CHAPTER 16

Tally dreams. It is last year, and she’s at GoCamp with Gory and Jade, hanging out with the cute animals at the animal sanctuary. She laughs at something funny Gory says and feels the warmth of Jade’s arm slung around her shoulder, and everything is real and good and simple. And then she wakes up and the positive sensations vanish before she has even opened her eyes, only to be replaced by the feeling. Actually, it’s more than a feeling; it’s a churning, physical whirlpool in her stomach and it’s impossible to ignore.

“Morning, sunshine!” trills Mum, entering the room. “It’s a glorious day outside and it’s nearly the weekend so there’s lots to be happy about!”

Tally doesn’t move. Happy is not an option for her today, even if it is Friday.

“Let’s get you up.” Mum flings back the curtains, not seeming to notice that the bright sunlight pierces straight into Tally’s eyes.

“I can’t.”

Tally hears the words come out of her mouth and every muscle in her body tenses. She didn’t mean to say it but it’s the truth. She can’t go to school – she knows that with every bit of herself.

Mum sits down on the bed. “Talk to me, honey. We’ve been through this over and over again and I need you to explain the problem to me.” She leans over and gently strokes Tally’s forehead. “I know it’s tricky for you without Layla but what’s going on in there, hey?”

If she weren’t battling with the terrifying sensation of drowning inside her own body, Tally would almost want to laugh. Mum has asked that question as if it has a simple answer; like it’s as easy as asking if Tally wants peanut butter on her toast. But the simple answer to her question is everything and there is nothing easy about that.

Everything is going on inside Tally’s head and it feels like water under pressure, getting higher and higher and threatening to overflow the edges. She knows that she should be happy – she has some friends and really is a part of the group, not just hanging on the edges – but it all still feels so risky. As if she’s going to mess it up at any minute and lose everyone.

It’s happened before with the friends she cares most about.

It’s not the most illogical fear in the world.

Tally sits up and swings her legs past Mum, intent on getting out of the room as quickly as she can. She knows this feeling and it never ends well.

Mum sighs. “I’ve spoken to school again and they say that your grades are OK and you seem fine in class and you haven’t even needed to use the Safe Space for a while.” She looks down at Tally. “They think that you’ve made real progress since we had that last meeting with them. So why are you refusing to go in?”

The dam bursts. But instead of doing what it might normally do, and roar out into the room, it empties Tally of all ability to move or speak. As the pressure releases, it drains her of action and instead of sending her into an explosive rampage, her body takes control in a new way.

There is no screaming because there is no air in her lungs.

There is no throwing or breaking because there is no strength in her arms.

There is no running because there is no power in her legs.

All that remains is emptiness.

And it is the worst feeling Tally has ever experienced.

Mum is speaking, but Tally can’t understand what she’s saying because some of the words seem to be missing. Somehow, she’s got herself wedged into the gap between the wardrobe and the end of her bed and all she knows for sure is that she cannot leave this place. She curls into a small ball and puts her hands over her head. When she’s having a meltdown she often makes a lot of noise and, sometimes, when she can feel a meltdown approaching, she’ll sing one of her favourite songs to keep herself calm. But this isn’t a meltdown. It isn’t red and hot and volcanic. She doesn’t know what’s happening, but it’s the opposite of those things. This is blue. This is cold. This is a blizzard. And she is stuck in it, with no idea about how to get out.

It lasts for ever, like an ice age.

At one point, Tally vaguely registers Mum leaving the room and then she’s back, her mobile pressed against her ear. She crouches down in front of Tally and speaks urgently into the phone. Occasional words and phrases push themselves through the fog and into Tally’s ears but they make no sense.

Silent.

Detached.

Won’t respond.

Tally has no idea how long she’s been there, in her safe little cave away from the snow and wind and ice. She knows that she feels bad, because her head is writhing in pain, but she doesn’t know what bad might mean. Is she angry? Does she feel guilty? Is she unwell or scared or hurt?

Time passes, and slowly, so very slowly, other sensations start to creep in. It was impossible to even think about moving when her legs weren’t properly connected to the rest of her body but now she can feel a tingling in her toes and a cramp in her left thigh from where she’s been curled up. And sounds are trickling in too.

“Are you OK?”

Mum’s voice is quiet but filled with fear. Tally wants to reassure her; tell her that she’s fine but her throat feels tight and her mouth is dry.

Plus, it would be a massive lie.

