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Lloyd’s one wish every weekday was that he wouldn’t have to go to school.
Unfortunately for him, that wish never came true. Every night, he’d cross his fingers and hope that by some means, school would be canceled – but it never was. His alarm always blared loudly in the morning, and he always, albeit begrudgingly, grabbed his phone to silence it.
Lloyd sighed and pulled himself out of bed like every other morning. He got dressed, brushed his teeth, and headed downstairs and into the kitchen. His mother smiled at him, currently surrounded by a yellow – pink mix of colors as he signed her a greeting and raced out the door after packing his things. He slowed down once he approached the bus stop, trying to ease himself gently into the whirlpool of colors that greeted him every single morning. The colors, which represented people’s emotions, gathered involuntarily in his chest, some bringing pain and others doing the opposite.
Eventually, the bus pulled up, and Lloyd clambered into a seat, already feeling overwhelmed by the amount of emotions he’d gathered. The colors were everywhere – a bright red aura appeared in front of him, circling a boy who was yelling at another. The second boy’s aura was blue, and he seemed close to tears. Lloyd winced as the red anger and blue sadness crept into his chest, and a small amount of pain made itself known. Several other colors floated over towards him, and Lloyd tried to gravitate towards the good emotions, like the yellow happiness that had surrounded his mother this morning. The pain lessened, but didn’t completely leave. Lloyd sighed.
The bus stopped, and more kids piled on, auras of all colors spreading through it. Lloyd gathered most of the light gray confusion, pink love, silver determination, green envy, and several others that all pooled together in his chest. He winced when some more anger joined the others. It seemed as if the fight from earlier was still going on – and a peek towards the seats in front of him confirmed it.
Lloyd scooted towards the window as more kids began finding seats, trying to look away in an attempt to make sure no one would ask to sit next to him. Unfortunately, he failed miserably, as a kid walked up to him and asked, “Can I sit here?”
Lloyd turned his head, smiled, and nodded. He then turned back to the window, praying that this guy wasn’t a social butterfly and that he wouldn’t strike up a conversation. That would only lead to disaster – Lloyd didn’t talk and normally used sign language to communicate after what people around town called The Incident. No one except his mom knew he’d been at the scene of the crime and seen everything play out, and he planned to keep it that way.
Even after two years, he still kicked himself for investigating. Maybe then he’d actually be able to talk .
“So, what’s your name?” the guy next to him asked, and Lloyd wanted to bang his head against a wall. Damn it.
“I’m L-L-O-Y-D,” he signed and fingerspelled his name, watching as the boy’s face changed and a dark green color circled him. Lloyd tried his hardest not to wince as he gathered the disgust that the person was feeling. He simply watched as the guy got up and searched for another seat, even though the bus was still moving.
Lloyd tried his hardest not to cry.
Stepping through the school doors provided Lloyd with the oh – so wonderful experience to gather each and every single emotion known to man before the day even started. Not.
He sighed, trying to get to his first period before everyone else so he had a few minutes to recover – the teacher was normally feeling a good emotion anyways, so it worked out. Lloyd struggled through the throng of people, suddenly stopping in his tracks when he felt a sharp pain in his chest, like someone had stabbed him. He forced himself to keep walking when annoyance, a deep red color, joined the other emotions in his chest. Lloyd looked up and immediately spotted the source of the pain – a guy was glaring daggers at him from across the hallway, with a black cloud behind him – rather than an aura like the rest of the emotions that came together in his chest.
This guy hates me, Lloyd realized with a jolt. But why? What did I do?
He tried to think back, but he couldn’t remember what he’d done. He sighed, lowered his head, and kept walking through the growing pain.
By the time he had entered his classroom, everyone was already inside and had found a seat. The teacher was taking attendance, leading him to quickly find his own seat in the middle of the class, gathering the annoyance from the teacher, disgust, anger, sadness, and several other emotions from his classmates, which only served to add to the pain he’d received from the earlier hate. The day hadn’t even started yet and he just wanted to go home and sleep.
