Zeta Tau Xi’s Trick or Treat Chapter 1

Guilt

Gio’s POV

The heat is unbearable. We're already in October and the temperatures are still in the late nineties to early hundreds with wicked humidity to top it off. I should be used to this. I've trained and played hard all summer long and into the fall, covered in a jersey and layers of pads, since I was five. The training and games are outside in this heat everyday. They're long and grueling, pushing my body to the limits, while fighting to breathe in the hot, moist air. It’s been my natural state for most of my life.

But today, it's too much.

Today the heat isn't an afterthought or a mild inconvenience. It's an itch across my skin that reminds me of those awful woolen sweaters my ren used to make me wear on special occasions when I was a kid. The discomfort of the sweat that would accumulate underneath it while standing in the overcrowded family gatherings or the sweltering heat of the kitchen was as unbearable as the way my skin feels right now.

There’s a throbbing pulse in my head that’s making it hard to think. Jumbling my thoughts together so I can’t focus on anything past that damned heat and the way everything looks surreal. It’s so hot I can see a translucent beam of steam coming from the ground where the sun is beating off of it. An almost mirage-like shimmer that's mocking me and my agitation with the heat. Even the pavement seems more vivid than normal. The tar blacker than usual, the sidewalk a startling contrast as the sun beams off of it and turns the cream concrete into blinders. Even the green of the grass looks more vibrant. Like the world around me is more animated than real. More… wrong.

The discomfort of my skin, making it feel like it's not mine, like it doesn't belong to me. My lungs are fighting for more air, and my vision swims against the onslaught of the unnaturally vivid colors. The sweat and agitation creeping into my brain and making me replay the conversation earlier with Coach Byrnes in as much technicolor as the world around me is.

Had I really told Coach Byrnes to bench me? Fuck. What the hell was I thinking? After years of being one-track minded about going pro, letting it go all of a sudden should have been harder. I should have agonized over the decision for months, fought delusionally against it, made them make the decision for me and haul my ass off the field kicking and screaming.

I shouldn't have fucking volunteered. But the realization that I was fighting for the wrong future came out of left field. All it took was one twisted ankle and watching our second-string quarterback, Tristan Donovan, take a team he'd only been training with for a handful of weeks and leading them into an almost effortless victory. The opposing team had always been one of my biggest hurdles, but Tristan barely broke a sweat.

And even though it's been me on the field ever since, it doesn't take the realizations of watching him play away. Watching him during practice since then has only solidified my resolve of who should really be leading this team and what that says about me and my dream of going pro and the reality of my chances of ever getting drafted.

It made me realize I was holding out for a dream that was never going to happen for me. I mean, I'm good. I know that much. Coach Byrnes reiterated that much. I'm good enough to be in my third season as first-string quarterback for one of the power teams in college football. Coach Byrnes pointed out he places his players exactly how he wants them, so it's no accident I'm where I'm at. But I'm also playing at my absolute best. I know with everything I have that I'm not going to get any better than I am now, and that's maybe second-string on a pro team.

And if I can recognize that, then sure as shit the scouts can too, which makes my chances even less likely. In a pool full of players that are on the same level as me, I'm never gonna stand out. Not enough. I've had several years to shine and I'm a ‘just driven through a car wash without a wax job’ at best.

It's players like Tristan that scouts are looking for. Players like Tristan who have the potential to lead this college team to championships. Not me. I'm good, but I'm not Tristan-good. And this isn't me being petulant or jealous. This is me calling it like it is.

But knowing the best thing for the team is for me to step down should have come with a heavier emotion. Football has been in my blood since growing up and watching the games with my pai. I should care more about giving it up, be more unhappy, more defeated, and be fighting against it. But I'm not. I'm fucking volunteering and it's almost a damn relief.

But. I've spent my whole life dreaming of going pro. Why doesn't this hurt more? Have I been holding out for a dream more out of habit than desire? What have I lost and gained for not realizing sooner this isn't where I'm meant to be? And most importantly, how do I break this to my ren and pai. How do I dare look them in the face and tell them I don't want to go pro anymore?

After all the years they've spent dumping time, money, and enthusiasm into a dream that I'm only realizing isn't as important as I thought it was–as important as I told them it was. Them wrangling four kids around my practice and games. Sending me to football camps and one-on-one training sessions that cost more than what we could afford. The gear, the game, the damned protein shakes that still taste like ass. All of it, from running them ragged to having to survive off rice and eggs for days on end just to get out of the financial hole my football expenses put them into.

