Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  A poem, they said. All we need is a poem.

  But not just any poem, I told them.

  That’s a problem.

  So the day was already a mess. Now there were no white buns. I was feeling increasingly anxious.

  I have been told that anxiety is a consequence of being autistic—my desire for white buns is an inflexible adherence to non-functional routine. I was told this by a behaviour interventionist whose desk was perfectly organized. The writing pad was parallel with a binder of notes, which was itself parallel to the pencil beside, and perpendicular to a pen above. None of them were touching.

  Adherence.

  The lady at the lunch counter gave me a cheeseburger on a whole wheat bun.

  “That’s not my lunch,” I told her.

  “It’s what you ordered,” she said. “Do you want fries?”

  “No,” I answered and stared at the burger. “I want a white hamburger bun.”

  She chewed her gum and stared at me with no expression on her face. “We’re all out of white buns, sweetheart. Do you want fries?”

  “I want a white hamburger bun.”

  Turning away to serve the next person in line, she said, “I want a Porsche. Sometimes we gotta drive a Volkswagen.”

  “I don’t want a Porsche. I want a white hamburger bun.”

  “Sorry, kid.” She dished a plate of fries. “Maybe you can run to the store and buy some buns, ’cause here at school we don’t got none.”

  I considered what she said. “I don’t think I’ll go to the store,” I said and took my hamburger to the till.

  My phone vibrated and I checked it as I stood in line to pay. It was a message from Saskia.

  h, it said.

  And so it began.

  THE BOYS IN THE CAFETERIA

  Listen: This is how it happened.

  I opened my eyes and the smell of the Hampton Park cafeteria washed over me like the smell from a meat grill at a carnival. My phone, in my hand, was vibrating.

  h

  “Are you going to take your money, or what?” said the cashier, and I looked up. She held out my change. I didn’t know how long I had been staring at my phone. I was now at the front of a lineup.

  The phone vibrated again.

  h

  I started to text her back.

  “Can you not do that right now?” said the girl behind me. I stepped out of line, leaving my change and my lunch tray at the counter.

  “Dork,” muttered the girl.

  I texted Saskia. Where are you? I asked.

  here

  I looked across the cafeteria. She sat at our table, huddled over her phone, turned away from the three boys sitting close to her. One of them was sitting very close to her.

  h

  I put my phone in my pocket and went back to my tray. It was time to have lunch at my table.

  At our table.

  —

  When Danny Hardwick and his two friends came into the cafeteria, they should have sat at their own table. But four girls were already sitting there, so they were sitting with Saskia.

  Danny Hardwick sat beside her. I watched, standing in the aisle that led to my lunch table. I stood motionless, holding my tray. Danny Hardwick sat beside Saskia, his hands near her.

  The boys were talking to her, all of them, at the same time, laughing. Her hands were pressed hard against her headphones. Her phone was on the table in front of her.

  Danny Hardwick sat beside her and looked up at me. I didn’t move.

  A single thought was in my head, by itself. All other threads had niced themselves.

  I thought, Saskia Stiles is my friend.

  I stepped forward.

  Jack Sweat would have approved.

  THEN DANNY STOOD UP

  Danny Hardwick stood up when I approached.

  “What are you staring at?” he said. He said it angrily, although there was no reason for him to be angry with me.

  He walked around the table and up to me. “I said, what are you staring at?”

  I didn’t answer, for I was noticing how fast my heart was beating.

  What are you looking at, sport?

  —

  Listen: Danny Hardwick stood up and walked over to me, and I had a flashback. I flashed back to being strapped to a gurney, voices all around, an oxygen mask over my face. I flashed back to staring at the emergency ward ceiling, rolling down a hallway. The fluorescent tubes streamed by like boxcars.

  I flashed back to the swishing sound of the doors to the emergency room opening, and two paramedics, in thick green parkas, pushing the gurney I was on.

  But that wasn’t right. Paramedics don’t wear green coats. They wear blue uniforms.

