After I came down with the rare condition that stole my sense of pain, my parents and Dylan Henson treated it like a crisis.
They cleared the house of anything sharp and laid thick carpet across every floor, terrified I'd hurt myself somewhere I couldn't feel it.
Then my sister came home, the one with the same rare disorder as me, except hers ran the other way. Her senses were painfully sharp, her pain a hundred times what an ordinary person felt.
I only hugged her, gently, and she cried out.
My father shoved me to the floor. My mother pulled Jade behind her and looked at me, her eyes full of disappointment.
"How can you be this jealous? You know your sister can't take it, and you still hurt her on purpose!"
I wanted to explain, but I caught the flicker of disgust in Dylan's eyes too.
After that, I volunteered to test the medications for her, gave blood in her place. The needles went into my arm and left a row of bruised puncture marks, and Dylan soothed Jade instead.
"It's fine, she's thick-skinned, she can't feel a thing anyway. Doesn't matter how many times they draw her blood."
I said nothing. But my illness meant I couldn't feel even a broken heart.
Then one day Jade and I were kidnapped together by one of Dylan's enemies, and Dylan shoved me forward hard.
"You take a few blades for us first. You can't feel pain anyway."
I couldn't get out of the way. The knife drove into my body, and an enormous pain tore straight through me.
And it hit me all at once that my rare condition seemed to be gone.
……
My hand went to the wound on instinct, and warm blood welled up through my fingers.
The kidnapper who'd stabbed me saw that he'd actually cut someone open, screamed, staggered back a step, and turned and ran.
The pain dropped me. I went down on my knees with a thud.
"Dylan, help me……"
I curled around the wound on the ground, drowning in despair.
Dylan was already shielding Jade Matthews, getting ready to leave.
He heard me and turned to look.
"Enough. Drop the act. You can't feel a thing. One little stab, all you're doing is bleeding a bit."
"No, Dylan, I think I'm cured, it really hurts……"
I looked at him and forced myself to sit up, trying to make him see my stomach, still bleeding.
But right then Jade, tucked against Dylan's chest, let out two soft moans, biting down like she was enduring something.
Dylan grabbed her hand in a panic and checked it over, and finally he saw it—a small patch of skin scraped raw on the back of her hand.
"Jade, what happened? You scraped off this much and just held it in without saying a word?"
Watching the panic on his face, my chest twisted with pain, wave after wave.
Jade shook her head, eyes red. "I'm fine. Help my sister first."
"She doesn't look… good……"
She finished the sentence and moaned again, and that was it for Dylan. He scooped her up in his arms and held her tight against him.
I pressed the wound and shook, letting out a few low groans.
Dylan looked at me with disgust all over his face.
"You know Jade's pain is hundreds of times what a normal person feels, and you still want to compete with her for attention right now? You can't even feel pain. Would it kill you to grit your teeth for once?"
With that, he strode off with Jade in his arms.
I curled up on the floor. My body was going colder and colder, and watching Dylan's back shrink into the distance, I managed to dig out my phone and dial my mother.
But the second the call connected, I heard her anxious voice.