The effort of moving is almost too much. It’s as if someone has wrapped her in a weighted blanket and her entire body feels laden down. But her legs are aching and her hands are cold and she can’t stay trapped in between the wardrobe and the bed for ever. She’s going to have to get up.

Struggling against the heaviness, Tally sits up and leans her back against the wall.

“There you are,” says Mum, relief chasing away the fear. “You’re back!”

I never went away, Tally wants to tell her. I was always here.

But it’s too difficult to speak.

Tally sits in the living room, curled up on the sofa watching Peppa Pig. Peppa’s little brother George does something silly and she smiles a little, just as Mum sticks her head around the door.

“Are you feeling a bit better?” she asks, handing Tally a plate of sandwiches.

Tally pauses for a second and thinks about it. She isn’t entirely sure what Mum means by better but the scared, bad feeling has been replaced by a numb, slightly blurry sensation that makes her feel like all her energy has been drained away like bathwater going down the plughole. It doesn’t feel good but it is definitely better than whatever it was that happened to her in the bedroom.

“A bit,” she croaks, her throat strangely scratchy. “Although I’m still too tired to go to school.”

“We should talk about that,” says Dad. He rushed back in through the front door not long after Tally moved from the floor to the sofa, and he’s stayed close by for the last few hours. Now he sits next to Tally and turns off the television. Mum sits on her other side and Tally tenses. She’s telling the truth about being too tired for school and she hasn’t got any fight in her today.

“I’ve spoken to the autism support worker and also to your school,” starts Mum. “And we’ve all agreed that you feeling this way isn’t acceptable.”

“I can’t help it,” Tally says, staring at her plate. “I’m not choosing to do all of this, you know?”

“We do know,” Dad tells her. He turns to look at Mum. “What was it you said the support worker called it, again?”

“Anxiety based school avoidance,” says Mum. “It’s not school refusal if Tally doesn’t feel that she has a choice.” She puts her hand on Tally’s knee. “And I didn’t mean that you aren’t acceptable – I meant that it’s not OK for you to feel this way about having to go to school.”

Tally’s head whips up and she stares at Mum. “Are you saying that I don’t ever have to go back?” she asks, barely able to believe it.

“Not quite,” says Dad.

Tally sinks back against the cushions and takes a tiny bite of a sandwich, although it’s completely tasteless. She should have known better than to think they’d actually understand. Mum has got it right about the school anxiety but how does just knowing that make any difference, if they’re still going to make her go?

“We’ve come up with a plan.” Mum puts her hand on Tally’s knee. “These tricky days are happening a lot and so school has agreed with us that we need to make a couple of changes.”

“Like what?” asks Tally suspiciously. Change is not her favourite thing and she doesn’t really see how adding even more stress to her week is going to help.

“We’ve spoken before about taking you out of all your PE lessons,” Dad tells her. “But then you’ll be missing out on getting any exercise. And the school thought you could stay out of lessons like French and music and drama and go to the inclusion unit instead for some work in a smaller group – but those are subjects that you really enjoy, aren’t they? It seems a shame to miss out on those.”

Tally nods. There are other kids in her year who get removed from those lessons and have to do extra English and maths instead and she’s always thought that they must be having an even worse time at school than she is, which is really saying something.

“So the new plan is that you can have one day a week where you don’t go into school and, instead, you’ll do something different,” says Mum. “Something that will give you a bit of space to relax, get some fresh air and time to be active but also recharge your batteries.”

“What kind of thing?” asks Tally, her face wrinkling. Being active isn’t her favourite thing, and if she’s allowed to have a day off school then she’d much rather spend it in her room, either sleeping or playing games on her iPad or maybe writing and playing a new song. Those are the things that help her relax – not fresh air and being outside.

“Well.” Dad wiggles his eyebrows at her, as if he’s excited. “We wondered if you might like to go and help out at Ginny’s stables?”

Tally is on her feet in seconds, her plate tumbling to the floor, the rest of the sandwich forgotten.

“Yes!” she shouts. “I would love that!”

She throws Mum a high five and then Dad stands up and pulls her in for a huge, long hug that lasts just a little bit too long and smushes her face against his scratchy, woolly jumper but she doesn’t say a word because she knows that this is his way of telling her that he loves her.

When he finally lets her go, she steps back and beams at her parents.

“What day will I go?” she asks.

“That’s the good part,” Mum says, her face pleased. “We’ll have a code word and you can tell me in the morning if you don’t feel that you can go to school. You don’t need to explain or justify it – the code word will let me know that it’s a stables day and not a school day.”

