The tiger stares out of the bedroom window at the world beyond the glass. The sun is shining brightly, making the garden look warm and inviting, but the tiger cannot go outside. All the tiger can do is press her nose to the window and watch the other animals as they go about their daily lives, making it look so, so easy. The tiger isn’t sure about very much right now, but one thing she does know is that they must all be faking it. There is nothing easy about getting up and getting dressed and having to listen and talk and say the right things. There is nothing easy about being told what you should be doing or where you should be going or how you should be thinking – even if everyone else does act like it’s no big deal.
The tiger has done everything she can to make it easier for herself, in her fight to be accepted as one of them. She has observed the other animals and tried to copy what they do. She has squished herself into shapes that should have been impossible – and do you know how hard it is for a tiger to pass as an alligator or a giraffe or a hippopotamus? All she ever wanted was to be like everyone else and to fit in.
And she’s done it. She’s got the lead role in the production and she was invited to the party. Nobody is calling her unkind names, and yesterday Jasmine told her that her acting is amazing. If someone had told her two months ago that these things were going to happen, she’d have hardly been able to believe it. She’s got everything she ever wanted.
She is the luckiest tiger in the world.
Even if she doesn’t really feel like a tiger any more.
Even if, actually, she isn’t really sure who she is. And the one thing she does know about herself is something that she can’t even bear to think about, never mind share with anyone else.
“Can we have quiet, please?” calls Miss Balogun.
Tally stands on the dark stage, waiting for her cue. She can sense everyone else nearby, but nobody is making a sound. It’s peaceful and calm, and for a second Tally can breathe properly.
And then the lights come on and the music starts and she steps forward. She can do this. She’s good at pretending to be someone else. In fact, pretending to be someone else is a lot easier than trying to figure out who she’s supposed to be. She can hang out with the popular kids playing the part of “regular girl” and she can sit in class and play the part of “quiet kid” and all she has to do is follow the others. Not that she has to mimic anyone when it comes to playing the part of Little Red, though. No matter how often people try to tell her how Carrie played the role, Tally knows that she can make it her own. She knows that acting is where she truly shines, and she doesn’t have to copy anyone else.
After the rehearsal, Miles beckons her across to where he’s standing at the light and sound desk. Miss Balogun is leading everyone out of the hall and back to class, and Tally hesitates as she watches Layla leave. She’s barely spoken to Miles since she got the part of Little Red – there hasn’t been time in between all the rehearsing and then hanging out with the other kids. She’s told herself that she’s just been really busy, but she knows that isn’t the whole truth.
She’s worked really hard to earn her place with the others, and she doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. But that isn’t the whole truth either.
The whole truth is never just one thing. The whole truth is always made up of lots of smaller things that weave and flow around each other, and more than one thing can be true at the same time.
Tally has been busy. And she doesn’t want anything to mess up her newfound popular status, not after wanting it for so long. But neither of those truths are the entire reason for the fact that she has been ignoring Miles. One, tiny, little truth is missing, and even though Tally has tried very hard to keep it squashed deep down inside, it swirls and flurries its way up, up, up until she can’t pretend any longer.
The report from Dr Zennor. The autism diagnosis. They’ve given her the same word as Miles, but when Tally looks at Miles she doesn’t see herself, not even a little bit. And she can’t risk anyone else seeing him when they look at her. So she’s trying to stay away.
Tally starts to turn. But then Miles waves at her again, and she can’t just ignore him. She was ignored all the time before she got the part of Little Red, and she knows how awful it is. She only has to stay for a minute, she tells herself as she walks across to the lighting desk, and nobody is even here to see. She’ll talk to him for a moment and then she can go and find Layla and the rest of them outside and listen while everyone tells her what a brilliant actor she is.
“You weren’t standing in the right position for the spotlight,” Miles tells her, making frantic notes on his plan.
“Yes I was.” Tally glares at him. She came over here to be nice, not to be insulted. “I was standing exactly where I was supposed to be.”
“You weren’t.” Miles shakes his head and thrusts his piece of paper in front of her. “Look. Carrie always stands here.” He points to a dot on the page. “But you were standing here.” He stabs at the plan with a red pen. “You were at least twenty centimetres to the left.”
“So what?” Tally can feel her frustration starting to build. “Twenty centimetres is nothing.”
