Five
The kids left quickly after class, leaving Daniel sitting patiently at his desk, finishing his drawing. Dark, wide strokes covered most of the page, and somewhere in the middle, two eyes seemed to stare right out of the darkness. I leaned over, trying to understand him, to sense any distortion in the frequencies around him, but all I could see were those eyes.
I coughed lightly to get his attention. When he looked up, I still didn’t feel anything out of sync with this world. For a second I thought I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes, but in the same moment he lowered his gaze. His whole state could be described in two words: compressed lump. Even if there were any hidden frequencies, his tightness wouldn’t allow them to come out. All his emotions and thoughts remained inside his clearly outlined perimeter, and I would have to try very hard to get inside.
“Hi. Are you Daniel? Your teacher should have told you that I wanted to speak with you.” He raised his head for a second, blinked a few times before answering, his fingers gripping the edge of the drawing. Shoulders hunched, knees pressed together, spine curved as if he could fold in on himself. His eyes scanning for danger in every shadow.
“Yes.” His gaze darted back to the paper, refusing to meet mine.
Great, what next? No, I knew exactly how to talk to kids. There’s no secret about it. You speak to them the same way you speak to adults. Respectfully, but without unnecessary familiarity and certainly without any superiority. But how do you pull information out of a person who is curled up like a hedgehog, quills raised in anticipation of attack? Still looking at the drawing, I decided that better is the enemy of good and, without inventing anything clever, just went straight for it.
“I wanted to speak to you about your work. The dog that you drew before and,” I pointed at the drawing in front of him, “you keep drawing.” He tensed.
“Ms. M spoke to me about it.”
“Ms. M?”
“A counselor.”
“Oh? And what did she think about it?”
“She said it was ‘interesting.’” Throughout the conversation he seemed to be concentrating on the drawing, but he pronounced the word “interesting” with a specific hesitant intonation, the tone of a concerned school counselor.
I laughed a little when I imagined the counselor receiving this assignment. His gaze jumped to me. “Are you a counselor?” I felt him tighten even more; the quills almost vibrated. No, I was wrong, they weren’t metaphorical quills. I actually felt the vibration. The room seemed to shrink around us.
“Oh God, no. I’m visiting for a college fair. But I saw the picture and was impressed, so I just wanted to take a look at the artist. Maybe suggest a couple of things.”
He looked at me. Tightness coiled in his shoulders, and instantly, mine mirrored it. My chest clenched. My jaw locked. My heart thudded so loud I could almost hear it in my ears. Goosebumps prickled down my spine. Sweat pooled at my neck. My fingers itched, curling without thought. I wanted to check the door behind me. My stomach hollowed, then twisted. And in that moment, I realized I was feeling what he felt.
He tilted his head, studying me. There was a faint shift in his body, as if he were about to shut down, and I had an impulse to mimic it, my hand twitched unconsciously, mirroring his hesitation.
“You don’t… look like someone who cares about the drawing. You’re looking at… the dog. Not how I drew it.” The pauses in his speech became longer. I could see fear growing inside him, and somehow, mirroring it, the same anxiety stirred in me. I felt the faint pull of his tension in my own neck. My pulse jumped and my hands tensed. I caught myself mimicking his micro-shift, an instinct I didn’t control.
He seemed ready to stop the conversation, but I needed to keep it going. I pointed at the drawn eyes.
“To tell you the truth, it kind of makes me uncomfortable. I never fully got over the fear of dogs I had, and this one… I definitely met this one in my childhood.”
Time stopped. His eyes widened, then narrowed, not in suspicion but in something more complicated. Recognition, maybe.
“Fear?” he whispered. He glanced down at the paper, then quickly closed the sketchbook, sliding it half under the table. I felt a slight release when he asked,
“You… met it?”
“Ah,” I murmured softly, lowering my voice. “Right now I feel a bit of pain in my left butt cheek, right where that monster bit me.”
He let out a short, surprised breath, almost a laugh, and I felt my chest loosen. The tight hum in my veins faded to a gentle thrum. My pulse slowed. My palms cooled. The air didn’t feel so thick. I could finally breathe in and out without forcing it.
