The Encyclopedia of Me

by Karen Rivers

  “Oh, great,” said Dad, like he was listening, which he clearly wasn’t.

  “Remember, ballet starts up again tomorrow,” said Mom. “Have you found your leotard and made sure it still fits? You didn’t grow, did you? Did you know that people grow more in the summer than any other time?”

  “Yeah, like Tink is ever going to grow,” said Seb. He laughed and nudged Lex.

  “Bwa ha ha,” said Lex. “She was, like, grounded all summer, so she’s all sun-deprived and stunted.”

  “Oh, that’s hilair,” I said.

  “Boys, be nice,” said Mom. “Tink, you didn’t answer. Are you all ready?”

  “Yes, fine, whatever. It’s fine,” I snarled. A lump formed in my stomach and started growing, like a conk114 on a tree. I no more wanted to put on pink tights and a black leotard than I wanted to, say, have my arms removed by a saltwater crocodile while innocently walking along the banks of a river in Australia. I was not a pink tights and black leotard person! I was a baggy pants and sneakers sort of person! A skater! Not a dancer! WHY COULDN’T MOM SEE THAT?

  “Did you try on your whole outfit?” Mom sighed.

  “Yes,” I lied. “It’s FINE, MOM.”

  “My day was awesome,” said Lex. “Blah blah blah.”115

  I chewed my cheese. Soy! Foiled again.

  “Need bread,” I murmured.

  “Me too,” whispered Lex, and winked. “MMMM, good broccoli, Mom,” he said. “I’m just going to get some ______. From the ______.” Luckily, as he rarely finished his sentences, no one asked him to. He got up and wandered into the kitchen. I heard the bread box open and close.

  When he came back, he slipped a piece onto my lap. Sometimes he’s OK. Squishy, white contraband bread was the best. Dad must have bought it because Mom would never allow something without nuts and seeds to cross her threshold. I rolled it up into a neat ball and popped it into my mouth.

  Mom and Dad didn’t notice because they were busy listening to Seb. Seb was explaining how the field at the new school is awesome because it’s prime snake territory, and he is starting a club for snake collectors and he was anticipating a lot of interest, and there were four types of snakes to be found in the area. Oh, and yeah, he was sort of also a celeb now, did we know that? Kids at school were being really friendly, especially the girls, and he was thinking he’d let them join the club too, if they showed a real interest in snakes and weren’t just after him now that he was all famous.

  I choked on the bread. I could have died! No one even looked up.

  “That’s good,” said Dad, to no one in particular.

  “How nice,” said Mom at the exact same time. “Does this broccoli taste sandy to you?”

  “No,” said Dad. “It’s fine.”

  Then Lex started tipping his chair.

  “Don’t tip your chair,” said Mom.

  “Sorry,” said Lex. “I was just ______.”

  But then Seb tipped his chair too.

  “SEB,” said Mom. “Don’t you tip either.”

  Lex stopped. Seb didn’t.

  “Hey,” said Lex. “I stopped so you have to stop too.”

  “Don’t,” said Seb. “I’m autistic.” He smirked.

  “Give me a break, dude,” said Lex. And he reached over and tipped Seb’s chair straight again.

  We all went back to eating — the broccoli really needed a lot of chewing. But Seb was . . . It’s hard to accurately pinpoint how he was haywire, he just was.

  I guess we should have seen it coming. I don’t know if anyone else did. Maybe they all did and I was too busy thinking about Freddie Blue and/or Kai to notice.

  Seb tipped again. Chewing with his mouth open. Loudly.

  “Don’t tip your chair, Seb,” said Mom. “Close your mouth when you chew.”

  “Don’t tip your chair, Seb,” mimicked Seb. “Close your mouth when you cheeeeeew.”

  “Seb,” warned Mom. When he starts mimicking, Mom always gets mad. It just gets under her skin. You’d think he would have learned by now not to do it, but apparently that’s one of the somethings that he can’t learn.116

  “Seb,” mimicked Seb, tipping his chair so far it fell over. His feet kicked the remainder of the broccoli casserole off the table and the dish smashed. He lay on the floor with a little smirk that suggested he was not hurt, but wasn’t going to get up either. “I’m OK,” he said. “A-OK.”

