Page 83 of The Cartographer

It’s comical we’re having this conversation while we’re both naked. I could draw the sheet up to cover myself, but I’ve never been terribly modest. Physical nudity is nothing compared to the raw vulnerability I’m about to visit upon myself.

“Have you ever heard of a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain?”

He blinks, parsing the words before nodding slowly. “Yeah.”

“You know what it is?”

“Yeah. It’s when you can’t feel—”

His eyes get wide, wider than I’ve ever seen them, and I hold back the sigh that’s dying to escape.Wait, just wait.

“You’re trying to tell me you don’t feel pain?”

His words are doubtful, and the narrowed eyes and cock of his head echo the sentiment. Yes, I know it sounds like science fiction or like some madcap government experiment gone horribly awry or like a plot point of a middling police procedural. It’s likely all those things, but it also happens to be my life.

“I don’t feel physical pain, no. And no, I won’t demonstrate.”

His complexion takes on a greyish cast. I’m thankful for it. “People ask you to do that?”

“When I was a kid. Before I learned to keep it to myself.”

And I had. Slicing my arm open with a proffered pocket knife. Taking a swing of a bat directly to the gut. I’d been perfectly willing to let a kid slam my fingers in a door, but a teacher had realized what was about to happen and stopped it.

“Who knows?”

“My mother, obviously. My doctors. Matthew.” My grandparents and my father had too, but they’re gone now. It’s possible some members of my father’s family might know, but I’ve never spent much time with them and never once after my father died. Pretty sure that was my grandparents’ doing.

“Does India know?”

“Yes, although I honestly think she forgets sometimes.” I smile and shake my head, recalling how she’d kicked me under the table the last time I saw her. Matthew had scolded me for the bruise. “Do you want to talk about India instead of the very private information I’ve shared with you?”

His eyes have narrowed, brows creased, and he’s staring into space as if he’ll find the answers there. He won’t. I’ve looked. “No, I’m…I’m trying to get my head around it, you know? It’s hard to imagine what that would be like.”

“I understand.”

It’s precisely like me trying to imagine how pain feels. I can’t. I have no frame of reference.

“But you’re a sadist.”

“I suppose.”

“How can you enjoy causing people pain if you have no idea what it feels like?”

A question I’m not thrilled to answer, but it’s better than him vaulting out of my bed and calling me a freak, so I’ll take what I’ve been offered. A chance to explain.

“It fascinates me. Always has. I understood from an early age I had best learn how to fake it convincingly. To do that, I had to watch people very, very closely. Something that was an instinct for everyone else is a learned response for me. Something as simple as saying ‘ouch’ when I stub my toe took I don’t know how many hours of practice. The timing, the pitch of my voice, what my face was supposed to look like—all of that I had to learn.”

My most vivid memories of my father are of him pointing out people in pain. He taught me how to watch people, to record endless details and use them to my advantage. To move in a world I don’t belong in.

I took in all that information, filed it away. Practiced endlessly in front of a mirror and tried to figure out what the scale was. Papercuts and stubbed toes were the hardest to learn. They don’t look like they should hurt so much, given how minor the injury, but those are what get people cussing and hissing in pain.

“But you like to hurt people?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

I’d like to turn it back on him, ask him why he enjoys being hurt, but I know what he’ll say. It’s what most of the masochists I know tell me:I don’t know. I’ve always been this way. It feels good. It turns me on.

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