The State of Grace

by Rachael Lucas

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Here’s a short list of things I don’t like:

  1. Surprises

  2. Bowling.

  ‘D’you want to just –’

  Gabe sort of motions towards my feet, and my very much still-laced-up-thank-you-very-much Doc Marten boots.

  There was nothing in Lillian Eichler’s Book of Etiquette (published 1921, available free on Project Gutenberg, for those of you playing along at home) about the correct procedure for When Your Second Date Comes Around and He Announces He’s Taking You to Lazer Zap and Bowl.

  I know this, because I read the entire thing last night, and finally got to sleep at some time after five. This morning is the first morning I realized what people feel like when they can’t get out of bed.

  I had to literally drag my limbs from under the covers and I couldn’t face cycling to the stables, so I caught the early bus there and back. The heating on the way back caused the smell of horse to float gently out of my clothing and fill an area around me wide enough that office-dressed people were wrinkling their noses and looking unimpressed.

  And then I had a shower. There was no Leah to help me get ready because she was at a tennis tournament with Mum, and Grandma had taken herself off to the garden centre, which seems to magically lure in old people with the power of scones. So I just washed my hair and brushed it (ow) and left it to dry and, because there was nobody to tell me not to, I put on the same thing I’d worn to the party. There was a splodge of something on the front of the TARDIS but I gave it a rub with a face wipe and it came off, mostly.

  So that’s how it started. I’m standing at the end of the road at lunchtime, waiting for Gabe, and he turns up in his plaid shirt again and a different T-shirt this time and he holds my hand, which is nice, and we start walking. A magpie hops on to the wall in front of us and looks at me, beadily. Because I once read a book on superstitions and accidentally absorbed a whole load of them, I have to salute him, surreptitiously, and mutter, ‘Morning, Mr Magpie. How’s your wife?’ under my breath. If Gabe notices, he doesn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ve got us tickets for bowling,’ he says brightly.

  Everything in my entire body shrieks EMERGENCY, EVACUATE SITUATION.

  I carry on walking, and make what I hope is a polite sort of noise. It sounds a bit like, ‘MmMMPH.’

  ‘You been up to much?’ says Gabe as we walk along the road that leads down to the shore, where the big shops and the very loud bowling place live. It’s funny that even though he’s grown up here he’s still got a soft Polish accent. It must come from listening to his family. I wonder if he speaks Polish at home, or if they only talk English.

  ‘Just riding Mabel,’ I reply, adding uselessly, ‘my horse.’

  Gabe looks at me sideways and gives a grin that makes his eyes scrunch up and he looks incredibly cute as he says, ‘I know who she is.’

  ‘Can you ride?’ I realize that on a conversational scale this isn’t exactly up there, but my brain is not being helpful. In fact, I think it might be realizing that it needed more than an hour’s sleep. Your fault, brain, I think. I could have done with you on side today.

  ‘Yeah, a bit. My cousin Petra has horses back in Poland, and when we go over in the summer I help her look after them.’

  ‘You could have a ride on Mabel, sometime,’ I hear my mouth saying.

  I don’t let anyone ride Mabel, so I have no idea what is going on with the whole brain-to-mouth connection, but I can tell that this isn’t going the way that I’d hoped.

  I don’t know how to bring it up, so I sort of lift up my left hand so he can see that I’ve got the metal of the TARDIS key ring circling my thumb, and the blue box tucked inside my palm.

  ‘Thanks.’

  There’s one of those five-minutes-long seconds when he doesn’t say anything, and I think maybe I got it wrong, and there’s a random ‘very handsome, darling’ young chap turning up on the doorstep handing Doctor Who merchandise to unsuspecting grandmothers.

  And then Gabe smiles. ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  So we trundle towards our inevitable doom (or the bowling alley, if you want to be technical) making weird, stilted conversation about nothing. I’m not sure why it’s so awkward, or even if it is. But I’m so tired I’d quite like to lie down and have a sleep on one of the seafront shelters where the old people sit and watch the world go by.