  “I’ve got it!” said Lex, leaping up so fast you’d think he’d been waiting for just that moment to happen. “I’ll clean it up!”

  “Leave it,” said Mom. “Seb can clean it up.”

  “No,” said Seb from the floor.

  “Seb,” said Mom calmly. “Get up and clean up the mess you made.”

  “I don’t have to,” said Seb. “I’m not a normal person. You can’t put normal expectations on me!”

  Mom whirled around to Dad. “See?” she says. “That’s JUST what I’m talking about. That’s what you’ve done by telling him something so stupid! He just uses it as an excuse!” She turned back to Seb. “Seb, up. And clean up that mess right now.”

  “I’ll clean it up,” said Dad.

  “Don’t you dare,” said Mom. “Seb needs to learn to take responsibility.”

  I could feel myself starting to cry. I couldn’t help it. At this point, even I wanted to clean it up and it had nothing to do with me. The awful tension was turning my stomach upside down.

  “Don’t YOU start crying, Tink,” Mom said in this exasperated voice. “I thought you were the big Peacemaker.”

  “That’s not fair!” I shouted. “I don’t want to be your stupid peacemaker! And I didn’t have a very good week either, so thanks for ASKING.”

  “Wah wah wah,” said Lex. “You’re a bigger pain than Seb.”

  I pushed back my chair and ran up the stairs to my room.

  “Tink!” Dad called.

  “Leave her,” said Mom.

  I closed the door and turned off the light. It wasn’t dark, but I liked it better in the dim half-light than in the full brightness. After a few minutes, I guessed Seb must have gotten up, because I could hear crashing and banging, i.e., the sound of Seb throwing stuff around in his room.

  I started to cry again. I wasn’t crying about Seb, not exactly. I was crying about a bunch of stuff, like all the bits and pieces of my life that felt broken had all bunched together in my throat like a giant popcorn ball and were stuck there and I was choking. I cried and looked out the window at Kai’s house and saw the light in his TV room come on, and then the TV. So then I cried and watched his TV with the sun setting over the beach in the distance and the seagulls circling.

  Then after a bit, I felt OK again. Like I’d swallowed the popcorn. Sometimes crying is the right thing to do. It cleans everything up, like how storms make the whole outdoors feel clean once they’ve passed.

  Maybe that’s how Seb felt after an episode too.

  I felt like I could breathe. I actually felt sort of good. I wasn’t the PEACEMAKER! I said “No”! I didn’t hold my breath and fix everything! I totally understood what people meant when they said they’d been empowered. I was strong! I could set boundaries! I COULD SAY WHAT I WANTED!

  But then that whole thought melted away, because of what happened next.

  As I watched out the window, I saw something. Something weird. Seb was getting into Mom’s car. Into the driver’s side.

  And Seb couldn’t drive.

  But it was the way he was getting in that was troubling, the way he was hitting himself while he did it, flailing at his own head and torso. It sort of looked like he was trying to punch his way out of his own skin.

  I stood up and pulled the blind at a better angle so I could watch. Mom was trying to stop him. Dad followed them out and stood on the lawn, shouting.

  I held my breath. Like I could make peace from up here even though no one could see me. The shouting got louder. Seb locked the car doors and Mom was hammering on them and Dad was shouting. I opened the
window as far as I could so I could hear better just as Seb jumped out of the car, shouting, “WHERE IS MY KNIFE? MY KNIFE?”

  He shoved Mom aside like she didn’t weigh anything, and she fell over onto the driveway. Before she could even get up, he was back, waving something in his hand, and he got back into the car and I realized what was happening because my brain suddenly flashed to how Mom used a knife to start her car. And I remembered Dad saying just a few days ago, “I’ll get it fixed, honey. I will. But in the meantime, at least no one will be able to steal it!” And I remember we all thought that was funny.

  Oh, it was hilair.

  I wrapped the blind cord tight around my finger and watched as my skin turned purple. I didn’t want to see what happened next, but I couldn’t stop looking either.