“It’s everything,” says Miles, his voice sounding shocked. “But more importantly, it isn’t where Carrie always stands.”
Tally shrugs. “It’s where Carrie used to stand,” she tells him. “I’m not Carrie and I’ll stand where I like.”
Miles slowly raises his eyes from the plan and looks right at Tally. It’s the first time he’s ever looked properly at her face, and she can tell that he’s feeling awkward, but that doesn’t stop her from glaring at him. It’s bad enough that other people keep helpfully telling her how Carrie played the part of Little Red – she doesn’t need Miles joining in too.
“But you’ll ruin the whole lighting plan,” Miles whispers. “I set it all up for Carrie, and you have to stand in the right place or everything will be wrong.”
Tally can see the panic in his eyes and her heart suddenly feels heavy. She opens her mouth to reassure him, and then the sound of feet makes her hesitate.
“What’s going on?”
Tally turns to see Lucy, Ayesha, Luke and Ameet closing in behind her.
“Why are you talking to him?” asks Luke, jerking his head at Miles. “It’s break-time now.”
“I wasn’t,” Tally says quickly. “Let’s go.”
“What did you think about Jasmine’s party at the weekend? It was wild, wasn’t it?”
Tally starts to speak and then stops. The question isn’t directed at her.
“Oh, sorry!” Luke slaps his hand to his mouth in fake shock and stares right at Miles. “You weren’t invited, were you? My bad – it’s just that everyone else was there, so I forgot that Jasmine didn’t actually want you to come. On account of you being such a weirdo loser and everything.”
Miles puts his lighting plan down on the table and starts making hurried marks on the page, his glasses slipping down his nose, the way that they always do when he’s trying to concentrate.
“Go away, Luke.” The words come out before Tally can stop them.
Lucy makes a gasping sound, and Tally doesn’t have to look at Luke’s face to see that she’s just made the biggest mistake of her life.
“Are you standing up for Weirdo Edwards?” Luke’s voice is slithering and slimy. “Are you actually friends with him or something?”
Ameet snorts with laughter.
“I thought you liked hanging out with all of us?” demands Luke, his eyes glittering. “Well, you have to choose. Us or the freak boy?”
And suddenly everything is very still. Tally holds her breath and watches as some part of her that she can’t quite control weighs up her options. It’s as if she is standing at a crossroads and is being forced to choose which path to take. Her fizzing head and angry hands want her to go one way, her fingers curling themselves into a fist, ready to slam hard into Luke’s smug face without a single care for the consequences. Her thudding heart and swirling stomach want her to go the other way, pleading with her to run away as fast as she can and find some space where she can try to figure out how to retain some of the status she has fought so hard to win.
But the tiger, who is rearing up inside her, is telling her something entirely different. It’s telling her that right now, in this moment, she is making a bigger choice than whether to go left or right; to run or to fight; to choose acceptance or isolation. An even bigger choice than deciding whether to be friends with Miles or everyone else. It’s telling her that while all of that matters, none of it is as important as choosing who she is.
A quiet, tiny voice is whispering in her head that if she keeps trying to reinvent herself as someone else and she still doesn’t fit in, then maybe it’s about time to stop trying to be who they want her to be and start being her. That if every new Tally she shows them is wrong, then she might as well accept being the one, true Tally. And that her liking her real self is maybe, just maybe, more important than other people liking who they think she is.
“Miles is my friend.” Her voice is strong and clear, which she’s glad about because she’s fairly sure that her legs are shaking. “Leave him alone. You can’t just go around being nasty to people all the time.”
“Yeah, leave us alone,” mumbles Miles, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Just go away.”
Luke smirks. “What was that, Weirdo Edwards? Did you have something to say? Say it again – to my face this time.”
He lurches towards Miles but the tiger is quicker. She lunges forward, putting herself between the two boys.
“Get lost, Luke,” she hisses. “If you lay one finger on him, then I’m going to scream so loudly that Miss Balogun is going to be back down here in two seconds flat, and then I’m going to tell her all about you and the things you say about other people, and I’m pretty sure that she’ll phone up your dad and he’ll have to come into school and you’ll have to explain why you’re such an ignorant, despicable pig.”
Luke hesitates. “What makes you think that she’ll believe you over me? I’ll just tell her that you’re making the whole thing up.”
“Because I’ll tell her too.” Miles steps out from behind Tally.