Algebra seemed to drag by slower than a snail, and trying to distract himself from the pain by doing work wasn’t helping any matters. His chest throbbed internally as he gathered more and more emotions from the other kids, the teacher, and even people walking down the hallway. After what seemed like forever, the bell rang, and Lloyd stifled a whimper of pain as he walked through the halls, noticing the same guy from earlier and collecting more of his hate. Then his chest burned, as if someone had pressed an open flame against it. He averted his gaze.
What did I ever do to him?
Luckily, Lloyd made it to his second period a little early, but the few minutes he was granted with were unfortunately not enough to recover, and he was still collecting emotions from the hallway anyways. He sat down in the back of the class, chest still burning in pain, and laid his head down, only looking up when class started. Eventually, his eyes drifted shut as his head fell against the desk, and for a few moments, there wasn’t any pain. He didn’t feel the impact of the emotions he was subconsciously collecting – until a ruler slapped against his desk, and Lloyd’s eyes flew open with a gasp. He sat up, coming face to face with swirling colors and sudden pain, along with the angry face of his Business teacher, who glared at him before walking back to his desk. It was then Lloyd realized he’d fallen asleep – in the middle of class. His face burned with humiliation.
Can I just go home, please?
“Oi, mute boy!” A voice yelled out as a hand grabbed Lloyd and shoved him against a locker. He winced as the boy with the hate cloud appeared in front of him, bits of the emotion making its way into Lloyd’s chest. “You still haven’t apologized for what you did.”
Lloyd frowned. What had he done? “I don’t know what you – ” he tried to sign, as his hands could still move, but two of the boy’s cronies pressed them into the cool metal of the locker door.
“Nuh uh. I wanna hear it from your mouth, mute boy. You have a tongue, right? Use it. ” The boy smirked. When Lloyd remained silent, the bully growled and raised his fist. “Okay, now you really asked for it – ”
His fist connected with Lloyd’s face, and he winced as pain blossomed across the left side of it. “What did I do?” he tried to sign, but the boy grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and then shoved him onto the floor.
“You were the one who ratted me out to the teacher for stealing the answer key, mute boy, ” the boy growled, “and now you’re gonna pay. ”
Lloyd’s eyes widened. He had done that. He’d written a note to his Biology teacher when he heard someone was trying to cheat and steal the answer key. And now this kid wanted revenge. Great.
“Hey! What’s going on here?”
Lloyd breathed a sigh of relief as a teacher he didn’t recognize walked over and prevented the fight from continuing. Thank goodness. “Both of you, come with me to the principal’s office. Now.” She snapped, waiting as Lloyd stumbled to his feet.
A half hour later, Lloyd stared at the mix of orange anxiety and dark blue worry that surrounded his mother as he got into the car. He wasn’t worried about being punished – if there was one thing that he actually liked about his life, it was his mom. When he had chosen not to talk, she had been his number one supporter, along with having already taught him sign language from a young age. She was basically fluent, as her cousin, who she was extremely close to, was deaf. She also knew almost everything about Lloyd, except for his ability to see and feel the emotions around him. That was a secret from everyone he knew, and he planned to take it with him to the grave.
“I’m sorry,” he signed when Koko turned towards him. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“I know, honey, she signed back. “But the school said you’re getting detention for the next two days, okay?”
Lloyd nodded in response as his mom started the car.
The next few weeks were a whirlwind of coming to school, dealing with growing hate for three hours, and then calling his mom to pick him up because “his stomach hurt.” It was always a relief to get out of school, but eventually he noticed a blue and orange aura surrounding his mother more and more. She was sad and anxious, and seeing how the feeling only grew each time he came home early, Lloyd knew it was because of him. So after another day after this realization, he didn’t call her. He remained at school, the pain in his chest growing worse and worse with each passing day.
But he couldn’t tell his mom. Lloyd had seen that she was already feeling stressed out enough because of him, and he hated the sound of her crying herself to sleep when she thought no one could hear her.
So he kept it a secret, like always.
After two more weeks of never – ending pain, Lloyd had finally reached his breaking point.
