Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  So I stopped.

  I put the book down and never took it out of the bedroom again.

  —

  “Quitting isn’t as difficult as you think,” my father often told me. “It can be easy. I did it. The first time I quit smoking”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. And I didn’t pick up a cigarette for ten years.”

  “And then what?” I asked with anticipation. He’d told me this story on more than one occasion. I knew my lines.

  He held a cigarette in his hand as he told me this.

  “And then you came along, Freddy.” He smiled and took a drag. He exhaled slowly. “And then you came along.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  My father sighed and rubbed his temples. “And then nothing, Freddy. That’s the end of the joke.” He sighed. “Jesus, you wreck it every single time.”

  Well, there was another thing. I had to stop wrecking jokes.

  —

  I put The Twentieth Century in Review down. Its pages were ripped and crumpled, the binding shredded and held together by layers of packing tape. For years, I carried that thick hardcover with me everywhere I went. But the day I was liberated, when I came home from my walk in the forest, I put the book on my night table and never took it outside my bedroom again.

  Solitary confinement. No exercise yard privileges.

  —

  Inside my bedroom, everything was fair game. I allowed me to be who I used to be. I allowed myself to stim—to chant, to sing, to practise words. I allowed myself to rock to my music. I flipped pages. I listened to the gossiping birds, the tapping nervous tree, the leaves giving their applause, and the silence of the flat olive wall.

  I left that part of me in the bedroom every morning. Outside, I was careful.

  I was a deer.

  I made it a goal to never engage in conversation except when absolutely necessary. Becoming a mute was desirable, but impractical. I needed to talk, because never talking would end with more people trying to get me to talk. So I answered questions as politely as I could, but scrupulously avoided the game of small talk. Light discourse was a minefield that had blown my leg off on multiple occasions. And trying to hold a conversation with four boys almost killed me.

  —

  That day in the forest, I found an answer to the question how do I move forward? But it didn’t answer the second question. How do I stop this from happening again?

  It didn’t take me long to answer and close the thread. I realized I will never always know when I am about to get in trouble. Adrift in conversation, I always hope that the next reply will be the one that ends the conversation, so I throw up responses as quickly as I can, in my haste to retreat from words.

  This realization of my true self led to a final confusion: because of who I am, some people were going to try to hurt me. There was nothing I could do about it. That opened a new thread: how do I avoid being sent to the emergency room again?

  The answer: I had to learn what to do when four boys came after me again.

  I had no idea how I would do it.

  But I found out.

  THE CHEM CLASS REVELATION

  After three weeks of chemistry classes with Saskia, after sharing the same textbook, and writing notes, I realized something. This was also the third week without a conversation in chemistry class. It was the third week of wordless, uninterrupted study and experimentation. I felt calmer than I had in a long time. Chemistry class had somehow become a new Favourite Thing.

  Knowing that Saskia was not going to attempt conversation brought peace to me. Our table was silent, almost sacred, and we were two monks of our own order.

  With Saskia at my table, there was no need to concentrate on mundane banter. There was no need to try to anticipate questions, or analyze comments for non-literal meanings. So I relaxed and became the person I wanted to be. Saskia and I sat in our two solitudes, together enough that we could let each other be safely alone.

  Saskia was the perfect lab partner. She never asked to copy my notes, not like every other lab partner before her. She made her own set, rudimentary and scattered. Sometimes, I took her notebook from her and added my own notes. When I did this, she straightened up, her arms at shoulder level, quoting her forehead. I knew she was grateful. None of my previous partners were grateful when I did that for them. Often, it was the reason why they stopped sitting at my table.

  The ones who had stayed at my table for a while lost track of where they were. They wondered out loud about random things. They didn’t know which step we were on. They asked me what I was doing. “I’m answering your question,” I said.

  So there it was. It wasn’t chemistry class. It was Saskia. She was my new Favourite Thing. When we were together, classmates left us alone. No one talked to her paternalistically, no one talked to her slowly in short sentences with small words, and no one talked to her with feigned enthusiasm. At the same time, people left me alone because they assumed I was otherwise occupied with her. They were often relieved they could carry on their normal lives without talking to me.

  Saskia Stiles was my new Favourite Thing because, when she was around, my least favourite thing—other people—stayed away. She was a human antidote.

  I realized that this could have application elsewhere. Strategies in chemistry class should also work in real life. I knew then that Saskia Stiles and I should stay close to each other. We would form our own herd, at table seven of the third row. We would be friends. And we wouldn’t talk.

  —

  Jim Worley took little convincing.

  “Frederick,” he said, making a temple with his fingers. He put his feet up on his desk and looked to the ceiling. “Okay, okay,” he said, still staring upward. “Let’s think this through. You want me to get the school to move Saskia Stiles from her current homeroom to your homeroom.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you want to change your schedule so that you and Saskia have the same study hour.” He pursed his lips. “Because . . .”

  “We can support each other,” I said.

  “I think I understand how you can support her,” he said. “Act as her advocate or proxy, I get it, I get it. But how does she support you?”

  “By taking on responsibility for a peer, I am taking gradual steps toward independent living.” I said the words carefully, slowly, enunciating clearly, hoping that I wasn’t obviously repeating verbatim something I had researched on Wikipedia.

