My friend with glasses

I jumped off the already leaving bus and hit the asphalt beneath me. I turned towards the school and walked while holding my breath through the buzzing crowd. I was shaking. Blame it on nerves if someone asks. Keep eyes on ground. Waves crashing over and over. I glanced up to see where I was going, and someone caught my eyes. There was this kid at school. He stood out, so I wearily walked over to him. He wore thick glasses, a red jersey and jeans. He was my first friend. My only friend. This was my friend with glasses. 

After second period I stumble over to the loud cafeteria. The cafeteria kind of looks like a hospital, white walls, light blue table and seats but other than that the cafeteria was a mess. I saw him in the corner of the loud cafeteria. I walked over towards him in the corner and yet I was pushed over on the way. My lunch was all over my new jacket and my face was pushed into gum. The lino was cold under my body. My heart felt like it was trying to escape my own body and sending all its blood to my face. Think of waves. Waves crashing. I turned over to see who had pushed me. Waves still crashing.  A boy then spat in my face and called me a weirdo. Waves rolling around and through each other. I shut my eyes hoping tears wouldn't fall. I stood up shaking again like this morning, grabbed a napkin and wiped of my lunch. Calm on the outside yet dying in the inside, I walked over and sat down with my new friend in the corner. He kept eating and staring at his book. I knew from then on this was going to be it. I squeezed my eyes shut and were glued to my eyelids as I tried to imagine the sea so I wouldn’t spiral.  

I was scared this was going to happen. This happened at my old school and was the reason we moved.  Mother thinks I have anthropophobia, fear of people. I keep telling her it’s a phase, I will get over it, and that was the only reason she let me go back to any school. Although if I feel like there is too many people or if someone such as taps my arm for attention, I might go into a spiral. Spiral, meaning panic in fear so much that I black out. Mother calls it an “episode” but that sounds to formal, so I call it a spiral. That's why I moved to a school with less people in it.  

I sat with my new friend the next day again after some shoving and huge panicking to get to him. We sat for a while, I got myself together and I asked him his name, yet he wouldn't answer. I did this for three days till he told me with a slight tilt of his mouth. Some would say he nearly smiled.  

When I sat with him, we talked. But I will never forget what he told me on that first day under his breath. I had just been shoved. I was thinking of waves crashing and rolling over and against each other whilst he just continued reading. Then he whispered under his breath, not taking one glance away from his book "Don't trust no one. Everyone has secrets. You have yours, I have mine, they have theirs."  

After that I didn’t have many “episodes”. Mother was thrilled with that fact, so I told her about my friend, she told me she was so proud of me getting over my fear of people so fast. 

Around two months later Mother insisted I have my friend come round for dinner in the weekend. I asked him in school that day and he turned me down. Yet that night he showed up at my doorstep, books in hand, saying he was there to study. Mother was at work now and would be home close to midnight. We studied hard then he stood up and left just before mother got home. 

Mother told me to ask him again the next week, so I did. He said no. Yet he turned up again that night. Again, we studied harder than the week before and like last time, he had to go. I only noticed this now, but he always leaves just before Mother got home. 

Once again mother asked me to invite him around, she didn't have a shift tonight, so I asked him. This time to my surprise he said yes. he showed up at around five pm and slammed the door behind him which made the house tremble. Mother came to the door after hearing the noise to introduce herself.  

Mother searched the entry way with her eyes and when her eyes landed on me, I spoke, "This is my friend" I said gesturing to him behind me. She started to cry. At the time I didn't understand why. She stood crying for a second then hurried to the phone on the wall and called a number, I turned to see where my friend was, but he had disappeared. Mother finished her call and ran up to me and threw her arms around me and holding on as if her life depended on it. She kept crying until we heard an ambulance. She rushed me out the door into the waiting ambulance. A doctor put something into my arm, and I don't remember anything after that.  

You now ask me, in this boxy office littered with paper and important documents, if I still see him. I look at the planters hanging on the windowsill. I am uncomfortable telling you this while I sit on a childish beanbag. I just handed you a slice of my life and you ask me about him. I don't tell you. So, you diagnosed me. I am schizophrenic you say. But I don't think so. I don't think that because of what he told me. I think. I think I see ghosts. 

I know you therapist like to have us write in these little diary entries so we can overcome our fear, like how in books the hero or someone always have a death-defying fear that they can defeat that fear and then save the fairy princess or whatever. Too bad real life isn't like that. You can't just be handed a pen and paper and expect to finish writing with a whole new vision of the world. You can't expect me to do that. Yes, we all have our fears, but we also have our problems. I have the ability to see ghosts, yet you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. And I fear people. So, for now I'm schizophrenic in your books. But in my books. Well. In my books I see ghosts. 

And tonight, is Halloween.