“And me,” adds Ayesha. “You’ve gone too far this time, Luke.” She turns to Lucy. “You’ll back Tally up, won’t you?”
Lucy glances quickly between Tally and Luke and then nods. “Yeah, of course I will.”
Luke glares at Lucy and Ayesha before turning his gaze on to Tally.
“You’re going to be sorry that you messed with me,” he tells her quietly. “I see you, Weirdo Adams. And I’m going to make sure that everyone else sees you too.”
Tally plants her feet firmly apart and speaks with a confidence that, while new and a little bit shaky, feels rooted deep down inside of her. “Go ahead. I’m not scared of you, Luke.”
Luke gives a little laugh. “How perfect is that? Weirdo Adams and Weirdo Edwards. Best friends for ever.”
“Call him that one more time,” warns Tally, narrowing her eyes and feeling the tiger start to rear up. “Go on. See what happens.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, and Tally knows that Luke was telling the truth. He can see her – and he can also see the tiger about to pounce.
He takes a step back and then gives a quick nod to Ameet.
“Let’s get out of here,” he snaps. “And leave these sad losers to it.”
Tally watches as they storm out of the hall and then turns to face Miles.
“Are you actually my friend, then?” he asks before she can speak, peering over the top of his glasses that have slid down his nose again. “Because I thought that you didn’t like me very much.”
Tally narrows her eyes. “I said that I was your friend, didn’t I? I don’t tell lies.”
“So does that mean that you’ll stand in the right place for the spotlight?” Miles persists. “That would be a very friendly thing to do because otherwise I’m going to have to reprogramme all the lights and it’ll take ages.”
Lucy makes a funny sound in the back of her throat like she’s about to laugh, and Tally whips her head around to shoot her a warning glance before looking back at Miles.
“Yes,” she tells him. “I’ll stand in the right place. But not because you told me to. I’ll do it because it’s the right thing to do and I want to do it.”
Miles nods seriously and then bends back over his lighting plan, his pencil moving lightning quick across the paper as he scrawls more notes.
“I’ll catch you up outside,” Tally tells Lucy and Ayesha. She waits until they’ve left the hall before turning back to Miles. “I’m sorry that Luke said those things to you,” she tells him. “I should have stopped him sooner. He shouldn’t have told you about the party – just ignore what he said about it.”
Miles straightens up and gazes over Tally’s shoulder, his face puzzled. “But it was true,” he says. “I wasn’t invited. Did you know that the world record for the largest number of people wearing those shiny cone party hats at the same time was set in 2019 in an English school? It wasn’t even that many people – only one thousand, one hundred and sixty-one, which I think could be easily beaten. Not by me though – I hate the way the elastic on those hats digs into your chin skin. I like hats though. If I had to wear a hat for a party then I’d choose something else like maybe a cowboy hat or a fedora or maybe a top hat.”
Tally stares at him for a moment and then starts to laugh.
“Chin skin?” she stutters. “Chin skin?”
Miles tilts his head to one side and lets his eyes flicker towards her. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No!” Tally tries, and fails, to control her giggles. “I’m laughing at chin skin. And I know exactly what you mean. It’s horrible!”
“It really is.” Miles hesitates and then starts laughing too. “Did they have shiny party hats at Jasmine’s Zombie Laser party?”
Tally’s laughter comes to an abrupt halt. Nobody has mentioned the details of the party today. Miles must have known about it all along.
“No,” she tells him. “They didn’t have any shiny hats. There weren’t any hats at all, actually.”
“Oh.” Miles picks up his lighting plan and starts to walk towards the hall doors. “Not much of a party, then?”
“Not much of a party,” agrees Tally.
They reach the corridor and Miles pauses. “I’m going to Koala Club,” he says, not looking at Tally. “You can come if you want to.”
Tally takes a deep breath and thinks about what he’s suggesting. Lucy and Ayesha are waiting for her outside, and Layla is probably with them. If she goes with Miles then she isn’t sure what people will think.
“You don’t have to, though.” The words stumble over themselves in a desperate attempt to get out of Miles’s mouth. “I’m not telling you what to do. I know you don’t like being told.”
“I know you’re not telling me,” says Tally. “You’re asking me, and that’s different. Asking is good.”
She isn’t sure what people will think, but she is sure that right now, she doesn’t particularly care.