I’ve already told you that I’m a synes-creep. I experience the world differently from other people. I see sounds, voices, and music as colors. The London Underground sounds steel gray, like a bagful of knives. My mother’s voice is soft, like soft gauze on a frozen lake. And purple. My voice is currently colorless, but when I’m scared it turns bright yellow. When I speak it’s light blue, like a baby’s playsuit. It’s breaking at the moment, and ideally I would say nothing further until that’s over.

People who know who they are and what they’re capable of have green voices. Dark-green voices, serene and majestic like a wise old forest.

For me, numbers also have colors. The figure eight is green, four is yellow, and five is blue. Letters have personalities: R is aggressive, S is sly, and K is a covert racist. Z is cooperative and F is a diva. G is upright and strong.

When I enter a room I can tell which emotions have been felt in it most frequently. With someone like Mrs. Walker, I can sense how heavyhearted she is by the density of the shadows surrounding her.

I can’t look another person in the eye. There’s too much there, and much of it I don’t understand. Sometimes I’m afraid that their gaze will tell me they’re about to die, which turned out to be the case with our housemaster at Colet Court and our neighbor Mrs. Logan.

People with synesthesia used to be regarded as pathological. Pathologically shy, pathologically oversensitive, a real burden on their families. Children who have it are always screaming, quick to tears, and peculiar in other ways too. When they grow up they often turn out to be borderline, complete schizophrenics, or prone to depression. Many kill themselves because they can’t cope with the world and the way they see it. Hypersensitive crybabies. If there were any pills to treat this condition, I’d be gobbling them like Smarties.

THE FIRST TIME I walked through the ward of the “zombies,” it felt as if their souls were bleeding colors. I perceive that kind of thing, although I’d rather not. Then I caught sight of the man in C7. I felt nothing.

It was weird. I’ve never felt nothing. Only that once. The stranger was lying motionless on his back on an aluminum bed. The shadows around him were thick, the color of the moon. His eyes were closed, and he gave off nothing. That nothing worried me, but only in a strange, standoffish way.