Overemotional_-_David_Fenne
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First published in the UK in 2023
This electronic edition published in 2023 by Ink Road
INK ROAD is an imprint and trade mark of
Black & White Publishing Ltd
Nautical House, 104 Commercial Street, Edinburgh, EH6 6NF
A division of Bonnier Books UK
4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1B 4DA
Owned by Bonnier Books
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, Sweden
Copyright © David Fenne 2023
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
The right of David Fenne to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This is a work of fiction and not intended as a historical or factual account. Names, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PBK): 978 1 78530 472 9
ISBN (EBOOK): 978 1 78530 473 6
eBook Compilation by Data Connection
www.ink-road.com
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For John,
My doofus, my butthead, my everything.
*book boop*
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Contents
Author’s Note
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
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
Acknowledgements
About the Author
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Author’s Note
OVEREMOTIONAL is a story about friendship, love, and loneliness. It’s
about finding who you are and where you fit in the world. There are
depictions of violence, drugging, and references to medical experimentation
conducted on pregnant women in the past. While it is my hope this book is
for everyone, I am including this note so that those sensitive to these issues
can make an informed decision from the very beginning. After all, emotions
have power, even if they aren’t magic.
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1
Steven
The first time I kissed another boy was probably the worst day of my life.
One moment I’m waiting for the upstairs loo at a yay-we-did-our-first-
week-of-mock-exams party, the next, I’m being led into a bedroom, and I’m
making out with a total stranger.
And then his head exploded.
Like, actually exploded. I was dressed like a zombie at the time, which
basically meant I’d ripped some old clothes and let Freya squirt me with
fake blood. Unoriginal, but at least it disguised the real blood.
Oh god. The real blood.
Just what the hell was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly explain to the
police that I’d snogged someone’s head out of existence. I had been
careless. My powers had been getting stronger, but I thought one party
would be fine. That I could keep my emotions in check. And now they’ve
. . . killed someone. I’ve killed someone. So, I did what any seventeen-year-
old walking atom bomb would do.
I ran.
Ran home, packed a bag and kept on running. Okay, there were some
buses in there too, but I think it’s safe to say no one will find me here.
Grunsby-on-Sea: the official arse end of nowhere.
I need to stop thinking about it. I can’t let myself get overemotional.
Whenever I do, things . . . happen. It’s weird. Whatever I feel seems to
manifest in some strange and horrific way. I can’t be happy without
inflicting misery. It’s like the universe is conspiring against me – constantly
playing cruel tricks. I try not to indulge it. I try not to feel anything.
That’s why I’m alone.
No one around to hurt. It’s safer for everyone else if I just stay here by
myself and keep my emotions (and these damn manifestations) under
control.
It’s 11 a.m., but I just woke up. I say “woke,” but I don’t think I actually
slept. My body was exhausted from lugging boxes around, but my mind just
doesn’t want to stop. Every night, I replay that party – that popping noise –
over and over. Can’t remember the last time I got eight hours.
I throw on some clothes and head into the kitchen: bread in the toaster,
kettle on. It’s a revolting kitchen, but not because it’s dirty; it isn’t. The
moment I feel even a whiff of disgust, I draw all the dirt and dust in the flat
toward me like a human vacuum. I guess I attract what disgusts me. Handy,
but showering it all off is a pain. No, the kitchen is revolting because it
hasn’t been redecorated since 1954. Busy floral wallpaper is peeling from
the walls, and the pink paint that once coated the cupboards is chipped and
flaky. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole flat were made of asbestos.
I’ve been considering calling myself an emomancer. Makes sense.
Pyromancers control fire and necromancers bring back the dead – at least in
Dungeons and Dragons or whatever. So, emomancers have emotion powers.
I mean, it sounds like I should dye my hair black and wear a trench coat,
but what else can I call it? I don’t think there are emos anymore anyway – a
casualty of the noughties. I was too young to be one, but I do remember
Freya’s older brother straightening his hair within an inch of its life at the
time.