“But you only get one day a week,” warns Dad, wagging his finger in a joky way. “So you’re going to have to make some good decisions about when to use your code word.”

Tally frowns. That sounds an awful lot like they actually do think she has a choice about whether she can go to school or not. What happens if she uses her code word on Monday and then wakes up on Wednesday with the feeling? And what if what happened today happens again? She couldn’t even get off the floor, never mind all the way to school.

Mum interrupts her thoughts. “Ginny has one particular horse that she wants you to help out with. And she doesn’t mind when you go – we can just let her know that morning that we’re coming.”

Tally’s mind floods with memories of Ginny’s stables. She hasn’t been back there since she was in year six, despite asking Mum and Dad all the time if she could. Riding lessons cost the earth, according to them, which always makes Tally cross because horse riding is one of the things she could be doing that literally wouldn’t kill the planet, unlike both of them driving off to work in their gas-guzzling cars every day.

“Can we go there now?” she asks. “I can be ready in five minutes. Please?”

Mum shakes her head. “It’s too late to go today,” she says. “And, besides, I think you need to have a few quiet hours here, just while you recover from your shutdown.”

So that’s what it was. It’s a good word for what happened to her, Tally agrees with that. She felt just like a computer with too many tabs open – eventually it all got too much and it just stopped working altogether. Maybe she just needs switching off and on again sometimes?

And Mum has a good point. While the thought of spending time with the horses gave her some energy, she really is tired. It feels a bit like she’s done a long, underwater swim and now that she’s come up for air, she needs some time to let her lungs and her head and her eyes adjust to the real world again.

It’s all going to be fine, she reminds herself, as Mum and Dad leave her to chill out with Peppa. She’s got friends and she’s in the group and now she has something else good; something really positive to focus on. If it’s a good day then she can go to school and hang out with Lucy and the others and surely the more time she spends with them, the more she’ll understand who it is that they expect her to be. And maybe she won’t miss Gory, Jade and Layla quite so much.

Plus, if she can’t go to school then she can visit Ginny and the stables and spend time with animals who aren’t going to ask anything of her that she can’t give.

It’s all going to be perfect.

Today’s In-Depth Report: School Anxiety Part 2 What Makes School so Hard?

The social

Sometimes being with friends is the one thing that makes me feel OK about going to school. But trying to maintain friendships on a daily basis is exhausting and if it’s not gone well then I really struggle to make myself go in and face the music.

The learning

Lessons in my secondary school are one hour and thirty minutes each, which is way too long. They also move too fast for me to keep up, are too hard and usually involve too much listening to someone else talk for ages about something that it’s really hard to get interested in.

The teachers

Even though the teachers are nice, having to be known and understood by so many different teachers is really hard. At primary, I just had to explain myself once, to my class teacher, and that was it. Now I have about twenty different teachers and every year I have to start again with a load of new ones. Also, not only do they have to get to know and understand me, but I have to get to know and understand them. Like, which teachers will let you make jokes with them, which ones won’t? Which ones will insist you look them in the eye, which ones won’t? Which ones will make you stand up in front of everyone if you get something wrong, which ones won’t?

The discipline

Trying to remember all the rules is a nightmare. There are so many, like no talking in the corridors, don’t take off your blazer, etc, etc, etc. And some teachers enforce some rules more than others. When you are focusing so hard on whichever rules you need to follow to stop you getting into trouble, it’s hard to be able to focus on learning too.

The sensory

The terrible noise as soon as I arrive – the sound of so many kids talking, shrieking, arguing, laughing. I can’t hear myself think, which always panics me. The smells – sweat mixed with overpowering bodyspray. School dinners, the polish from the floor, cheese and onion crisps, trainers. Ugh. The brightness of the horrible fluorescent strip lights and the walls all covered with brightly coloured words reminding us what we mustn’t forget. The discomfort and demand of having to change from my clothes into my PE kit and back again, then the horror of being picked for teams and play games in a noisy, echoey, screechy, squeaky PE hall. No wonder my head hurts at the end of the day. I’m overstimulated, overwhelmed and overexhausted.

At school, I have to just grin and bear all of this, because if I don’t then I get into trouble. And getting into trouble, or standing out for not joining in, would be even worse than all of the awful sensations.

Home is like being alone in your own pack of lions. You don’t always get along with them, but you know you belong with them

At school, it’s like being thrown in with the whole zoo.