He was walking through the hallway, heading to the cafeteria, when he collected a little bit more hate from some random person nearby. Normally, it hurt a little more and then he got used to it, but this time was different. The pain increased way more than it normally did, to the point that his eyes began to water and his vision blurred. He stopped in his tracks, all kinds of emotions now mingling with the hate, when suddenly voices seemed to fade, the emotions swirled and grew bigger and louder, their colors obscured his already blurry vision, and he reached up to cover his ears, trying to block everything out, when suddenly, everything went quiet. The colors disappeared, and the pain seemed to vanish.
In other words, it was pure bliss.
When he finally opened his eyes, it was to a continuous beeping and the sound of snoring.
Slowly, Lloyd sat up, his chest still burning in pain, but it was somehow much more bearable than before. He looked around and saw his mother asleep in a nearby chair, and it took him a moment too long to realize that he was in the hospital.
Then the door opened, and Lloyd turned his head towards the stranger that had just walked in. The two boys stared at each other for a moment, with a thin orange aura surrounding the stranger as he waved at Lloyd. “Hi,” he said, a slight yellow tinge appearing on the orange aura. “I’m Jay.”
Lloyd looked him up and down, taking in his auburn – colored hair, orange scarf, blue clothing, slightly tattered shoes, and a comic book in his hand. Lloyd’s eyes widened at the sight, immediately signing, “Is that S-T-A-R-F-A-R-E-R?”
It then hit him that he was acting like a total idiot. Jay probably didn’t even know sign language – and if he did, Lloyd was most likely coming across as rude anyways. But to his surprise, Jay said, “Yeah. It’s Starfarer. Why?”
“It’s my favorite series. And sorry for randomly asking. I’m Lloyd, by the way.” he watched as the yellow color grew more noticeable as Jay let out a happy gasp.
“You like Starfarer too? I thought the fandom was dead! No way!” The yellow color was starting to dominate the orange, and Lloyd grinned. More yellow wafted over towards the two boys, and Lloyd looked to his left to see his mother smiling at the two of them.
“This is where I get all the comics from – meet Mother Doomsday! Sure, he’s a guy, but Father Doomsday sounded really weird, but everyone’s super cool with it, so it’s fine. Anyways, he’s super chill – just pay for all your stuff and you’ll be fine.” Jay explained as he took Lloyd with him throughout the shop, pointing out the several different sections of comics.
Jay was an awesome friend – he was shy at first, but once you got to know him, he was amazing. He was normally surrounded by happy emotions, which prevented Lloyd from another hospital visit – (Lloyd was seriously debating telling his mom, he couldn’t stand making up excuses when the doctors proved them all to be false.)
And while Jay stopped things from getting too bad, he didn’t stop them from getting bad in general. Emotions weren’t something you could just shut off, and Lloyd had no idea if he could just stop using his empath ability.
Eventually, Lloyd and Jay paid for their comics and stepped into a whirlwind of colors as they exited the shop – at least, Lloyd did – but everything seemed ten times stronger than normal. Colors sped into his chest, making him grit his teeth in pain. Luckily, Jay didn’t notice, and the younger teen tried his best to keep up with his friend through the crowd. But then he tripped, sending him sprawling onto the ground – but when he got back up, Jay was nowhere to be seen.
Panicked, Lloyd looked around as he continued collecting emotions from everyone around him, his chest tightening due to the pain. The world seemed to spin as colors circled him, trapping him in an endless cycle of gathering emotions. They seemed to come at him faster now, barely giving him any time to process each one that flew into his chest. The colors swirled and mixed together, and Lloyd began to move, not knowing where he was going, but he didn’t care – all he knew was that he had to get out of here he couldn’t take it anymore it was too much to much to much he couldn’t breathe or speak or see anything except for the colors that drowned him, the emotions that held him down and he knew they would never let him go –
“Lloyd!”
His eyes snapped open to find Jay in front of him, surrounded by a dark blue aura of worry that reflected in the older teen’s eyes. “Lloyd, buddy… you okay?”
