Anything but Typical

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

“But it was me, all along,” she says. “It is me who needs you, Jason. You’ve taught me so much this trip. You’ve taught me about being brave.”

  I don’t know what she is talking about. If my father were here, he wouldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t be talking so much, or not at all, he sure wouldn’t be crying, and that would be better. But it’s okay. That’s what my mom is like.

  She can’t help it.

  We all have things we can’t help doing.

  Bennu’s story has a kind of happy ending too.

  Maybe not happy, so to speak, like happily ever after, but okay. Because I didn’t want a sad ending. And I didn’t want an unrealistic ending. And because life is kind of like that. You don’t really know how it’s going to end.

  Hamilton told us that writing is a process. It doesn’t always come out right the first time.

  Right.

  Write.

  Right.

  Like life, he said, but in writing you get to fix it. You get to rewrite. And rewrite and rewrite until you have the exact words you want.

  So first thing when we get home, I turn on my computer and revise my story.

  Bennu wakes up on the morning of his scheduled surgery, before the driver shows up to take him to the hospital. He lets his little feet hang off the edge of his bed, and he wiggles his toes. He takes a great big stretch and reaches his hands up to the sky. Then Bennu hops down and fixes himself a little breakfast, no pun intended. When he can’t reach the toaster to get out his bread, his friend and roommate, Joshua, gets it for him.

  He has a little trouble reaching the knobs in the shower, but he has a plastic stool he keeps in there, so he steps up onto it when he needs to turn the water on or off, or to adjust the temperature.

  All the while Bennu is certain about what he is going to do about this surgery. He has made up his mind. After his shower Bennu dries off and then goes into his bedroom to take out the specially made clothes that fit his body. He pulls his belt an extra notch, and he takes one final look at himself in the mirror.

  Then Bennu goes to the doctor’s office and this is what he says:

  Sorry, Doc. I changed my mind.

  This is who I am.

  This is me.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  SYNOPSIS

  Jason Blake is anything but typical. He tells his story in his own language, that of an autistic twelve-year-old boy. He is intelligent and sensitive, with many special gifts, and he is different. We learn of his sensitivity and “differentness” as he writes about his life and describes his world. Through his writing, which he posts on a writing website, he meets another young writer, Rebecca, who responds to the post of his story. Jason is intrigued with this girl in his life and fantasizes about her being his girlfriend.

  Jason’s challenges in school, socially, and at home all portray his difficulty in navigating normal life situations. Complicating his life is his desire to have a girlfriend, and his fear of meeting Rebecca and of her rejection becomes almost too much for Jason. By facing his fear and meeting Rebecca, he is able to grow and ultimately accept himself.

  DISCUSSION TOPICS

  1) How do we know, right from the beginning of the book, that Jason is not a typical twelve-year-old? Name some of the characteristics he exhibits. Are these behaviors things you have seen before?

  2) The letters NLD, nonverbal learning disorder, and ASD, autistic spectrum disorder, are labels used to identify the symptoms Jason displays. Describe what it would be like to have a conversation with Jason.

  3) Does it seem that Jason has a hard time understanding what other people are doing or asking of him? Give an example of a conversation from Jason’s point of view. What things does he notice? What things are hard for him to tolerate? What things doesn’t he notice or respond to?

  4) What are some of the techniques his therapist suggests he use in order to communicate with NT (neurotypical) people? Do you think these are easy or hard for Jason to do?

  5) What does Jason do well? What is he particularly knowledgeable about?

  6) Describe Jason’s relationship with his mother, father, and younger brother Jeremy. How has Jason learned to communicate with each of them? What do they do that makes communication with Jason possible? What about his relationships with his aunt, uncle, cousins, therapists, teachers, and librarian? Who is most successful in communicating with Jason?

  7) Jason’s writing, and his use of the writing website, is an outlet that allows him to be anonymous and to be known to others without their awareness of his autism. What do we learn about Jason from his writings?

  8) When Jason and Rebecca begin to correspond on the writing website, how does it affect Jason’s life? Is he successful in sharing this relationship with others? How does it change how he feels about himself?

  9) Through the dialogue in the book, we get insight into how Jason’s mind works. Describe the difference between how Jason perceives things and how his “more normal” brother, Jeremy, does.

  10) In Chapter 10, Jason is sent home from school after causing a huge disruption in art class. Everything about the episode shows us who Jason is and how he perceives his surroundings. Describe how Jason experienced the events of art class, and then present the point of view of the teacher and other students. Once Jason is at home, how do his parents see it? How does this incident shed light on Jason’s feelings toward his parents? What does he tell us about his dad? His mom?

  11) In his story about Bennu the dwarf, Jason explores the possibility of a person being cured of the thing that makes them different. What parallels can you draw between Bennu and Jason?

  12) When Jason’s parents reward him with a trip to the Storyboard convention and he finds out Rebecca is attending as well, describe the dilemma that Jason faces. What is his biggest fear? How would you handle facing the same fear of exposing who you really are to someone you liked?

  13) How did Jason end up going to the convention? What does he tell us about his relationships with his dad and mom?

