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 around 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 about 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.’
‘What d’you think, Grace?’
‘That would be lovely,’ I say politely, because frankly this afternoon can’t get much odder. It’s like an out-of-control dodgem. I keep veering from one feeling to the next. Maybe this is what dates are like. I don’t have anything to compare it with, so I don’t know.
‘Go on, then,’ says Gabe. ‘We’ll catch you up.’
‘Cool,’ says Archie, and he wrinkles his nose when he smiles, and I think he’s pleased we’re coming.
And our hands sort of find each other again, and we walk down towards the pier, and along the marine lake path. Old people sit on benches watching the ducks and swans floating by, and families are laughing their heads off as they try to control the little wooden rowing boats.
We walk up the path and into the skate park and I have to force myself to keep walking because there’s a whole clump of people – I can’t pick them out to start with, because my contact lenses don’t work as well as my glasses do, and I’m hopeless at recognizing people. Because of this I’ve developed a fairly standard sort of polite (I think, but remember I am the Queen of Resting Bitch Face) half smile, which I keep in attendance while I work out who I’m smiling at.
I have this weird thing, where people outside their normal spaces confuse me. When I see people from school that I don’t spend time with, it takes me a moment to work out who they are. When they’re in uniforms and in the corridors and they’re hanging around with the same people they always do, I can recognize them almost straight away. Put them in everyday clothes, mix them up so the populars are hanging around with the geeky science lot, and the skater boys are talking to the netball team people, and I am confused. Beyond confused.
‘Gabe, hi!’
It’s Holly Carmichael.
Of course it is. And on the bench, poking around inside a huge shopping bag from H&M, there’s Riley and Lauren. And whatever her name is, the other one with the dyed black hair that looms in the background chewing gum and looking threatening, is looming in the background looking threatening. Apparently it’s her full-time job, even in the holidays.
Holly bunches her hair over to one side, letting it fall loosely over one shoulder.
Gabe waves a greeting at her, then gives my hand a squeeze and turns to me, lowering his head so his mouth is near my ear again as he says, ‘We’ll just watch Arch doing his thing then head off, shall we?’
As I nod a reply, which he feels rather than hears, I see Holly looking directly at me, her chin raised slightly as if she’s sizing me up. And I see her look down at Gabe’s hand in mine.
‘So what are you two up to?’ she says as Gabe turns away from my ear so we are facing them, side by side, holding hands, like cut-out dolls. ‘Not wearing your Doctor Who outfit today?’
I wish I could send her into deep space. ‘No.’
‘Did you know Grace was a total geek?’ Holly says innocently, smiling at Gabe as if she’s being perfectly lovely. She somehow manages to radiate charm in his direction while simultaneously beaming hatred in mine. It’s an interesting talent. I realize I’m probably glaring at her, because my face isn’t very good at disguising what I’m thinking.
‘Yes,’ says Gabe, and he sort of swings my hand. ‘We’ve been comparing notes on our favourite episodes.’
‘Really?’ says Holly, and both her eyebrows shoot up for a moment before settling back down like two fat slugs. ‘I had no idea Doctor Who was so fascinating.’ And I think that she’s unsettled all of a sudden, and that’s not a thing I’ve seen before. I watch her rearranging her face.
‘Yeah,’ says Gabe, and he smiles at me as if we’re sharing a secret.
‘Right.’ Holly flicks her hair over her shoulder and plucks at the strap of her vest top that’s showing underneath the checked shirt she’s wearing, so we can all see what brown shoulders she’s got and it’s as if I literally don’t exist. ‘Maybe you can explain it all to me.’
She gives me a frosty glare. I realize that Holly Carmichael is now looking at me as if I’ve got something she wants, and she’s not very happy that I’ve got it. And I’m standing here in the skate park holding its hand. His hand.
‘Look,’ I say, and I point up at the ramp where Archie is doing some kind of complicated spinning thing with his scooter. He looks down at me and his smile is watermelon huge and he leaps into the air and lands on the edge of the ramp before flying down and up into the air and over, so he flips 360 degrees and lands – safely – on the ramp. It makes me feel a bit sick.
I give him a thumbs-up and a big smile to indicate how impressed I am. Holly looks at me with utter disdain and shakes her head so I feel myself blushing.
I realize that I’ve made myself look like a presenter from kids’ TV, and I slink my hand down to my side.
It’s all going a bit weird, and I feel really awkward about talking to Gabe about being autistic, like I’ve exposed part of myself, and I feel sort of raw. I really, really would quite like to just go. But I’m not sure how to say that, so after another five minutes when Gabe turns round and says, ‘Shall we go?’ I almost gallop towards the exit.
And I don’t know whether Gabe doesn’t have anything to say or if he’s just bored, or whether it’s just me feeling weird. It occurs to me much later that maybe he’s shy, too.
‘So your mum seems nice,’ I say, realizing I sound about a hundred years old. ‘What about the rest of your family?’
We stand waiting at the crossing.
‘What d’you mean?’ Gabe looks a bit puzzled.
‘How did you end up here?’
And instantly as he’s talking I’m thinking – is it OK to ask that? Is that rude? Is he thinking I’m rude? So I’m listening to his reply, but the voice in my head is asking questions at the same time, and it makes it really hard to concentrate and I start thinking maybe I’m acting strangely and my ears start doing that thing they do when they whoosh in time with the ground as I’m walking. I just want to lie down and have a rest.
‘Oh,’ says Gabe. ‘Well, my mum and dad moved here when I was only tiny. And then my grandmother came over when my grandpa died, and my uncle Piotr got a job one summer and ended up staying, but my aunty and uncle and cousins still live on the farm in Poland.’
‘It must be very difficult living with all your family in one house squashed together,’ I say, because I can’t imagine having that many people all taking up space and there not being anywhere for quiet and to hide and switch my brain off.
‘No, it’s fine,’ says Gabe.
‘Oh,’ I say, and we walk along the road in silence. But it doesn’t feel like a companionable Anna sort of silence, and the whole time I’m searching through my head for things to say, but all I can think of is that I wish we could go back to the nice bit before all the awkward bits. And I wonder if dates are supposed to be like a rollercoaster of amazing bits and uncomfortable silences and kissing and not knowing what to say.
We end up at the corner of my street, and Gabe lets go of my hand.
‘Right, then,’ he says. And he leans forward, still with a look on his face that I can’t quite read, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to kiss me on the cheek to be polite or on the mouth because he wants to, and so I duck my head sideways at precisely the wrong moment and I think he gets a mouthful of hair.
‘Holly Carmichael fancies you, you know.’
I didn’t mean to say it.
And Gabe looks at me with a frown of surprise and says, ‘Really?’
I say, ‘Yes, it’s obvious, because if you’ve studied body language you can tell because she turns herself to face you and she was mirroring your gestures and she flicked her hair, which is a grooming motion that is used to –’
And I stop halfway through the sentence because, honestly, I need a minder sometimes to hit me over the head with an inflatable mallet when my mouth starts going and my brain forgets to catch up.
‘Right,’ says Gabe. He steps backwards. ‘I better get back.’
‘Me too,’ I say.
He looks at me for a moment with a strange expression on his face, just before he turns away and walks down the road towards town.
I watch and watch, until Gabe becomes a little speck, and then he disappears from sight.
And I don’t know how, but I think I’ve blown it.