“Can – can you get me home?” Lloyd whispered, hating the way his voice cracked and how Jay probably knew how close he was to crying. “Please.”
Jay looked at him, concern and worry etched onto his face and showing through the colors that surrounded him. “Sure. Come on.” He helped Lloyd to his feet as the younger teen absorbed the colors, letting out a soft gasp of pain that didn’t go unnoticed.
The hate he absorbed during school only grew as the weeks went by. So did the bullying for not talking. So did the pressure in his chest.
At this point, Lloyd was just about ready to drop out of school altogether. But he knew he couldn’t – his mom had paid a lot for his education, and he couldn’t let it all go to waste.
So he stayed. He dealt with the consistent pain. He could handle it.
I can do this.
Until he couldn’t.
“Lloyd, can we talk?” Koko asked, a dark purple aura – guilt – surrounding her. He nodded.
“What’s going on with you?” She whispered, reaching over and cupping his cheek. “You’ve been so… distant lately. What’s going on?”
Lloyd took a deep breath. His mom was feeling guilty, thinking that whatever was going on was because of her, but it wasn’t. The purple hue seeped into his chest, and Lloyd squeezed his eyes shut from the pain. There was a gasp, and a light purple aura – concern – followed the darker one into his chest, smoothing it out.
“Where are you hurt? What happened?” Koko asked, the blues and purples around her mixing together.
“I need to tell you something,” Lloyd signed, and Koko nodded.
“Okay. What?” She asked, orange mixing in with the blues and purples.
“I’m an empath,” he signed, watching his mother’s face and some of the colors around her change.
“You are going to love these guys. One of them, Cole, has been my best friend since kindergarten! Everyone is so cool – and, and, get this, they all know sign language! All! ” Jay exclaimed, practically bouncing on his toes. Yellow waves drifted off of him, and Lloyd gravitated towards it as they walked, pushing the emotion away so he could save it for later. It was a new trick his mom had suggested – normally, the good emotions he gathered disappeared fast, but the negative ones remained for longer periods of time, leading them to snowball in a world of pain faster. The good emotions would be used up faster because of how desperate Lloyd was, but hopefully that wouldn’t be the case anymore.
“Anyways, welcome!” Jay exclaimed, unlocking the door of the house they’d approached. “Guys, I brought Lloyd with me!”
The two walked inside, and Lloyd shifted uncomfortably when he noticed everyone’s eyes were on him. He gave the four teens in front of him a little wave, smiling when they all waved back. Different colors circled near them and eventually moved into his chest, where he saved them all for tomorrow’s school day. After a few moments, Jay introduced the four to Lloyd.
“Okay, this is Cole.” Jay said, pointing to a boy with bushy eyebrows, dark black hair, and chocolate brown eyes. Bits of light gray confusion, orange nervousness, and yellow happiness circulated into Lloyd’s chest.
“Here’s Zane. He’s an amazing baker, by the way. We keep telling him to open up a bakery, but he won’t listen. I don’t know why.” Jay said with a shrug as Lloyd looked at the boy with white hair, eyebrows, clothing, and gray eyes. Like Cole, he was surrounded by light gray confusion and yellow happiness, with orange anxiety dominating them both. It seemed everyone so far was confused about who he was, which made sense, along with being nervous to meet him.
“Then we have the Smith siblings – this is their house, by the way. Kai, the oldest, the hothead of the group – ” “Hey!” “ – and Nya, his awesome little sister who can totally kick your butt.” “Aw, thanks Jay.” The same emotions from the other two moved into Lloyd’s chest, and he saved the good ones for later, attempting to shove the bad ones down. He smiled at the four teens, before signing, “Nice to meet you all.”
All four signed back. “Nice to meet you too.”
Lloyd couldn’t stop smiling.
“Okay, here we go. Lloyd, would you rather get stuck in a den full of lions or almost drown?” Kai asked, reading from the card in his hand. The board game lay beside him on the sofa, the majority of the cards scattered across the floor due to six rowdy teenagers, with only five currently in the room.
