WhatsApp Group: How You Doin’???
LORI: How do you know if someone likes you? Quick! I need urgent assistance here
ANDILE: Wait . . . who’s liking who?
GUY: What kind of like?
LORI: Like, like like
GUY: Smooching, touching, heart like?
ANDILE: Ha-hah! Smooching???
LORI: Shut up, you can tease me later. I’m in a public bathroom, and I need to get out, so . . . how do you know if someone likes you?
ANDILE: They ask you a lot of questions about yourself
GUY: And they listen. Genuinely interested
Okay, check!
ANDILE: They find an excuse to touch you . . . even if it’s brief
Twice and counting.
GUY: Tease and joke with you, in a cute playful way
Check!
ANDILE: Want to spend time with you
He asked us out today.
ANDILE: Smile at you a lot
Yes, yes, yes . . .
GUY: Flirt with you
LORI: How do you know if they’re flirting?
ANDILE: Trust me, you’ll know
LORI: How?
ANDILE: You’ll get that feeling
LORI: What feeling?
ANDILE: It’s hard to explain, but it makes you feel drunk and giddy and stoned all at the same time
Oh my God. That’s how I felt right now!
ANDILE: Why? Do you think someone likes you?
LORI: IDK
LORI: I mean . . .
But how could he like me? Me. Of all people. Of all the girls who inhabited the bright-yellow corridors of BWH. Why me? I sighed. I was clearly reading into this, letting my imagination gallop away from me. He was just a friendly guy. Our siblings were friends, so we were hanging out, by proxy.
LORI: No
LORI: Don’t worry about it
LORI: Gotta go
I walked out of the bathroom and up to the patch of grass everyone was seated on.
“Why did you take so long?” Zac asked firmly. “Were you having a poop?”
“Oh my God.” My face flamed hot as Lisa and Jake burst out laughing.
“No! No! I was messaging someone.” I waved my phone in the air. The very last thing I wanted was Jake imagining me doing . . . that! Sometimes I wish Zac had a social filter, but he doesn’t. He will ask the most inappropriate questions, at the worst times, at the top of his voice usually. He’s the master of creating awkward moments. Like that time he loudly asked while I was buying tampons what they were used for. The other shoppers had all turned and looked, me with a bright-pink box of tampons in my hand. Why don’t they make tampon boxes in more discreet colors? Even pastel pink would have done—not the luminous, cerise thing I was clutching in my hand.
I lowered myself onto the grass carefully while everyone watched me like I was a neon-colored tampon box.
“Can I have some water?” Zac piped up.
“Sure.” I reached into my bag, and took his special bottle out. It’s the only water bottle he’ll drink out of, because it’s blue and has a pop-up straw. For the most part, Zac wears only the color blue, and wherever possible, prefers only blue belongings. He’s also fascinated by the way the straw pops up, and always opens and closes it three times before drinking.
“I don’t want to get dehydrated,” he said, opening and closing the lid three times before finally taking a sip. It was long and slow, and when he was done, I took the bottle away and popped it back into my bag.
“Can I have my snack?” Zac asked.
I pulled the bag of crisps out of my bag and passed it to him. He paused and looked at them.
“Sorry,” I said. “They didn’t have your usual ones, but I did check, they are white.”
He looked at the bag and shook his head. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Why don’t you go play with Lisa?” Jake asked.
Zac turned and looked at him blankly. “I don’t like the game she’s playing.”
“Well, why don’t you ask her to play another game?” Jake suggested.
“Like what?”
“What games do you like to play?” Jake asked. Zac looked confused. I knew why. The truth is that Zac doesn’t actually play games, not in the sense that other kids do. He’s never played games imaginatively; instead, he prefers practical activities like building machines or taking them apart, creating experiments, or constructing forts and obstacle courses for the snake.
“Here.” I swung around and pulled his binoculars out of my bag. “Why don’t you and Lisa go and see what you can find lurking in the bushes.”
