He did not like crowds. Or people. They made him uncomfortable, not because they were there but because he was there with them. Whenever Austen found himself in a public situation his heart would slump in his chest and his lungs would knot together. He did not like crowds, and upon arriving home that afternoon he fell into a chair and simply sat there, his eyes wide pools of perplexity. He could feel the breath of strangers still clinging to his clothes. The sweat of their skin continued to stick to his palm from all the hands he had been forced to shake. Rubbing his fingers anxiously along the sides of his pants, he quietly wished he were dead.
