Anything but Typical

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  Breathe.

  Don’t drive over your own headlights.

  Though even my therapist could not have anticipated this.

  Right as we walk in, there is a historical fight demonstration going on. The two actors are dressed as warriors from the olden days, the days of kings and queens. They are fighting with long swords. The noise is really loud, metal against metal. The men are grunting. Their beards are falling off. They are sweating into their costumes. I can smell them from here.

  A young woman walks by dressed like Hermione, and there are about fifteen Harry Potters all over the room. A lot of the characters I don’t recognize from any book or television show.

  But I can’t look very carefully.

  I have to concentrate, breathe, and think only of the space directly in front of me. Then directly in front of me is a blur of beads and black hair. I think it is Captain Jack Sparrow.

  But my therapist didn’t anticipate Rebecca either.

  Everything happens just the same as in my last awake dream. The lady in the sign-in line even takes the same few steps just to get farther away from me. And when I sign in, I get my name tag, which is not the sticky peel-off kind but a real one in a plastic sleeve that hangs on an elastic cord to put around your neck.

  And my dad gets one too. Only now it is my mom.

  I look down at the tag hanging around my neck.

  JASON BLAKE

  WESTON, CONNECTICUT

  STORYBOARD MEMBER

  THREE YEARS

  “Excuse me. But can you tell me if I am in the right line?”

  A girl has stepped up beside me. I smell her first, in the air like baby powder. Her shampoo is strawberry. She reaches out with one hand toward the table. In her other hand she has a cane.

  “My name is Rebecca,” she says. “Am I in the right line to get my name tag?”

  She doesn’t know, because she can’t see. Nothing here is in Braille, and Rebecca is blind.

  My father is wrong.

  There is such a thing as luck.

  The man dressed like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean rushes by me, shouting, “Ahoy!”

  I press the backs of both my hands against the door frame for ten seconds.

  “To yourself,” my mother reminds me.

  I count to myself.

  My mother is right next to me when we walk into the Perdinalez Room where the Storyboard registration is being held. There is a black bulletin board on an easel with white letters, plastic letters, that spell out:

  WELCOME STORYBOARD WRITERS

  AND THEIR FAMILIES

  This is another thing that always worries me. I worry that I am not in the right place. We are in the right place.

  But so far I don’t see anyone with a Seeing Eye dog—or a birthmark.

  —nobody smells like strawberries and baby powder.

  Not that I really expect to.

  There was only one table for signing in.

  There was no line of people. There were no hanging plastic identification cards. There was a sheet of sticky labels, and you had to write your own name. There were three permanent markers; two were missing their caps, the red and the black.

  “Your name, Jason. You’re supposed to write your name there.” My mom hands me the blue marker.

  Of course I know this.

  My name.

  How can I get out of doing this?

  “Jason, your name. Write your name.”

  My mother still speaks louder when she thinks I don’t understand or that I’m not listening.

  What am I looking for?

  “Jason, what are you smelling? Your name. Just write your name. Do you want me to do it?”

  My mother takes the red marker, but it is almost dried out. She writes in a light shade with blank streaks that should be red.

  JASON BLAKE.

  Love, Jason Blake.

  “Here you go,” my mother says. She very gently presses the name tag to my shirt. “And can you loosen your belt . . . just a notch, maybe?”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Are you Jason? Blake? From Connecticut? There aren’t many other kids here. Not like . . . our age, anyway.”

  I don’t have to see her.

  I don’t have to look at her face. I don’t have to answer. I know that it is her.

  And she smells like strawberries.

  “Who are you?” my mother is asking.

  “Oh, I am Rebecca Stone. Jason told me he wasn’t going to be here . . . but look. You’re here.” Her voice is so real. I am awake. I am not dreaming. I can hear her.

  “He told you?” my mother is saying. I can feel her shaking hands with someone. “You two know each other?” Beside me my mother’s body is shifting slightly as her hand is moving up and down. They are shaking hands.

  “From the computer,” she says. Like singing.

  I tell my body what to do. I twist my head far ahead and I let my arm do what it is supposed to. I put my hand out to shake.

  This is Rebecca, and she smells like strawberries.

  “Are you . . . Jason?” she is asking. Her hand is dry, and I feel her skin, her bones. Her hand. I feel her skin and I smell her shampoo. I focus on the wall by the tables.

  I am nodding. Yes, I am Jason.

  “I’m Jason’s mother,” my mother says. “Elizabeth Blake.”

  “I’m Rebecca,” Rebecca says. She said that already, but I can’t look at her face. I am supposed to look. To try.

  I want.

  I want.

  I want to be a snowflake that blends in with all the rest of the snow. So nobody really knows what it looks like.

  So badly.

  But now my mother is talking, but I can’t listen to what she is saying, something about where we are from. The plane. The computer. Oh, the computer. Of course. Storyboard. Of course. Yes, Jason has a little brother.

  Then my mother says, “So you’re a writer, too? Jason is a great writer.”

