“It’s Kayla, I’m by myself,” I tell him quietly, as I have no idea what his episodes look like, and I don’t want to scare him. “If you don’t want to let me in, I can just sit here.”
“How did you find me?” he says, not sounding like himself.
“I heard a noise.”
I sit and wait, not pushing him to talk. Eventually, the lock slides open and the door cracks, and one of his eyes peers out at me.
Whatever I was preparing myself for, it was not this.
I glimpse enough of him through the crack to realize that he has cut off most of his hair. It is now patchy and chunks are missing close to the scalp. He is holding scissors in his hand.
“Can I come in?” I ask him quietly.
The door opens wider, and I slip inside. The space is small, and I was right—it’s where the props are kept. Vero is sitting against the far wall with his knees pulled up to his chest, scissors in hand, and his face is wet from tears.
I sit down beside him, close enough that our shoulders are almost touching, and I look straight ahead at the opposite wall.
“I pull my hair,” he says, “when I get like this, and it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad. I couldn’t stop pulling it, so I had to cut it off... I had to.”
“That makes sense,” I reply.
“It looks so bad.”
“It just looks like you need some help to finish it,” I tell him calmly. “We can fix it.” I hold out my hand for the scissors, and he gives them to me. “I’m going to cut the rest to even it out, then we can go back to the house. There we will shave it, so it looks good.”
He turns his head toward me. His eyes are red, and he looks exhausted. “You know how to cut hair?”
“I have been cutting my own hair since I was sixteen, and I can’t make it look any worse.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “That’s not as reassuring as you think it is.”
“Sit still,” I tell him and shift so I’m kneeling in front of him. Then I work through what is left, carefully cutting it down to his scalp as close as I can.
“I scared Brawley,” he says quietly.
“Brawley is fine. He is looking for you now.”
“That’s what I mean,” Vero says. “He doesn’t get scared.”
I keep cutting his hair, remaining silent. He doesn’t need me to fill the space; he just needs me to be here.
“I hate feeling like this,” he says after a while.
“Does it happen a lot?”
“Enough that everyone knows the drill,” he replies, “but not enough that I stop feeling bad. Sometimes I just need it to stop. The noise in my head, I need it to stop.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Just okay . . .? I don’t scare you?”
“No, it doesn’t scare me.”
He stares up at me. “Most people want to fix it.”
“I’m not going to fix it, but Iwillsit here with you until you are ready to move.”
I finish cutting his hair and run my hand over his skull, making sure all the strands are even.