The kettle boils, and I scoop some instant coffee (the supermarket own-
brand kind that tastes like someone blended up topsoil) into a mug. I don’t
trust myself to have anything nicer. Two weeks ago, I tried a pumpkin spice
latte and shattered every window in the high street. It was delicious, though.
The memory of the spicy-sweet drink rushes to my lips, and my toast
catches fire, yellow light fizzing around my hand.
Great.
At least burned toast might mean sunshine today. But sunshine might
make me happy and cause a sinkhole in Grunsby town centre . . .
I stop myself thinking. It’s something I learned from one of those
meditation apps. Not sure super-powered teenagers were their target
demographic, but it works. I just picture white and nothing else, and usually
everything balances out. No thoughts, no emotions, no tricks. I call them
that because they are rarely treats.
I try to scrape the burned bits from the toast, but it’s completely charred.
My tricks seem to be getting stronger and more frequent lately. Used to be,
I’d only cause a trick if there was a particularly strong emotion, and even
then, there were long periods between them. Now I run out of fingers
counting all the ones before lunch.
I thought a job might take my mind off things and keep my tricks under
control. Plus I could use the cash. When I came to Grunsby-on-Sea, a week
or so ago, I tried to be a bartender in a run-down pub called the Lazy
Cough. I was keeping everything together until some middle-aged hag
demanded I make her a Porn Star Martini. What even is that? She kept
shouting that Millennials were “entitled slackers” despite the fact I was
born after the millennium, so I haven’t touched a pair of skinny jeans in my
life. She just kept going on. I could feel the tricks bubbling up inside me,
feeding off my anger until I just couldn’t take it and told her to shut up.
That was when I realised my anger manifests as fear in other people.
Everyone fled the pub in terror like I’d brought an emotional support lion
with me. I was banned from the premises and told I was lucky they didn’t
call the police.
Since then, I’ve been unloading cargo at the wharf when the ships come
in. It’s hard, manual work, but at least I don’t have to think. Or worry about
feeling. There are surprisingly few emotional reactions one can have to
stacking crates and lugging boxes.
Thus far, no tricks.
As I pull on my boots, my triceps burn, and back muscles I didn’t know
I had grind like rusted gears. If the tricks don’t kill me, then my sheer
unfitness in the face of manual labour will. Why couldn’t I have gone to the
gym more often? The one at school was free for all sixth formers, but I felt
too embarrassed to go. What if everyone laughed at me for standing on the
elliptical the wrong way round? Someone might film me, and I could end
up on TikTok. Freya loves watching videos of people hurting themselves.
How I would love to laugh at someone else’s misfortune for a change. But
any rogue laughs could cause a thunderstorm or an old woman to slip and
break her hip.
I don’t know if there are any others like me. And if there are, would
they make good things happen when they are happy, or would they be
broken like me? I wonder if they can . . . relieve their “teenage urges”
without causing a hurricane.
I did that.
I finished, then looked out the window to see next door’s shed flying
around like it was about to drop on the Wicked Witch of the West. At first, I
didn’t connect the dots. My powers were still developing, and my hands
weren’t glowing different colours yet. It wasn’t until puberty really had its
claws around my hormones that I began to see the trail of devastation.
Earthquakes, lightning strikes – I’m pretty sure I even caused a foot-and-
mouth outbreak across the county when I bunked off school.
I was probably the most sexually frustrated teenager to ever walk the
planet. I learned to stop thinking about it. And it works. It was working
until a guy I had just met kissed me, and I made his head pop like an angry
spot.
But it’s not just sex stuff. Other tricks happen depending on how I feel.
Things often go in pairs and opposites, and the stronger the emotion, the
stronger the trick. I keep a little chart in my pocket to keep track: my cheat
sheet. I’ve left some empty boxes because I seem to develop a new trick
every couple of months. Just the other day, I pushed a convertible into a
wall by admiring it.
I used to live my life and ignore whatever occasionally manifested.
Now I don’t have that luxury. All I can do is try not to feel – go about my
day with mechanical efficiency, like a passenger in my own body. But it’s
so hard. Every time I slip up, something terrible happens.
