6

I dragged myself and my humiliated soup can shirt out of the bathroom, and as much as I like to give off the vibe—whenever possible—that I’m cool and unaffected by such puerile, immature behavior, it’s all a lie.

Because I am. I am affected by it. It does get to me, and it cuts me right to the quick, and now I wished that I had my regular afternoon appointment with Dr. Finkelstein. I pulled up the message she’d sent me with the number for a therapist in Cape Town. While my phone was out, I decided to send the guys a quick WhatsApp. I needed something familiar in my life right now. Something I could anchor myself with.

WhatsApp Group: How You Doin’???

I smiled to myself whenever I read the group name. Two years ago we’d binged all of Friends, and this had become our official greeting for a while. That was a happy time.

LORI: This place is crazy! You wouldn’t believe it

GUY: Do tell

ANDILE: Are the guys there hot tho?

LORI: You’re such a gay cliché

ANDILE: But you love me anyway

LORI: Who wouldn’t!

ANDILE: And what are the girls like? Are they a bunch of hot Mean Girls?

LORI: Some of them seem okay, I guess. But then there’s Amber . . .

GUY: AAAHH! There’s always an “Amber” isn’t there?

LORI: And she already hates me . . . I guess I did break her nails and spill water on her

ANDILE: Bad girl

LORI: It was an accident, but now she has it out for me

GUY: Just put that gorgeous head of yours up in the air and be yourself

ANDILE: Totally. Everyone will love you

ANDILE: Well, maybe Amber won’t. But that’s okay. Who wants to be friends with her anyway

LORI: I gotta run, don’t want to be late for class

GUY: We miss you xxx

LORI: Me too

GUY: Big time!

ANDILE: I miss you more than Guy

GUY: That’s just because Musi broke up with you

LORI: Noooo. Why?

ANDILE: He decided he wasn’t gay . . . again!

GUY: Confused “straight” guys are the worst! They should just come out as bi. Like me. Best of both worlds

ANDILE:

LORI: Okay! Love you all. Have to go

ANDILE:

GUY: Bye. Slay the day!

Slay the day. I smiled. It was so cheesy, but we loved saying it to each other. The conversation with the guys had made me feel a little less lost and I started typing another message.

LORI: Hi, my name is Lori. I got your number from Dr. Finkelstein. I’ve just moved to Cape Town and she recommended you as a therapist. Wondering where you are and if you have any time to see me?

I started to slip my phone back into my bag, not anticipating an immediate response. But it beeped.

DR. STRIDE: Lori! Of course. I’ve heard great things about you from Pamela. I’d love to see you. How’s tomorrow afternoon at 3:00?

LORI: I’m not sure I can make this week, I have to look after my brother in the afternoons at the moment. What about next week?

DR. STRIDE: You’re welcome to bring him.

LORI: I’m not sure

DR. STRIDE: There’s plenty to do here. I have a huge garden he can explore

I looked at her message and paused. I always dreaded this moment, when I had to explain it. Explain him. And it always felt wrong, as if I was betraying Zac, disrespecting his right to privacy. But that’s the thing with autism, sometimes it’s impossible to hide.

LORI: My brother doesn’t like stranger’s homes. He’s not very comfortable in them. He’s on the autism spectrum.

DR. STRIDE: No problem. Whatever suits you

Smiley face? This woman didn’t sound like a normal therapist at all.

LORI: I’ll ask my mom whether she can look after Zac tomorrow and get back to you later

DR. STRIDE: Perfect. I look forward to working together

What were the chances that my mom wasn’t busy tomorrow afternoon with some important meeting/advert/eyebrow lift? Since coming here, looking after Zac seemed to have become my responsibility. Back home we’d had an au pair three times a week, but now it was just me, and my mom was hardly home anymore either. I loved spending time with Zac, but school was going to get busy and I wasn’t going to be able to do that every day.

The day sort of tumbled on from there. I went from one class to another in a silent daze. Moving through the crowds of people, down the passages, and up the flights of stairs . . . alone. This was nothing like art school. Firstly, there was no art here, other than some after-school club, and secondly, everything was so formal, despite the lack of school uniforms. Desks and chairs and lines and neat rows. Also, the kids here were completely different from the ones I was used to. Everyone here seemed so made up—perfect, polished, pretty. I felt so uncomfortable here; every step I took felt like I was wading through a swamp of quicksand that was trying to suck me under. And then it was lunchtime.

I hate eating in front of people. I’m scared that like my mom, they might also be taking an inventory of everything I put into my mouth. Watching the fat girl eat with curiosity, like an animal in the zoo. So I walked straight out of the cafeteria and strolled around school, and without Teagan by my side, I noticed things I hadn’t seen the day before, like all the #motivational posters on the walls.

