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“Sounds dangerous.”
He ducks his head again, shrugging. “I guess.” He pauses. “That time I burnt myself…I didn’t understand. So I just kept…grabbing things nearby. A glass. A dish. The utensils by the stove.” He peeks up at me. “I-I didn’t know what else to do.”
I frown.
“That’s why Mother was so mad when she found me. She heard me screaming and breaking stuff while she was on an important phone call.”
I clench my hands into fists, remembering what he told me on the beach that day. “You werehurt.”
He blinks rapidly, lifting a shoulder. “Yeah, she saw that, eventually.” His gaze flits away.
He was just a child…
“I’m…better about that now, mostly.”
“Better about what?” I say tightly.
“Pain.”
Jesus.
“I-I-I just mean, I know where it’s coming from,” he quickly clarifies. “I know it’s the brain responding to a stimulus—a signal indicating something’s not right.” He nods strongly. “It calms me. Knowing what it is. Makes it easier to act like everyone else.”
My brows fly up at that.
He notices, winces, and brings his knees to a chest. But he doesn’t elaborate. And I don’t push him to.
I sit up a little straighter, and clear my throat before speaking. “You said it didn’t start with Canaan, but they made it worse.”
He starts nodding, and flashes me a look almost like he’s grateful for the subject change.
“I actually was doing pretty well before I went there. I was utilizing the coping skills I was taught, and working really hard to manage my…issues.”
I frown at that, not liking the sound of that. Something about all of this—how his problems were handled—it just…rubs me wrong. He was a kid for fuck’s sake.
Skyler doesn’t seem to notice my reaction, so he keeps going. “But then…an incident happened.” He winces and looks away again, fiddling with his fingers. “Ahead of my senior year, I begged my parents to let me go to a normal school.”
My eyes slide shut, and I shake my head, inwardly cursing the shit out of those assholes.
“And since it’d been years since I’d had a really bad outburst, they decided to give me a chance. We thought—theythought—I was fixed.”
Jesus Christ, the more I learn, the more I hate those people.
“I made it about two months, I think. Um, I didn’t exactly fit in, and…well, I was just way out of my depth. It was stressful, and I’d stopped taking my medication because I didn’t like how fuzzy it made my head. I couldn’t focus in class, and the classes were a lot harder there. I wanted to do well.”
Chewing the inside of my cheek, I glare up at some distant spot in the cave wall.
“Well, to make an already long story short, I snapped one day. Someone bumped into me—accidentally, I was told, but who knows? It’s not like it made a difference.” He sighs roughly and kicks his foot at the ground. “Their tray of food spilled all over me. It was…gross. There was just…” He wrinkles his nose, face bunching. “So much…” Shaking his head, he starts tapping his foot.
Reaching over, I clasp his knee.
He stills, and a moment later, his gaze swings to mine.
I nod, silently reassuring him I’m here, it’s okay.
“I broke the kid’s nose,” he says roughly. “I don’t even remember doing it. I just… snapped. Then I…proceeded to just sort of…” He waves a hand. “Destroy everything. Trays. Food. Tables. I-I don’t even remember.”
“The storm,” I whisper, remembering what he called it. I’m beginning to sense a pattern.
