“What do you mean?” I ask, and then something clicks and I think I know what he’s talking about. “Oh, you mean empathy? You’re really empathetic?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Well, I mean, sort of yeah. I’m an empath. It’s not like I’m just hypersensitive or anything, I literally feel the feelings of everyone around me all the time. Really specifically. It’s like being psychic, except it sucks.”

“Caleb, there’s no such thing as psychics,” I say gently. I’m starting to get worried that this is way beyond my capabilities of understanding—is Caleb delusional? How seriously worried do I need to be? I suddenly feel like a child in a way that I haven’t in a really long time.

“Yeah, I think there might be,” he mumbles before continuing, “but that’s a whole other thing.”

“You know, Caleb”—doubt and worry are starting to slither up my spine, a knee-jerk response kicking into gear—“you might be hanging out with jocks too much if you think it’s abnormal to notice other people have feelings.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Caleb’s face flinches and crumples.

“Don’t be a dick,” he says defensively. “I’m not messing with you—”

“I didn’t think you were,” I say, while simultaneously realizing that, yep, that is exactly why I’m getting defensive.

“I know it’s something you worry about.” He’s looking at me earnestly now. “Being pranked or led on or whatever. Because right now, you have a bit of the same feeling you had the first time we had lunch—like you don’t trust me. It’s all defensive and prickly but also scared.”

“What are you talking about.” I don’t phrase it as a question because suddenly it’s not just the back of my neck prickling—there’re goose bumps over my whole body. I know what Caleb’s talking about. I know exactly what he’s talking about. That is something I worried about in the beginning, and the moment he brought up messing with me, I felt my walls go up.

“I know,” he says. “I know how you feel. All the time. I don’t always understand it but that’s why—why I know stuff, all right? About you, about Caitlin or Bryce, about your parents—all of it. It’s why I get weird sometimes—like when I got drunk at your birthday—”

“You what?” I interrupt but he ignores me.

“You said I’m strange—well … this is why.” Caleb exhales like he’s run a marathon and I feel like a marathon has run over me.

But things are starting to slot into place. All the oddly tense moments, the weirdly perceptive observations—all those times that Caleb is about to say something before gulping it down like a secret—those things are starting to make sense.