The anxiety of an entire realignment of my future goals on top of the guilt of it all, bearing down in my brain. Combining the heavy emotions overwhelming me and the sweltering heat and humidity that's making it impossible to breathe and my mind is hovering somewhere between numb and hazy.

I know what's coming. I can feel it now. The irritated skin. An unnatural spike in temperature at my temples. The feeling of my throat closing in on itself. I can feel it vibrating in my skull and the effort to keep breathing is damn near painful.

I move quicker, needing to get to the frat house I live in. I need to get out of the heat before I lose the battle with the panic attack that is dancing at the fringes of my eyesight. I need my bathroom with a cool porcelain tub. The cold surface is one of the quickest ways to soothe the worst of these down. Like the contrast between my feverish skin and the cool surface shocks my system.

My anxiety is going through the roof and if it gets much worse I'll end up losing my shit right here in the middle of the sidewalk along Frat Row for everyone to see. Won't that be fucking fantastic? Gio, the ISU's quarterback, has a full mental breakdown in the middle of the road. As if they need another reason to talk shit behind my back other than simply my ethnicity and the assumption that because I’m a jock, I lack intelligence. Pretty Gio, good for a fun time, but nothing else. Doesn’t matter that I’m one of the lead pre-med students in the school despite my full-time football training schedule, or the fact that my family immigrated to the states several generations ago. No, they don’t care about facts, they care about what they can see and spin to fit their narratives. So I don’t need to hand them even more ammo by passing out in the middle of the road. Shit, I’m making it worse. Focusing on the bad shit. 

I usually have emergency meds to take to stop a panic attack in its tracks, but they aren't good for performance and I’ve always powered through the season without them. I could get a special exemption to take them during the season if I wanted to. I have a diagnosis for my anxiety disorder and Coach Byrnes has offered to help me apply for the exemption. But they’re harsh on the body and can affect performance. It's also why I don't have regular medication either. When I'm already pushing myself to the limits, it doesn't seem like the right decision for me.

I try to regulate my anxiety with meditation, balance, calm spaces and tranquil music when I get overstimulated. But I also didn't plan to walk into Coach Byrnes's office and offer to step down for the team's best interest. I didn't expect Coach Byrnes to point out that I needed to at least finish this season because while Tristan is fully capable of leading us to the championships this year, Coach Byrnes doesn't feel like he's been with the team long enough to effectively lead as the offensive captain. I didn’t expect the guilt of what I’d put my family through for years, so I could chase this dream that I no longer want, to hit so hard. I didn’t expect to make this decision and not have it hurt nearly as much as it should have. And I definitely didn’t expect that to add to the guilt, to feel like an ungrateful prick for all those years, only to realize I don’t want it after all. 

Another hitch in my chest and I can feel claws reaching into my brain and squeezing it shut. The panic setting in that I might not make it to my room to fall apart in privacy. Black dots blot out my vision and there's a ringing in my ears that makes me feel even more cut off from the world around me.

It's the unsettling feeling of being hyper aware of everything around me and nothing around me at the same time. I can see everything brighter, feel the heat, the breeze that's too hot to bring relief with it, the shimmery strands of heat the pavement is emitting and the damned cream concrete that might as well be a reflector with how brightly the sun is beaming off of it.

I can feel every bead of sweat that's breaking out across my body. The way the hair on my arms stands up and how the hair at the nape of my neck is pulling. I can feel the sting in my eyes from the effort not to cry, and the stretch of each skin cell of my chest as it tightens and expands with each gasp of breath I’m fighting desperately to inhale.

And yet, I'm completely cut off from everything else. Someone could be standing beside me and I wouldn't know it. A car could crash right in front of me and it wouldn't even register. Hell, even if the car hit me I probably wouldn't even clock that I'd been hit until I woke up in the hospital.

The ringing in my ears almost suspends me into this pocket that is divided from the rest of the world so I can simply feel every cell of my body glitch out and fall to pieces.

My feet are moving on autopilot as I try to regulate my breathing just long enough to get to where I need to be. If I could breathe, I would have let out the biggest sigh of relief when my feet turn on the pathway that leads to the front door. Just a little bit more, I cajole my brain into a false sense of complacency.

And just like that, each small victory is marked by the slow progression of getting from the sidewalk to privacy before falling apart.

Just a little further.

Just to the front door.

Just through the door.

Just to the staircase.

And then another visceral wave of panic hits me when the stairs glare at me in mockery. The steps seem to go on forever in a cartoonish exaggeration. There's no way I'll make it up with my legs being this shaky. And just like that. It’s the final straw. The final defeat. My last thought is at least I’m in the house and not in the middle of the street, and then my vision blacks out.