now, then part of my job is to address that and make the necessary changes to help make it so. And for the record, you're welcome to stay in here for as long as you need."
"Thanks."
"You know, part of what Phil was emailing me about last week was setting up a safety plan for you, and part of that plan is giving you a place at school where you can go when you need some time away from everything. Time for you to do what you need to – relaxing, getting calm, working through a feeling, feeling safe – whatever you might need at any point. That's what my office is for, and what the plan's for."
"I know," Skye mumbled. "I didn't really follow the plan. I'm sorry. Jemma said I should, but I just got so… I don't know, worked up, I guess, that I kind of forgot all the steps. I didn't really think things through. I just had to get out of the room."
"We're still working out the bumps in the plan. And," Mrs. Hinton added with a smile, "you still ended up where you were supposed to be if you had followed the steps the normal way. We can work on sticking to the steps later, if you need to use the plan again."
"Do you want me to finish the rest of the steps of the plan?" Skye asked. "I know I messed up the beginning ones, but I could still do the rest."
"It's up to you," said Mrs. Hinton. "If you think that would be helpful, then I say we try them. It wouldn't be a bad idea, but you don't have to use the steps if you don't want them."
"We should do them, I think. I still feel… buzzy, maybe. Nervous."
"Great, let's use them, then. What's the next step supposed to be, after you've made it to my office?"
"I'm supposed to do a grounding exercise, especially since my other ones weren't working earlier. The breathing and my phrases and counting and stuff."
"And you have a couple of options for those, right? We can take a walk, or you can practice tai chi, or you can use one of my stress relief toys if your hands need something to do. Your choice."
"Tai chi," Skye decided without much hesitation. She still wasn't very good at it, but the idea of doing something May taught her filled her with a steadiness that she hadn't felt all day.
"Phil said Melinda was teaching you," smiled Mrs. Hinton. "I'd love to see some of what you've been working on."
Mrs. Hinton helped Skye push some of the furniture around in the room to make an empty space in the middle, then settled behind her desk to watch as Skye began to clumsily demonstrate the opening forms for her. She moved from horse to crane to fish, the fledgling familiarity of the movements helping her muscles to relax as she settled into the patterns. She had to concentrate to get them right, and it felt good to have something to focus on, something slow and deliberate that could break her earlier fixation on her racing heart and shallow breaths.
As she worked, pushing and pulling, inhaling and exhaling with as much power as she could muster, and trying to focus on anchoring herself in her core – where her qì was, just like May had said – she began telling Mrs. Hinton about her day so far. That was one of the steps. Once she was settled in the grounding exercise, she was supposed to talk through the feelings that had made her feel ungrounded in the first place, so she could work them out. Identify and process, Dr. Garner called it. He reminded her so much of Jemma sometimes, with all his fancy words and logical talk. Skye told her about how nervous she was to leave May, Phil, and Bobbi, and how things had gone sideways in math, when she'd been totally alone and when Mr. Bennett had shut the door.
"I know doors can't always be open," Skye said. She frowned in concentration as she corrected the position of her elbow for 'strum the lute.' Inhale. Rotate. Exhale. Move hands. "I'm trying to get better about it. But I just couldn't handle it today. Not with everything else I was trying to deal with."
"That's very understandable," nodded Mrs. Hinton. "I'm proud of you for recognizing that in yourself. Knowing your limits is really important for keeping yourself safe."
"And then I couldn't pull myself out of it," continued Skye. Rotate, pull hands. Inhale. Step back, push. Exhale. "I tried my little things, the little tricks, you know? But I couldn't calm down. And then I went to science and I just… I don't know, I just kind of snapped. All I could think about was how scared I felt and how much I wanted to be gone from there. I kept thinking about May and Phil and Bobbi and how something bad might have happened to them while we weren't together. We're supposed to be back together after school, but if something bad happens… I know it doesn't make sense to think like that, but… Sometimes people promise that you'll be together, and then something happens that makes it so you get pulled apart. And nobody can control stuff like that, so promises only go so far. May and Phil kept their promise before – they got us back when we got taken away – but I guess I just keep thinking, 'what if our luck runs out?' What if this is it, we've used up all the promises we're going to get, and there are no more left to keep?"
"That's a scary thought to wrestle with," Mrs. Hinton acknowledged. "Guarantees are hard to come by in life, that's true. But it's also true that there's no cut-off on promises. There's no limit, not when people love each other as much as you and your family do. Some promises can't be kept, yes, but there's always an opportunity for the next one to be. And it sounds like Melinda and Phil have already shown you that they care enough to try and keep as many promises as they can."
"I want to trust them," Skye whispered, her voice cracking a little. "I want to trust them so badly it makes my stomach hurt and my chest feel like it's going to explode. But it's just so hard to turn off the voice in my head that tells me I can't."
