I tried, though. I didn’t have it in me to actively make friends, but as I sat in the living room watching daytime TV talk shows while Darren watched YouTube with headphones, I made an effort to notice the good things, not the bad. The room was threadbare and the furnishings tired, yes, but the room was actually quite clean. This, it turned out, was because of Carrie, the woman with Down’s syndrome. It was her job to clean up, and she loved her work. In fact she came through once in the morning with a dust mop and a cloth and again in the afternoon. No food or drink was allowed in the living room, so there were no wrappers. If someone got out a puzzle or a game, they had to pick it up when they were done.
The staff was also great. Sure, they spoke to most residents as if they were children, but honestly? Mentally a lot of them were. I noticed Darren got different vocal tones than Carrie. In fact the female staff member working that first day seemed to quietly favor Darren. As I watched the two of them interact, I thought maybe he felt the same way. His face didn’t change much, but his mouth almost smiled when she was nearby. I’d learned with Emmet that autistic facial changes are subtle and difficult to catch—but they’re always there.
I wanted to connect with Darren. Partly I was curious—I was about to live with someone with autism, so some recon couldn’t be bad, right? Also, there was something so comforting about him. While he wasn’t really like Emmet, he kind of was. Sitting on the couch next to Darren made me feel calm and okay. I still didn’t know how to interact with him, or if I should, but wanting to felt like a good start.
I admit, though, that while I could focus on the positive, I still couldn’t wait to move into The Roosevelt.
Emmet came to Icarus House the afternoon of my second day there. At first I worried it would upset him, because it was sometimes so loud, but he surprised me by being almost cheerful about the visit. In fact he knew several residents, including my roommate.
He also taught me the trick of how to talk to Darren.
When Emmet came into the living room and saw Darren sitting on the couch with his tablet watching YouTube, he smiled what for him was a pretty impressive smile. He didn’t say anything, however. He sat on the far end of the couch and remained still. Then, when Darren’s video finished, Emmet lifted his hands and began to sign. Not spelling the way we sometimes did, no ASL that Emmet had taught me, but complicated gestures I couldn’t understand.
For the first time since I’d met him, Darren put down his tablet. He signed back.
This went on for several minutes, and it was the damnedest thing because neither Emmet nor Darren looked at each other, but they seemed to see anyway. I, however, couldn’t stop staring. Every so often one of them would laugh, and sometimes Darren made one of his semi-articulate sounds. Eventually Emmet made one last sign and stood up. He took my hand, which made my heart flutter, and led me out back to sit in the garden on one of the benches.
“I didn’t know your roommate was Darren. He’s nice. We were friends in Iowa City. I didn’t know he was here in Ames now. That was a nice surprise.”
I blinked. “How did you know he was my roommate? I hadn’t had a chance to tell you yet.”
“Darren told me.”
“So you were using sign language?”
“Darren language. Some of it is ASL, but mostly he made up his own language. It’s simpler. He says he works at the library sorting books. He’s good at that kind of thing.”
He’d learned more about my roommate in ten minutes than I’d learned in a day. “How could you read what he said with his hands without looking at him? And the same for him with you?”
“We both have camera eyes. It’s easy.”
“You have what?”
“Camera eyes. A lot of autistic people can see things like camera pictures. We use our peripheral vision to see things, and we can remember what we see. It’s why sometimes we get overwhelmed in busy places. We take too many pictures.”
This potentially explained so much about Emmet. “Are you telling me right now, though you’re not looking at me, you’re looking at me? I mean, even though your eyes aren’t focused on me, for you they are?” Every time I said it, the words didn’t make sense.
Emmet smiled, understanding anyway. “Yes. I can show you. We’ll play a game. Hold up a number with your fingers and I’ll tell you. You can try to hide it a little to make it challenging.”
I did try, and he never, not once, failed to know exactly how many fingers I held up. I went into the house and got a book to hold up, and as soon as I held it close enough, he could read it from the side as well as he could in the front. In fact, it wasn’t as close as I’d have had to have the book reading it the usual way.
