Page 6 of Role Model
“Really dramatic. Your face hit the floor like a wet fish.”
I open my mouth exactly like a fish, because his frank way of speaking has rendered me speechless.
“You’re autistic, right?” he asks merrily.
If the whole school wasn’t aware before, they will be now. “Yeah, so?”
“I am, too. And a bunch of other things, my brain is a salad of lots of cool stuff. But I think being autistic is the lettuce. It’s nice and crunchy.”
His completely relaxed way of talking about disability reminds me of Fizz. I try to sit up.
“Easy,” he says, suddenly earnest. “You really did hit your head on the stage, it was loud.”
“Shouldn’t even have been up there,” I say.
“Dr Mars is alright,” Txai says. “She can get a bit “neurodiversity is a superpower’ too often, but it’s22because she doesn’t want us to be negative.”
I take in his words for a moment. I’ve been told by a lot of people that being autistic is like having a superpower. It’s usually to coax me out of a toilet cubicle after someone has called me a name or left me out of a game. They don’t actually know what they’re talking about.
If I did have superpowers, I could fly away from here.
23
Chapter Four
Something strange has happened.
I can feel it as Ilya and I are driven back to the house. He says nothing, as usual. He knows that the transition from school to home can be challenging, and that I need to be left alone to decompress. I sometimes don’t know if it’s hard trying to let go of the school day or because I’m preparing for another five hours with my family.
However, when we enter the flat, it’s not just my family waiting for us. There are some of mum’s work drones as well. When I take in all of the faces in the room, they’re impossible for me to read, but I notice Mum is not actually there. Fizz is, which is unusual. She doesn’t live with us.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Don’t you want to take your bag off?” Dad asks24me gently.
“No,” I say, starting to panic because grownups only get like this when something bad has happened. “What is it?”
“We wondered if we could have a quick meeting with you,” Keren, Mum’s dull flunky, says.
“Just be straight with her,” Fizz interjects, glaring at the woman.
“Something went a little bit whoopsie in your assembly this morning, didn’t it?” Keren asks me, in a sickly-sweet voice.
I hate when adults do this. They start speaking to you like you’re a golden retriever. A baby-voice with gross, cutesy words. “I fainted.”
“Yes, you did. And it turns out, someone in the hall filmed it on their phone.”
I suddenly feel feverish. “What?”
“They uploaded it to a social media site. We, upon learning of it, reported the video but it’s popped up elsewhere.”
I look at all of the faces in the room. Dad looks anxious, because he has no understanding of social media. Fizz and Gideon look anxious because they have complete understanding of it. Keren has a gleam in her eye, one that makes me very nervous.25
“I think we should film something short and sweet,” she says. “You thanking your school for their great care and telling anyone who is concerned not to worry about you.”
I want to tell everyone that the school was the reason I fainted. Their environments are too overstimulating; they pulled me up onto the stage when I didn’t want to be there. The words don’t come out. They jam themselves in my mouth like a dam refusing to burst.
“Something short,” I echo.