  I flashed back to being pushed down the hall, past four boys in thick winter coats, who were looking directly at me. But that wasn’t right either.

  “Nothing happened,” they said. “Nothing happened. Got it?”

  Before I had a chance to remember what the nothing was that didn’t happen, the paramedics were back in their blue uniforms, one of them shining a light in my eye, and I was sitting on the pavement, blood pouring from my temple.

  None of this made sense.

  “Can you hear me?” asked the paramedic. “What’s your name?”

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard my mother’s voice.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said.

  —

  I snapped back to the cafeteria. Danny Hardwick and his friends stood around me in a circle. Danny faced me directly.

  My heart raced. I was afraid, but not of Danny Hardwick. I was afraid because I had been so submerged in my memory that I didn’t know how long I’d been away, how long they had stood there, talking at me.

  I was afraid of what I remembered, but I didn’t know why.

  And then it registered: Danny Hardwick was wearing a green coat.

  He stood in front of me, inches from my face. Poking me in the chest, speaking each word distinctly, clearly, abruptly.

  “I. Said. What. Are. You. Looking. At?”

  “I’m looking at you,” I said, because it was the first thing I could think of to say. “Before that, I was looking at Saskia Stiles.”

  “Who’s Saskia Smile?”

  “Stiles.” I pointed to Saskia. “She’s my chemistry partner.”

  “So fucking what?”

  “That’s how I know her. We sit together in chemistry class.”

  The boy to my right was taller than the other two, and his teeth were crooked, stained thick yellow. His face burst with pimples. He wore a Yankees baseball cap. He wore a school colours jacket.

  “I think the retard’s got a crush on her,” he said to Danny.

  “I’m not a retard,” I replied, looking down. “You were sitting where I sit.”

  “I don’t see your name on it,” said the boy.

  “Did you look?”

  He blinked. “Huh?”

  “Did you look? I don’t think you looked.”

  Danny Hardwick pushed me on the shoulder. “You want this kind of trouble?”

  I am not large, but I am not small, either. Danny was two inches taller than me, and weighed forty pounds more. By objective standards, he was a big man.

  He pushed me, and my lunch tray clattered to the floor. My hands went up slightly, elbows loose, but in tight to my sides. Wrists turned.

  I raised my head slowly to stare at him, and that wasn’t the reaction he expected. A frown flickered on his face, and his eyes darted to his friends, then back to me. He licked his lips.

  “You knocked over my lunch,” I said.

  My eyes were fixed squarely on his. They didn’t waver. They didn’t blink.

  Then I said something I had never said before in my life.

  I said, “Woof.”

  —

  If you stare at a dog, you will make it uncomfortable. If you keep staring, it will lick its lips and turn away from you.

  I have difficulty looking people in the eye becaus
e it makes me uncomfortable. When someone is looking at me, I become frustrated. When I look someone in the eye, threads burst into my head like popcorn from a popper.

  When someone looks at me, and I look back, the first thread will be, Why is this person staring? I will immediately answer, Because he’s talking to me, and close the thread. But a second thread will appear: Why is this person still staring? They’ve stopped talking.

  No matter how many times I close this thread, it will continue to burst into my thoughts, as long as the person and I are looking at each other. It makes my thought process stilted. It interrupts the chain of logic.

  It makes my eyes uncomfortable. It makes me want to blink.

  It makes me want to lick my lips.

  —

  At the moment Danny Hardwick knocked the tray out of my hand, I remembered something Jack Sweat said, not long after the four boys put me in the hospital.

  “You got beat up because you didn’t make eye contact,” he told me. “When you look down at the ground, some kids are going to think you’re afraid of them. Bullies like making you afraid.”

  According to Jack Sweat, there was only one way to react to a bully.

  “Don’t back down. Don’t try and fight him, but make sure he knows you’re not afraid. That’s all it takes to get a bully to leave you alone.”

  Danny Hardwick was a bully. I knew I had to react to him; I knew I had to imply that I was not someone to be trifled with.