“That’s amazing.” I put the book down and shook my head. “You’re Superman or something.”
He smiled, but it was a subtle smile. “I am. Super Emmet.”
“Are you this way with everything? Can you hear like that too?”
“Yes.”
I never thought I’d be jealous of an autistic person, but I was. A veil had been lifted between us, and while I’d admired him before, I was besotted with Emmet now. “Everything about you is more powerful, isn’t it? When you smile, it’s big to you. And to you your voice isn’t flat at all. I’m the stupid one.”
“Not stupid. You can’t use the S word.” He rocked on the seat. “Sometimes autism is bad. Sometimes I don’t have control. I’m lucky. It’s not as severe for me, and most of the therapy worked to help me modify myself. Some autistic people have a difficult time. We have trouble sleeping, and our digestive systems can be sensitive. Darren can’t make his mouth work the way he wants. He thinks a lot, but he can’t make his mouth work right. He says people are too loud too, so he watches YouTube.”
“Is that why you sat so far from him? So you wouldn’t be loud for him?”
“Yes.”
Huh. I watched Emmet rock for a second. “How can I be a friend to Darren? I don’t know his sign language.”
“I can be an interpreter. Also, he can use his tablet to make it talk, when he wants to. But he doesn’t usually want to.”
The idea of being able to bond more with my roommate excited me. “Can we go talk to him now?”
“In a minute. I want to kiss you first.”
Emmet always announced our make-out sessions, and it thrilled me every time. There was something delicious about him giving the order. Emmet always arranged us, initiated the kiss and introduced any new elements.
Today it was tongue.
We’d kissed at the hospital, and some of those kisses had felt pretty steamy to me, but they’d only been teases of lips, maybe a little nibbling and gentle suckling. Emmet liked to play with the sensory aspects of a kiss, sometimes stopping to comment on the feelings they elicited. I loved that.
I didn’t often say much, but sometimes I did. I could tell him anything: how hard he made me, how my chest felt tight, how I loved the way I could feel his mouth on my lips for an hour after. He always smiled when I said that and paid more attention to my lips.
That first day in the garden, though, he parted my lips with his tongue. Surprised, I opened my mouth. His tongue slipped inside and touched mine.
I gasped. Emmet smiled and pulled back, touching my face. “That felt like a fish.”
I laughed and leaned into his hands. It had, kind of. “Bumpy. Like wet sandpaper.”
Emmet’s fingers stroked my cheeks. “I want to do it again. Open your mouth and let me kiss you with my tongue.”
The shiver that went through me was so intense I had to shut my eyes. “Emmet, you make me so hard when you talk like that.”
“Let me touch my tongue on yours again, and I’ll make you harder.”
He did. I’d stopped asking him where he learned to kiss—it was the Internet, always. Sometimes he watched videos, sometimes he read things, and sometimes he
found message boards. There wasn’t a corner of the Internet he didn’t know how to find, I swear.
I loved being the recipient of his kissing research, and kissing with tongues was no exception. His tongue stroked along mine, exploring my mouth. He was hesitant and uncertain, but not for long. I made my own explorations too, but mostly I went quiet and let Emmet lead me, because it was the way I liked it. When he kissed me and touched me, everything went away except for Emmet.
The only problem today was that Frenching Emmet made me so hard it drove me crazy not to touch myself. I wanted to touch him. I broke the kiss to nuzzle his nose with a careful amount of pressure. “Emmet, I want to do more than kiss you.”
His fingers in my hair tightened. “Yes. When we get our apartment, we can have sex.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that far, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment. I also didn’t want to wait that long to do more than kiss. “We could go to my room here, now.”
“No. Darren might come in.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. “I don’t want to wait. Moving into our room together is another month and a half away.”
I swear I could feel him smile. “I forgot to tell you. Bob said we’re a special case, and we can move in two more weeks.”
