Me and You Read Free

chest, along with my PlayStation, three Stephen King novels and a couple of Marvel comics.
    I locked the door.
    This would be my ski week.

 
    2
    I started talking when I was three years old. Small talk has never been one of my strengths. If someone I didn’t know said something to me I would answer yes, no, I
don’t know. And if they insisted, I would answer with whatever they wanted to hear me say.
    Once you’ve thought something, what need is there to say it aloud?
    ‘Lorenzo, you’re like a cactus: you grow without bothering anyone, you just need a drop of water and a bit of light,’ an old nanny from Caserta used to say to me.
    My parents used to bring over au pairs for me to play with. But I preferred playing on my own. I would close the door and imagine that my room was a cube that floated through space.
    My problems started at primary school.
    I have very few memories of that period. I remember my teachers’ names, the hydrangeas in the schoolyard, the metal containers full of steaming hot maccheroni in the canteen. And the
others.
    The others were anyone who wasn’t my mum, my father and Grandma Laura.
    If the others didn’t leave me alone, if they pushed me too far, the blood would rise up through my legs, flood my stomach and spread out to the tips of my hands, and then I would clench my
fists and lash out.
    When I pushed Giampolo Tinari off the wall and he fell on his head on the cement and had to get stitches in his forehead, they called home.
    In the staff room, my teacher told my mother: ‘He looks like he’s at the station waiting for the train to take him home. He doesn’t annoy anyone, but if any of his classmates
tease him he starts shouting, turns red and starts throwing whatever he can get his hands on.’ The teacher had studied the floor, embarrassed. ‘Sometimes he is frightening. I
don’t know . . . I would recommend you . . .’
    My mother took me to see Professor Masburger. ‘You’ll see. He helps a lot of kids.’
    ‘But how long do I have to go for?’
    ‘Three quarters of an hour. Twice a week. What do you say?’
    ‘Yeah, that’s not too much,’ I told her.
    If my mother thought I’d end up being like the others that was fine with me. Everyone had to think that I was normal, Mum included.
    Nihal would take me. A fat secretary wearing a caramel perfume would lead me into a mouldy-smelling room with a low ceiling. The window faced a grey wall. On the hazelnut-coloured walls hung old
black and white photos of Rome.
    ‘But does everyone who has problems lie there?’ I asked Professor Masburger, as he pointed towards a faded brocade couch.
    ‘Of course. Everyone. This way you can talk more freely.’
    Perfect. I would pretend to be a normal kid with problems. It wouldn’t take much to trick him. I knew exactly how the others reasoned, what they liked and what they wished for. And if what
I knew wasn’t enough, that couch I was lying on would transfer to me, like a warm body transfers heat to a cold body, the thoughts of the kids that had lain there before me.
    And so I told him all about a different Lorenzo. A Lorenzo who was embarrassed to talk to the others but who wanted to be like them. I liked pretending that I loved the others.
    A few weeks after I began the therapy I heard my parents whispering in the living room. I went into the study. I took a few volumes from the bookshelves and put my ear up against the wall.
    ‘So what’s wrong with him?’ Father was saying.
    ‘He said that he has a narcissistic personality disorder.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘He says that Lorenzo is unable to feel empathy for others. For him everything that’s outside his circle of affections doesn’t exist, has no effect on him. He believes he is
special and only people as special as him can understand him.’
    ‘You want to know what I think? That this Masburger is a dickhead. I have never seen any boy as affectionate as our son.’
    ‘That’s true, but only with us,