The walls feel too close.

I know they’re not. I know we’re in a normal room — my room — but it feels like the drywall is breathing. Like the shadows are moving. I’m standing by the window, fingers twitching, and I can’t get a full breath in. My skin is buzzing. I’ve already clawed at the inside of my sleeves enough that the fabric’s gone loose.

I hate this. I hate that I can feel myself unraveling in real time. And I hate more that everyone around me can tell.

Voices hum outside my door, muffled through the wood, and I catch my name. Again. And again. Then the shuffling. Then the whisper that lands like a soft blow to the back of my head.

“Call her.”

They don’t say her name. They never really need to.

Because when I’m like this — stripped of all the things that make me feel in control — she’s the only one who works. Not meds. Not grounding exercises. Not even my mom, and she’s the strongest person I know.

It’s her. It’s always been her.

Even when we were kids, when I couldn’t sit through a full lunch without spiraling, she’d just reach over and hook her pinkie around mine. Say something dumb and simple, like “You’ll be okay, Xander. We’ll be okay.” And that tiny gesture — that pinkie hold — it was like plugging myself into a socket. Static fizzled out. Light came in.

My door creaks open, and I don’t have to look to know it’s her.

I feel it. In the change of air. In the way my shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. In the way I can suddenly breathe like there’s actual oxygen in the room again.

She walks in soft. Doesn’t say much. Doesn’t need to.

My head’s bowed, eyes glued to the floor, but I hear her approach. The shuffle of her sneakers. The soft sound of her hoodie brushing against her jeans. Then the pause. The wait. She always waits for me to move first.

I don’t talk. Can’t. But I hold out my hand.

Her pinkie finds mine instantly.

I let out a shuddered breath.

“I’m here,” she says, so quiet it’s barely a whisper. Like she’s talking to my pulse. “I’ve got you.”

I nod — just once — because if I try to speak, I’ll break. And I can’t break, not in front of her. Not when she’s already the glue.

“You want to go out?” she asks, gently. “Just out the back? Some air?”

The thought makes my chest tighten, but she doesn’t push. She never does. She just waits, pinkie still wrapped around mine, thumb lightly brushing the side of my hand. So soft. So grounding.

And I don’t know how she does it — how she makes the most terrifying things feel like something I can do. Not alone, never alone, but with her? Always.

“Yeah,” I murmur eventually. “Okay.”

She smiles — I hear it in her voice more than I see it. “We’ll go slow.”

We walk like that — barely touching, but anchored. Like two planets caught in orbit. And as the door swings open and fresh air hits my face, I swear the static dulls just a bit more.

And for the first time in hours, I believe myself when I whisper, “I’m okay.”

Because I’ve got her pinkie. And she’s still here.