I lifted my head and caught him grinning. He hadn’t forgotten. He was playing one of his Emmet jokes on me. I didn’t care, I was so glad. Everything in me got loud and hot, but in a good way.
“I want you to kiss me again,” I said. But when he leaned forward, I put fingers over his lips. My stomach flipped in nerves and anticipation as I made my next request. “Can you kiss me hard, Emmet? With your tongue too?”
His face didn’t change much, and his voice was flat, but I could hear his smile anyway. “Yes,” he said.
And he did.
Chapter Fifteen
Emmet
I was so excited about moving into The Roosevelt. We had all my things packed up in boxes, which was a little disconcerting, but soon I’d be opening the boxes at my own apartment. My apartment with my boyfriend.
We went shopping at Target for our own dishes and pots and pans. I did most of the shopping. The one time Jeremey went, it didn’t go well.
It took us three tries to get to the store, to start. The first day we had an appointment to go, Icarus House called my mom to cancel. “Jeremey is having a bad day,” the aide told her.
I got upset and insisted Mom take me over, but they wouldn’t let us go upstairs. I paced in the living room and hummed and flapped while my mom argued—and then Darren signed to me.
Are you here for Jeremey?
Yes, I signed back. Why won’t they let me see my boyfriend?
Because he’s very sick today. In bed. Sometimes he cries.
That made my octopus go crazy. I signed to my mom I was not okay.
“Please—you need to let my son see his friend, if only so he can see Jeremey is safe,” she told the aide. “If you don’t, I can promise you you’re about to witness a very angry autistic young man.”
They argued a few more minutes, and Darren talked to me some more.
He might have a cold, or the flu.
I shook my head. He has depression. I’m scared, Darren. I don’t want him to try to kill himself again.
It would be hard to do that from his bed. He won’t get out of it.
It actually would be easy to use his bed, if he had somewhere he could string up the sheets. I hummed loudly and flapped my hands so hard they hurt. I hadn’t banged my head against the wall for a long time, but I wanted to do it then.
Mom calmed me down, and a few minutes later we were able to go upstairs to see Jeremey.
Looking at him scared me. He was in his bed, the sheets over his head, and when I called his name, he didn’t respond. I pulled the sheets back, and my stomach felt funny when I saw his face. He looked flat. I knew he was alive because he blinked, but he didn’t look like my Jeremey.
I felt nervous and upset. I didn’t know what to do.
Mom came up behind me and put a heavy hand on my arm. “Jeremey’s depression is bad today. They’ve given him some medicine to help.”
He looked like he had the day he’d first gone to the hospital. “Did his mom make him upset?”
“No. Nothing in particular made him upset, as far as the nurse could tell. That’s how depression works, jujube. Sometimes you’re sad for no reason at all.”
“But we were supposed to shop for our apartment stuff today. That’s a happy thing.”
“Depression likes to eat happy things, sometimes.”
Right now depression was eating my boyfriend. He looked almost scary. I knew it was the drugs, but I wondered what was going on inside his head.
“I hate depression, Mom. It sucks. It’s a bad disease.”
“Yes, sweetheart. It really is.” She tugged my arm. “Let’s let him rest.”
I pulled my arm away. “No. I’m not leaving him.”
Mom sighed. “Emmet, you can’t—”
“Not leaving him.” I sat on the floor and clamped a hand on to the metal frame of his bed. “Not until I know the depression won’t hurt him.”
Mom crouched beside me. “Sweetheart, he’s not going to attempt suicide again.”
“How do you know? Besides, it’s not him who wants to do it. It’s his bad octopus. What if the drugs—?”
I stopped talking because something was tickling my hair. When I turned, Jeremey was looking at me.
His eyes were dull and strange. I could see his light, but it was all messed up. I hummed. I was scared. Was Jeremey okay?
He petted my hair, and he smiled. It was a tiny smile, but it was a smile.
