Almond Read online

  Notes

  Alexithymia, or the inability to identify and express one’s feelings, is a mental disorder first described in medical journals in the 1970s. Its known causes are lack of emotional development during a person’s early childhood, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the smaller inborn amygdalae, in which case, fear is the emotion these parts of the brain are least able to identify and express. Recently, however, new studies have suggested that the ability of the amygdalae to process fear and anxiety can be increased through training. This novel describes alexithymia based on these studies, and with the author’s imagination.

  P. J. Nolan is a fictional character.

  The dinosaurs’ sizes mentioned in this novel are based on Bernard Most’s The Littlest Dinosaurs. Their actual sizes may differ based on various studies.

  Dedication

  TO DAN

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Notes

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Two

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Part Three

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Part Four

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  A Note From the Translator

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I have almonds inside me.

  So do you.

  So do those you love and those you hate.

  No one can feel them.

  You just know they are there.

  This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me.

  I won’t tell you whether it has a happy ending or a tragic ending.

  Because, first of all, every story becomes boring once the ending is spoiled.

  Second of all, not telling you will make you more engaged in this one.

  Lastly, and I know it sounds like an excuse, but neither you nor I nor anyone can ever really know whether a story is happy or tragic.

  Part One

  1

  Six were dead, and one was wounded that day. First were Mom and Granny. Then a college student who had rushed in to stop the man. Then two men in their fifties who had stood in the front rank of the Salvation Army parade, followed by a policeman. Finally, the man himself. He had chosen to be the last victim of his manic bloodshed. He stabbed himself in the chest hard and, like most of the other victims, died before the ambulance came. I simply watched the whole thing unfold before me.

  Just standing there with blank eyes, as always.

  2

  The first incident happened when I was six. The symptoms had been there way earlier, but it was then that they had finally risen to the surface. That day, Mom must’ve forgotten to come get me from kindergarten. She told me later that she had gone to see Dad after all these years, to tell him that she would finally let him go, not that she would meet someone new or anything, but that she would move on anyway. Apparently, she had said all that to him as she wiped the faded walls of his mausoleum. Meanwhile, as her love came to an end once and for all, I, the uninvited guest of their young love, was being completely forgotten.

  After all the kids were gone, I wandered out of the kindergarten on my own. All that six-year-old me could remember about his house was that it was somewhere over a bridge. I went up and stood on the overpass with my head hanging over the railing. I saw cars gliding by beneath me. It reminded me of something I had seen somewhere, so I gathered as much saliva as possible in my mouth. I took aim at a car and spat. My spit evaporated long before it hit the car, but I kept my eyes on the road and kept spitting until I felt dizzy.

  “What are you doing! That’s disgusting!”

  I looked up to see a middle-aged woman passing by, glaring at me, then she just continued on her way, gliding past me like the cars below, and I was left alone again. The stairways from the overpass fanned out in every direction. I lost my bearings. The world I saw underneath the stairs was all the same icy gray, left and right. A couple of pigeons flapped away above my head. I decided to follow them.

  By the time I realized I was going the wrong way, I’d already gone too far. At kindergarten, I’d been learning a song called “Go Marching.” Earth is round, go go march ahead, and just like the lyrics, I thought that, somehow, I would eventually get to my house if I’d just go go march ahead. I stubbornly continued my small steps forward.

  The main road led to a narrow alley lined by old houses, those crumbling walls all marked with crimson, random numbers and the word “vacant.” There was no one in sight. Suddenly, I heard someone cry out, Ah, in a low voice. Not sure if it was Ah or Uh. Maybe it was Argh. It was a low, short cry. I walked toward the sound, and it grew as I approached closer and closer, then it changed to Urgh and Eeeh. It was coming from around the corner. I turned the corner without hesitation.

  A boy was lying on the ground. A small boy whose age I couldn’t tell, but then black shadows were being cast on and off him again and again. He was being beaten. The short cries weren’t coming from him but from the shadows surrounding him, more like shouts of exertion. They kicked and spat at him. I later learned that they were only middle school students, but back then, those shadows seemed tall and huge like grown-ups.

  The boy didn’t resist or even make a sound, as if he’d grown used to the beating. He was getting tossed back and forth like a rag doll. One of the shadows kicked the boy in the side as a final blow. Then they left. The boy was covered in blood, like a coat of red paint. I approached him. He looked older than me, maybe eleven or twelve years old, around twice my age. But I still felt like he was younger than me. His chest was heaving quickly, his breath short and shallow like a newborn puppy’s. It was obvious he was in danger.

