Dustin had been in his tree house when he heard them coming down the road.
“My mom lets me sleep there sometimes,” he said. “I knew you were going to go to the Deep Downs tonight—I heard you say that—but I didn’t really think you’d be stupid enough to go in the middle of the night.”
They were sitting a little away from the cave entrance. They had told Dustin about the book and the jars. No one had mentioned the Starling, but then Dustin said, “What about that thing that fell out of the sky the other week? Does this have anything to do with that?”
“How do you know about that?” Alma asked with a gasp.
“I was in the tree house that night. I—I saw it. And then I heard you three talking about it at Astronomy Club. That’s why I’ve been, you know, interested in hanging out.”
“Interested in following us,” Shirin corrected him. “Like you did tonight.”
Dustin glowered at her. “Yeah,” he muttered. “So you wouldn’t die. You don’t know anything about these caves. It’s a good thing I did too, since Alma had a panic attack and fell in a pit … although some of that might have been my fault.”
Alma flinched. It was so easy for him to call her episode what it was—a panic attack—as if it was nothing. As if this secret that she kept so carefully hidden was no big deal.
“A panic attack?” Shirin turned to Alma, mouth open. “Wait! Are you claustrophobic too?”
“No,” Alma said. She shook her head, wishing she didn’t have to answer. “I’m—I don’t know what I am. I just get anxious. Really anxious. Especially in new situations or when there’s lots of people or—”
“Or around me,” Dustin said. “Right?”
Alma wanted to deny it, but then she thought of her first panic attack. She could still feel the way her shoulder had jerked forward when he had run into her, how her hands had slammed into the lockers to keep herself upright. She could still hear his voice yelling, “Watch out, weirdo!” And then, the part she really tried not to think about, after she had crumpled to the ground: “Hey! Look at this! Look at this girl!”
“You—you were there,” she said quietly. “The day I had my first panic attack. You pushed me. You—you yelled at me. You told everyone to look at me. You were making fun of me.”
Dustin stared at her, aghast. “That’s not what happened!” he cried. “I wasn’t making fun of you. I was trying to get someone to come help you!” When Alma didn’t answer, he continued, “My mom gets panic attacks, okay? She used to only get them sometimes, but after my dad—after he left last summer, she got them a lot. Like every day. So I know about them. I know how to help her with them. But that day—I didn’t know you, you know? I thought someone else should help.”
Alma tried to make this new information fit into the image of Dustin she had formed three months ago. It was hard to reimagine her first panic attack. It was hard to think of him as someone trying to help, not hurt her. Although not as hard, now that he had helped her again.
“Yeah, but you’re mean to us,” Shirin said, getting to the point. “Like constantly. And you and Hugo were best friends! Why are you so awful to him? Do you think you’re too cool for him now or something?”
Dustin’s face contorted in confusion. “What? No!” he said. “I don’t care about that. Why would I care about that? I just wanted—I wanted to be by myself.”
“Okay, but why were you so mean?” Shirin persisted.
“Because of all the stuff I told you!” Dustin yelled. “About my dad leaving and my mom’s panic attacks and everything I just said!”
Alma shook her head slowly. “That sounds really hard,” she said. “But it’s still not—you know that doesn’t make it okay, right?”
Dustin was silent. He glared at her. He glared at Shirin. He glared up at the stars. He glared down at the ground. Then he mumbled, “I know.”
Hugo had been sitting as still as a deactivated robot this entire time. Now he pushed his glasses up very slowly and said, “I didn’t know about your father leaving.”
In an instant, Dustin’s glare returned. “Yeah, because you never asked, weirdo!”
Hugo went back to being tense and stiff. Dustin went back to being angry. To Alma, it seemed as if both boys had stepped out of their own caves, just for a moment, and were now retreating back inside.
When Hugo spoke again, it was to Alma only, and his voice was flat and emotionless.
“I observed that you were breathing very rapidly immediately prior to the panic attack,” he said. “The ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide that you were creating in your bloodstream was unconducive for a calm outlook.”
“You closed your eyes too,” Shirin added. “And you got very tense and shaky.”
“It may be helpful to know that a panic attack is a self-limited phenomenon,” Hugo continued. “The human body cannot produce adrenaline indefinitely.”
“So it can’t last forever,” Alma said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“From what I have read, symptoms usually peak within ten minutes, then gradually subside,” Hugo agreed.
Shirin, at least, seemed encouraged by this news. “Ten minutes isn’t that long!” she said. “You can do anything for ten minutes.”
Alma laughed, although it wasn’t funny. It was, to use a Hugoism, ludicrous. “That’s what you think,” she said. “I just wish— I wish I didn’t have them. I wish I could just be happy.”
There was silence in the woods as the four stood by the entrance to the Deep Downs. Alma kept her gaze fixed on the stone gray and pine-needle-and-dirt-brown ground beneath her feet. How could so many precious, glittering things be buried there, in mud and rock?
“No one can be happy all the time,” Shirin said finally.
Alma glanced at Shirin out of the corner of her eye. Next to her mother, Shirin was the happiest person she knew. “Not even you?” she asked.
Shirin shook her head, hands on her braids. “Not even me.”
“Definitely not me,” Dustin muttered.
“Not me either,” Hugo said quietly.
What did this mean? Alma wasn’t sure yet. But her friends had learned the truth about her, and they were still here. No one thought she was crazy or flawed or destined to fail. And she knew one thing.
“I’m happy right now,” she said. “That’s worth something.”