NUMB

Day Twenty-Nine - Elyse

The next day, I am released from the infirmary. I still have no idea what happened to me, or what Jet told the nurses had happened. I can only assume that he took me down there after I blacked out. I still can't shake the dream. It was so vivid. I had felt things in it. I had felt Jet touching me.

Edie is waiting for me in the hallway when I leave the room.

"Elyse!" She hurries over to me and gives me a quick hug. She glances around for a second and then smiles at me. "I'm glad you are finally out. I've been so worried."

"Do you know what happened?" I say as we start walking towards the double doors at the end of the hall.

"Yes, Jet came and found me the next day in the courtyard. He said that you two had been talking in the stairwell about something and then you got uneasy on your feet and just fell over. He said it all happened very quickly."

"I remember some of that." I squint against the sun as we step out of the building and into the courtyard. "Did the nurses find anything? They would not talk to me the whole time I was in there."

"No, I don't know." Edie steers me towards the fence, away from our usual spot. "They wouldn't talk to me. Jet tried, but I they told him it was fatigue. Which I think is a lie, because you had been sleeping fine before that, right?"

"I had a few nights where I could not sleep, but it has never affected me like that." I touch my fingertips to my chest and look at Edie. "Edie, before I passed out, I remember something. There was this feeling in my chest."

"A feeling?" Edie stops walking and stares up at me. "You felt something?"

"Only for a moment. A banging in my chest, like someone was knocking against my ribs. It started out as a fluttering feeling."

Edie gives me a tight lipped smile and clears her throat. "What were you and Jet talking about?"

"What does that have to do with me passing out?"

"Tell me."

"He told me that he has seen me at our window at night. He's noticed me watching him when he is posted on the East Gate."

"That's what you're doing when you sit there?" Edie's face splits with a grin and she laughs. "I thought you were just star gazing or something! I didn't know you'd been watching Jet." She holds her hand to her mouth for a second and then lets it drop. "That explains it then, the feeling in your chest. You like him."

"What?"

"Is that why you were asking me what a heartbeat feels like the other day? You've had that feeling before?"

"I have felt it a few times." I look down at myself and press my lips together. "But how is that even possible?" My eyes meet Edie's. "I do not feel any different than I have before. Nothing has changed in me, I am still Numb."

"Maybe you're not as Numb as you used to be. I mean, you don't experience emotions like a Sensitive does, but what if you are experiencing them? Just less than a Level One or Two, but you're not as Numb as a Three."

"Could that be possible?"

"Sure, why not? I mean, for as long as I've known you, you've been a Three through and through, but there are times where you don't act like it." Edie takes my hand in hers and squeezes it. "You became my friend, for starters. There are not many Threes who socialize like we do. You've comforted me a lot, Elyse. And this whole thing with Jet...maybe we aren't as empty on the inside as we've been led to believe."

I stare at our hands.

If this is true, if there is any way it could be true, then I am not unable to feel. I am capable of experiencing emotions. I am Numb but I can feel. I raise my gaze back to Edie's face, my lips parting.