"So…" Sam took a deep breath, "would you like to go out on Friday?"

He didn't like the silence that followed. Margaret avoided looking at him now. "Or not," said Sam, forcing out laughter—anything to kill the silence.

"Sam…" Margaret sighed. "I value our friendship too much. And it's hard for me to see you in that way. Let's just remain friends, okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Of, course. Yeah." Sam couldn't look at her anymore either.

They spoke softly. They were in the school's library, sitting at a table made only for two.

"Are you okay, Sam?" Margaret reached her hand out to Sam's. But Sam jerked his hand away and fixed his glasses (although they were not off balance). "Margaret, it's fine. Really."

Sam got up and walked into a section of the library where no one was around. Embarrassment was only partly the reason why he had to walk away. The instant Margaret crushed his hopes, he could feel "it" starting to happen. It was good that she denied him, thought Sam. She's better off not dealing with a basket case like himself. Sam leaned his forehead against a shelf containing several books on Geography and patted his pants. When he heard a rattling in his back left pocket he quickly took out a small cylindrical tube marked "Olanzapine." Sam stared at the pills, his mind drifting elsewhere.

How stupid he was. It was as if she had her answer prepped and ready to go—she saw him coming from a mile away. Sam turned the cap on the bottle. He thought good fortune brought them together as partners in a project for class. But, moving forward, it would only be awkward. Perhaps she wouldn't mind continuing a friendship. But Sam didn't want to be "just friends."

His maid, Emily, had gave him some advice earlier in the morning: "Be aggressive. Be confident." He knew he was neither.

Sam downed three pills as he felt a creeping feeling swell the more he brooded over Margaret. Water would've been nice, but he bared with it.

His episodes usually didn't last more than five minutes. He hoped Margaret didn't come looking for him. He may have hated her at the moment. But Sam didn't want her thinking him to be anymore of a tool than she already had.

Sam's forehead still leaned against the bookshelf, now liable to slip from excessive moisture. He shut his eyes tight and did breathing exercises he saw on the internet—in and out, deeply; focused. But the pressure came anyway. It always did. It was a tremendous pressure. A feeling that made it seem like gravity wanted him drilled into the Earth's crust. It would come and then it would go. But whenever he felt it, he was certain his stalker had appeared; or, rather, what his doctor had called: His hallucinations.

Sam grudgingly opened his eyes and peered to his side.

There it was with that devious smile. It was far away from him, in an adjacent aisle—it never stood next to him. He was paralyzed with fear the first few times he saw it. But, now, he looked at it with an utter contempt.

An upright gorilla with fur like the leaves of a tree: that's how he had described it to his father. He wished he hadn't. Samuel Sr. was heavily involved in the city's politics. He would not have future prospects ruined by a son who sees leafy green gorillas. "Not gorillas—plural; gorilla—singular. I only see one, dad," Sam had told him.

Samuel Sr. cursed his son. He then cursed Sam's late mother for cursing them all. Sam never knew her. Samuel Sr.'s words meant nothing to him until they went to the doctor's office and he had heard his father confess his late wife's mental problems.

"Well, your son has a rare form of schizophrenia," the doctor had said. "I will prescribe him an antipsychotic. His auditory and visual hallucinations should subside eventually. If he takes the medication as instructed, in your son's particular case, I am confident he will be able to function as any normal boy his age would."

The pills didn't do snot—although he told his father they worked fine. He decided this would be his last time taking them. If anything they made things worse, giving him blurred vision and muscle tremors. Sam wiped some sweat off his face. It was okay. Other than the unexplainable pressure that made it feel like gravity upped itself by a few notches, he was close to becoming desensitized to the gorilla's presence. Sam realized after the sixth or seventh time, the image never approached him; and Sam never approached it.

He was taken aback, initially, of course. It stood as tall as two grown men. And its posture was erect to a regal degree. It did not look like an ape trying to be human. It looked like an ape not of this world; in its own category of species. Brilliantly green leafy fur covered all parts of it except its chest and facial area. The skin on its chest looked odd from afar—leathery, and deeply wrinkled brown. It stared daggers into Sam's eyes. Which is why, now, as he suffered more so from the side effects of the pills than the actual hallucination, Sam chose not to give it attention anymore.