  I went back to the alley. It was still empty—only the red letters on
the gray walls disturbed my eyes. After wandering for quite some time, I finally saw a small corner store. I slid open the door and stepped inside.

  “Excuse me.”

  Family Game was on television. The shopkeeper was snickering so hard watching the show that he must not have heard me. The guests in the show were playing a game where one person wearing earplugs had to guess words by watching others mouth them. The word was “trepidation.” I have no idea why I still remember the word. I didn’t even know what it meant then. One lady kept making wrong guesses and drew laughs from the audience and the shopkeeper. Eventually, time ran out, and her team lost. The shopkeeper smacked his lips, maybe because he felt bad for her.

  “Sir,” I called to him again.

  “Yes?” He finally turned.

  “There’s someone lying in the alley.”

  “Really?” he said indifferently and sat up.

  On television, both teams were about to play another round of a high-points game that could turn the tide.

  “He could die,” I said, fiddling with one of the chewy caramel packs neatly lined up on the display stand.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” That was when he finally looked me in the eye.

  “Where’d you learn to say such creepy things? Lying is bad, son.”

  I fell silent for a while, trying to find the words to convince him. But I was too young to have much vocabulary, and I couldn’t think of anything else truer than what I had already said.

  “He could die soon.”

  All I could do was repeat myself.

  3

  I waited for the show to finish while the shopkeeper called the police. When he saw me fiddling with the caramel again, he snapped at me to leave if I wasn’t going to buy anything. The police took their time coming to the scene—but all I could think of was the boy lying on the cold ground. He was already dead.

  The thing is, he was the shopkeeper’s son.

  * * *

  I sat on a bench at the police station, swinging my legs hovering in the air. They went back and forth, working up a cool breeze. It was already dark, and I felt sleepy. Just as I was about to doze off, the police station door swung open to reveal Mom. She let out a cry when she saw me and stroked my head so hard it hurt. Before she could fully enjoy the moment of our reunion, the door swung wide open again and in came the shopkeeper, his body held up by policemen. He was wailing, his face covered in tears. His expression was quite different from when he had watched TV earlier. He slumped down on his knees, trembling, and punched the ground. Suddenly he got to his feet and yelled, pointing his finger at me. I couldn’t exactly understand his rambling, but what I got was something like this:

  “You should’ve said it seriously, now it’s too late for my son!”

  The policeman next to me shrugged. “What would a kindergartener know,” he said, and managed to stop the shopkeeper from sinking to the floor. I couldn’t agree with the shopkeeper though. I’d been perfectly serious all along. Never once did I smile or overreact. I couldn’t understand why he was scolding me for that, but six-year-old me didn’t know the words needed to form this question into a full sentence, so I just stayed silent. Instead, Mom raised her voice for me, turning the police station into a madhouse, with the clamoring of a parent who’d lost his child and a parent who’d found hers.

  That night, I played with toy blocks as I always did. They were in the shape of a giraffe and could be changed into an elephant if I twisted down its long neck. I felt Mom staring at me, her eyes scanning every part of my body.

  “Weren’t you scared?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  * * *

  Rumors about that incident—specifically, how I didn’t even blink at the sight of someone being beaten to death—spread quickly. From then on, Mom’s fears became a reality one after another.

  Things got worse after I entered elementary school. One day, on the way home from school, a girl walking in front of me tripped over a rock. She was blocking my way, so I examined the Mickey Mouse hairband she was wearing while I waited for her to get back up. But she just sat there and cried. Finally, her mom came and helped her stand. She glanced at me, clucking her tongue.

  “You see your friend fall and don’t even ask if she’s okay? So the rumors are true, something is weird about you.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I said nothing. The other kids sensed that something was happening and gathered around me, their whispers prickling my ears. For all I knew, they were probably echoing what the girl’s mom had said. That was when Granny came in to save me, appearing out of nowhere like Wonder Woman, sweeping me up into her arms.

  “Watch your mouth!” she snapped in her husky voice. “She was just unlucky to trip. Who do you think you are to blame my boy?”

  Granny didn’t forget to say a word to the kids, either.

  “What are you staring at, you little brats?”

  When we walked farther away, I looked up to see Granny with her lips pressed tight.

  “Granny, why do people call me weird?”

  Her lips loosened.

