“You spent twelve hours drawing a nose?”
“I did.”
“You must have gotten an A.”
Shaking my head, I tell her, “I drew an aardvark nose. My professor claimed to have asked for a human nose. Personally, I don’t think he did but as I was the only one to jump species, he won the argument. He gave me a C for at least doing the assignment meticulously.”
“That seems unfair.”
“I agree,” I tell her before changing the subject. “Any chance we can talk about something else?”
Allie reaches across the little bakery table and takes my hands in hers. Looking me straight in the eye, she declares, “We can talk about anything you want. But please know, I don’t thinkany less of you because you have a touch of the‘tism. If anything, I’m a little bit jealous that you’re such a unique person.”
A thousand embarrassing memories try to break out of my subconscious at the same time. Pushing them back into the basement of my brain, I reply, “I appreciate that, Allie. I really do. I’m comfortable being me now, but it’s not been an easy journey getting here.”
“I bet,” she says sympathetically.
“It’s hard enough being a teenager without learning that everything you thought you knew about yourself might not be true.”
“Did it cause a big identity crisis?”
Instead of answering directly, I decide to practice my use of metaphors, and ask, “Does a Sasquatch have big feet?”
While I’m truly over feeling embarrassment about my differences, I’m reminded why I don’t like to discuss them. When people find out you’re autistic, they ask a thousand questions that, whether they realize or not, have a tendency to make the afflicted person feel … well … afflicted.
CHAPTER FOUR
THOMAS
It turns out there aren’t a lot of travelers arriving in Madison after eleven o’clock at night. I’m glad I scheduled a car to meet me at the airport instead of waiting until I landed.
After retrieving my luggage, I roll it out the sliding doors and look for the ride that’s picking me up. According to the app, it’s supposed to be a Tesla. Imagine my surprise when a man steps out of a giant, retro, black Cadillac—seriously, the car is bigger than some NYC apartments. “Thomas Culpepper?” he calls out.
“That’s me,” I respond while looking from the left to the right for witnesses in case he’s really a mobster who time traveled here from the eighties to fulfill a hit someone hired on me.Talk about a sure sign I’m a native New Yorker. Most people would never consider such a possibility, but I worked with a doctor once who operated on a crime boss’s wife. She didn’t make it and her husband decided to enact revenge. Long story short, my co-worker survived, but left the city and took early retirement.
When I don’t move toward the car, the driver asks, “You need me to come over there and push your suitcase for you?”
I step forward. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”
After popping the trunk, he lifts my luggage and throws it in with the ease of a dock worker used to handling heavy cargo. “I don’t usually work this late,” he tells me. “But I had a fare that took me all the way to Chicago this afternoon. I figured I’d stop and pick you up on my way home.”
“How long did that take?” I ask, while opening the front door to sit in the passenger seat next to him.
“Two hours to get there.” He scoffs. “You’d think they’d just take a train or bus, but some people have more money than brains.”
I pull the seatbelt strap across my shoulder and snap it into place. Somehow, the inside of the car seems bigger than the outside. “I was expecting a different ride,” I tell my driver.
He snort/laughs. “I used to tell folks to look for Adelaide, but I didn’t get as many trips that way. People are kind of snooty these days.”
Even though I would have probably forgone the pleasure of this ancient vehicle, too, I decide to play the diplomat. I pat the fading burgundy leather seat next to me. “I bet this used to be the hottest ride around.”
“It sure was. I didn’t have Addie back in those days though. I picked her up at auction a couple of years ago. Can you believe she only had a hundred and fifty thousand miles on her?”
A hundred and fifty?“Wow, what’s she at now?” I’m hoping he says a hundred and fifty-five.
“Two hundred thousand and twelve! Amazing, right?”
“It really is.” I suddenly worry she won’t have the life in her to get me to Elk Lake.