Nya let out a loud groan. “Why did he get the most gruesome one?”
“Do you want the most gruesome one?” Lloyd signed, and the boys burst into a frenzy of “oooohhh’s” and “roasted!” while Nya just rolled her eyes. Lloyd giggled and turned back to Kai and signed, “Almost drown. At least that one confirms you’ll live.”
“Ooh, smart!” Cole said as Zane walked in with a tray of brownies. Almost instantly, the five practically jumped on him, staring at the tray with wide eyes as they drooled at the sight of the sweet treat.
“Everyone sit down!” Zane exclaimed, and the other five went still. “They’re still hot, Kai, you will burn your tongue off.”
“Ooh!” “Yeah, Kai, you’ll burn your tongue off – ” “No I won’t – ack ack hot hot hot!” “I told you!” “See, Zane was right , you idiot , are you happy now –” “Shut up, Nya –”
As Lloyd watched the group bicker, he couldn’t help but smile as he gathered their emotions. Sure, he had only met them a few weeks prior, but he would be lying if he said that he didn’t consider this group his best friends.
After a few weeks, his uncle Wu, who knew a lot about empaths, stopped by once he heard about what was going on.
“You have to let it out, Lloyd. That’s the only way.” he said, watching Lloyd’s face twist in concentration. “You can’t hold the emotions in. That will only hurt you later on.”
Lloyd nodded, adjusting his meditation pose. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the emotions, trying to push them out.
“You can’t do anything unless you let yourself go to where you’ve kept them.” Wu said, and Lloyd frowned in confusion.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Where do you think the emotions go when you gather them?” Wu asked with a twinkle in his eye. “If you want to remove them from the premises, you need to enter the premises first, correct?”
“Yeah… you’re right.” Lloyd signed. “So, do I just do it, or…”
“You need an anchor so you don’t get stuck there forever – and I’m starting to think I won’t be enough. We need a few more people.” He smiled from underneath his beard, and Lloyd was starting to see where this was going. “Do you have a few people in mind?”
Lloyd gave him a nod before pulling out his phone to text his friends.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and focused on the emotions, trying to follow where they went after he gathered them. He followed the trail, going deeper and deeper, and then let himself fall.
He fell into a sea of colors – it seemed as if every single emotion he’d ever gathered since birth was floating around here. He floated downwards, catching sight of a huge pulsating ball full of colors.
This is it. This is what I need to remove.
Before he could even think about what he was doing, Lloyd had reached over and placed a hand on the ball, letting out a gasp as the colors flew inside him, but he wasn’t gathering them like normal – if anything, it was like he had full control over what he’d somehow managed to contain.
Now… how do I let it out? Do I just…
Lloyd let out a yell as he threw his arms to his sides, letting out a gasp when the emotions exploded out of him and vanished. Only a few strings of color remained, but he left them alone and tried to focus on getting back up.
Kai, Jay, and the others – they’re my anchor, right? So do I think of them to get me back up there?
He closed his eyes again, thinking back to the memories – albeit few ones – that he had of his friends. He thought of his mom, and everything she’d done for him. How she’d never judged him for being himself – neither had the others.
He hadn’t expected it to be so easy – within a few minutes, a golden wispy shape that resembled a hand reached out to him, and he took it. Suddenly, he was being rushed upwards, and his eyes flew open to see his mom, friends, and uncle staring at him, dark blue auras surrounding them. It quickly changed to a bright yellow color as his friends celebrated, his mom hugged him, and his uncle gave him an approving nod.
Finally, things calmed down enough for Lloyd to think about next steps. He’d have to do this ritual once a month, and once he got enough practice, he could do it whenever he wanted. His empath abilities would never turn off, but that was okay – at least now he’d be able to keep it from completely ruining his health.
But one thing had changed since the beginning of all this – at night, he no longer wished for school to get canceled.
Okay, that was a lie. He totally did. But come on, everyone did.
But at least now, he knew things would be a lot better than they’d been before.
Later that night, Lloyd smiled and closed his eyes – while all around him, colors swirled and danced around in the sky.