Four Doors Down(49)

As we turned the corner by the last shed, I saw a couple of Ryan’s friends standing there looking behind them. When I walked past them, I saw Sam sitting on the ground further down, leaning against the wall and curled up in the fetal position. Jake stood awkwardly next to her, touching her shoulder. She was crying uncontrollably.

“Shit,” I muttered, dropping my bag and running over to her. I tapped her on the shoulder and when she saw it was me, she started to cry harder. I had sunk down next to her, wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into a hug, letting her get it all out.

I remember being scared. This wasn’t like Sam. She was so levelheaded and so calm; something terrible must have happened. I was almost too scared to ask. I tried to calm her down, telling her it was okay and that everything was alright, but she couldn’t stop crying.

I looked up and saw Ryan and his friends standing further away, watching us.

“Go away,” I snapped. The last thing Sam needed was an audience and with this crowd, Sam’s meltdown would be all over the school within an hour. “There’s nothing to see. She’s fine. Totally fine.”

I turned back to Sam and when I looked up again, they’d all left.

“What happened?” I asked her when she seemed to be calming down. There were still tears, but she had her breathing under control now.

“I can’t do it, Becca,” she whispered. “I can’t do it.”

“Do what?”

She had reached for her bag and pulled out a few pieces of paper. It was an algebra test. There was a C grade scrawled across the top in red pen.

I got it.

Sam is incredibly intelligent. As in top of our class intelligent and will probably be valedictorian. Her parents are both highly successful. Her mom is a top surgeon at the local hospital and her dad is a professor of literature at Berkeley. Her oldest brother was valedictorian and got into Harvard and is going on to study at medical school. Her other brother was also valedictorian and got into Georgetown, and he’s planning on attending law school after he graduates. Sam is fully expected to be at the top of our class, get into one of the country’s top universities, then graduate with a brilliant career ahead of her.

The pressure was immense.

Our SAT’s were coming up and I knew that she’d been hammering the books. Turns out, it was much worse than I thought. She’d been studying until two in the morning every night and getting up at five to get in a couple of hours before the start of school. She was physically and mentally exhausted. She had to ace the SAT’s, she had to make her parents proud and when she got that C grade, it sent her over the edge. She couldn’t cope with the pressure. God, no one could. She just wanted to please her family and make them proud but the expectation on her was huge.

“This doesn’t mean anything, Sam. You’ve got this, okay? Sam? You are going to be okay.”

She took a deep breath and nodded at me. I looked around, trying to figure out what the best thing to do was. Sam needed to get out of here and she needed to talk to someone about the pressure she was under and how she was feeling. Unfortunately, that day I didn’t have my car, and Sam wasn’t in a good enough state to drive herself. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get her home.

I helped her stand and wrapped my arm around her, letting her lean on me for support. She was so exhausted it was an effort for her to even walk. We walked around the corner of the shed to head back toward school and standing there was Jake and Ryan. They hadn’t left with the others.

I turned to Jake. “Can you give us a ride?” I asked him, ignoring Ryan as usual. “I don’t have my car and need to get her home.”

He nodded and turned to walk toward the parking lot. We followed him, but then I turned back to Ryan, who was watching us leave. I left Sam to follow Jake and moved toward Ryan.

“Who saw her? Who was with you when you found her?” I didn’t even want to know what they’d been doing all the way down here.

“Me, Jake, Mason and John. Bianca and Katie.” I nodded. “Sadie Whitaker, too.” I screwed my face up at that. “She’s a sophomore,” he explained.

“Right. I need to go find them then. You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? She doesn’t need everyone gossiping about her, Ryan, not right now. Don’t tell anyone and I’ll go tell everyone else.”

I turned to walk away and he’d held out his arm to stop me.

“I’ll tell them. No one will say anything. I promise.” When I turned back to look at him, he looked deadly serious. I nodded, thinking I really should be with Sam rather than tracking down potential gossips and turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm again. “Is she okay?” he asked with genuine concern in his eyes.

I shrugged. “She will be.”

Sam was okay. We went home, and when her mom saw the sort of state she was in, she was devastated and assured Sam that she didn’t care what score she got or which college she went to as long as Sam was happy. Then she arranged for Sam to go see a doctor and she started going to counseling for a couple of weeks to get her anxiety under control. She took a week off school and when she came back, she was more like her old self.

Ryan was true to his word and no one ever found out about her meltdown, and if they did, they never said anything about it to Sam. And I would know as I double checked with her a couple of times. In fact, Sam said Ryan was great when she got back to school. He got her notes from all the classes she’d missed, even the ones he wasn’t in, and he made it clear to her that no one would ever mention what had happened. They were in the same homeroom so they saw each other once a day. I had been a bit annoyed, to be honest. I’d planned on doing that for Sam, but he’d beaten me to it.