Birds of the Same Feather

"THEY DRUGGED YOU?!" Arthur scowled at me.

Katherine raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought you knew about this story already?"

"I know that she goes bonkers when she's acting and that she was bullied by her friends over there. But nobody told me about her being drugged." Arthur put his hand on his chin with a shake of his head.

"Bonkers?!" I exclaimed, not believing my ears.

Jake tilted his head then he turned to me. "You go bonkers?"

'Oh dear God, not again.' I started wondering if I'll be able to answer the question that Katherine gave me without losing my focus as well.

Mia scratched her head with frustration. "How do you even know those things?"

Brian tapped her knee with his paper boat. "Can we just listen to Zeanne first?"

"Yeah. Sorry." Mia nodded and they all turned to me again.

I heaved a sigh and calmed myself before proceeding with the story. "So yeah, when I woke up I was already locked up in a coffin."

"YOU WERE LOCKED UP IN A COFFIN?" Arthur exclaimed again which made Katherine slap his arm.

'Will we be able to finish talking about this by the end of the night?'

"Are you a parrot? If you don't know what happened, then just let her finish." She was obviously starting to get annoyed.

Then I overheard Jake asking Brian in a low voice. "Where did they get the coffin?"

And Brian just shrugged without taking his eyes off me. "Who knows. Try to ask later when it's your turn."

Before they could come up with questions again, I went on. "Where was I? Ah, right. They locked me up in a coffin and I was in that thing for a very long time until I started running out of air."

"While I was asking… begging them to let me out, it seemed that they started fighting among themselves for some reason. But I could no longer clearly remember what happened after that because I was suffocating and panicking at the same time."

I squeezed Katherine's hand as I focused on reminding myself that I was just telling the story and it's not really happening again. Then I found myself looking at Craige and it was weird how I somehow got the strength to continue with just one smile from him.

"But there's this one girl, Erin, who knocked on the coffin and scornfully told me to die. That was the last thing that I could remember before losing consciousness. Her voice and words are still engraved in my head that I used to have really bad nightmares about her. And hearing the same words used to give me anxiety attacks and bring me back to that night."

My eyes met Ameera's and horror washed over her face when she remembered what she told me during the audition. "Oh my God!"

"What? Why?" Arthur was caught by surprise by her sudden outburst.

"Is that why you had difficulty in breathing during the audition? Because of my line?" Ameera's lips were trembling.

"Ah!" Jake also exclaimed. "Was it that 'Just go and--mmmph!"

Brian covered his mouth. "Are you really stupid or what? She just said that it causes her to have anxiety attacks. Why would you repeat it?"

Jake nodded. "Sorry."

Shaking my head at Jake, I turned to Ameera. "It was not your fault. I lost my focus at that time and I was being careless. So don't blame yourself, okay?"

Ameera meekly nodded and Arthur tapped her back to comfort her.

"So that was the reason why I started suffering from insomnia. And watching anime until I could get a short nap has been my only way of sleeping for a long time aside from relying on sleeping pills."

I looked around and all of them were looking at me with a variety of expressions on their faces. Ameera and Mia covered their gaping mouths with their hands as horror filled their faces while Trixie and Brian both wore an identical frown. Craige kept a straight face while Arthur and Katherine's expressions dimmed with anger as their lips thinned to a straight line. And for the first time since meeting him, I saw Jake with a very serious look on his face.

They all looked like they each had a question that they wanted to ask but they're obviously holding themselves back until I finish with my story. So without delay, I continued.

"After passing out that night, I woke up in the hospital and learned that I was in a coma for two whole weeks. The doctors said that waking up just after two weeks, when I lost oxygen in my brain like that, was almost impossible. And it was already a miracle that I even regained my consciousness at all. But I managed to recover quickly after that and was discharged from the hospital sooner than everyone expected."

I tapped Katherine's hand apologetically and looked at Mia and Trixie as well.

"I told myself that I could not tell you guys what happened because I didn't want you to worry about me. But the truth is that I was just refusing to remember what happened that night, so I lied about having too much fun in Canada to remember sending you a message while I was there."

Katherine pinched my cheek with tears brimming on her eyes. "I can't believe you made me resent you for that."

Mia also pouted as her lips trembled. "Is this why you started refusing to attend my parties? Because you were deeply traumatized by that event?"

I nodded. "But it's far worse than that."

"What do you mean?" Trixie asked with a worried look on her face as well.

I always thought that having them worry about me would be troublesome. But the corner of my lips lifted because I never thought that it would make me feel as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. "I avoided Mia's parties because I would have panic attacks whenever I am reminded of what happened. But I didn't know that there was something else wrong with me until I went to audition for a role last summer."

"It's like having a system overload. My brain gets too excited and goes into an overdrive when I'm reenacting the role in the script. I can't be too absorbed with the role or else I will start losing my grip on the present and turn the story into reality. My brain tells me that I am the person in the story and makes sure that I play it out to the fullest: Happiness, grief, anger and pain." I played with Katherine's long slender fingers then lifted my head when Brian raised his hand to ask a question.

"What do you mean by playing it out to the fullest? Is it like maxing out your ability to act and make it seem real?"

Jake raised both his thumbs up with rounded eyes and almost instantly put them down with a crease on his forehead. "But isn't that a good thing?"

"Sounds great, doesn't it?"

From the corner of my eyes, I could see Arthur soundlessly shaking his head, trying to warn Jake of what's to come. I grinned at Jake and reached out my hand to him which he reluctantly took after crawling towards me.

"It'll be hard to explain the problem without a demonstration. I'll give you a simple scenario and we will act it out. I will squeeze your hand really hard until you cry out from pain. It's just pretend, don't worry. Are you okay with that?"

"Sure."

But contrary to my promise, I really squeezed his fingers together and he cried out in pain. But I didn't let go until he lay down on the floor then he cradled his hand against his chest. "Aside from being blinded of what's really going on around me while playing the role, I experience and feel every single thing that my character goes through very realistically. Does it hurt?"

Jake looked at me as if I was crazy. "Of course it hurts!"

"Then what if we all tell you that I didn't do anything but just touch your hand and it was just your brain telling you that I squeezed because that's what the script says?" I smiled when his eyes looked like they were about to pop out from their sockets as he looked around.

"That can't be! You guys saw what she did to me! Brother!" He looked at Arthur who tilted his head with a confused look on his face.

"What are you talking about? She was just shaking your hand."

Jake looked at his hand in confusion and very slowly, understanding finally came to him. "Ah! Ahh! I see!"

Mia shook her head. "Does that mean, when your character is having a cold then your brain will dictate your body to feel the symptoms of the cold even if you really don't have one? Isn't that dangerous? Then that means you should drop acting, right?"

"Amazing. As expected from the daughter of Doctor Reynaldi, you really don't disappoint." I smiled at her proudly then chuckled. "I should. But I don't want to."

Katherine squeezed my hand with a scowl on her face. "What do you mean you don't want to? If it's that dangerous, then it's only right for you to drop it."

'I haven't even told them yet about the time that I stopped breathing just because my character died.'

"If you injure your wrist and make it hard for you to do operations, will that stop you from trying to be a surgeon?" I asked Katherine with a soft smile on my face. I used an analogy that would surely make it easier for her to understand. And knowing how stubborn she was, I already predicted her answer.

"No."