I was actually feeling what he did. Why? Was it empathy, or something deeper, a resonance I didn’t fully understand? My own fear had nothing to do with the dog, yet there it was, moving through me like a second heartbeat.
A small, wary smile tugged at his lips.
“You’re serious?” He studied my face for any trace of a joke, curiosity slowly taking over inside him.
“Absolutely,” I nodded, letting my own smile soften the tension. “When I was young a dog bit me. It wasn’t bad enough to leave a visible scar, but I still feel it sometimes. Like a scar, but inside.” Our shoulders relaxed after these words and for the first time in the conversation, I could feel my heartbeat slow.
“Are you afraid of dogs?” He asked it with a mix of curiosity and tentative hope. The hedgehog finally showed his face.
“Yes, but shhh!” I put a finger to my lips. “Don’t tell that to my other fears. They might get jealous.”
“Fears?”
“Yep. I have a whole collection of them. You know, they say fear is actually good. It’s a higher function of your brain. You’re supposed to feel it. If you had no fear, that would mean your brain wasn’t functioning.” I sank into the chair, letting the lesson land without pressing it.
“I like what one of my teachers once said: ‘Fear itself is a sense, just like smell, touch, or taste, and it should be treated as such.’”
The boy looked at me with wide eyes. All that anxiousness that had pulsed like electricity just moments ago now only a memory. There wasn’t a drop of tension left between us now, only interest and questions.
“What if there is too much fear?” he asked. “I think it’s like with other senses. Sometimes a smell can make you nauseous or a sound can make your head hurt. Fear can also overtake you. But you learn to control it. I usually think of something good, a safe place where I feel relaxed. You can try that too.”
He leaned forward slightly, absorbing the words. His arms uncrossed, hands folded on the desk.
“A safe place… I have one. Behind the library there’s an old basement. Nobody goes there anymore. I like to read. It’s the only place where I’m… not scared of anything.”
“What are you reading right now?” He flushed slightly, eyes brightening.
“The Invisible Man. I like how he’s invisible.... nobody notices him. Nobody can… mess with him.”
Something! That was something. I felt it — weak, singular, but there. It appeared for a millisecond when he opened up just enough to let me feel him. Not his fear, but him — the pain of loneliness and the inward pressure around that cocoon. For a fraction of a moment it was there. Strange that he embraces it. Alone in a basement, reading about a madman intoxicated by his own invisible power, a power that ultimately destroys him. Yet this is what made him open up: the thought of being alone. And the more he opened, the more I could feel his frequency.
“I don’t want to spoil the ending,” I said, “but Griffin isn’t exactly a great role model.”
The boy smiled.
“I know. But if the world doesn’t see you, it can’t scare you.”
That was unexpected. He didn’t go to his hideout to be alone, he went there so the world couldn’t see him. So it couldn’t scare him. He isn’t lonely because the world is pushing him out. He seeks loneliness himself, that way the world can’t frighten him. Is he even in-between then?
“Do you often go to your place?” I noticed the way he looked at me shift slightly, more guarded.
“Sorry. Did I say something wrong?” Daniel shrugged uncertainly.
“It just sounded like Ms. M.”
“Ah. I’m sorry. I guess all adults start to sound like school counselors at some point.”
“Ms. M isn’t our school counselor.”
“Oh?” I was genuinely surprised.
“Yeah. She’s a counselor, but not from school. I have her card.” Daniel bent down to his backpack and pulled a business card from a side pocket. In bold blue letters it read:
Anna Melnitz, PhD
"He didn't go to his hideout to be alone. He went there so the world couldn't see him. So it couldn't scare him." That reframe is the whole chapter — and it arrives late enough that it genuinely lands. The protagonist feeling Daniel's fear in her own body first (the mirrored tension, the prickling) before she understands what it is does something very precise: it shows the reader that real contact precedes understanding, not the other way around. The Invisible Man detail is perfectly chosen. — @lintara
"A scar, but inside" — that's the unlock. Not fixing him, not asking him to explain the drawing, but meeting him in that exact compressed spot with something equally real. The fear moving through the narrator like a second heartbeat, unrelated to the dog — that's what makes this chapter work. Connection through resonance, not resolution.
— @lintara