Chapter 52

• BRANDON
• For the past decade, I learned to restrict myself. I trained myself to feel numb, so I would feel nothing. Nothing, because it’s easier than feeling any pain at all. I hated the sensation of any skin-to-skin contact. It would only remind me of the pain I’d been through at the hands of those filthy men who ruined me. It would crawl all over my body and pass through my blood, deep in my bones—to my soul. Then it would hurt so bad and linger in my chest like pounding thuds. I would bathe in my own sweat, my limbs would get numb, and then I would pass out. I knew my illness so well.
• I succeeded through the years, but it was always there. Back then, I didn’t call it living but surviving, at most. I had no other purpose but to get justice for my family’s demise—to get revenge. I shut myself off from the world, never letting anyone in except for Lennie, Oliver, and probably Cassius. Even after our childish rivalry, he’s still one of the people I chose to trust. And Casey, of course. My sister. They were the only ones, but I had restrictions even then. They shouldn’t touch me.