At that, he perked up, grabbed the binoculars from my hands, and walked off happily. When it looked like they’d found something to do together, I felt Jake turn to me.
“What did you mean when you said, ‘they are white’?” Jake asked.
“Oh, Zac only eats white food. We are still working on that in therapy,” I said. “You know, sooo autistic.”
Jake smiled back at me. “Sooo autistic,” he echoed with a tone in his voice that told me he wasn’t mocking Zac at all. In fact, it sounded affectionate, just like mine had. This made me smile, probably more than I should have.
“Can I ask you another question?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Have you been avoiding me at school?”
“What? I mean . . . no. It’s just been busy and confusing what with the new schedule and . . . I don’t think so . . .” My words fell out of my mouth like randomly dropped marbles, and in that moment, I wished I was one of these people who was more confident and chilled, and less me. “You’ve been avoiding me too!” I said quickly.
“So you have been avoiding me, then?”
“So have you.”
“When did I avoid you?” Jake asked.
“In isiZulu.” I shrugged to make it look like although I’d said this, it really didn’t bother me. So what! I didn’t care . . . but I did care.
“You were avoiding me in Zulu,” Jake said.
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Um . . .” Jake leaned forward. “I tried to catch your eye to say hello but you looked away and then didn’t look at me again.”
“No. You looked away and didn’t look at me again.”
Jake chuckled, low and soft under his breath.
“What?” I asked.
“Clearly, we got our wires crossed. I thought you were avoiding me because you didn’t want anyone asking how we knew each other, because you didn’t want anyone to know about Zac and—”
“No!” I cut him off quickly. “It’s not that. I don’t care who knows about Zac. I’m not ashamed of him, at all. It’s not that. Trust me!”
“Cool,” he said, and then went quiet for a while. “No one knows about Lisa, or that I volunteer at Lighthouse.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I guess I don’t want people to judge.”
There was a heavy full stop to that sentence that lingered in the air around him. And I didn’t know if he meant he didn’t want people to judge Lisa or didn’t want people to judge him.
“People can be judgy,” I replied quietly.
“Like my gran. She doesn’t believe in ADHD. She thinks Lisa is just badly behaved and my parents need to be stricter with her.”
“That’s such crap!” I sat up on my knees. “You know this friend of my mom’s told us that you can cure autism by cutting out all gluten when she saw Zac eating a sandwich for lunch.”
“That’s insane! You can’t cure it.”
“I know! I bloody told her where the hell to get off! Much to my mother’s horror, of course.”
Jake smiled. “We needed you last year, then.”
“For what?”
“There were protestors outside the school holding up signs protesting psychiatric diagnoses of children so young.”
“Screw them! They just don’t know what it’s like. Getting the diagnosis is the good part; you have something to work with after that. Before the diagnosis, you have no idea what’s going on; afterward you at least have a way of moving forward with therapies and things. If I’d been here, I would have ripped their stupid signs up, bloody hell!”
Jake smiled at me, slowly again.
“What?” I asked.
“You speak your mind. I like that.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. And you’re not afraid to stand up for Zac and advocate for him.”
“Well, yes! If I don’t, who will?”
Jake’s smile wavered. “I don’t think I do that for Lisa as much as you do for Zac. If I did, all my friends at school would know about her and Lighthouse.” He looked down at the grass and pulled some blades out.
“You volunteer at her school! You’re here with her now!” I said emphatically, and this seemed to make his face soften again.
“So, I have a bit of a confession to make,” Jake said.
“What?”
“You know that fire alarm in assembly?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, that was me,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“It looked like you needed saving from Amber, especially after the crappy Monday morning you had last week.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I saw you at the Lighthouse on Zac’s first day when he tried to climb over the fence . . .” He tapered off.
“You saw that?”
“Sorry. It looked hectic.”
And then a thought hit me and I quickly looked down. “So you saw me . . . I mean . . . ?”
“Yes.” His voice was filled with compassion.