At this point, all I want is to feel nothing.
Jacketed and booted, I step out of my gross time capsule of a rental flat,
and the November sea breeze bashes my face. There’s something
particularly cruel about the seaside in winter. The wind is extra cold, and it
carries salt that licks your face like a cat’s tongue.
Grunsby-on-Sea is a dump. That’s partly why I chose to come here:
some vague sense of altruism. If I torture myself, then maybe nothing bad
would happen to anyone else. This place topped every BuzzFeed listicle for
worst places to live and was even voted “Most depressing town in the UK”.
Not that the Grunsbians have noticed. It probably wasn’t always like this,
though. Back in the forties, this was probably a lucrative holiday
destination. People would take their kids to play at the seaside with jam
sandwiches and ginger beer like something out of an Enid Blyton novel.
Now the only visitors are film crews looking for the saddest looking place
in England and emomancers hiding from the law, I guess.
At some point, some optimistic soul tried to liven the seafront up with a
pastel-pink coat of paint over everything: railings, buildings, the old, ruined
pier. Obviously, they didn’t maintain it as everything in town is cracked and
flaking from the sea air. Even the town’s crown jewel, the Grand Regalia
Hotel, which now offers “colour TV in every room”, looks like it has a bad
case of eczema. The hotel, situated just next to a rickety old Ferris wheel,
overlooks the sunken pier like a post-apocalyptic art deco monstrosity. No
one ever seems to be staying there, but I can hardly blame them. Any parent
who willingly brought their child here today would have social services
round faster than a seagull on chips.
One good thing about Grunsby-on-Sea is that no one bats an eyelid at
you. It’s the perfect place to hide away and have zero questions asked. You
can walk to the corner shop without anyone sparing you a second glance.
Speaking of which, I pull my coat up over my mouth and head down the
hill.
*
The shopkeeper grunts at me as the beeping door heralds my arrival. I’m
the only one who seems to come in here, but it’s not hard to see why.
Plastered to every inch of the glass door are scraps of paper saying “no
children”, “no loud talking”, “no browsing”, “no old people” and “no
phones”.
I flash him an awkward no-lip smile and pick up a basket. Much like the
rest of the town, the corner shop is frozen in time. Worn boxes of Jaffa
cakes sit limply on the shelves; their sell-by date seemingly older than I am.
I pick up a bottle of what I assume is Pepsi – the label is coated in so much
dust, it is hard to see. My thumb streaks across it, and a handsome man with
way too much gel in his hair looks back at me. Apparently, he’s a football
player from the 1998 World Cup – not that I have any clue about football
despite my dad’s repeated attempts to teach me.
I wonder what Mum and Dad are doing right now. They’ve been
visiting my uncle in Madrid for the month – supposedly to “give me room
to revise” for my mock A Levels, but I’m pretty sure they just wanted to
sunbathe for the whole of November. By now, they’re probably the colour
of tanned leather and haven’t worried about me once. I’m sure Freya’s
worrying, though. We’ve been best friends since we were six. She saw my
Ben 10 lunch box from across the playground, marched straight up to me,
and demanded we play together. We pretended to turn into aliens and fight
baddies together almost every lunchtime. Since then, she’s always been in
my life, except for that brief few months in Year Seven when we decided
we hated each other. She’s in my form but we don’t have any subjects
together. I tell her everything . . . Well, almost everything.
Recently – well, before I went AWOL – she’d been boring me with
every intimate detail of her new boyfriend, Marcus.
Prick.
I’ve never felt such an instant dislike for someone. He always insinuates
that he’s a lot smarter than me, just because he’s already got uni offers for
engineering. He can basically fix anything; it’s super annoying. “Stevie,
you’re doing this wrong . . .” “Stevie, I passed my driving test first time
. . .” “Stevie, I’m a prick who has biceps and a car . . .”
Some people assume that I’m jealous, but I’m honestly not. Freya is like
my sister – I imagine. I don’t have any siblings. But I can safely say our
relationship has only ever been platonic. I guess certain things bind you to
someone for life. And, apparently, running around the playground
pretending to be alien butterflies with freezing breath is one of them. God, I
miss her so much . . .
