Nathan let a frown slip through despite his best intentions when he realized his shitty attempt at a joke, asking his cousin why he speaks Spanish, fell utterly and absolutely flat. 'Why would that have been funny?' He thought to himself...'Why do I even try?' He followed his cousin's eyes to look at a few of the students who were entering the room. Like everyone else they seemed friendly enough, and Nathan momentarily contemplated waving at them; though he didn't know why the thought even crossed his mind and nixed the idea as soon as it came. Then he heard his cousin's words, suggesting he find himself a "girlfriend"...It's not like the thought hadn't crossed his mind before, in fact he thought about it all the time; he pondered what it would be like to have that kind of relationship. Before now he never would have been able to do anything like that because of his mother. As soon as he thought about her his cousin said it: "...you finally escaped your mother." His cousin truly had no idea how true of a statement that was; he knew that Jason had his own suspicions and thoughts about what went on in their home but he didn't know the half of it...no one did.

All of this caused Nathan's anxiety to spike intensely, he'd say it had reached a 9...maybe even a 10, it was as though the room around him began to spin and he closed his eyes tightly to get things under control, to fight the [i]urges[/i] that erupted inside him. "See you at the banquet", Nathan managed to squeeze out as his cousin made his leave. He was alone again and it was probably for the best, but at least he was beginning to calm down a bit. As his anxiety lowered he realized that he had been clenching his fist hard...so hard that a few drops of blood began trickling down his hand. He had dug his fingernails so hard into the palm of his hand that he had broken the skin. 'Great just one more God damned thing to worry about.' He thought to himself as he stood and cautiously made his way towards the bathroom where he could clean the cut up and hopefully stop the bleeding before anyone noticed how fucking weird he was.