  It doesn’t get better when we get inside, because it wasn’t ever going to, really. The thing is what I ought to have said was sorry, look, I’m really tired and autism and crashing music and flashing lights and bowling noises and arcade machines are a really bad combination. It’s weird because it works at the funfair – I think because there’s loads of fresh air and the noise gets carried away by the wind. But here we’re trapped inside the darkness and it feels like everything is taking over my head. Instead of saying what I feel, though, I smile politely and allow myself to be led by the hand into sensory hell.

  So here we are now, and I’m looking at a shelf full of shoes, which other people have put their feet in, and I’m wondering who decided this was a good way to spend time.

  ‘I’ll get you some shoes,’ Gabe says, ‘if you tell me what size you need.’

  I think that’s what he says, anyway. I can’t hear very well and now my brain’s doing that thing it does where it sort of goes on a

  delay

  so

  when

  someone

  speaks

  I

  watch their mouth move but the processor takes a moment to translate the words and by the time I’ve caught what they mean they’ve started to say something else. It’s like watching a film where the words are out of time.

  This was not in the bloody etiquette guide. And now I’m wearing someone else’s shoes and frankly wearing someone else’s shoes is not my idea of a hot date.

  So we set up the bowling lane with our names in the machine and I feel hot dread because I am beyond awful at bowling and I say to Gabe in his ear, which smells nice and of apple shampoo this time:

  ‘I’m awful at this.’

  And he turns round and puts his mouth close to my ear and speaks, which makes the back of my knees feel prickly, and he says, ‘Everyone says that. I bet you’re not.’

  After about half an hour it’s clear to everyone – Gabe, me, the group of ten-year-old boys having a party in the next lane – that I really am. And not comedy bad, just pointlessly, humiliatingly, no-spatial-awarenessly bad.

  It stops being funny and starts making me feel like I want to burst into tears. And the music’s so loud that we can’t really talk about anything.

  So we go and get a coffee and some chips to share in the cafe bit, and Gabe checks his phone and fiddles with the plastic knives and forks and makes a stack of salt sachets. He seems distracted and sort of strange, like he’s somewhere else. I can’t think of anything to say at all, and neither can he, and I wish more than anything that I could make it all be like it was the last time when we had a nice time and there wasn’t all this noise and elephants crashing in my head.

  ‘Shall we forget the next game and just get out of here?’ says Gabe.

  I hear that bit loud and clear, and I nod, but I feel a bit sick because this isn’t the way it was meant to go. I was going to ask nice questions about his family and how they came here from Poland and what he thought of school and if he thought the Doctor was going to regenerate in the next series. And instead we’re leaving the bowling alley, and the skinny boy with the matching Lazer Zap and Bowl baseball cap and polo shirt asks if we’re not playing our second game and Gabe says, ‘Nah, mate, thanks.’

  As we leave, Gabe reaches for my hand and he pushes his other hand through his hair and gives me a smile, and I think, actually, maybe, this isn’t as bad as I thought. Because now we’re outside, and we start – without either of us saying anything – walking along the little promenade towards the park.

  My hair’s whipping aro
und because of the wind, and I stop for a moment to shove it behind my ears.

  ‘It looks bonkers, doesn’t it?’ I say, because I know that I’ll have a mad halo of fuzz all around my head. Living by the seaside and having hairbrush issues is a really bad combination.

  ‘No.’ Gabe shakes his head. ‘It’s nice.’

  And he sort of half turns towards me, and reaches out a hand, pushing back the same strand of hair I’ve just tried to tame. But he doesn’t put his hand back. It strays down the back of my neck and somehow his mouth is on mine, and – in the street, the actual street – he kisses me. And I don’t know how it happens, but I reach out and put my arm up so it curves round the side of his waist and I can feel his breathing and underneath his shirt and his T-shirt the heat of his skin. And I kiss him right back.

  I pull away again for a second because it’s too much, and my heart is thumping so hard that I swear everyone in the street can hear it. I – me – Grace – I’m kissing a boy in the street.