I find this kind of thing so distasteful. Like those motivational speakers who ooze fake humility in that totally pseudo, sincere manner. Big smiles, power suits, gelled hair, telling you how they used to get bullied when they were young and understand what you’re going through—And for only R999.99 you can be like them if you buy their Ten Steps to Success program, guaranteed to give you brighter, whiter, bigger smiles, thicker wallets, and thinner thighs, but wait, there’s more. I stopped and read a poster.

“‘Good, better, best. Never let it rest.’” Ugh.

“‘Today’s struggle is tomorrow’s strength.’” Double ugh. But the next one made me stop dead in my tracks.

“‘When you start seeing your worth, you’ll find it harder to stay around people who don’t.’”

My worth. The word punched me in the gut. Most of my worth had been tied up in the fact I was an artist. People knew that, they respected that, I was even semicool because of it. But any semblance of cool I’d once possessed, had been left behind in Joburg, with my old life. I walked all the way down to the field at the far end of the school. There was a really nice tree there that provided just the right amount of dappled shade. In the distance, some guys—the jocky ones—were tossing a rugby ball around. And because I didn’t want them to think that I was there to watch—that would be mortifying—I turned my back to the field and sat down.

I could eat my sandwich in peace here and draw something in the sketchbook I carried around with me. I flipped the book open and took out my 2B pencil. It was the perfect pencil for sketching: soft, yet still hard enough, giving just the right combination of perfect lines and shading. I decided to sketch my sandwich wrapper, so I crumpled it and dropped it to the ground. But just as I was about to take a bite and lower my pencil to the paper, something whacked me on the back. My entire body fell forward and my face hit the ground.

“What . . . ah . . . what?” I scrambled to my feet in a state of shock. What was that? A bomb? A meteorite? A . . . a . . . a . . .

Bloody rugby ball. Loud laughter erupted behind me and I froze. Had that been on purpose? I certainly wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I grabbed my things and was just about to rush off when I heard a voice.

“You okay?” I turned, only to find him standing there.

Jake Jock Jones Double Barrel.

“Sorry about that. Vuyo got a bit carried away,” he said. Vuyo, I knew that name . . . oh, TikTok-famous guy who deliberately fell down flights of stairs. God, I hoped he hadn’t filmed that: I don’t want to be trending tomorrow.

“Sure. No worries. Sorry,” I replied, shrugging. This was my default response to things like this. I brushed them off with carefully rehearsed nonchalance. I’d learned that when you reacted, it spurred them on. Dulling your emotions and reactions was the only way for girls like me to handle situations like this.

“Why’re you saying sorry?” he asked.

“Uh . . . what?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were just sitting here, having lunch.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks . . . I think.” I blinked a few times, utterly confused.

He smiled at me. He really was gorgeous. Still, not my type. But there was no denying his obvious hotness. Michelangelo believed that beauty could be boiled down to a simple equation. The golden ratio that dictated how features should fit together in perfect, mathematical symmetry. But Jake’s hotness seemed to defy this. His lopsided smile, the scar through his left eyebrow, the random and imperfect waves in his hair, the way it was mostly brown except for those gold strands that made it look like the sun was directly above him, casting a constant glow over him. Nothing about his face was in proportion, and yet it fit together perfectly. Michelangelo was definitely wrong.

“I’m Jake, by the way.” And then he did something strange. He extended his hand for me to shake.

“I—I know,” I stammered, taking it sheepishly. “Lori.”

“I know,” he said.

And then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he was gone. He jogged back to his friends, who were all still laughing.

“Shut up,” Jake shouted, throwing the ball at Vuyo.

“Don’t be a dickhead,” Vuyo said when the ball collided with him. I think a look must have passed between them, because suddenly Vuyo looked over at me and waved.

“Sorry!” he yelled.

The day grew progressively worse after the ball incident. Just when I was starting to think the people at BWH weren’t as bad as I’d initially thought, Amber proved me wrong. She’d teased me as I’d walked past her and a group of her friends, Well, I guess she needed bread to go with that soup.

They’d all laughed and I hadn’t understood why until I’d gone to the bathroom and realized my sandwich had smudged across my shirt. Clearly, I’d fallen on top of it when the ball had hit me.

So when the last bell finally rang, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. When I was safely in my car again, I looked back at the school. Strange really, that this brightly colored building with its sunshine-yellow walls and sky-blue roof could be such a dark place. In the 1500s an artist called Hieronymus Bosch painted these disturbingly dark images of hell, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he shouldn’t have included Amber and BWH in his famous oil paintings.

The drive to my brother’s school was a quick one, and very unlike my walk back from school in Joburg. Everything here was so clean. Pristine. Even the streets looked shiny and manicured, like all the people and cars that inhabited them. There was a neatness and orderliness to this place that Joburg didn’t have, and it felt suffocating. But it also felt made up in some way, like a stage set that had been meticulously designed and then professionally lit, just waiting for gorgeous actors to start whatever scene was next. Everything about this place felt like a performance, nothing was out of place, except me.