  “I know,” Rebecca says. “I love Jason’s stories,” she says, but her voice has already changed. She sounds more like a grown-up. It is nice but not nice. It is not for me. It is for her. It is for my mother. Rebecca changed the letters when I wasn’t watching. She changed the language when I was trying to look back from the wall.

  I can look next to Rebecca. I can see her brown hair and the tall folding screen where there are posters and sign-up sheets and more people. There is a man and woman arguing by the door. I see the round of Rebecca’s cheek and her eyelashes, but I can’t even smell her shampoo anymore.

  I want so badly to breathe.

  I want.

  But I am the same.

  Look in the mirror—

  I am still the same.

  Boy loses girl.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I started hearing the word “autistic” a lot after my diagnosis in third grade. But I didn’t know if it was one of those things like when you learn a new word and all of sudden you see it everywhere. And you don’t know if that’s because you didn’t know the word before so you never noticed it, or because all of sudden it’s everywhere.

  Some numbers you outgrow. They stick to you for a while, and then you move on. Like your age and your grade. But some stay with you, like your birthday. Maybe your favorite baseball player if he never got traded.

  Letters are like that too.

  The letters of your name never change, unless you grow up and get famous and you want a different kind of name.

  But your real name never changes.

  And people will always look you up and find out your real name.

  I knew I had these new letters—ADOS, LD, HFA, PDD–NOS—that would always be linked to my name, that I was not going to outgrow. And even if my mom didn’t know it, I only had one choice. I could keep my name with all its letters and sounds and all its meaning and all its nonmeaning. Or I could disappear.

  And that’s when I started writing stories.

  My mother is talking
loudly on her cell phone. She says the hotel will charge us money to use their phone. But there is not very good reception, so she has to stand in the little hall by the closet. Otherwise I think she would be in the bathroom with the door closed so I couldn’t hear her.

  Because she is not telling the truth.

  “No, no, everything is fine. How’s Jeremy? Did he eat the meat loaf I left you guys? No, no, we found the place just fine and we are all checked in. We registered about an hour ago. Yeah, there are lots of workshops Jason is interested in. It’s great. Just great.”

  My mom is a lot like me. She doesn’t want the people she loves to worry. She doesn’t want them to be sad.

  The air conditioner in this room vibrates, like a piece of metal inside is loose. I like it. I am standing right next to it, listening. The pitch rises and falls like a voice, only this voice is calm and it is telling me to relax. I am comfortable slipping into this humming voice and talking to it in return.

  I have a lot of feelings but nothing to say.

  All the letters and all the words they form escape me.

  I never finished my Bennu story. I was going to write the ending and then post it so Rebecca would read it before she went to the Storyboard convention.

  After I found out I wasn’t going.

  Before I found out I was going again.

  But now I never want to write.

  I never want to put words together, and sounds, and letters. That have meaning and that don’t. Sounds like poetry and like weapons.

  That hurt, and wound and lie, and those that fly. And soar. In which I find freedom. There will be no more.

  I want to go home.

  I don’t want to be here.

  These are the awake dreams that are real. Like the bad dreams that are more real.

  Like having no dreams at all. I will never write again.

  But my mom orders us room service and we get to eat dinner in our twin beds and watch Law and Order. Then we brush our teeth and go to sleep.

  Bennu is my last fictional character. There will not be more. It was my last story ever. Bennu will have the last word.

  No one will ever hear him.

  Not even I will.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  We order the breakfast buffet in the morning.

  On other trips with my family we don’t.

  Because, my mother says, it is too expensive and we could never eat enough food to justify that kind of money. But I think my mother is trying to make me feel better this morning.

  And that’s nice.

  What’s also nice is that she still hasn’t tried to talk to me. Or make me talk to her. She hasn’t asked me about Rebecca. Who she was. How I knew her.

  There are seven different kinds of cold cereals in those miniature boxes. Someone lined them up like play blocks. Under those metal covers are scrambled eggs, two kinds of bacon, French toast, and hash browns. The covers are hot when you lift them up. Steam hits you in the face.

  The person behind me with her plate in her hand is waiting. She waits until I am all done looking at everything. She hasn’t come a step closer, even though there is room.

  There are three rows of juice glasses, red, orange, and yellow. I don’t know what the yellow one is.

  “Cranberry, orange, and I don’t know,” my mother is saying.

  We sit down at a table, with cloth napkins and coffee cups and silverware.

  “Yes, please,” my mother says when the coffeepot comes to our table. I watch my mother turn her cup right side up. The coffee sounds like a waterfall.

  “Do you think you’re ready for session one, Jason? It starts in about an hour,” she is asking me. Her cup clinks back into the saucer.

  Session one.

  I signed up for Turning Fact into Fiction before we even got here, when we had to fill out the registration online, but I don’t feel like going to it now. I haven’t told my mother that I’m never going to write any more stories.

  But I’m not.

  There is no reason to go to the writing workshop.

  There isn’t anything left.

