It’s still warm outside in the garden, but Tally doesn’t want to sit in the sunshine. She walks down the path, past the apple tree, and then she turns left and bends down so that she can scuttle under the low, sweeping branches of the willow tree and into her den.
Dad helped her to make it several summers ago. They spent days propping old branches against the trunk and creating a secret hideaway where she could come whenever she wanted to be on her own. At this time of year, when the leaves of the willow tree block out the rest of the garden, it’s even more peaceful and hidden. Tally drops to her knees and crawls through the gap.
Now she can think.
“Tally!”
Nell’s voice breaks through the silence before she’s even able to think one tiny thought. “Are you in there?”
Tally clamps her lips closed and holds her breath. Maybe if she doesn’t reply then her annoying big sister will leave her alone.
The sound of footsteps comes closer and then the branches are parted, letting sunlight through onto the dank, dark ground where Tally is sitting.
Nell’s face appears in the gap. “There you are! Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
Tally scowls. “Leave me alone.”
Nell scowls back. “Charming. I guess you don’t want the treat that I’ve brought you, then?”
She starts to shuffle back on her knees, but Tally reaches out a hand to stop her.
“What treat?” she asks. “And why?”
Nell’s mouth turns up at the corners and she pauses, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a badly wrapped chocolate bar.
“You’ve already had some!” complains Tally, staring suspiciously at the half-eaten snack.
Nell raises an eyebrow. “Do you want it or not? Cos if you do then you’d better let me in – I’m not crouching out here all day.”
Tally inches backwards, creating just enough space for Nell to enter the den. Her sister thrusts the chocolate bar into her hands and then looks around.
“It’s a bit cramped in here, isn’t it?”
Tally nods, chocolate already smeared around her lips. “It used to be bigger,” she mumbles through a mouthful. “I think it got smaller.”
“So what’s going on then?” asks Nell, pulling her knees up close to her chest. “Mum said that you’re having a tough time.”
Tally stops eating and looks down at the ground. There’s a tiny ant making its way across the dirt, struggling to carry a piece of leaf that’s three times the size of its body. It doesn’t give up though, and as she watches it’s joined by another ant, and then another, all marching with a purpose as if they know exactly what is expected of them.
“All I wanted was to get the main role in the production,” she says. “And now I’ve got what I wanted but everything is still difficult and wrong. So what am I supposed to do?”
Nell shrugs. “You might have got what you wanted, but maybe that wasn’t what you needed,” she tells her. “Wanting and needing are not the same thing.”
Tally narrows her eyes and pushes her foot into the dirt, being careful not to squish the ants. “That’s stupid,” she snaps. “And it doesn’t even make any sense.”
Nell’s face scrunches up, which Tally knows means that she’s thinking really hard. “It’s a bit like when you say that you can’t do something but other people think what you’re really saying is that you won’t. It might sound like a small thing, but it makes all the difference. You said that everything is wrong, yeah?”
Tally nods.
“You got what you want, but it hasn’t made everything OK. So what do you need?”
“To make things right.” Tally’s voice is a whisper, but Nell hears her anyway and nods.
“OK. So do that.”
Tally whips her head up and glares at her sister. “Do you think it’s easy? Because it isn’t, OK? It’s not easy making things better and it’s not easy being me. It’s OK for you – you’re not autistic.”
Nell glares back at her. “It’s not easy being me either,” she states. “It’s not easy being anyone, Tally. And I know that you’re autistic, but that’s not the only word to describe who you are. And you need to figure out who you are if you’re going to figure out how you can solve your problems.”
“Did Mum send you out here to have this conversation?” snarls Tally. “Because I’m getting a little bit sick of people telling me that I’m all these words but never telling me what any of them are.”
“I could tell you a few of them,” shouts Nell, getting to her knees. “Like stubborn and irritating.”
“Well, you’re annoying and bossy and a total pain!” yells back Tally.
The two sisters glower at each other for a few seconds and then Nell’s face softens.
“You’re also creative and fun,” she says. “And tenacious. You always keep going until you achieve whatever it is you set out to do.”
Tally huffs. “I suppose you’re not too bad,” she acknowledges, and Nell snorts with laughter.
“I guess that’s as good as I’m going to get,” she says, grinning at Tally and shuffling backwards out of the den. “I’ll try not to let it go to my head.”
And then she’s gone, and Tally is left alone in peace to finally do some thinking.
But all she can think about is what Nell just said to her.
You need to figure out who you are.
So, who is she?
The sun has started to dip in the sky, but Tally hasn’t moved an inch. She’s sitting inside the den, drawing shapes in the soil with her finger and trying to let her head calm down. The problem is that her brain just won’t settle long enough for her to make sense of anything. Thoughts and words and images are hurtling around her head, and the more she tries to make them stay still, the faster they go.
Stubborn.
Irritating.
Tally’s finger scrawls the words into the dirt.
Creative.
Fun.
Tenacious.
Her finger writes faster as she remembers Nell’s words.
Wonderful.
Kind.
Good enough.
Those were the words that Mum used.
Tally stares at the list, her eyes blurring. She might be all of these things but they aren’t her words. And she needs her own words if she’s going to do what Nell said and figure out who she actually is. She thinks back to the conversation she had with Mum in the kitchen, when Mum asked her what she’d done that made her feel proud. She remembers that day with Miles and Luke in the school hall and she thinks about the person that she was and suddenly, the word is right there, shining and dancing before her eyes.
Brave.
Tally is brave and she always tries to do the right thing, no matter how hard it might be.
Her hand swipes across the ground, scattering the words into dust. Her brain is fizzing and whirring, and the den suddenly feels too small for her and her thoughts. Maybe the den has shrunk since the last time she was in here or maybe she’s grown, but, either way, it isn’t the safe place that it used to be.
She doesn’t want to write her words in the dirt – her words need room to move and stretch. Her words need to fly, not be tethered to the ground.
Scrabbling out of the den, she ducks under the willow branches and runs down the garden. The ladder is lying next to the garden shed and it takes all her strength to lift it up and rest it in position. She does it though – she’s tenacious like that. Then she climbs up, one rung at a time, nearly losing her grip when she reaches the third rung that’s almost rotted through, until she gets to the top.
Taking a deep breath, Tally clambers up the steep sides of the roof. And then she pulls one leg over so that she is straddling the ridge, sitting astride the rooftop with the ground far below her.
Not that she’s interested in the world below right now. All of her attention is on the sky, the endless sky that goes on and on and on. A sky big enough to hold all of her words and give them space to grow.
Brave.
Tally releases her first word into the air where it glides on the breeze.
Fierce.
Exciting.
The words just keep on coming, like birds escaping a cage.
Loyal.
Adventurous.
Loving.
They float out in front of her and then rise on the current, ascending so high that they are almost out of sight before plunging back down to play.
And now there’s only one word left. Tally cradles it in her hands like a tiny fledgling and then gently sends it into the air. It flaps its wings a little, as if it isn’t really sure what it’s supposed to be doing, and Tally holds her breath, certain that it’s going to plummet to the ground.
Autistic.
And then, as she watches, it takes flight and soars into the sky to join the others, swooping and frolicking and flying free, and soon Tally can’t distinguish it from the rest. All of her words, tangled together to make her who she is – the letters rearranging themselves to spell out the most important word of all.
Tally.
Nell was right (much as it pains her to admit it). She needs to make things right and she knows exactly how to do it.
And it starts by being proud to be her.