Chapter 30 Marlene
Marlene
When you’re having a panic attack, look around you. Find five things you can see. Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste.
I see a man standing in front of the trees. His back is to me. He’s tall and shrouded in darkness. Residual droplets of rain strike him from above. His hands are big enough to wrap around my throat.
Was that five or six?
I can touch the bark of the tree that I am hiding in, the hollowed-out center that’s keeping me from him. It scratches my knees, my elbows. There’s blood or snot running out of my nose. It mixes with my tears.
I can hear my own breathing, though I’m trying to keep it quiet. My pounding heart’s something else. So loud it feels like they could hear it from the highway, so I count it as two things instead of one.
There’s the smell of earth, the scent of rain. A boy in eighth grade tried to tell me once that rain doesn’t have a smell, but it’s permeating everything around me now. Rain and earth and—
Blood.
That’s what I taste. Metallic and sharp.
And one more for sight.
The man’s eyes as he turns and spots me, whites gleaming in the night.