  Why tell a story if there is no one there to read it? Why make a sound if no one will hear it?

  Now I am thinking of black paint all over my ceiling at home, covering up all those letters, all those letters twisting themselves into words that nobody understands anyway.

  This was the first morning no word came to me while I was brushing my teeth.

  Nothing.

  I am a blank.

  My mother is looking away. There is something about the way the skin on her face is loose now. Her hands are on the table; even her fingers are loose. If she were a color, she would not be bright right now. She would not have much color.

  I think she is sad.

  “What, Mom?” I ask her.

  When she looks up, I am still looking at her.

  “I just love you so much, Jason,” she tells me. “When you hurt, I hurt.”

  L-O-V-E.

  I can feel her love around me. Like colors and letters taking shape, some I can see and some that are still moving. Some I know, some I don’t. They stand still long enough to give a name. I want to name what I am feeling. Love is like yellow. Warm and safe.

  “Grapefruit,” I say.

  I want to say something. I love my mom so much.

  She says, “Yes, I think it is. Grapefruit juice.”

  I make a face. I pinch my face.

  “Yeah. Too sour for me, too.”

  Then, just as we are about to leave the restaurant, I see Rebecca Stone walking in. I don’t recognize her face exactly, but I know who she is.

  Maybe it’s the way my mother stiffens.

  But probably more I put it together when Rebecca suddenly stops walking, then bends down to the carpeted floor like she has to tie her shoe, which doesn’t need to be tied at all, then she suddenly stands, turns, and walks in the exact opposite direction. And then when the woman who was walking with her notices that Rebecca is no longer with her, she calls out, “Rebecca, where are you going? Breakfast is this way.”

  I wonder if Rebecca has seen me or maybe she forgot something outside or in her car. And who is that woman with her? I think maybe it is her mother.

  At the same instant I am thinking all this, I hear a funny little sound. It reminds me of Lester, when he was alive. But when he was sick and you’d go to pet him. He’d make this funny little sound that only comes from pain, I think. Now it comes from my mother’s mouth.

  It is not the kind of sound you can mistake for anything else.

  Bennu drives all day to get to the hospital the day of his big operation. The directions are complicated, and the driver gets lost a couple of times in the high mountains that rise above the village where Bennu has lived all his life with his family. But because Bennu is so small, he has noticed the different types of soil and dirt, and he is able to direct the driver to just the right ravine, and right to the hospital.

  There is a nurse at the station who takes his name and all his information. Just in case.

  “Next of kin?” she asks Bennu.

  He gives the nurse the names of his mother and father.

  “Okay then, well, we just need to run some tests before we begin,” the nurse tells Bennu.

  “What kind of tests?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. We do this to everyone.”

  Bennu doesn’t believe that for one minute.

  In the first testing room Bennu can’t get up onto the examination table. In the second room Bennu can’t reach the paper and pencil he is supposed to write on. In the third room Bennu can’t press the pedals of the testing machine.

  “Okay, now it’s time for your operation,” the nurse says. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  Bennu isn’t too sure about that either.

  But he has paid his money and he figures he’d better just go through with it.

  “Take a deep breath,” the doctor says, “and count to ten.” At least Bennu
thinks it was the doctor; he didn’t recognize him with the mask over his mouth and nose. His voice is muffled too. So Bennu hopes for the best as he counts. One. Two. Three. Four.

  The next thing Bennu knows, he is in the recovery room. He feels fine. He feels the same as he always did, the same as he is used to. He decides to get out of bed and walk over to the mirror that is hanging by the bathroom door.

  But when he swings his feet over the side . . .

  What? What is this?

  His feet touch the ground while he is still sitting on the bed. Bennu reaches his hands out as far as they would go, and he nearly knocks the clock right off the bedside table.

  As quick as he can, he runs over to the mirror.

  But of course all he can see is his face.

  And his face looks exactly the same.

  Oh, no, Bennu cries. It didn’t work. It didn’t work. I am the same.

  I am the same.

  Chapter Thirty

  I used to play baseball.

  I used to get invited to birthday parties.

  I threw away my baseball glove. I shoved it deep down in the trash can so my mom and dad wouldn’t see it.

  I used to write stories, but now I know I won’t do that anymore either.

  Last year my dad was the coach of my Fall Ball baseball team. I liked the way that sounded.

  It rhymes. Fall Ball.

  So I agreed to play one more season.

  We were the SeaHawks, and we got gray T-shirts with the name of MARIO’S PIZZERIA on the back. And a cartoon drawing of a hand holding up a piece of pizza with three pieces of pepperoni on it. And a number.

  Thirty-nine.

  Of course games were bad, but even in practice I know my dad heard things too.

  Jason, why do you run funny like that?

  Catch the ball. You’re supposed to catch the ball.

  What’s the matter with him? What’s the matter with you?

  I heard someone, I think it was a man, tell my dad it was dangerous to have me out there. Way out there. I was in left field. I was always in left field.