"Oh god. Oh god." The words tumble out of my mouth in a broken loop, barely audible over the hitch of my own breathing. I'm hunched on the closed toilet seat in the Chuks Cheese employee bathroom, knees tucked so tightly to my chest they might fuse there. My body rocks without me telling it to, back and forth, like a badly balanced pendulum.
The room is too quiet. Too sterile. Every little sound, the hum of the flickering fluorescent light above, the distant thud of something in the kitchen, feels sharp enough to cut through me. I'm alone, which is the only reason I let the sobs rip out of me, raw and ugly. They scrape my throat, leave me gasping.
