I can hold my breath for twelve seconds. No more and no less. Twelve.
When I arrive at school, I can already tell that today will be another repulsive day. At least, relative to the days of this past week. I look around at my comrades, people I have known since middle school, others since elementary school, others I have known all my life. The are clad in pink and blue, according to their societal gender. They sneer at each other, shoulder check those of opposite sex in the hallways, push them to the ground and laugh in their faces. And it is not just one group of people. They are all doing it. It is carnage.
I rear out of the water to get another breath. I resubmerge.
I hug my binder to my chest so nobody can shove it from my hands, and I hunch my shoulders so nobody will clash with them, and I tread as quickly as I can to my locker, hoping that nobody will talk to me. I barely breath, because I don’t want the pestilential hate to infect me.
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  On this day, I do not wear pink, as the notabilities of our school have asked me to. I wear a green shirt and black pants, two staple colors that I wear on a day to day basis. I have refused to partake in this inane game that has persisted through the years at my school. I look up above my locker at a pink poster that says “GIRLS can do anything boys can do… with CRAMPS!!!!!” I sigh with disbelief as I put away my trumpet and continue down the hallway, now rapidly filling with human flesh.
I come up again. Take another breath. Not as big. Repeat. 
I am forced to take a breath as I realize how out of my depth I am. All I want, what I want more than anything, is to get outside and get a little fresh air before I panic; these people are too much for me, too many in such a small space. I feel like I am struggling with a mythical many-headed squid, fighting a battle I can not win, no matter how hard I try.
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3…
I can see the shiny glass door that leads to Nirvana, I can see the rays of pure sunlight and the crisp, cold wind that will be my saving grace, and I can feel myself getting closer and closer, and then taking an enormous step to the right, or to the left, and getting even farther away. I can’t breath. 
12 11 10 9…
I can’t move. I can’t even fumble awkwardly towards the door any more. 
8 7 6…
I can’t do anything in this sea of blue and pink…
But then I am there. I am at the door, these pearly gates that welcome me. And I can move my arms to push the door open. And I can breath in the beauty that is the outside air.
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3-
As I manage to start breathing normally, and as my heartrate slowly descends, I look up again, and not to my surprise, my vision is filled with blue, nothing but blue, pasted to a wall that is normally a sickly shade of beige. A color I hate. A color I can not look at. But I do not hate the color blue, a beautiful baby blue, that is what I see when I look up. And words, painted in a darker blue, like cerulean.
The water is blue. It is warm. It is safe.
They pop against the backdrop of sky color, and for a moment, I don’t read them because they are so beautiful, and I feel like they are my reward for moving past so many of these callous people who surround me and for making it to the outside, where it is safe and welcoming and-
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN”
I am drowning in the blue. I am drowning in the warm. I am drowning in the safe. It is killing me.
These are the first words I see as I am enveloped in my haven. They condemn me. They take the freshness away from the air I am still trying to breath, they cause my throat to close up in anger and disgust and something else. Fear. Fear that my peers think this way. Fear that this is the world I will have to deal with in only two years. Fear that I will have to fight this medieval concept that womens’ “rightful place” is behind the walls of a house, cooking and raising children and doing stifling things that no one should be confined to.
I thrash. Helpless. Remember when the blue made me happy. Not scared.
I am scared. I want to live in an equal world. This is not what I want. I look around and see faces, so many faces, looking where I was just looking and laughing and smiling, most of them female. The males look smug, like they are winning something.
I have twelve seconds. No more and no less. Twelve.
They cannot convince me. I run, I run to my class as the bell rings, and I bury my flushed face in my jacket, and I try to hide my concern. Because, even though it is only for a week, I cannot push away the fact that there is some truth in what everyone does. So I try to keep calm, and try to remember when the people around me wore the colors they liked, when they exchanged happiness and not rude glares and violent shoves.
But when was that?
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1