Your best friend dragged you to a party tonight. You have both known each other since kindergarten, but you can also both feel each other gradually slipping away as you want different things in life, so she wanted this to help. She wants to be a stripper, use her body for money. But you want to be a neuroscientist. Your mother had you when she was 16, and had been living with severe depression since she was about the same age, until she gave up and committed when you were 10. You always had to take care of her and yourself at once, and you don’t want to let anyone else have to go through anything like that ever again. You have uppermost grades in all of your classes and you have near-perfect attendance. Your best friend doesn’t understand how hard it has always been for you, she doesn’t understand what it means to you, though you’ve tried to make her understand. Practically the second that the two of you had walked into the party, you lost her in the crowd, the crowd of yelling, dancing, drinking, kissing teenagers. You had always been easily overwhelmed and it didn’t help that you wouldn’t be here if you had a choice. You bite your lip and flit your eyes through the crowd before being able to push through, finding an empty room, already feeling like prey in the sea of too-loud people, drunken kids, the sounds of kissing, the visuals of thoughtless dancing, your heart racing unhealthily quickly and your pupils dilating with overstimulated fear. You close the door to the room you found and practically throw yourself to the floor in the corner, in a fetal position. You can hear your heart in your throat and feel your breath quickened to a lurching rate. The sounds of the party can still be heard. After a few minutes of trying uselessly to calm down, the door opens and in comes the silhouette of a man that you don’t know. It takes him practically a full minute to notice you, but you assume he heard your panting. His eyes widened and he closed the door before walking over to you and crouching down beside you.