nineteen

"I don't know. I guess. I should probably tell someone, and you're not gonna... judge me, or whatever the house is gonna do." He sits up, shifts a little - Diego doesn't even move - and says "I started seeing things everywhere. Not just, like, a little thing for ten seconds next to a guy at the bus stop, but everyone. Everyone had a, a hallucination, a vision, whatever they are. I was seeing things all the time and I didn't know what any of it meant. I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't even stay in the house because there's eight of us and that was just... that was too many people. There's no one at Grandpa's place but him. He sent me some money for the bus and I, I left. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you."

"Why couldn't you tell your friends? You even live with them."

"I don't know. They don't always believe me, that sometimes I see things. They kind of, um...." He snaps his fingers, apparently trying to remember. Diego wakes up, turns in a circle like a dog, and goes back to sleep. "Patronize me. Is that the word? Like they're just humoring me. So what could I tell them? I was hallucinating everything everywhere, around everybody? Putting all of us in one room was too much. Right before I went to my grandpa's, I couldn't even leave the house - any, any kind of crowd just gave me a headache. You know what kinda helped?" He chuckles. "I found someone's sunglasses at the house. I probably looked really stupid at night, wearing these sunglasses, but they kinda made it better."

( So why did you come back? Did it get better? )

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