Sam checked his watch: one more minute to go, just about. He closed his eyes again, but then a soprano voice called out to him. Margaret?

"Hey," the girl said.

Sam tried to gather himself. He turned around from resting his limbs and head on the bookshelf and saw it wasn't Margaret but rather some other girl he didn't recognize.

"Hey," she said again, "are you alright?"

Sam slapped his face with both hands. "There's a gorilla in the library. I just got a little freaked out." The girl looked around and then did a full three-sixty. She appeared amused instead of afraid.

"You're funny," she said.

Sam looked around as well. The pressure was gone. The ape was gone. A girl was here.

"I saw what happened back there," said the girl.

Sam narrowed his eyes. "So you did see the gorilla?"

The girl laughed again. "No, crazy. I overheard the conversation between you and that girl."

Embarrassment returned. "Oh, that. Yeah."

"Did she really give you the cliché: 'I value our friendship too much' spiel? Women are such bitches."

Sam said nothing. He really wanted to gather himself.

He heard her audibilize something.

"Huh?" grunted Sam.

"I said: Are you there?"
"Yeah." Sam cleared his throat and repeated himself with more confidence. "Yes, I'm here."

"Good," she said with a wide smile. "I'm, Jessica, by the way."

Sam reached out his hand, smooshing his lips in an uncertain way. "My name's, Samuel."

She hugged Sam tightly and then shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Samuel."

Sam was somewhat back to being relaxed. The hug actually helped—a lot. She was a tad taller than Sam. And her plaid skirt was short—shorter than school regulation probably allowed. She had a mane of fluffy bourbon hair which she kept neatly tamed with a pink headband. Sam concluded she was a very pretty girl. He had never seen her before.

"If you want," said Jessica, "you can come sit over with me and my friends. We have one of the room's over in the corner."

Sam was finally not worried about the gorilla anymore. He'd probably dwell it on later, though.

"Well, Margaret is—"

"PFFTT." Jessica grabbed Sam's wrist. "Forget her for today. There's no way y'all are going to be able to finish anything."

Sam acquiesced. Jessica led him in and out of the literary columns and rows to a back wall which housed several private rooms for students. She brought him to the front of room 304C and Sam glanced in from the room's outside window. There were three boys and one other girl. Sam became quite serious and pulled at Jessica's arm. Sam was staring at one of the guy's with a shaved head and sunken facial features. The boy had his hands politely clasped together on top the table and was clearly speaking quite sternly about whatever was being discussed with the three others. "Hey, is that guy right there named Aejo?" asked Sam.

Jessica smiled. She knew why Sam was asking. But she played dumb. "Yes, that's Aejo. Why?"

Before Jessica could say anything else Sam began to turn around. They were a group of crazies—weirder than Goths and novelty card players combined. Aejo had approached Sam before. Sam told him in so many words to leave him alone. They preached peace and did not practice—to anyone's knowledge—illegal activities. But they were still eccentric acting individuals. Aejo was a senior who was once an all-star athlete and handsome to boot. But after Christmas break last year, Aejo had come back with a disheveled appearance and a disavowment of everything people held him in high regard for.

Perhaps Jessica knew about Sam's mental condition and thought he was susceptible to the crazies. Sam had too much self-respect, though. They thought a pretty girl could persuade him, did they?

Jessica moved in front of Sam and spread her arms out. "What if I told you I DID see the gorilla?"

Sam stopped. He looked at her, trying to recall how much he flippantly said regarding the hallucination. "You people must really think I am the most pathetic human being to—"

Jessica cut Sam off: "A green ape. His fur looks like leaves dangling from a tree. And it stands there, smiling but does not approach you. When he appears you feel a crazy heaviness."

Sam knew he didn't explain these things to her. His doctor knew a bit. His father did, too. But…

Jessica continued. "Sam, Aejo has answers for you. That gorilla isn't a gorilla. It's something much more."

Sam didn't move or say anything for a couple of minutes. He actually felt relieved to the utmost, hearing someone else go on about something that others would've looked at him as a crazy person for.

"Sam," said Jessica, getting extra close to him, "trust me. Just talk with us."

Sam remained silent. His vision started to blur again. Maybe that's what it was. The side effects of the crappy medicine. But he did find himself following Jessica into the room.