The touch was too soft, but I didn’t care. “Jeremey, don’t listen to the bad voices. You can’t kill yourself.”
“Honey, it doesn’t work like that—” Mom started to say this, but I put my hand over my ear and she stopped.
Jeremey kept petting my hair. He looked like he wanted to talk, but it took him several seconds to get started, and when he spoke, his words were slurry and quiet. “Not…going to. Just a…bad day. Sorry.”
“I want to make it better,” I told him.
“You can’t.” Mom stopped trying to pull me away, but she stayed beside me on the floor. “Jeremey has medicine—not his usual antidepressant. This is something else. A sedative. To calm him and help his brain unplug. He’s still having an intense depressive episode, but the drug is helping him separate from it. It makes him very tired, though.”
“It’s making him drool.”
Jeremey blinked long and slow, and on the last blink, his eyes stayed closed. I hummed, worried.
Mom kept talking. “He’s fine. Yes, the side effects of the drugs aren’t fantastic. But sometimes we need a day off from our brains. He’ll be better later. We need to leave, so he can rest.”
Why didn’t she understand I couldn’t leave? “Someone has to sit with him. Someone has to make sure it doesn’t get too dark for him.”
Mom started to tell me I couldn’t stay, but a sharp sound, like a bark, stopped her. I smiled and turned enough that I could see Darren with my camera eyes.
“Hi, Darren.”
Darren typed into his tablet, then held it up. A computer voice spoke. “Emmet, I will stay and watch your boyfriend for you. You can go home.”
Without moving my eyes, I looked at Jeremey, then at Darren, then at my mom. I wanted to stay—but I didn’t. I wanted to make sure Jeremey didn’t hurt himself or wasn’t lonely. But it scared me to see him all drugged like this. I didn’t want to think of Jeremey like that.
“Will you text me and let me know how he’s doing?” I asked Darren.
He tapped into his tablet again. “Yes, if you give me your phone number.”
I gave it to him. “Thank
you, Darren.”
“No problem. Jeremey is my friend too.”
Darren did text me, several times, until in the evening Jeremey was able to. He didn’t talk much, just enough to tell me he was okay and feeling better but was still tired. I went to see him the next morning, and he wasn’t quite so drugged out, but he wasn’t himself, either. He cried a few times, and when I asked why, he said there was no reason. He started to apologize, but I told him to stop, and he did. We hugged a little, but he wanted to sleep again, so I hung out with Darren until Jeremey was awake from his nap.
“Sorry,” he said when we sat on his bed that evening. He wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t know what happened. I just felt all panicky, and then all heavy, and then it was just…bad. Very dark.”
“But you didn’t want to kill yourself?” Mom had told me not to ask, but I couldn’t help it. It worried me a lot.
He shook his head. “Not…really. I mean, I always do a little, but it’s not because I don’t want to be with you. It’s because it feels so hard to be alive. This time I hurt all over. I felt like I was sick. But I didn’t have a fever, or anything. Just depression.”
“Is it gone now?”
“No. But it’s quieter.”
That seemed better. “When you’re ready, we can still go shopping for the apartment.”
His hand tightened against his leg. “Okay. I’ll try. Hopefully I don’t have a panic attack.”
It took another couple of days before he was ready. He said he wanted to try the next day, but when Mom came to pick him up, he said he was sorry, but it wasn’t the right time. The day after, though, he got in the van, and we drove over to Target.
We went at a time it wasn’t busy, but we didn’t make it five minutes before he stopped in the middle of the cleaning products section, like he’d bumped into something. His body became rigid, his shoulders hunched, and he shut his eyes as his breath started coming fast. He didn’t say a word, but I knew this was a panic attack.
Mom knew too. She led him to the pharmacy area, where they had a bench, and made him sit down. The pharmacist came out, looking concerned, but Mom told her everything was fine. Mom never took her focus off Jeremey, and whenever she spoke, to him or anyone else, she kept her voice soft and gentle.
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