  Jim Worley, lips still fully pursed, looked at me skeptically. After a moment, his lips unpursed. “My gosh,” he said. “That might just work.”

  My fingers barely flickered, but flicker they did, for I was surprised by his response. I hadn’t anticipated it, even though I had carefully crafted my words to lead him to this point. My carefully crafted plans rarely succeed.

  This one, it seems, succeeded on the first try.

  —

  Later that day, I sat with Saskia for lunch, and I stared at the ceiling with a single overpowering thread running through my mind.

  What the hell just happened? the thread asked.

  HOMEROOM

  On the morning of the next day, a school aide brought Saskia Stiles to my homeroom. Huddled behind her armful of notebooks and pens, Saskia stood at the door looking in. Her eyes darted up and down rows, looking for a free chair. In the back corner, she saw the furthermost desk, with no one sitting at the adjacent desk.

  “Take a seat, please,” said Mrs. Brody, who was the homeroom teacher.

  All eyes followed Saskia as she entered the room. No one spoke.

  As she walked quickly to her seat, I stood from my regular seat and went to the desk beside her. We both sat down in silence. Putting her books on the table, and her backpack under her chair, she sat down. Her hands came up. She squeaked.

  THE HALLS OF HAMPTON PARK

  I opened my eyes. It was study hour and Saskia wasn’t anywhere to be found. That is, she wasn’t in the study hall or the library, and I found
myself having difficulty doing my homework, for things were out of place. It wasn’t that I missed her. It was that my study hour was now abnormal: Saskia was supposed to be here. But she wasn’t. I closed my books, took them back to my locker, and walked the halls, an old habit I indulge in when my mind is cluttered with threads.

  When I walked the halls, I did so without intrusion from teachers. Autism had few advantages, but this was one of them: other students weren’t allowed to wander the halls. I had this freedom because teachers thought it was a form of stimming. Instead of flapping my hands, I paced the halls. They decided it was better to have me stim alone in the hall, than be a distraction in class. They convinced themselves that walking the halls was a form of therapy for me. Who was I to say otherwise?

  Sometimes they asked me why I was walking in the halls or where I was going, but I had a ready answer: I was going to check my locker.

  Jim Worley did it twice. “Where are you going?” he asked the first time he bumped into me in the hall.

  “To check my locker,” I replied.

  “Isn’t your locker the other way?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I agreed. We looked at each other in silence.

  “Uh,” Jim Worley said at last, then shrugged. “Okay.” I knew he was disappointed. He was probably hoping for more small talk.

  The second time, he found me on the other side of the school, near the gymnasium. “You checking your locker again?”

  “Because I love to,” I replied. He looked at me, and I hesitated. I thought he was going to say, “Look, I don’t know where to go with that.” So I tried another tack.

  “Hot enough for ya?” I asked. He frowned. So I started flapping my hands.

  Gets them every time.

  —

  The day Saskia wasn’t in study hall, there was no teacher interference. I paced the halls in peace. As I was walking, I approached a group of girls who were giggling loudly, talking in high-pitched gossipy voices.

  One of them said, “Honestly, a wool cap and a pink coat? It’s ridiculous.”

  One of them said, “She doesn’t even brush her hair. The way it sticks out like that? It’s like she isn’t even trying.”

  The three of them laughed loudly, because each was trying to show the other that they abhorred such an ensemble the most. When they saw me, the conversation stutter-stepped.

  Small talk hates perturbations.

  —

  When I walk by groups of people in the hall, conversations fade. Oscillating arms dampen, laughter abates. It’s not because my appearance is disturbing—in fact, it’s the opposite: I have laboured to make myself as nondescript as I can, in order to avoid drawing attention and the random small talk it evokes.

  But I can only blunt my appearance so far. Objectively speaking, I’m a good-looking young man. I’m fit, not too short or too tall, and I have no deformities. At worst, I’m average looking; at best, striking in my appearance. I have long eyelashes. My jaw is well defined. My hair is thick. My skin is unblemished by freckles or acne. My pores are not big. I understand that small pores are a measure of attractiveness, but I don’t know why. I have no moles or warts, no goitres or deformities sticking out at odd angles. I don’t have the qualities of a sideshow freak.

  All of my deformities are on the inside.

  Mine is a carefully constructed persona. This is who I worked to become. It has served me well because, in my presence, girls are intimidated into silence. My aloof and silent caricature keeps them shy and unlikely to initiate conversation with me.

  Similarly, boys look at me with suspicion, and most keep their distance. I’m not only silent, but brooding, possibly seething, possibly coiling. Every girl’s silent bad boy is every boy’s silent gangster.

  When I walk by boys, I quiet them like cold air blown into a room. They glance at me from the corners of their eyes, concerned about not looking concerned about the person walking by. But my aloofness is non-aggressive. It’s just anti-social enough to keep other people at bay, but not so threatening that they become aggressive themselves.

  When I walk by girls, I quiet them like snow falling on a field. This bundle of girls was no different than any other. My hands were in my pockets, and I walked with a carefully designed carelessness. I looked the picture of a brooding teenager, smouldering with intellect, cynically rejecting the world around him. I could have been part of a boy band.

