Hearing thoughts isn’t all it’s cracked up to be I learned. One morning I just woke up with the ability I haven’t looked at people the same since. I’ve heard so many things I wish I didn’t, from confessions to fantasies.

The first day of this power gave me a new best friend. His name is Jacob everyone always considered him weird. He always just sat in the corner in school never participating, never talking to anyone. Jacobs thoughts used to scare me. He would make very detailed plans to kill all our classmates right down to the socks he would wear. But Jacob is misunderstood I didn’t realize it until weeks later when he was thinking about being beaten. Jacob seemed to have a rough childhood beaten by people from children to what looked like his parents. He seemed to have been bullied from school to school until he arrived here. He sometimes would think about how no one would miss him if he died.

“Can I help you” I asked, his head snapped up to look at me. “No, I don’t need any help” he said turning back to his book. “My names Kade, we share some classes” I say “yeah” he replies “you’re Jacob right” I ask he nods. Then I gave him my number I didn’t know if he would text me but I wanted him to know someone tried. The “weird” kids are usually always misunderstood or at least that was the case for my friend Jacob. We do everything together now and he doesn’t ask me how I knew he needed help. We both have our secrets that we need to hide from the world.