And I tried to resist, but something in her just cracked. She pushed and pushed and pushed until she yanked the door open and pushed me out the same way she’d just pulled me in. I tumbled out into the hallway and crashed right into Dr Zanker. I remember everything as if it all happened in super slo-mo. Dr Zanker wasn’t watching where he was going. He was in a hurry and certainly didn’t expect a kid to crash into him in the middle of the hallway. He was wearing a surgical mask and carrying a small nasal spray bottle. I slammed into him in mid-stride, knocking the bottle out of his hands. He fumbled for it, but he only slapped it up into the air even higher. I fell in a flop to the floor, and a moment later, the bottle hit the cold, hard tiles too. Right in front of me. Close enough that I could read the label – Personal Vexation Zoners (PVZ). Close enough that when it cracked open I got a big whiff of it right in the face.
I immediately panicked. Instead of covering my mouth, I gasped for air. Not smart. By the time I sat up, the PVZ bottle was empty and I’d inhaled it all.
“What did you just do!” shouted Dr Zanker as he snatched up the broken bottle.
I leaped to my feet and wiped my face as if that would somehow get rid of the evidence. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was about to take off, make a run for it, when a fire alarm rang out. The hall quickly flooded with lab technicians and employees. As Dr Zanker scrambled to collect the broken pieces of his PVZ bottle, Lucy came out of nowhere, grabbed my arm, and ushered me into the crowd.
Before I could really process what had happened, we’d gone back through the main door between the labs we should never have gone into in the first place and the hallway we should have been waiting in this whole time. Up ahead, Dad guided his focus group towards the lobby. “Just remain calm,” he said, “like PVZ will make you. Eventually. When it’s approved for mass consumption.” One of the focus group members gave him a dirty glare, so he shouted to the whole group, “And don’t worry, you’ll still get your free vouchers!”
I headed towards him, but Lucy stopped me before he could see where we had come from. We saw Dad look at the empty bench, realise we weren’t there, and then spin around to scan for us. Lucy pushed us behind a rather large lab tech, and by the time Dad had done a full 360, we were back sitting on the bench as if we’d never left.
“Oh, where … I just …” Dad stammered, confused. “Never mind. We need to evacuate.” As he guided us both towards the lobby, I saw Lucy slip his security card back in his pocket. She was so much sneakier than I ever imagined. The fire alarm kept blaring and that’s when I put it together.
“Did you pull—” But I was cut off by Lucy’s elbow in my rib cage. Dad took one look at me and asked his standard, “Hey, are you okay?” He saw me look accusingly at Lucy and asked the even more standard, “What’s going on?”
I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but despite how much we drive each other crazy, we must have some instinctive sibling bond that sparks in times of crisis. Without even hesitating, we both said, “Nothing!” as if it had to be the truth. Dad wasn’t convinced, but there was no time for cross-examinations. We had just made it to the lobby exit when Pauline Salt popped up out of nowhere, like a jump scare in a horror movie. “The focus group was cut short, Dale. This whole day is now void,” she said, completely oblivious to the concerned people trying to get to safety all around her. “You’ll have to redo it. We go to the board next week. No mistakes. No excuses.”
Dad stared at her like a chastised child. “But … it’s a fire alarm.”
“No. Excuses,” she reiterated. And then Pauline Salt click-clacked away, against the tide of the crowd, back towards the labs as if the fire better be afraid of her.
As I watched her go, I spotted Dr Zanker frantically searching the crowd. We made eye contact, and he lit up like I was the dessert tray after a fancy meal. “Slim!” Dad shouted after me, reminding me that I was once again two steps behind them. I ran to catch up, slipping through the door just as it was shutting. The last thing I saw through the closing gap was Dr Zanker standing there, still watching me, as a creepy, giddy smile slid across his face.
We parked in the driveway of the model home after a long ride in total silence. Dad seemed to be preoccupied with work. And considering how Pauline Salt had chewed him out, I didn’t blame him. Lucy kept quiet in the back seat, not even using her phone. I was pretty sure she was just trying to keep a low profile to prevent me from abruptly ratting her out about sneaking into the labs.
But any hope of remaining calm and quiet was shot when I went inside. Mom took one look at me and rained down questions I didn’t have the energy to answer: “Are you okay? You look pale. Are you sick? What did Dad do with you? Did he give you candy? Is it a tummy ache? You know sugar doesn’t help your anxiety. Did you at least do your homework? Why are you looking at me like that? What happened?”
Thankfully, Dad was totally in the mood to answer that last question. “What happened, Leslie, is that you screwed up our schedules – AGAIN.”
Lucy had already run upstairs to avoid getting roped into the drama. But I couldn’t pull myself away. It was like watching a car crash you’re powerless to stop.
“I didn’t ‘screw up’ our schedules, Dale; you just never bother to listen to anyone.”
Dad scoffed. “Oh, I hear you. Trying to control everything and everyone as usual.” And from there came a familiar litany of complaints – the missed opportunities, the forgotten anniversaries, the lack of empathy, the time we got stuck at that gas station on the way to Big Moose Lake. (Dad locked the keys inside the car!) I knew exactly how the rest would go and that it wouldn’t stop until one of them said something mean enough to end it. I didn’t need to stick around to witness that part. So, I trudged up the stairs after Lucy and shut the door to my model room in my model home right above my not-so-model parents, who I could still hear shouting.
“Fire alarm?! After what Slim already went through today? Did you WANT him to have another episode?”
“Slim was fine! He is fine! Well, mostly. And anyway, my focus group today was for a new treatment that could end up helping him when it’s released.”
“Oh God, you sound just like that sociopathic boss of yours,” Mom shot back. “We agreed to this ‘medication vacation’,” she continued. “And I’m looking for a new therapist, since he won’t actually talk to the one we’re wasting money on. I just haven’t found the—”
“TIME?” Dad scoffed again. “All those years and God forbid I missed one of your imaginary deadlines for mowing the lawn or replacing the Brita filter, but you can’t hit a deadline on helping our son?”
No matter what the fight started about, it always included what to do about me.
I always seemed to be the problem.
I lifted the bottom edges of a life-size Spider-Man poster (one of the few personal touches I was allowed to add to our model life), revealing an almost unnoticeable little door in the wall. It was built to be a storage cubby, but it’s got a little light inside and over the past few weeks, I’d filled it with blankets and comics and a good-size candy stash. It’s my “safe space”. No one knew about it. I crawled in, shut the door, put a pillow over my face, and screamed my frustrations into it. When I was done, I felt a little better. I opened an X-Men comic, grabbed some Twizzlers, and gnawed down three at a time until my parents’ shouting faded away and I heard Dad slam the door and leave.
Everything got very still and very quiet after that. I almost felt like I could breathe again, but as soon as I realised that, I began to feel guilty. Like I was happy my parents weren’t together. And that’s how I would feel if it really were my fault. I got a sinking feeling in my gut, and it wasn’t from the candy. My thought spiral was picking up speed again, so I started doing the mental exercises my therapist gave me to reframe my negative thoughts. I told myself that I’m okay. That everything is going to be okay. Then I got specific. I remembered Pauline Salt saying PVZ is for anxiety issues. So I thought to myself, Maybe I’m starting to calm down because