I swallowed a grape and sat back, ready to talk with no distractions. I knew the one he meant. The one he sent after I saw the graves of my ancestors. “Yes. You said you felt what I felt. That my emotions were your affliction.”
He nodded. “Exactly. I told you the truth right there. I’d hoped you’d guess, but I suppose it’s hard to understand. There was no trick in those words. No lies. It was God’s honest truth.”
I waited for him to continue. I had so many questions, but I needed patience. I believed Jethro would answer them when he could.
Jethro sighed. “The reason why I don’t like anyone calling me insane or crazy is because I’ve been told I was throughout my entire childhood. My father never understood me. Kes didn’t. Jaz didn’t. Shit, even I didn’t know what was wrong with me.” His eyes glazed over, thinking of the past. “Some days I was fine. Hyper like a boy should be. Happy to play with my siblings. Confident in my place within my family. But other days, I’d cry for hours. I’d claw at myself, trying to rid the overwhelming intensity from my blood. My mind would seize with darkness and sadness and anger—such, such anger.
“I wanted to kill. I craved violence.” He smiled wryly. “That doesn’t sound so unique, but it was when I was barely eight years old. I had fantasies of tearing men apart. I stressed over money and business—things I had no right to worry about as a kid. It got so bad, I was admitted to a local hospital. I’d stopped eating or drinking; I attacked Jasmine whenever she got too close. I couldn’t handle the thoughts inside my head. I fully believed what people said—that I was crazy.”
I shifted closer, looping my fingers through his. He didn’t pause, almost as if now he’d started, he had to finish as fast as possible.
“The hospital was even worse. There, I worried about dying. I fretted over a child down the hall dying of terminal cancer. I cried all the fucking time, devoured by grief and feeling the keen absence of someone I loved dearly—only thing was, I didn’tknowany of the other patients.
“A nurse found me one night trying to hang myself after watching a movie of a man who couldn’t survive life anymore.”
His lips twisted into a smile that held both annoyance and appreciation. “If she hadn’t have found me, I would’ve been free. Free from living a life no one could understand. But she did...and she both condemned and saved me.”
“How?” I breathed.
“She was a psych major. After a few days of me screaming and self-harming due to a busload of students slowly dying in the ward next to me, she gained permission to check me out and take me to a psychiatric facility instead.”
He laughed. “I know this isn’t helping my case when I said I wasn’t insane.”
I shook my head, willing him to continue.
Jethro looked off into the distance, seeing things I wasn’t privy to. “Once there, I was even worse. I started having seizures and developed heart arrhythmia. I screamed for no reason, spoke in tongues no one could understand. I self-harmed to the point of disfigurement—all to get the fucking intensity out.”
With every glimpse into his past, his present made so much more sense.
“Did—did they diagnose you?”
Jethro nodded. “It took a year of being shuttled between my home and that mental hospital. A year of working with the young nurse who took it upon herself to rescue me from myself.”
I held my breath, waiting for a final answer.
But Jethro stayed silent.
I squeezed his fingers. “What was wrong with you?”
He snorted. “Wrong?” Shaking his head, he said condescendingly, “Everything. Everything was wrong.”
Untangling his fingers from mine, he traced the blue veins visible beneath my tanned skin. “One day, my father flew in a child psychology specialist. The doctor made me do a lot of tests. After a week of assessment, he was as clueless as the rest of them.
“But there’d been one saving grace. The entire time I’d spent with the doctor, having no contact with others, locked in a cool white room with only puzzles for company, my thoughts became calm, diligent, focused on facts and data. I wasn’t emotional or crazed. I found happiness and silence once again. And that’s what gave the answer away.”
“What answer?”
Jethro huffed. “The one that ensured Cut would never accept me, because there was no cure for what I am. Back then, it seemed like I was making this shit up. That I was rebelling and putting on a show. Nowadays, it’s one of the first things a doctor checks for.”
I needed a name—something to call what Jethro was. I leaned closer, waiting.
“I’m a VEP, Nila.”
I blinked. He’d announced it as if it were a foul, common disease that would make me hate him. I had no idea what it was.
He half-smiled. “Also known as an HSP.”
I frowned, racking my brain for any remembrance of such a thing. “What—what is that?”
