Page 61 of Yearning Difficulties

I didn’t know where I was going. Not home. Ma would know straight away that something was wrong. She’d want me to talk about it.

I wished Max was here.

I instinctively reached for my phone, started a text. Stopped. Deleted it. I could have called her. I knew her number by heart.

But I didn’t call.

Twenty-One

Shall I Be Her?

Today’s Track: ‘Girl Next Door’ by Saving Jane

It was Saturday afternoon and I was trying to write my essay on Descartes. When I took a break to check my phone, I had four missed calls and a bunch of texts from Killian. I deleted the notifications without reading any of them and blocked his number. After leaving the feast the night before, I’d taken refuge in Brooks Books for an hour. I’d no money to buy anything but George Brooks had made me take a copy of a magazine called Roma. There had been a whole stack of them on the counter.

Now, as I sat in my tiny bedroom, I took a moment to read it and laughed when I realized why George had been handing them out.

His daughter, Allegra, was the cover star. A child actress turned major phenomenon, she was definitely the most famous person to ever grace Lake Pristine. The cover showed her in an autumnal knitted dress and a tartan scarf. She wore the kind of make-up that made it seem like she wasn’t wearing any and her long hair was swept up into a messy bun. She looked into the lens of the camera with a slightly despairing smile, as if to say, ‘Aren’t posed photographs kind of silly?’

I flipped to her interview inside.

The reporter asked her how she balanced her relationship with her ever-increasing stardom.

Allegra’s answer made my heart stop beating.

‘Well, my boyfriend and I are both autistic. We both know our limits, we both know what can push us too far. So we categorically don’t entertain anything that might cause either of us to shut down. Privacy and carved-out time for each other is non-negotiable. We take advantage of our natural directness. We don’t expect the other to be a mind-reader. And he supports me unconditionally. And I him. So it’s easy. I’ve never had anything be so easy! Dating neurotypicals never felt like this. I finally have a hand to grasp, even when things can get pretty dark.’

I dropped the magazine as if it were on fire.

I stared at the interior pictures of Allegra Brooks. Tall, curvy and beautiful. Successful. Happy and in love. Adored and admired. Protected. Loved. Safe.

Autistic.

I steadied my breathing and turned the page. The journalist had asked about her autism diagnosis. I closed my eyes. Almost too scared to read. Maybe I was afraid that her answer wouldn’t make any sense.

Maybe I was more afraid that it would.

‘Getting diagnosed as a teenager was great and terrible. I don’t like to talk about it too much, I’m always figuring things out. And I don’t think the allistic world is good at talking about it yet so I prefer to, you know, keep things to myself. But it was amazing to finally make sense of things. To have a word for it. I like words with only one meaning and it was nice to finally have one to replace ‘weird’ and ‘cold’ and ‘strange’. And to realize that there was never anything wrong with me, not really. Though some people will disagree with me there. To realize why I can’t handle certain sensory things or plans being changed at the very last minute. Why I like routine. Why I like scripts and predictability. Why I’ve never been great at working out what other people are thinking or feeling, especially if they aren’t being open. Why I’ve struggled socially. Why my sense of fairness can make me really rigid. I used to call it my ‘strong sense of justice’, before I got together with Jonah, but that got me into some trouble. I ended up being so rigid, I didn’t see what was right in front of me. But that’s another story!

‘I know now why I use fiction to process emotion and storytelling. Why the world often felt too harsh and me too sensitive in it—’

I dropped the magazine once more and stepped away from it. The words felt like a lance to my heart. I wanted to reach through the pages and grab on to Allegra Brooks. Beg her to tell me more. Explain me to myself.

There were more pictures inside: one of her at a premiere and another taken from her socials.

And one with her boyfriend: Jonah Thorne. I knew they’d met over that one long summer in Lake Pristine. He was a local, unlike her: his mother ran the bakery in town. The picture showed a tall, broad-shouldered young man pushing through a small band of photographers outside a townhouse in the city. He had his other arm around Allegra, protectively sheltering her, looking serious and stoic. She was gazing up at his profile with a small, knowing smile. As if this whole charade was something they laughed about when they were alone.

I felt the small rip in my soul widen, become more of a wound.

And yet, for the first time in a long time, something else felt like it might finally start to heal.

I kept myself to myself before the show. I arrived as late as I possibly could and changed into my costume as the rest of the cast were doing fight call. I walked to my mark right as the audience poured in. Killian was waiting with Dave on the arena floor, now back to its usual staging. I ignored his quiet, earnest whispering of my name and climbed onto my block. Dad had asked me numerous times if I was all right and I’d brushed his concern away. Now he watched me with unbridled worry but I gave him a small nod of reassurance.

The show started.

From the moment we began, something felt off. When you perform a show enough times, aspects start to feel routine. And then, naturally, when something doesn’t quite land, it feels blatantly obvious. Painfully so.

Tonight, nothing had gone wrong, exactly. It just felt off. The energy was fragmented. The crowd was excited but lacking its usual generosity. Dave seemed distracted. Killian seemed forlorn, which didn’t suit his arrogant character at all.