I pulled up to a traffic light and then choked on an intake of breath when I came face-to-face with my mother staring down at me from a streetlight. Her arms were folded, her hair was shiny and overstyled, and her smile was so big it reminded me of the Cheshire Cat. Another performance.

Palm Luxury Realty. Your luxury specialist.

I pulled off as soon as the light turned green, but it wasn’t long before I saw her again. This time she was standing in front of a massive house. Arms open wide, porcelain-veneered Cheshire smile.

Welcome to your new luxury home.

I shook my head in disapproval; I could do that now. What the hell had happened to my mother to turn her into this strange face on a poster? Well, I suppose catching your husband in a hot tub with a much younger woman will do that to you. Not that I was meant to know any of this, of course. But I’d overheard them arguing late one night when they thought I was asleep. And believe me, I wish I had been asleep, because I know more than any child should know about their parents’ relationship. Like the fact they “hadn’t made love in over a year,” according to my dad. I throw up in my mouth a little every time I think of that. My mother replied that she’d sacrificed everything for this family. She’d once been his business partner, but had given that up to stay home and look after his kids so he could go out and follow his dreams. What about my dreams? she’d said. To which my father had replied that she wasn’t the woman he’d married anymore. She was no longer fun and had lost herself somewhere between school runs, the PTA, bake sales, and worrying about which nonstick pan or washing detergent was best.

I guess that was the thing that caused my mother’s one-eighty. This complete and sudden transformation that now found her staring down at me from posters with that smile plastered across her face, looking like she fit in so well around here. I didn’t get her at all. She painted herself as this perfect mother, and by all outward appearances she probably looked like one, but she wasn’t. And I didn’t even want perfection from her, I just wanted something that wasn’t this. Whatever this was.

I’ve thought back on that time a lot, to when my parents were still together. And I can’t figure out how I hadn’t seen it coming. Surely, I should have known that my father was planning on leaving us? Because he hadn’t left just my mom for her, he’d left me and Zac, too, and if I thought about it like that, it made me want to cry, even after all these years.

I finally arrived at the Lighthouse. That was the name of my brother’s new school. And allow me to make a quick observation related to the naming of these kinds of schools. There always seems to be a trend toward overloading the light thematics: the Lantern Learning Center, Stars Academy, Sunshine Kids. As if they’re trying to disguise the undeniable truth of it all, which is often far from bright and shiny.

But as I climbed out of the car, panic knocked me in the ribs. I hoped Zac hadn’t lost it today, tipped over a table, or run from class. I hoped they weren’t going to say he could no longer be a pupil here. Then this move would have been for nothing. I took a deep breath and walked in.

The inside of the school was awesome, and today I was really able to look around. It was unlike any of the other schools he’d been to, and looked more like a house than an actual school. I walked through the central courtyard, filled with bright, colored plants and a small veggie garden, and headed in the direction of his classroom. A kid with thick glasses ran past me on his tiptoes. I smiled; Zac used to run on his tiptoes. It took craploads of physical therapy just to get him to walk flat on his feet. I remember the day he was able to do that; we’d celebrated as if he’d won the Nobel Prize.

“Hello?” I stuck my head into his classroom.

His teacher, Mrs. Edwards, looked up from her desk. “Hi.”

“I’m here to fetch Zac.” I glanced into the classroom, but it was empty. “How was he today?” I asked apprehensively.

“It took him a while to settle, but when he did, he was great.”

“Really? He was?”

She graced me with a warm, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, he’s going to fit in well here.” She said it with such confidence that I almost believed her. But we’d thought that about the last four schools.

“They’re all down on the sports field. Can I show you where it is?” she offered.

“It’s okay. I know where it is. Thanks.”

When I reached the field, I scanned the sides for Zac. There’s no way they would get him to play a sport. He detests any kind of activity with rules that aren’t his own, and he also hates the noise and excitement of sports. But when I didn’t see him sitting there, another stab of panic hit me. I scanned the field, looking frantically from child to child to child and then . . . I was gobsmacked.

There he was. He was holding a tennis racket and someone was helping him hit a big, blue ball with it. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I found a spot on a small wall and sat down to watch. It looked like they were playing a mash-up of tennis meets soccer meets volleyball meets cricket. And clearly there were no rules, either, which quickly become evident when Zac hit the ball and then hopped on one leg to a Hula-Hoop, which he then picked up and wiggled around his hips.

The guy who helped him hit the ball ran up to him with his hand in the air. “That’s it, buddy! High five!” And then I was downright floored to see Zac give this stranger a high five.

But I was even more floored—literally, I almost fell off the wall and landed on the floor—when the stranger turned around and I saw who it was.