I catch myself, but it might have been too late. I stare at my fingers,
hoping that nothing happens, but of course, it does. A faint yellow aura
crackles around my hand. I’m manifesting happiness. The sky outside
darkens, thunder crashing overhead. Long, spear-like rain plummets to the
ground, and a powerful wind rips open the door to the shop.
I grab some milk and pay for it quickly, the shopkeeper too distracted
by the sudden downpour to notice my glowing hands. Wrestling the door
shut, I turn my face against the storm and trudge back up the hill.
By the time I am at the foot of the rusted metal steps to my flat, the
worst of it has passed, but I am entirely saturated. Why couldn’t I have
packed a jacket with a hood? I didn’t have much time to think. I just had to
shove everything I could into a bag and leave before anyone noticed. Before
anyone could stop me, and by anyone, I mean—
“Freya!”
Stood outside my little shabby door, almost completely dry under an
obnoxious frog umbrella, is a copper-headed young woman. Her outfit is a
coordinated event of oversized woollen things and bright-pink wellies, and
her hair is piled up on her head in a messy bun.
“Alright, Percy? What does a girl have to do to get a cuppa around
here?”
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2
Freya
“You look like crap,” I say.
And I definitely mean it. Steven Percival has always been built like a
racing snake, but today he looks like a miner who got trapped underground.
Skin and bone with eyes dark like a murderer. His wet, brown hair is
unkempt and starting to curl at the edges.
“Nice umbrella,” he says with a sneer. “Steal it from a primary school?”
“Marcus got it for me, actually.”
Nothing. That’s weird. I usually can’t mention Marcus without Steven
pretending to retch.
“Are you going to let me in? Because I don’t fancy pneumonia, to be
honest.”
He mutters something under his breath, probably about the wellies, and
fetches the keys from his coat.
His flat is probably the worst thing that I’ve ever seen. Wallpaper!
Actual wallpaper . . . in a house. Ew. I’m all for retro stuff – my earrings
were my mum’s in the nineties – but this is just way too old and way too
ugly. No one wants to live in a place that was decorated when they were
still doing rations.
While Steven busies about in the kitchen making tea, I perch on the
vinyl-wrapped sofa in front of the deepest TV ever known to man. I check
my phone out of habit, but it’s been dead for the past three hours. Troy still
has my charger. Lucky I wrote down everything before I left.
“Three sugars and strong enough to stand the spoon up,” says Steven as
he plonks a bone china cup on the coffee table in front of me. No bourbon
biscuits, which is strange; we always have a packet with tea. He sits down
on a worn armchair and eyes me suspiciously. He opens his mouth, but I
hold up my hand. We aren’t even going to consider talking until I have
finished my tea. He stares at the floor, avoiding my gaze. His eyes seem
hollow, like they’ve been drained of life. Creepy.
“Right. We are out of the cold, and tea has been drunk. First things first:
have you gone full Norman Bates? Should I be checking this flat for dead
old ladies?”
A flicker across his face. So, he is still there somewhere.
“The only old lady here is the one on the sofa.” His voice is as dry as
ever, but his face is stern and impassive.
“Great, now I guess my follow-up question is – what the actual hell,
Steven Percival?”
He stares at me. He knows I am serious because I didn’t call him Percy.
Nothing passes his stony expression. Eventually, he shrugs and looks down
at the tea gripped in his hands.
“That’s it? Nothing to say? You disappear completely for over a week
and don’t have anything to say? I have been beside myself with worry, you
tit. That little cover story you told school about a family emergency was a
load of rubbish. I texted your mum, asking if everything was okay, but she
didn’t have a clue what I was on about.”
Steven blanches at that. I can see a hundred panicked thoughts behind
his eyes as his breath catches in his chest.
“Y-you texted—”
“Don’t worry, I just pretended I was talking about their holiday,” I say,
rolling my eyes. Honestly, what kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t lie
to his parents? “I figured it was the pressure of A Levels or something.