  “Maybe it’s because you’re special. People just can’t stand it when something is different, eigoo, my adorable little monster.”

  Granny hugged me so tight my ribs hurt. She always called me a monster. To her, that wasn’t a bad thing.

  4

  To be honest, it took me a while to understand the nickname Granny had so affectionately given me. Monsters in books weren’t adorable. In fact, monsters were completely opposite to everything adorable. I wondered why she’d call me that. Even after I learned the word “paradox”—which meant putting contradictory ideas together—I was confused. Did the stress fall on “adorable” or “monster?” Anyway, she said she called me that out of love, so I decided to trust her.

  Tears welled up in Mom’s eyes as Granny told her about the Mickey Mouse girl.

  “I knew this day would come . . . I just didn’t expect it to be this soon . . .”

  “Oh, stop that nonsense! If you want to whine, go whine in your room and keep the door shut!”

  That stopped Mom’s crying for a moment. She glanced at Granny, a bit startled by the sudden outburst. Then she began to cry even harder. Granny clucked her tongue and shook her head, her eyes resting on a corner of the ceiling, heaving a deep sigh. This seemed to be their typical routine.

  It was true, Mom had been worried about me for a long time. That was because I was always different from other kids—different from birth even, because:

  I never smiled.

  At first, Mom had thought I was just slow to develop. But parenting books told her that a baby starts smiling three days after being born. She counted the days—it had been nearly a hundred.

  Like a fairy-tale princess cursed to never smile, I didn’t bat an eye. And like a prince from a faraway land trying to win over his beloved’s heart, Mom tried everything. She tried clapping, bought different colored rattles, and even did silly dances to children’s songs. When she wore herself out, she went out to the veranda and smoked, a habit she’d barely managed to quit after finding out she was pregnant with me. I once saw a video filmed around that time, where Mom was trying so hard, and I was just staring at her. My eyes were too deep and calm to be those of a child’s. Whatever she did, Mom couldn’t make me smile.

  The doctor said I had no particular issues. Except for the lack of smiles, the test results showed that my height, weight, and behavioral development were all normal for my age. The pediatrician in our neighborhood dismissed Mom’s concerns, telling her not to worry, because her baby was growing just fine. For a while after that, Mom tried to comfort herself by saying that I was just a little quieter than other kids.

  Then something happened around my first birthday, which proved that she’d been right to worry.

  That day, Mom had put a red kettle filled with hot water on the table. She turned her back to mix the powdered milk. I reached fo
r the kettle and it fell from the table, tumbling down to the floor, splashing hot water everywhere. I still have a faint burn mark like a medal from that day. I screamed and cried. Mom thought I’d be scared of water or red kettles from that point on, like a normal kid would be. But I wasn’t. I was afraid of neither water nor kettles. I kept reaching for the red kettle whenever I saw it, whether it had cold or hot water inside.

  The evidence kept adding up. There was a one-eyed old man who lived downstairs with a big black dog he always kept tied to the post in the yard. I stared straight into the old man’s milky-white pupils without fear, and when Mom lost track of me for a moment, I reached out to touch his dog, who bared his teeth and growled. Even after seeing the kid next door, bitten and bleeding from doing the very same thing, I did it again. Mom had to constantly intervene.

  After several incidents like this, Mom started worrying that I might have a low IQ, but there was no other proof of that. So, like any mother, she tried to find a way to cast her doubts about her child in a positive light.

  He’s just more fearless than other kids.

  That was how she described me in her diary.

  * * *

  Even so, any mother’s anxiety would peak if their child hadn’t smiled by their fourth birthday. Mom held my hand and took me to a bigger hospital. That day is the first memory carved into my brain. It’s blurry, as if I were watching from underwater, but comes into sharp focus every once in a while, like this:

  A man in a white lab coat sits in front of me. Beaming, he starts showing me different toys one by one. Some of them he shakes. Then he taps my knee with a small hammer. My leg swings up higher than I thought possible. He then puts his fingers under my armpits. It tickles, and I giggle a little. Then he takes out photographs and asks me some questions. One of the pictures I still remember vividly.

  “The kid in this photo is crying because his mommy is gone. How would he feel?”

  Not knowing the answer, I look up to Mom sitting next to me. She smiles at me and strokes my hair, then subtly bites her lower lip.

  * * *

  A few days later, Mom takes me somewhere else, saying I will get to ride a spaceship, but we end up at another hospital. I ask her why she brings me here when I’m not even sick, but she doesn’t answer.