  I also had long bangs.

  They subconsciously moved closer to one another, subconsciously tilted their heads down slightly, and subconsciously batted their eyelashes. One of them giggled nervously, but the laughter evaporated as I approached. The talk of bad hair, pink parkas, and knitted caps halted.

  “Yeah, so,” one of them began, but didn’t continue.

  Six lockers down stood Saskia Stiles, leaning against her locker. She wore Bose headphones. Over her knitted cap. She was tucked inside a pink parka.

  I saw her backed against her locker, pressing her shoulders together. Danny Hardwick towered over her, one hand against the locker door, just to the right of her left shoulder. He talked to her, words I couldn’t hear, and she looked away from him.

  Her eyes caught mine.

  She squeaked.

  THE FUTILITY OF CONVERSATION

  WITH DANNY HARDWICK

  “Do you like listening to the Clash?” I heard Danny Hardwick ask Saskia as I approached. As she dropped her eyes from mine, she relaxed, and her shoulders came down, and she squeaked. When she did, the girls laughed.

  Saskia looked down. She fumbled with her headphones.

  I stopped before her, on the other side of the hall.

  Seeing me, Danny Hardwick turned to face me. He was a couple of inches taller than me, and his shoulders were wide. The Alpha Tater.

  “What do you want?” he said angrily.

  At once, several feelings came upon me. The first was annoyance with Danny Hardwick, although I couldn’t immediately identify why. But I felt it nonetheless. It filled my chest cavity like gel, and I started breathing faster.

  A second feeling was surprise as, muscles tensed, I felt a rush of adrenalin course through my stomach.

  “What do you want?” he asked again.

  I searched my memory for a topic we could discuss, but nothing came to mind. Those things that interested me surely didn’t interest him. Of those things in which I knew he was interested, I wasn’t. I struggled for something neutral to say.

  “How about them Cowboys?” I said, which caused him to open his mouth, but then pause and say nothing in response. He may not have been a sports fan.

  At that moment, Saskia slipped under his arm and stepped away from him. She stood a little straighter and turned to me, looking down, as if she was waiting for direction.

  My hands were sweating, and my heart was beating fast. I found myself wanting to look closer at her, but couldn’t bring myself to do such an unexpected thing. Instead, I remained true to character. I searched for something to say and, finding nothing relevant, took the first thing from the top of the stack: I was getting hungry.

  “Did you want to come to lunch with me?” I asked her.

  She nodded, then took a short step closer to me. Her arms were tight against her sides.

  Danny Hardwick started to move toward me but stopped, as if he was considering something other than his next statement. He said, “Enjoy your lunch, retard.” Then he turned and walked away.

  “I’m not retarded,” I said.

  Behind me, the girls whispered. I was unconcerned with what they were saying, although I could tell that we were the central topic of their conversation.

  I reached out to Saskia and lightly touched her arm above the elbow.

  “Let’s go to the cafeteria,” I said and turned. She followed. As we approached the cluster of girls, the whispering stopped. I lifted my head and looked directly at them as we walked, until they began to fidget and adjust their hair.

  THE PAUSE BY A BENCH

  I
asked Saskia to come to lunch, but it wasn’t lunchtime yet. It wasn’t even noon. It was too early, and I couldn’t buy a hamburger.

  I stopped at the hall junction and looked both ways. The cafeteria lay at the end of the left corridor. To the right, an exit to the school grounds. It wasn’t raining outside. I turned and walked outside. She followed me without a word.

  We passed the smoking pit where students stood around a five-gallon bucket filled with wet sand and cigarette butts, and walked to the crest of the hill overlooking the parking lot. The sky was overcast, but the clouds were breaking up. Sunlight shot through the gaps in the clouds, like pillars.

  We stood and looked out over the town for several minutes. I was going to suggest that we go inside when I felt her arm brush mine. I suddenly became aware of how close Saskia was to me. There was a small breeze from my left and she stood on my right, edging closer to me for shelter. Her hands tucked deep into her coat pockets. She stared down the hill and leaned against me.

  I didn’t move. I barely breathed. Normally, if someone touched me for so long, I would hasten to move away. I would push their arm off of mine. I would suggest that they give me space. I didn’t do this with Saskia. Instead, I leaned a little into her. I pushed back a little on her arm. To my surprise, she didn’t pull away. She moved closer.

  This is, said a thread. I don’t even—

  I grew uncomfortable and turned, just as she turned, and suddenly we were facing each other, my face inches from hers. She was shorter than me, and my lips were level with her eyes. She looked down but tilted her head forward.

  I could smell her hair; the shampoo she used had a scent of lavender. It washed over me, wrapping me like a quilt. I half closed my eyes and felt myself lowering my head toward her, until my lips were nearly resting on her eyebrows. We were so close that the random movements of our bodies brought us into brief contact, the feel of her eyelashes touching my lips, the feel of her rapid breath on my neck. The feel of her fingers against mine for a fleeting instant. They lightly brushed the back of my hand, the tips tracing down to my knuckles.