  14) What happens to Jason after he meets Rebecca? Is Jason’s reaction to Rebecca understandable? If you were Rebecca and had just met Jason, how do you think you would react? What questions would you ask yourself?

  15) During the convention Jason says that he will never write again. He feels himself shutting down. Do you think that he will continue to write?

  16) What happens in the writing workshop that turns Jason around? How is he able to communicate with Rebecca the last time they see each other?

  17) How does Jason use Bennu to show his own happy ending? Do you think Jason has also accepted himself?

  18) What makes a person who they are? Is it how they look, what they wear, how they act? Does Jason know that he is different from other children?

  19) Is Jason’s family able to accept him as he is? Does Rebecca accept him? Does that help Jason accept himself? Explain why or why not.

  20) Through Jason’s voice, we can experience the thoughts and perceptions of an autistic child. Do you think readers of this story will have a better understanding of autism? Support this position, using examples from the book that help explain autism.

  ACTIVITIES

  1) Many young people use writing as a way of sharing who they are: it helps them find a voice that they don’t have in talking with people. Try writing something that reveals something about yourself that you may find difficult to talk about. The expression that Jason experiences from writing frees him from some of his limitations. What do you feel as you express yourself in your writing?

  2) Autism, or autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), is a complex and unique way of decoding the world. On the following website, you can find out more about the disorder and how it affects people: www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/asd.cfm

  Research the signs or symptoms of autism, including:

  • Problems with communication—both verbal and nonverbal

  • Difficulties with sharing emotions, understanding how others think and feel, and h
olding a conversation

  • Routines or repetitive behaviors—such as repeating words or actions, obsessively following routines or schedules, and playing in repetitive ways.

  Read on for a glimpse of

  The Summer Before Boys,

  the next timely, touching novel from

  Nora Raleigh Baskin.

  one

  My Aunt Louisa, who is really my sister, snored like a machine with a broken part, a broken part that kept cycling around in a shuddering, sputtering rhythm.

  “Whistle with me,” Eliza said into the dark.

  “What?”

  We lay together in bed, in Eliza’s room that was really not a room, but a part of the den that had been sectioned off with a thin portable wall. Each night either Aunt Louisa, or Uncle Bruce, who is really my brother-in-law, pulled out “the wall,” like stretching an accordion as far as it would go. Then Eliza would yank her bed right out of the couch and we would both slip under the cool sheets and the thin cotton blanket.

  It was summer.

  The summer I spent living with Eliza, who is really my niece, but since we are both twelve years old that feels kind of stupid. So we just tell everyone we are cousins.

  And it was the summer before boys.

  “If you whistle, she stops snoring,” Eliza told me.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Watch.”

  Mostly Eliza was my best friend. We both went to New Hope Middle School, but I lived in town, on Main Street. And Eliza lived way up here, right at the base of the Cayuga Mountain, right at the gatehouse entrance to the Mohawk Mountain Lodge. She lived at the foot of a magical place and now I got to live there too. For the whole summer.

  Because my dad, who is technically Eliza’s grandfather, had to work.

  And so there was no one home to watch me.

  And because my mom got deployed to Iraq nine and a half months ago.

  Eliza whistled one long, clear, unwavering note. It floated out of the perfect circle she made with her lips and into the air. Her whistle slipped right under “the wall” that didn’t quite touch the floor, or the ceiling, so that Eliza’s room was lit with flickering gray light from the television set left on all night. Her whistle carried through the den and into Aunt Louisa and Uncle Bruce’s bedroom.

  And the snoring stopped, just like that.

  “It worked!” I said.

  “Every time.”

  “Does it last?”

  “For a little while.”

  I poked my feet out of the bottom of our sheet and thin white cotton blanket, careful not to pull the covers from Eliza.

  “I’m hot,” I said.

  Eliza was already standing beside the bed, her bare feet on the wood floor. “Then let’s go outside,” she whispered to me.

  Her white nightgown wrinkled and clung to her thighs—it was so sticky out—her scabby summer knees were showing. Her hair was sleepy, pulled from its ponytail so it poufed up around the back of her head and glowed like a halo in the unnatural light from the TV.

  “What time is it?”

  “Don’t you know? It’s time to go outside,” Eliza said. “Run!”

  And we ran. I ran. Past the TV, past the bedroom door, into the kitchen and right onto the big crack in linoleum that pinched my big toe.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “You’ve got to jump over that,” Eliza reminded me. “C’mon—”

  We ran until we were flying.

  Light elves, higher with each leap—onto the wet grass, into the hot summer night. We were the fairies that lived in the woods beyond the yard, hidden under the fallen trees, making homes of the leaves and twigs. Growing wings of glistening, glowing gossamer, as we felt ourselves lifted from the ground.

  “Look at me,” Eliza said. She lifted her arms and twirled around. She threw back her head. The bottom of her nightgown unstuck from her legs and spun out around her.

  “Look at me,” I said. And when I looked up I saw the sky, dotted with sparkling stars and a sliver of the moon that looked like someone had tried to erase it but couldn’t quite get it all. I arched my neck and turned around and around in place.

