“Gabby, sweetheart,” her mom began, her deep breath audible from clear across the room. “You know I’m here if you ever want to talk about how you’re feeling, right? You know you can always come to me? Or if you ever wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t me, even—”
“I’m feeling great,” Gabby mumbled into the pillows, interrupting. “Just tired.”
“Gabby,” her mom said again, but Gabby didn’t answer. Eventually, her mom gave up and closed the door.
So. They were broken up. She’d gotten through it once before, Gabby reasoned; she thought she could probably do it again. Granted, they hadn’t been dating the first time, and she’d had Shay to cushion the blow of it, but still. She didn’t need him. It was what it was. It was fine.
It did not feel fine.
She missed being quiet with him. She missed his loud, stupid laugh. She missed his hands and his mouth and the steadiness of his best friendship but worse than all of that was the undeniable fact that some very important, tethered part of her had shut down when they broke up and now she seemed to be hurtling off through space at a million miles per hour, her oxygen tank rapidly emptying out.
Her mind was a ceaseless churning, wracked by the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. She woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Her jaw started aching, then her neck and the back of her head and her shoulders. Her body felt a hundred years old.
“Go out,” Celia suggested, when she caught Gabby downing ibuprofen in the bathroom. “Get some sunshine.”
“Wow, thanks,” Gabby said, scowling at her in the mirror. “You know, I think you just solved all my problems at once.”
Even if she had wanted to go out, it wasn’t like there were a whole lot of people clamoring to spend time with her. It didn’t take long at all to become clear that the friends she’d thought she and Ryan had in common—Sophie, Nate, Anil—were very much Ryan’s friends, people who’d tolerated and even liked her but who, when forced to pick a side, didn’t blink before deciding. Gabby couldn’t blame them. She would have chosen Ryan, too.
Michelle was the one exception, showing up with iced teas and pointedly flinging the windows open, perching on the edge of Gabby’s desk with the comfort of a person who’d been visiting her house for the better part of a decade. They’d hung out a little more sporadically in the last couple of years, but Michelle was a really good friend, actually. Probably Gabby hadn’t appreciated her enough. Probably Gabby had done a lot of things wrong.
“Jacob and I are going to a show down in Williamsburg tomorrow,” she offered now, slurping the last of her iced mint tea and rattling the ice noisily. “You should come.”
Gabby considered it—she hadn’t left the house in three full days—but the idea of taking the Metro North all the way into the city, then getting on another train and going to Brooklyn, then standing in a hot, crowded room where she probably wouldn’t be able to see and listening to music she didn’t already know she liked seemed so profoundly difficult and terrifying in this moment that Gabby was certain there was no way on earth she could go.
She scrubbed a hand through her hair, remembering Ryan telling her she never wanted to do things. Remembering Celia telling her to go outside. She sat there in bed for another minute, debating, before finally sitting up and pushing her hair out of her face. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. I can come.”
They got on the train in Poughkeepsie, found three seats together on the river side. Normally Gabby really liked the train, the soothing rocking motion and the view of the Hudson, but she’d had a gnawing headache since that morning; she’d chalked it up to garden-variety dread, refusing to bail on the concert even though she was dying to. Annoying as it was, she told herself firmly, Celia was right. She couldn’t expect to feel better if she stayed in the house all the time.
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?”