  He grins and he looks a bit breathless too. ‘Shall we go and get an ice cream?’

  I feel myself smiling back at him. ‘Yes.’

  We start walking towards the park when he looks down at his phone again. It’s bleeped in his pocket about five times.

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry – I need to nip into my house for a moment. D’you mind if we just – ?’ He stops, biting his lower lip and frowning.

  I shake my head. ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  Gabe’s house isn’t far. When we get there, his mum opens the door. Her hair is dyed a cool burgundy red colour and she’s got the same brown eyes as him. She smiles at me, and steps back, beckoning us into the hall. There are coats hanging neatly on a rail, and a long row of shoes paired up underneath the radiator. It smells of the fabric conditioner on Gabe’s clothes, and furniture polish, and a vanilla-scented candle, which is flickering on the window in the sunlight. There’s a huge black-and-white aerial photograph of fields and a farm hanging up on the wall.

  ‘Grace, it’s very nice to meet you.’

  She knows my name. That’s a bit weird.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You like the picture?’ Gabe’s mum looks at me looking. ‘It’s where I grew up. My sister Jana still lives there.’

  ‘Oh, the place with the horses?’ I look at Gabe, but he’s disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen. He’s facing the sink, and as he turns, nodding, he places a glass tumbler upside down on the draining board.

  ‘Yes, we visit in the summertime.’ His mum pushes her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She looks at Gabe. ‘You OK?’

  Gabe rubs down his hands on his jeans, leaving wet smudges. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good boy.’

  ‘I’m not a dog.’ He grins at her and turns to me. ‘Ready?’

  I’ve been waiting there the whole time, so, yes, of course I am. I nod, though.

  ‘Bye, kochanie.’ She ruffles his hair and he ducks out from under her hand, laughing.

  ‘Lovely to meet you, Grace,’ Gabe’s mum repeats as he pulls the door shut, almost as she’s still talking.

  ‘Mothers.’ He shakes his head and looks a bit embarrassed.

  ‘What does that mean – kohanya?’

  ‘Um, I suppose – sweetie, or darling? That sort of thing.’

  It’s funny when you see people from school who seem like these huge, fully formed characters by themselves and suddenly they’re at home with a house that smells like baking and their slippers are in the hall and you realize they’ve got messy bedrooms and have to help with chores too.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ says Gabe, breaking into my rambling thought circles. ‘I had to –’ He pauses for a moment before all the words come out in a tumble. ‘I’ve got these pills I have to take twice a day ’cause I’ve got ADHD. I forgot to take them with me.’

  ‘What happens if you don’t?’

  ‘Best case – I end up a bit spaced out and I’m crap at paying attention. Worst – well, that’s why I ended up moving schools.’

  For some reason we both stop and sit down on one of the benches that look across at the big wooden climbing frame in the gardens by the lake. It’s new, and it’s so busy that from here it looks as if it’s been invaded by a swarm of ants. There are children running around the sides, up the climbing wall, along the tunnel. There’s one banging a huge stick down on the roof of the lookout shelter, and I realize that the parents below are yelling at him to get down.

  ‘There you go. That’s the sort of thing I used to do. Only sort of louder and bigger and messier. And pretty much every day. Like someone had forgotten to turn on my dangerous stuff filter.’ Gabe points to the kid on the climbing frame. As we watch, the father starts shinning up the pole on the side. The mother is on the ground looking up, her eyes shaded from the sun with a hand. She looks terrified.

  ‘I spent a lot of school sitting outside the head’s office.’ Gabe shifts sideways so he’s facing me more. He picks up the string of his hoody and pulls out the threads, untangling them, his mouth twisting sideways in thought. ‘When they finally worked out I had ADHD and I wasn’t actually as much trouble as they thought, Mum and Dad decided it would be better if I moved schools and started all over again.’

  ‘Because you had a reputation for being tricky?’

  Gabe laughs. ‘Tricky. I like that.’ He reaches out a hand and I watch as our fingers touch, one by one, like starfish. We hold them there as I speak.

  ‘Me too.’