  We spun until we couldn’t stand up and we both fell together, down the hill where Uncle Bruce parked his truck, and we lay there at the edge of the lawn to catch our breath. I was wearing a white nightgown identical to Eliza’s—worn and pilled. I picked off pieces of grass, one by one—looking so closely—and I could barely make out the faded kittens and puppies in the fabric. Little pink kittens and little blue puppies, when this nightgown must have been brand-new.

  I wondered if Aunt Louisa had bought it, if she had bought two, thinking of me, one day, spending nights at her house. Had she ever thought her father would have another little girl, twenty-two years after she was born, with another wife who became another mother? Or maybe it was just another hand-me-down from a whole other mother to another little girl altogether that Aunt Louisa picked up from Goodwill when she found out I would be staying here for the summer.

  “Tomorrow we can go up to the hotel,” Eliza said. “It’s check-in day. There’ll be a lot of people driving up. But Roger will pick us up for sure, if he sees us walking.”

  “Who?”

  “The van driver.”

  “Oh, right.” I liked to pretend I belonged there too.

  The mosquitoes began to smell our sweat, found our skin, and feasted. I scratched at my ankles and my left elbow and my forehead, but I didn’t want to go in. I wanted to keep looking at the moon, to memorize it and fill in the empty space.

  What time is it?

  Of course, I knew what time it was.

  I always knew what time it was.

  In Baghdad.

  Or Ramadi. Or Tikrit. Or Fallujah. But my mother can’t tell me where she is. She calls and sends me e-mails, but she isn’t allowed to tell me where she is.

  It’s morning time in Iraq right now.

  I know what time it is.

  My mother was probably getting up and making her bunk. And maybe eating breakfast already. She tells me she hates the powdered eggs, but they are okay with lots of ketchup.

  She can’t see the moon at all anymore. The sun is shining now where she is and I think that right at this very second she might be thinking of me. And I wonder if she is as worried about her forgetting my face as I am about forgetting hers.

  two

  The walk to the Mountain Lodge was just over a mile from Eliza’s house, and if we had been ready to go at five thirty in the morning we could always get a ride with Uncle Bruce. But we never got up that early. Summer is for sleeping late and not having to get up, and not having anywhere you have to be.

  And now it was already hot like yesterday, and the day before that.

  Three cars had already passed us by—not one was the hotel van—but we didn’t mind.

  “Imagine in the old days,” Eliza began, “when ladies and men rode up this road in buggies. Horse and carriages.”

  I loved to imagine that. If I were one of those ladies, or a daughter of one of those ladies, I’d be wearing a long dress, and high button boots. I’d have a hat for sure. And a parasol. There were old photographs all over the hotel, of the hotel and of the Smith family who had built and owned the hotel—and still did—and of people, women and children and men, swimming or riding horses, or just standing very, very still while somebody with a big huge camera hid under a black piece of fabric and said, “Now don’t move.”

  And I’d still be twelve years old but in those days I’d already be a young woman. I’d have put away my paper dolls and jacks. I’d already be learning to sew and serve tea and do only ladylike things.

  “Can we sneak into tea today?” I asked Eliza.

  “Definitely.”

  Eliza’s dad, Uncle Bruce, worked at Mohawk. He was the man who made sure the three hundred and thirteen wooden gazebos (they called them summer houses) that appeared all over the grounds, all along the trail up to the tower, all arou
nd the gardens, and even here and there along this road, were maintained. Every intricate lattice of gnarled wood had to be perfect. Every floorboard safe, every shingle of every thatched roof nailed into place. And Eliza’s dad did that, five days a week. It took him the whole week to get to all of them. The following week he did the same thing all over again. And there is always something to repair, he said. Most everything at Mohawk was old. The Mountain Lodge was built in 1862 and it pretty much looked exactly as it had then. There were no candy machines, no big screen TVs, no chrome, no plastic. If Louisa May Alcott or Laura Ingalls Wilder stepped into this hotel there would be nothing to surprise them. They would feel right at home. They wouldn’t even know any time had gone by at all.

  Eliza had grown up at Mohawk Mountain Lodge, so she knew everyone who worked there and nobody stopped her from going anywhere. Walking up the road to the hotel I thought, This is going to be a safe day.

  A good day.

  Sweat dripped down the back of my shirt but it didn’t bother me that much. I wore the same cut-off jean shorts that had been too big on me last year and new but already dirty sneakers. I couldn’t even remember what T-shirt I had thrown on this morning. What I really looked like didn’t matter, because walking on that road it could be any year, any century we wanted to imagine.

  Eliza and I.

  And we had the whole summer ahead of us.

  The dirt road was dusty and the heat seemed to shimmy from the rocks and distort the air. The lazy overhanging bushes and tree branches didn’t bother to shade us. They looked too hot, too tired to even try.

  This part of the road was for two-way traffic, but when we got to the bend, where the abandoned cement quarry was still visible, the road would split. It would be one-way the rest of the way up and by then we would know we were almost there, quarter mile to go.

  “Almost there,” Eliza announced.

  But the sky was getting very dark.

  “It’s gonna rain.” And just as I said that a huge, single drop of water thumped onto the dry dirt road. Another right on my nose, and almost immediately a loud clap of thunder sounded from above.