Adrian Cole was six years old, and he knew something was wrong with him.
Not wrong in the sense of being sick. The doctor had checked him many times after the accident—every month for the first six months, then every two months—and always said the same thing: "Physically perfect. Not a single complication."
Wrong in another way.
It was Tuesday, and he was at recess at Beaumont Elementary School, standing alone by the fence that separated the playground from the parking lot. The other first graders were running and shouting and playing tag, but Adrian just watched.
It wasn't that he didn't want to play. He did. Sort of. The problem was that when he did play, weird things happened.
Like last week when Tyler Morrison—the oldest boy in his class—had pushed him during tag. Adrian should have fallen. All the kids fell when Tyler pushed them. But Adrian didn't fall. His feet moved on their own, adjusting his balance so quickly that he didn't even wobble.
Tyler had given him a strange look. "How did you do that?"
Adrian didn't know how to explain it. "I don't know."
Or like yesterday in gym class when Ms. Mitchell had taught them how to do forward rolls. All the other kids tripped and fell sideways. But when it was Adrian's turn, his body just... knew how to do it. Perfect roll, straight, ending up on his feet without using his hands.
"Very good, Adrian," Ms. Mitchell had said. "Have you had gymnastics classes?"
"No, Ms.."
"Did your mom teach you?"
Adrian thought about his mom. She didn't teach him much anymore. Mostly she was in her room, or at work, or looking at old photos without saying anything.
"No."
Ms. Mitchell had frowned a little but then moved on to the next child.
Now Adrian watched the other children play and didn't know how to be like them. He didn't know how to trip. He didn't know how to fall badly. His body wouldn't let him.
"Adrian."
He turned around. Mrs. Chen—the school counselor—was standing behind him. She was a pleasant woman with round glasses and a kind smile who always smelled of tea.
"Will you come with me for a moment?"
Adrian nodded and followed her toward the building. He knew the way to her office. He'd been there many times in the past year.
Mrs. Chen's office had a child's chair that was just his size, toys on a shelf, and drawings on the walls that other children had made. Adrian always sat in the same chair—the blue one by the window.
"How have you been, Adrian?" Mrs. Chen asked, sitting down in her own chair with a clipboard in her lap.
"Fine."
"Did you play with anyone at recess today?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Adrian shrugged. He didn't know how to explain that playing with the other children made him feel more alone, not less.
"Your teacher says you've been very quiet in class. More than usual." Adrian didn't say anything. Mrs. Chen waited. She was good at waiting. She could wait a long time without speaking, just looking at him with those kind eyes behind her glasses.
"Have you thought about your dad lately?" she finally asked.
There it was. They always came up with that question. All adults eventually asked about their dad.
"Sometimes."
"What do you think about?"
Adrian looked out the window. From here he could see the playground. The children were still running and shouting. They looked so... simple. As if life were easy.
"I think about his face," he said. "But sometimes I can't quite remember it. Like it's blurry."
It was true. It was getting harder and harder to remember exactly what his dad looked like. He had pictures at home—lots of pictures—but it wasn't the same as actually remembering.
"That's normal, Adrian. Our memories change over time."
"I don't like it."
"I know."
Silence again. Adrian counted the seconds. One, two, three, four…
"Adrian," Mrs. Chen leaned forward slightly. "Do you remember what we talked about regarding feelings? About how it's okay to feel different things?"
Adrian nodded. They had talked about it many times.
"It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be angry. It's even okay to… not feel anything sometimes."
"What if I don't know what I'm feeling?"
"That's okay too."
But it didn't feel okay. It felt strange. All the other children seemed to understand their feelings. When they were happy, they laughed. When they were sad, they cried. When they were angry, they shouted.
Adrian didn't do any of those things. Or he did, but they felt… acted. Like he was pretending to be a normal child.
"Can I go now?" he asked.
Mrs. Chen sighed softly. "Yes, you can go. But Adrian... if you ever want to talk about anything, my door's open. Okay?"
"Okay."
He wasn't going to talk. He never really talked. What would he say? That sometimes his body did things it shouldn't be able to do? That he didn't cry for his dad even though he knew he should? That there was something inside him that felt old and tired even though he was only six?
It sounded crazy. Even to him.
After school, his mom picked him up in the car. She drove now—they'd sold the Camry after the accident and bought a used Honda—and she always drove very slowly, with both hands on the wheel.
"How was school?" she asked without looking at him.
"Good."
"Did you learn anything new?"
"We studied dinosaurs."
"That's nice."
She didn't sound like she thought it was good. She sounded like she was far away, thinking about other things.
Adrian looked up at her from the back seat. His mom looked different now. Thinner. Her hair wasn't always styled like it used to be. There were lines on her face that hadn't been there before.
Grandma said his mom was "processing her grief." Adrian wasn't sure what that meant, only that it meant his mom cried a lot and sometimes forgot to make dinner.