“Oh.” I pulled at a thread in the picnic blanket feeling vulnerable, exposed, and embarrassed.
“Don’t worry, we all need a good cry sometimes.” His voice was almost a whisper.
I raised my eyes slowly and looked up at him. He gave me a small grin. “Besides, it was nice to piss Amber off.”
“I thought you and Amber were together?”
“Together might be too much of a strong word for it.”
“Well, according to Teagan you were making your way down the Hot List, starting with Amber behind the bleachers.” I regretted it the second those words were out of my mouth. They made me sound like I cared who he made out with, which I didn’t!
Now you’re just lying to yourself, babe, Imaginary Voice mocked.
He laughed. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. BWH thrives on gossip. It’s like the invisible currency everyone uses there.”
“She’s really pretty, though,” I heard myself say, and again, regretted it.
“I guess.” He went quiet for a while and looked thoughtful. “But she can also be pretty mean and very clingy. I kissed her once and I think she was already planning our wedding.”
“It would probably be a beautiful wedding,” I offered. “Although, I’m not sure I would be invited. I think she hates me.”
“She hates anyone who isn’t like her,” Jake added.
“I would have thought that a guy like you would be with someone like Amber.”
At that, he leaned back on his elbows and eyed me. “Why, cos I’m the jock and she’s the hot, mean girl? You watch too many clichéd American teen movies, Anything but JustLori.”
“I don’t.” I laughed.
“Oh, I forgot! You probably watch arty black and white French films with subtitles and angsty, moody lighting.”
“I am so not that kind of person.”
“And I am so not that kind of person either,” he said firmly. “Maybe there was a time when I used to be, but that was before Lisa and the Lighthouse and things like that. That stuff changes you.”
“So, I won’t find you on TikTok throwing yourself down a flight of stairs with straws up your nose?” I asked playfully.
He laughed. “You know how many millions of followers he has?”
“I can’t believe I’m at the same school as a guy who’s a celebrity for sticking straws up his nose.”
But this time, Jake didn’t laugh. He glanced at Lisa and Zac, and I followed his gaze. I knew what he was thinking without having to ask. When you have siblings like we do, it really puts things into perspective. The things that your peers are doing can look like such a waste of time and energy.
Having siblings like we do means having to grow up quicker. It means that life isn’t always just a party. There’s a serious side to it, filled with heartbreak and pain, and sometimes the greatest joy too. When he caught my eye again, it was as if he knew that I was thinking the exact same thing. It was strange and exhilarating and warm. Nice. More than nice . . .
“This was cool,” I said, standing by my car. Jake was holding Lisa’s hand; it was cute to see how close they were, and of course this just made him even more attractive, which at this stage was almost impossible to believe.
“We should do this again. It’s nice to find a friend for Lisa,” he replied, and I instantly deflated. Had he only enjoyed this because his sister now had a playmate? His phone beeped and he turned his attention to it.
“Amber. It’s the summer dance in a few weeks. She wants to go with me.” He shook his head. “Are you going?”
“To the dance? Uh . . . no.” I tried to hide the shock in my voice, but I think I failed.
“You should come.”
“Nah.” I shrugged, trying to brush it all off. “I don’t really do dances, and certainly not royal-themed ones.” I rolled my eyes, trying to give off that cool, disinterested vibe. I was above this; above puerile dances and who cared about the royals anyway, Kate who?
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“It’s not really my scene.” I started opening my car door in an attempt to put an end to this awkward conversation.
He looked at me as if he was trying to decide whether he believed me. Was I that transparent? Could he hear that mad voice in my brain shouting, If you ask me, I’ll go! I couldn’t risk him seeing that, so I quickly turned.
“Well, thanks again. Zac had a really nice time.” I started climbing into the car.
“Okay!” He and Lisa waved at us. “But think about the dance, everyone will be there. I’ll be there. It will be fun. Or maybe it won’t be fun and we can laugh at everyone together,” he said as I closed the door and pulled away.