Page 31 of Role Model
I bought the lavender dress for the dance. It’s hanging in my wardrobe. It’s full-length and made of tulle. The neckline is a little high for my taste, and the sleeves are too long and too tight. It also has a lot of layering around the skirt. But Sable bought the yellow, Jaya the pink and Ana the blue so I have to match them when the dance arrives or their colour scheme won’t work.
I’m excited. It feels incredible to be within the group at last.
Ilya drives me to Sable’s family home in St. John’s Wood. He tells me to call him the minute I want to come home but I won’t. I’m determined to be a normal girl tonight. Not the Prime Minister’s daughter. Not the girl on Primrose Hill in the snow.
Normal.
A small whisper in the back of my mind tells me that normal is so boring, but I swat it away. It can go in the imaginary jar with all of the other wasps.
117I’m wearing blue jeans with a nice top, one that Fizz lent me. She was so excited by my excitement, even though I was trying to mask mine. She saw through it and gushed about how happy she was to see me having a friend group.
“It’s hard sometimes,” she said. “Having a whole lot of neurotypical friends when you’re neurodivergent. It can take up a lot of our energy, so I’m really glad you have this little study group.”
I just nodded.
Now, as I walk to Sable’s front door, I tell myself to be aloof. To keep my hands still. To move like they do. To talk like they do.
Her older brother, Hayden, answers the door. I’m surprised, I was expecting an adult. Hayden, I know, is seventeen but I’ve never met him. He greets me with a bored expression and stands aside to let me enter. The house is beautiful. It has a more homely feel than Ana’s did.
I blink in surprise once I’m inside. It’s loud. Too loud. Much louder than I thought a small gathering of friends would be. There is music blasting from one of the other rooms, and I can hear people shrieking and shouting over it. I follow Hayden, who looks completely unphased by the noise, into a conservatory.118Sable, Jaya and Ana are sitting cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table, giggling with their heads close together, but there are at least thirty other kids in the room.
Some candles that smell way too sickly sweet have been lit and people all smell of a light musk. The room is a complete sensory overload and I feel ridiculous, standing in the doorway like I’m too scared to go inside.
“Aeriel!” Sable shouts, beckoning me over. I stagger over, very aware of people staring.
“That’s her,” one girl whispers to another.
I fall into a seated position next to my friends. “This is a lot more people than I thought you meant.”
Sable frowns and I know I’ve said the wrong thing, but I find it hard to remember the right things to say when plans have changed without warning and everything is too loud and too intense.
Someone throws something that zooms by my head, too near for my taste, and someone else screams. I can’t instantly tell if it’s an exhilarated scream or if it’s one of fright. My heart goes from a jog to a sprint and I feel too closed in.
I know the others are talking but I can’t seem to listen properly. I feel seasick, even though I’m on land.119This wasn’t what I had envisioned. It’s so hectic and cramped. Everyone is shouting over the terrible music.
“Do you have a bathroom?” I ask of Sable, and I know my voice sounds too shrill, even in the pulsing room.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Of course we do. Upstairs.”
I get up, rather clumsily. I push myself free of the room, ignoring people as they yell my name. They do it as though I’m a zoo animal. They just want my attention, they don’t want to speak to me.
I climb the stairs and look for the bathroom. All of the doors are shut and when I try the first, I accidentally find a woman in a fluffy bath robe watching television.
“Oh, hello,” she says, beaming at me. Sable’s mother. The chill mum of the group, apparently. Jaya’s mother is a doctor who wants Jaya to go to an Ivy League university in America. Ana’s mother is Naomi, the influencer who wants more followers than she does time with her daughter.
Then there’s mine. Who runs the country.
Sable’s mum is still smiling at me.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling dazed. “I’m looking for the bathroom.”
120“At the end of the landing,” she says. “I’m banished up here, Sable says. I’m not to come down, or I would have shown you when you arrived. Gosh, you’re the famous one, aren’t you? I’ve seen you in all of the magazines.”
I don’t even know what they write about me in the magazines. So I just say, “Thank you.”
“You know, my friend at work has a daughter with autism.”
Autistic. And I never know what they want me to say when they do this. “Okay.”
