Page 100 of Wish You Were Her
“It smells great.”
“Allegra!”
Jasper made her way to the door. “Well, if you’re sure about that bus, Jonah, I’ve got to get back to my grump. You’re both okay?”
“Yes,” Allegra said. “Thanks for everything, Jasper. I can’t wait to see what you’re ma-making.”
Her words were earnest but clumsily delivered, a cough fighting its way out of her as she tried to thank her new designer. Jasper reached across to squeeze her arm and needed no words as she said goodbye and closed the front door behind her.
They were alone.
Allegra watched as Jonah flipped the omelette onto one of her many unused plates. They were pristine and untouched and she had a sudden wish. She wanted to see them chipped and scorched; blemished by a life lived with someone else. Meals made and shared, without worrying about perfection.
“Go back to bed. Now.”
She watched tendrils of heat rise from the omelette on the plate he was holding. “Looks so good.”
She wasn’t speaking purely of the food, but he was too busy ushering her back to her bed to notice any hidden meaning. He pulled the covers over her and only once she was still and breathing a little more steadily, did he give her the food. She ate slowly but intently. It was a comfort to her throat, now raw from coughing.
“Thank you, Jonah.”
He was perched on the edge of the bed, keeping a respectful distance as he watched her eat. He took the empty plate from her when she was done and they looked at each other.
“Everything is so easy with you,” Jonah told her softly. He sounded incredulous and her face must have shown bemusement because he clarified. “It’s rarely that way with allistics.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling. “Well…”
“I’m always having to explain myself,” Jonah said and his sadness seemed bone deep. “They don’t get that it’s a disability. I can’t read between their lines unless I have a million miles of energy. Which most of the time, I don’t. Because I’m fighting off sensory overload or trying to keep my scripts in order. They never say what they mean and if I ever stand up for myself, I’m the asshole. And I was an asshole to you. Horribly. But I wasn’t always like that. I used to be really open. I—I used to be softer. You know that there’s this whale in the ocean that sings at a different frequency to all the others? So, it’s always alone. The others never hear it. That was me. For so long. It’s why I overlooked Simon being an ass to me. He never was to other people, they wouldn’t believe me if I ever told them about his darker moments.”
“I believe you,” Allegra breathed.
“I know! That’s what’s so wonderfully jarring about you. You’re nothing like the rest of them.”
Allegra reached out a hand to caress his face. She held it in her hand. “Jonah…”
“They’ve never understood,” he said, almost to himself. As if finally realizing something. “They’ll never understand.”
“No,” whispered Allegra, who had met this truth long ago. She and that truth were old friends. They would sometimes clink glasses and laugh about how naive she had once been. But she knew Jonah needed this. Perhaps he was shedding the mask more easily now that he was away from Lake Pristine.
“They will make me explain myself and explain myself until I’ve no breath left in me,” he said. “They will never see whatI see. They won’t even try to look, even though I’ve memorized every color of their lives. They’ll never see the disability because it makes them uncomfortable. They’ll tell themselves they’re just tougher. Built stronger. But they’ll never know what that whale knows.”
Allegra brushed his cheek with the pad of her thumb.
“Jonah, I have something to tell you,” she heard herself say.
She had so many secrets. The one that was directly tied up with him, and pages of online letters. She was afraid of that one. Terrified that she was some base attraction to him, a warm body, while the girl in the emails was an imaginary girl on a pedestal. A fantasy that wasn’t based in reality. It was a frightened, whispered thought in her head. It made no logical sense but eighteen years of feeling othered let self-doubt dig its claws in deep.
But there was one secret she needed him to know now.
“Jonah, I’m autistic, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Allegra had been diagnosed for a few years. Her mother had fought for it on behalf of both of them. When it was finally granted, her school had done nothing to help her. Ear defenders were not allowed, aids in the classroom were sneered at and labeled “special treatment,” with an extra dose of callousness in the first word. Her school reports were written in venom.
So, leaving it all behind forCourt of Bystandershad been a ship leaving the harbor with no glance back.
Since then, no one had heard the word from her. It was her private information to bear. She turned down the occasional script with a “disturbed” character whose mysterious, unnamed neurodevelopmental disability made them a savant or a burden or a plot point. A neurotypical actor would gladly take the role and lament at parties when the awards never came.