  I’m surprised I say it. It sort of falls out of my mouth. Gabe raises an eyebrow in question.

  ‘Except autism, not ADHD. I was the weird kid in primary school.’ I pull a face and I feel my face prickle with heat but I don’t stop talking. ‘I mean, weirder.’

  ‘I like weird,’ says Gabe, and he pushes his fingers against mine a tiny bit, like a little pulse. It feels nice.

  ‘Lucky. Anyway, now I’m older I don’t take rucksacks full of fossils on school trips to London, or lie on the floor in H&M hooting. Or have meltdowns in the classroom.’ I think about the moment when they handed me the time-out card so I could escape before the feelings began to boil over inside me. ‘Well, not much, anyway.’

  And for some reason this makes us both giggle and we start laughing at the idea of it and then Gabe does a sort of honking noise.

  ‘Like that?’

  I do a sort of whoop.

  ‘More like that, I think.’

  ‘Hoooot,’ says Gabe.

  ‘HOOOOT,’ I say back, and an old man passes by and shakes his head at us.

  I do a little small-owl sort of hoot.

  ‘Hoot?’ says Gabe thoughtfully, but he’s still laughing.

  ‘That’s a socially acceptable hoot, Gabe, well done. Good hooting.’ I pat him on the knee and he grabs my other hand in his and leans forward and says ‘hoot’ in my ear and I feel his breath on my cheek and I turn and I kiss him, because I can.

  And then we get up and start walking again.

  ‘So apart from the hooting situation,’ Gabe says, swinging my hand, ‘what’s it actually like?’

  And I think for a moment, because people don’t actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they’ve read it in books, or they say incredible things like ‘autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy’ when I’m standing right there beside them (and one day I’m going to point out that that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they – even worse – talk to me like I’m about five, and can’t understand.

  ‘It’s like living with all your senses turned up to full volume all the time,’ I say. And I stop and he sort of spins round so he is looking at me. ‘And it’s like living life in a different language, so you can’t ever quite relax because even when you think you’re fluent it’s still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you’re exhausted.’

  And I think a
bout getting home from school and the effort of making it through the noise and the lights and the people and the change and the cars and the smells and the sun and the rain and holding it together through all that, and then getting home. And how when I get home and I can switch off, that’s when I blow up because it’s safe.

  ‘Wow,’ says Gabe.

  I nod. ‘Yeah.’

  And then I say that we should go and get some ice cream.

  ‘Do you want strawberry sauce on that, love?’

  The man at the kiosk on the prom has served me ice cream a million times. I’ve said no thank you (I don’t like stuff on stuff) a million times. But this time I say yes, because right now, this second, my life feels like someone’s covered me in strawberry sauce and chocolate sprinkles and hundreds and thousands. And I look across towards the shore where the lights of the amusement park are sparkling even in the daylight and I feel all sparkly too.

  ‘All right, mate?’

  It’s Gabe’s best friend, Archie. I’m standing with a dripping ice cream and Gabe turns round, licking his, and gives a bob of his head. ‘Arch. You going down the skate park?’

  Arch does some kind of complicated thing with his scooter in reply. It goes from under his feet into the air and then back under his feet again in seconds. ‘Yep.’

  He pulls at the strap of the helmet he’s wearing, so his shaggy blond hair flops down over one eye, and he gives me a nod too. ‘All right, Grace?’

  I say ‘hello’ in a formal sort of way, because I’m not very good at impromptu informal conversations that I haven’t been expecting. I realize that if I don’t do something rapidly, the rivulet of melting white ice cream and oozing red sauce is going to start pouring over my fingers and that is going to make me feel sick. And I preferred sparkly and breathless to that.

  ‘I’ve just worked out how to do a backflip,’ says Archie. ‘Want to come down and look?’

  ‘You mean scrape up the pieces and call an ambulance when it all goes horribly wrong?’ Gabe slides a sideways look at me.

  ‘He’s funny, isn’t he, Grace?’ Archie shakes his head, laughing. ‘You’re funny, Gabe. Very droll.’