  The car started up so loudly, it sounded like a car at a racetrack, roaring to life. It lurched forward and then stopped again, really fast. There was still a lot of noise. It took me a minute to realize what the noise was, which was screaming. It took me a minute longer to even see Lex running toward the car, and then I saw him in front of the car, holding out his hands like he could stop it. Like Superman. And then he was standing in the driveway. And then the car roared and lurched again and Lex was gone.

  And then I was out the window and sliding down the roof and somehow, I don’t even know how, climbing down the drainpipe so fast that later I would realize my hands were all bleeding and torn up.

  Lex was lying in the driveway.

  He didn’t move at all.

  I was totally sure he was dead, and I was screaming my head off.

  But then he sat up. Sort of. He kind of went up on one elbow and said, “Man, Peckle, that is so loud.”

  Then he fainted. I guess it’s a family thing.

  I suppose someone called 911. It’s all a blur to me, because then there was the ambulance and then Lex and Mom were gone, and it was just me and Dad and then we realized that Seb was up the tree, making this kind of keening sound like an animal might make, and Dad was saying, “Go inside, Tink, go to bed or something. Do something. I need to help Seb.”

  So I did. It was like I had no idea what to do with myself and that was the only thing that anyone suggested, so I did it. I washed my hands and put Band-Aids on the cuts. Then I climbed into bed in my clothes and without brushing my teeth or anything. I thought I wouldn’t sleep, but I did. I slept so much that I missed school, actually. I woke up at noon.

  “Tragedy,” said Mom, “does that to some people.”

  Lex’s leg was broken in three places and also some of his ribs. He’s going to live. But it’s more than just that his bones were broken. It was like in that split second, our whole family was just crushed flat under the weight of that car. Like the car was the autism that we’d all lived with forever, and we’d just been running along in front of it or beside it, and it had never occurred to us that it could actually crush us.

  Or maybe it was sort of crushing us all along, but it took this tragedy to make us notice.

  See also Autism; Haywire; Knife.

  Tragedy

  Something terrible that happens that shakes you to the soles of your shoes. Usually a natural disaster, such as an earthquake. But sometimes not.

  This shouldn’t be an entry in my encyclopedia. This spot should be taken up with more regular words like “Tiger” or “Tapir” or “Tap Dancing.”

  But I’m putting it in because of what happened with Lex. You can’t blame me, can you?

  This is my life. And this is my book. And it was our tragedy.

  At least, it was tragic to everyone but Seb. I know he felt bad, in the way that he does, but he didn’t seem to really feel bad.

  Charlotte Ellery was summoned the next day. She sat down on the Itchy Couch and we all gathered around. I felt like I was waiting for something important, like she was going to say something that would wrap it all up into a neat little bundle and make it so that I’d be able to see the whole thing differently. Safely. Charlotte Ellery had always made autism safe somehow.

  But instead, she said, “What a mess, Seb.”

  He got all defensive and said, “It’s not like he’s dead.”

  “Right, he isn’t dead,” said Charlotte. “But he’s really, really hurt.”

  Seb started swearing. He got up and jumped onto the back of the couch, so he was standing over Charlotte, and then jumped down over her onto the ottoman. He slid off and started shifting back and forth, like a boxer. Swearing his head off the whole time.

  My own head hurt.

  “Look,” I said. “I —”

  Charlotte interrupted. “Seb,” she said. “I’d like you to do a drawing of Lex, after he was run over by the car. I need you to draw what he was thinking.”

  Seb swore.

  “Please, Seb,” said Mom, breaking her silence. Dad put a hand on her leg, and she flicked it off like it was an annoying beetle.

  “LOOK,” I said, more loudly. “THIS ISN’T FAIR.”

  “What, Tink?” said Charlotte. “Do you have a feeling that’s relevant to Seb that you should share?”

  “I don’t care what is relevant to SEB!” I shouted. Then I really got going. I don’t know where it all came from, to tell you the truth. “LEX is hurt! We should be visiting him in the hospital, not exploring Seb’s feelings! SEB did something wrong! SEB did it, not AUTISM! I don’t care what Seb’s feelings are! I AM SO MAD AT SEB! Can’t I be mad? I’m mad at Seb and at Mom and Dad and at you and everyone and Freddie Blue for abandoning me and Kai for not knowing what he’s doing with me and I’m so mad at ME because no one ever asks me how I feel and I never tell anyone because no one asks and now I’m so mad! I’M SO MAD! I’m REALLY MAD!”