"It takes a lot of practice to silence that voice," said Mrs. Hinton. "I'll be honest with you Skye, most adults still struggle to ignore the voice that tells them they can't do things, they they're not strong enough or good enough or whatever kind of enough they think they need to be. That voice doesn't really go away. But there's another voice, one that says you can. You are strong enough, good enough, more than enough to do whatever hard thing you're facing. That's the voice that matters, the one that's telling you the truth. It can be quiet, but it's always there. Listen for that one, give that one the microphone and let it drown out the negative one. It's not easy, I won't pretend like it is. But it's so worth it to be able to hear the right voice, so we always have to try."
Skye smiled in spite of herself. "I've heard that's a pretty important thing."
She finished her forms a few minutes later, and she felt settled down enough that she figured she didn't need to run through them again, so she and Mrs. Hinton pushed the furniture back where it belonged and settled back into their seats.
"It's almost lunchtime," Mrs. Hinton said, glancing over at the clock on her desk. "Do you think you need to do the last step in the plan, or are you okay to finish out the day here at school?"
"I guess I don't really need it," Skye said, a little sadly. It was true, she felt calm enough that she could probably manage to finish the day without too much trouble. But she also knew what the last step was, and if she was being honest, she had been kind of looking forward to it. She sagged a little in her seat and began bumping her cast up and down on her knee absentmindedly.
"Would you like to do it?" Mrs. Hinton asked kindly, correctly interpreting Skye's moping. "Sometimes even if we don't need something to get through the day, it can still help us feel better. We need those feel-good things too, after all."
"Can I?" Skye lifted her head and Mrs. Hinton smiled.
"Of course. The plan is here for you, Skye. To make you feel safe. Whichever parts of it you want to use, it's always your choice. Let me get the phone set up, okay?"
Mrs. Hinton crossed back behind her desk, and Skye bounced up from her chair, all but bounding over to follow Mrs. Hinton to the phone.
May picked up on the first ring. "Hello?"
"Hi Melinda, it's Polly Hinton. I've got Skye here with me, and we just wanted to call for a check-in," Mrs. Hinton said into the speaker. "Let me add Phil in on the three-way, just one second." She started pecking away at the phone buttons, and Skye leaned in close to the phone, stretching out a few fingers to run across the ridges of the speaker.
"Skye? Are you there?" came May's voice. "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," Skye told her, and this time, for the first time that day, it was true. "I worked through my steps. I'm okay. I just wanted to talk to you."
"I'm glad you called," May said. "I've been missing you today. You and Jemma and Bobbi. It's good to hear your voice."
"I've been missing you, too," Skye admitted. "But it's already almost halfway to the end of school. I think we can make it."
May's laughter bubbled out of the speaker, but Skye could tell it was a happy, warm kind of laugh, even without seeing May's face. "I think we can make it, too."
"Here comes Phil," Mrs. Hinton whispered, clicking the final button to bring him into the call.
"Hello? Polly? Is everything okay?"
"Hi Phil," Skye called, smiling.
"Skye was working with Mrs. Hinton," May explained. Her voice crackled a little over the connection. "And she wanted to give us a quick call."
"Hi, Skye," Phil said, and Skye could practically hear the smile on his face. "How're you doing?"
"I'm okay now. I'm going to go have lunch with Jemma and Trip and Fitz soon, I think."
"That's great," said Phil. "I'm glad things are going all right now. I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
"Skye, we're really proud of you," May said. "We know going to school was a really big step for you today."
"I didn't exactly do it right," admitted Skye. "I was having trouble earlier. I walked out of science, but Mrs. Hinton found me."
"You're following the safety plan," Phil pointed out. "That sounds like you're doing things right to me. And even if you're having trouble, the fact that you tried, that you knew you needed help… all those things make us so very proud of you, Skye."
A lump started to form in Skye's throat, and she swallowed hard to keep it down. "I think the bell's going to ring soon. I… I should probably go. I love you guys."
"We love you, too, Skye," said May.
"So very much," agreed Phil. "We'll see you in just a few more hours, okay? Stay strong, kiddo. And give Jemma some taps for us, will you? Let her know we say hi."
Skye grinned. "I will. Bye."
"Bye, Skye."
"See you soon, love."
And with that, she nodded to Mrs. Hinton, who hit the button to end the call. "Thanks for letting me call them."
"Any time," Mrs. Hinton smiled. "I'm glad that helped. It's nice to see you so happy."
And she was. She didn't know exactly what the rest of the day held in store, and she couldn't promise that she wouldn't still get nervous between now and when Phil picked her and Jemma up at the end of the day, but Skye knew that in that moment, she felt lighter and brighter than she had in a long time. There was a new fire kindled inside her, a warm and cheerful one that illuminated the dark and cobwebby corners of her brain where she had been stuck all morning. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to chase the shadows away, but something about hearing May and Phil's voices had conjured more than enough sunshine to light her up for the rest of the day. She could hear the voice Mrs. Hinton had talked about – the quiet one, the true one. The one that said she could. And, almost to her surprise, she found that she believed it, too.
Thank you all again so so much for being here and continuing to share this space with me. You all are amazing and I'm so grateful for each and every one of you!