They arrived home—the same house as before, though it felt emptier now—and Adrian went straight to his room while his mom started preparing something in the kitchen.
His room was the same, too, except that the pictures of his dad that used to be in the living room were now in his room. His mom couldn't look at them without crying, so Adrian had brought them to his room.
He sat on his bed and looked at the picture on his nightstand. His dad was smiling, carrying him on his shoulders at the beach. Adrian looked so small there. So happy.
He tried to remember how he had felt that day. The sun on his face. The sand between his toes. His dad's laughter.
But he could only remember the facts, not the feelings. It was like reading about the day in a book instead of actually remembering it.
Whatever happens, happens.
The words appeared in his head again. They came sometimes, at odd moments, like a voice that wasn't his voice. Or maybe it was his voice. He wasn't sure anymore.
Adrian lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.
That night, after dinner (canned soup his mom had heated up), Adrian was in the living room playing with his plastic dinosaurs when he heard something.
A noise in the backyard. Like someone had knocked something over.
His mom was upstairs in the bathroom. Adrian got up and walked to the back door, looking out the window.
There was nothing there. Just the empty yard in the dark.
But then he heard the noise again. Definitely something moving.
Adrian opened the door—he shouldn't, he knew he shouldn't, his mom always told him not to go out alone at night—but his body moved before he could really think about it.
He went out into the yard. It was a cat. A large, gray cat hiding under the bush by the fence. It was meowing strangely, as if something were wrong.
Adrian approached slowly. "Kitty..." The cat saw him and hissed, showing its teeth.
Adrian stopped. He should be scared. Cats that bared their teeth were dangerous. He knew that.
But he wasn't scared.
He crouched down, slowly extending his hand. "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
The cat hissed again but didn't move. Adrian saw that its back paw was at an odd angle. Injured.
Without thinking—without really knowing why he was doing it or how he knew how—Adrian moved. Quickly but gently. His hand grasped the cat behind the neck in the exact spot where cats couldn't bite. His other hand held the cat's body firmly but not too tightly.
The cat stopped hissing, startled.
Adrian picked it up, examining the paw. Definitely broken. He could see how the bone was at the wrong angle.
"I'm going to take you inside," he told the cat. "My mom will know what to do."
He walked back toward the house carrying the cat, who was now strangely still, as if it knew Adrian was helping.
"ADRIAN MATTHEW COLE!"
Adrian froze. His mom was in the doorway, her eyes wide. "What are you doing? I told you never to go out alone at night!"
"The cat's hurt."
His mom looked at the cat, then at Adrian, then back at the cat again. "That... that's a wild cat. You could have hurt yourself. It could have scratched you or bitten you or—"
"It didn't hurt me."
"That's not the point!" Her voice rose, and Adrian realized she wasn't just angry. She was scared. "What if something had happened to you? What if—"
He stopped. He took a deep breath. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there were tears.
"You can't... you can't do things like that, Adrian. I can't lose you too."
And there it was. The thing they never said directly but that was always there. The fear. The constant terror that something would happen to Adrian like it had happened to his dad.
"I'm sorry, Mom."
And he was. Sort of. He understood that he had scared her. He understood that he shouldn't have gone outside.
But he didn't feel the danger. He hadn't felt afraid of the cat. His body had known exactly what to do, exactly how to move, exactly where to grab.
As if he had done it a thousand times before.
His mom picked up the cat—carefully, nervously—and carried it inside. She called the emergency vet. They put the cat in a cardboard box and drove to the clinic.
In the car, Adrian looked at his hands. Small hands of a six-year-old boy. But they had held that cat as if they were adult hands. As if they knew exactly what to do.
How did I know how to do that? he thought.
But there was no answer. Only that strange feeling again. That silent knowledge that lived inside him, waiting.
The vet saved the cat. She put a cast on his paw and said he'd be fine in six weeks. She asked his mom if they wanted to keep him once he healed, and his mom—to Adrian's surprise—said yes.
"You need something to focus on," she said on the way home. "Something to take care of."
Adrian nodded, though he suspected it was his mom who needed something to focus on. Something to get her out of bed in the mornings. Something that depended on her.
They named the cat Shadow, because he was gray and quiet and appeared in unexpected places.
And Adrian, six and a half years old, took care of Shadow with a precision that worried his mom, though she never said so aloud.
Because Adrian knew exactly how much food to give him. Exactly how to stroke him to calm him down. Exactly when he needed space and when he wanted company.
He didn't know how he knew these things.
He just knew.
Like he knew many things now that he shouldn't know.
And with each passing day, it became clearer that Adrian Cole wasn't like the other children.
Something inside him was different.
Something had changed that day in the park.
And though he didn't have the words to explain it, he knew—with the certainty of something ancient and wise that lived in his bones—that he would never be normal again.