  I looked around. Mom and Dad were just staring at me like I’d just woken them up from a deep sleep and was screaming, “THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!” They both jumped to their feet, and then hesitated.

  “Oh, Tink,” said Mom.

  And she hugged me. And then Dad hugged me. I don’t even know what Seb was doing just then, and I didn’t care.

  For a few minutes, we stood there. I didn’t want to move because I didn’t want them to let go. For the first time in forever, I felt safe.

  Then Seb started to pick up the encyclopedias, one by one. He threw them, one at a time, out the open window. The covers flapped open and the pages lifted in the wind. They fell like hugely awkward seagulls, crashing to the ground. I wanted to stop him, but also I didn’t.

  When they were all gone, Seb sat down and nodded once, like that was the thing he needed to take care of. Mom and Dad stepped away from me and sat too.

  “Those books were dangerous,” Seb said firmly. “People kept tripping.”

  “You can pick them up after,” said Mom.

  “I’ll do it,” said Dad.

  “No,” said Seb. “I’ll get them.”

  “OK,” said Mom.

  Charlotte took a big breath and said, “OK, Seb, let’s figure out what’s going on with you.”

  I left the room. I suddenly felt like I had a call that I really, really, really had to make right then.

  “Hey,” I said when Freddie Blue answered. “Seb ran over Lex in the driveway.”

  “What?” she said. “OMG, Tink. Are you OK? Is Lex dead?”

  “No!” I said. “I’m fine. I’m OK. He’s got a broken leg. And ribs. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you. I know we’re not, like, actual friends anymore.”

  “Oh, kiddo,” she sighed.

  Honestly, in that moment, I almost hung up. But I didn’t. I hung on.

  “Look,” she said. “I think we’ll always be friends. It’s just that . . . like . . . um . . . I just want to see what it’s like to be super pops for a while and be someone kind of shiny and pretty. And you’re into boarding and Kai and Ruth, and I’m just . . . not.”

  “So you’re into Stella?” I said. “That’s malg, FB.”

  “She’s actually OK,” said FB. “She’s nice. She’s had a really crummy
life and stuff, once you get to know her . . .”

  “FB,” I said. “I don’t want to know her. She is my Worst Enemy Ever!”

  “I know,” said FB. “But I like her.”

  “Oh,” I said. We stayed on the phone like that for a few minutes. I could hear her breathing. I lay back on my bed. “How was school?” I said.

  “Ugh,” she said. “So much homework. You missed a lot. You’re never going to catch up, except you’re so smart, you will.”

  “Um, thanks,” I said.

  “Brainiac,” she said.

  “You’re a brainiac too,” I said. “Gifted school, remember? They didn’t let you in for having good hair.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “Look, I have to go. I’m sorry about Lex. Give him a kiss for me, OK? I just . . . I have to go. I’m glad you called me.”

  “Bye,” I said.

  I don’t know if I felt better or worse. I lay down on my bed to try to decide, and I accidentally fell asleep. I guess Mom was right, sometimes tragedy just makes you sleepy.

  See also Autism; Ellery, Charlotte; Haywire; Respite Care; Tipping, Chair.

  Tree of Unknown Species

  A tree. My tree. Kai’s tree.

  Unknown because I don’t know. I sort of don’t want to know, to be honest. It’s always been the Tree of Unknown Species. If I knew what it was, I’d have to think of it differently, like once you find out someone’s name, they seem different than when they were just a stranger, like just the blue-haired boy.

  I love the tree. The way it stands there and has stood there forever, seeing all this stuff that is tragic and also stuff that is stupid and stuff that is great and stuff that is funny and stuff that is exciting, and still just stands there, growing more leaves and getting bigger and more and more beautiful and turning colors and losing leaves and growing them back.

  That might sound stupid. Probably I’ll go back later and cross it out, but for now I’m going to leave it in because I really do love that tree.

  If you promise not to tell, I’ll admit that on my goal list, I have “sleeping for one night in the tree.” I don’t know if I’ll ever do it. It probably wouldn’t be safe. I just like the idea of it, and the secretness of that.