Here goes.

“Afraid that I’m going to die. That it’s all going to end. That everything is arbitrary, and that this is just, like, a video game where you only get one life and that I might not get past this level.”

Gideon leans closer into his camera. He runs his hand through his hair, then looks right at me and says:

“I know exactly how you feel, Parisa.”

Suddenly, I’m afraid I might burst into tears. I bite the inside of my cheek, hoping the pain will distract me from crying. I thought I was the only one who had these thoughts.

“You do?”

He nods. He says his meds have helped a lot, but there used to be a time when he’d go to sleep at night afraid that maybe he had some undiagnosed heart defect that would end his young life before sunrise. Sometimes he’d get panic attacks in the middle of the night. And that in the morning, when he did wake up, he had this overwhelming sense of relief that he was still alive. We spend the next thirty minutes talking about all the things that terrify us. Airplanes (takeoff is the scariest), changing lanes on the freeway (one blind spot could end it all!), trees (they fall), the ocean (sharks? Death by drowning? Hard pass), electrical outlets that are too close to bathtubs, carbon monoxide and carbon-monoxide detectors that might not work, crowds, earthquakes, wildfires, spiders that could be black widows or brown recluses, terrorist attacks, eating alone and choking.

“Have you ever googled how to give yourself the Heimlich?” I ask him.

“Yeah, obviously,” he replies. “I think in some ways, my anxiety is what drew me to your sister.”

“’Cause you’d always have someone to help you if you got, like, a bite of steak stuck in your throat?” I joke. The truth is, I don’t just want to turn the volume all the way down on my computer so I don’t have to hear him tell me what he sees in my sister. I want to plug my ears and shout Lalalalalalalala.

“Neda’s not anxious about anything. She’s chill. All the time. Nothing scares her. She wasn’t even freaked out about getting on an airplane in the middle of a pandemic. I need that kind of energy around me.”

“Right. Totally. Me too.”

My heart sinks when I hear him say it, but I also know what he means. Being around Neda these days feels like sunbathing and reading a magazine on a life raft while the Titanic sinks behind you. Tragedy surrounds you, but somehow you know you’ll survive. My older sister always has been, always will be, unflappable. I feel foolish now that I thought Gideon would be more attracted to my anxiety than to her confidence.

“You know, it’s all just proof that you’re meant to be a writer.”

“What is?” I ask.