Mock exams or too many books to read or something – I don’t know what
you do in English Lit. I assumed you would text me eventually, and I would
come over with a pack of bourbons, and we would talk everything through.
But no. You ignore my texts, reject my calls, and pretend I don’t exist. Even
when we hated each other at the end of Year Seven, you never ignored me.”
“That’s because you kept telling people I cried during Inside Out.”
“Percy, you did cry during Inside Out. A lot.”
“You didn’t have to tell everyone. Liam Stalworth thought I was such a
loser.”
“Oh, what a shame, the kid with a criminal record before he was ten
thought you were a loser for crying at a Pixar movie.”
“He made fun of me for months!”
“Whatever. The point is, you dropped off the face of the Earth, and I
want to know why.”
Steven pauses, a muscle flaring in his jaw. He mutters, “It’s
complicated,” gets up and takes his empty cup out to the kitchen.
Ugh, I hate when he does this. If Steven Percival can do one thing, it’s
sweep out of a room when he wants to be dramatic.
*
Steven
I take my cup to the kitchen because I don’t know what to say. Freya will
probably say I swept off dramatically. She’s always saying I do that. What
the hell is she doing here? No one was supposed to find me. I had been so
careful. I took all the cash I could out of an ATM and left no paper trail. I
bet she asked her dad to help. He’s a police officer: probably got access to
facial recognition software or some other equally unsettling tool for privacy
invasion.
As I wash up my cup, I can feel Freya’s eyes boring into me from the
doorframe. She isn’t going to let this go.
“I’m not going to let this go,” she says.
Knew it.
“I can understand running away if exams got too much, but why here?”
she asks, trying a different tack.
I consider the wool-clad figure by the threshold. Fierce hazel eyes
scanning every inch of the revolting kitchen. Good thing Freya isn’t an
emomancer: she’s so disgusted by the decor the whole flat would probably
implode. I give her a bit. Mainly to just shut her up.
“Didn’t think anyone would think to find me here.”
“You’ve got that right. I’ve been in this town for half an hour, and
already I want to throw myself into the sea.”
“I think there’s already a pretty long queue,” I say, smiling weakly.
“You might have to take a ticket and come back.”
I probably shouldn’t be cracking jokes, no matter how small. They lead
to joy, and joy is very dangerous. Hopefully, the storm I just caused will
mean no tricks for a little bit. My batteries have to recharge – at least that’s
the theory. But almost every time I think I understand this emomancy, it
throws another curveball at me.
Freya smiles but then peers at me like she can’t really see me.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing, you just seem . . . muted.”
I feel muted. But if I want to keep Freya and everyone else safe, then
that’s the price I have to pay. I have to be a diet version of myself: less
emotional, less engaged, less sugar.
I shrug noncommittally, which just annoys her.
“Okay, if you won’t tell me what you are running from or why you are
here, then at least tell me when you are coming back?” she says, hopping up
on the counter. Her legs idly kick the paint-chipped cupboards.
“I’m not coming back, Freya. I can’t.”
She rolls her eyes again and says, “You always have to be so bloody
dramatic.”
“No, you don’t understand—”
“Then make me understand. Tell me. Talk to me. Say something!”
“FREYA, I CAN’T!”
I shouldn’t have shouted. I try to stop it, but it’s too late: a red shimmer
is curling around my fingers, the temperature plummets, and Freya’s face
grows fearful. She jumps to her feet, backing out of the kitchen. I’ve never
seen her so afraid in my life.
“Freya, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” I trail away, not sure what to say. I
close my eyes and think desperately of nothing but white. Pure white. No
anger, no colour, just white. Breathe in for four and out for four. My heart
slows down from its furious pounding.
“N-no, it’s o-okay,” she stutters, lingering at the doorframe. “Gave me a
fright, is all.”
“I shouldn’t have got angry.”
“It’s fine. My fault. I shouldn’t have come. Obviously, you are going
through something and want to be left alone,” Freya says as she heads