  At the same time, I was uncomfortable. He was staring me in the eye and I wanted to lick my lips, check to see if my nose was dry. A thread opened.

  Why not be a dog, then? the thread asked.

  —

  I looked Danny in the eye. I said, “Woof.”

  It startled him. He looked around quickly, unsure of himself.

  I don’t think anyone had said “woof” to him before. It’s unlikely he ever had a goal to make someone bark at him. More likely, his goal was to make someone afraid of him.

  But I wasn’t afraid. My eyes stopped hurting. The tightness in my stomach lifted. The tenseness of my muscles eased. I was in a spot where I was comfortable, for I had decided to become a dog. Now I knew what was going to come next.

  At that moment, though, the class bell rang, and people began to stand, doors began to open, and students began to spill into the halls.

  Danny Hardwick glanced around. He looked at me and nodded slowly, as if he had reached a conclusion.

  “You’re a fucking freak,” he growled. “And you’re dead if you cross me. Got it?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I stared at him levelly. I didn’t break eye contact.

  He motioned to his friends. “Come on,” he said to them. “This guy’s not worth our time.”

  Before he walked away he leaned even closer and whispered something in my ear, and I knew that one of us wasn’t going to walk out of the cafeteria.

  THE EYES

  There are only three circumstances in which I am comfortable looking into someone’s eyes.

  I could look my mother directly in the eye. Our bedtime ritual included several minutes of looking at each other. She sat at the edge of my bed, stroking my hair, talking softly. Most of the time, I paid no attention to her words, and she had to repeat them several times. But we both enjoyed the game, I think.

  I looked up at her blue eyes and was riveted by them. With anyone else, I would squirm, but my mother was the opposite. I was drawn to her eyes. Once I saw them, it was difficult for me to stop looking at them.

  She never seemed to mind.

  The second circumstance in which I can look someone in the eye is when I am in danger. When I am about to be in a confrontation. I haven’t always been like that, mostly because I’ve rarely been able to tell when I am about to get in a fight. I still have trouble recognizing the signs. I still walk in oblivious most of the time.

  Yet, when I read my environment right, when I understand what the person in front of me intends to do, that there is about to be trouble, I know to look into his eyes, and it doesn’t bother me. In fact, it calms me, something that surprised me, and continues to surprise me, from the moment it first happened three years ago.

  Before that, life was much more difficult.

  And much more painful.

  The third time I can look someone in the eye without pain is when I look at Saskia. I think it might be because she doesn’t look straight back at me.

  It makes it easier.

  —

  This is what Danny Hardwick said as he walked by:

  He looked at me and I looked back at him. I didn’t drop my eyes, even as his friends walked by me close enough to clip my shoulder with theirs. I ignored them. Danny snorted and shook his head. When he came abreast of me, his left shoulder knocked against mine, and he stopped.

  “She’s all yours, sport,” he said in a whisper, leaning in to me. “Then maybe tonight, I’ll drop by her place and give her a non-retarded fucking.”

  He walked away.

  Danny’s comment spawned several new threads, and normally I would have frozen for a moment. But these threads instantly vanished. They came in like a flock of locusts, but they didn’t stay.

  Will he actually drop?

  From how high?

  What is a non-retarded fucking?

  How will he give it to her? What if she doesn’t want him to?

  Will he hurt her?

  When I got to that question, all of my thoughts short-circuited. It was suddenly the only thread that mattered.

  Will he hurt her?

  I turned and kicked him in the back of the foot. He stumbled, then spun to face me. Rage wrote itself across his face. He raised his hands to hit me.

  But he didn’t.

  I hit him first.

  DANNY HAD A SHARK NOSE, TOO

  His hands were slow. The hands of his friends were slow.

  Danny Hardwick swung at me clumsily and I came back with a left hook to his jaw and a right cross to his nose. I heard the crack of shattering cartilage.

  Eleven percent shark was of no use to him either.

  His eyes lost focus and he dropped to the floor. His friends hesitated, then came at me. One of them acted angrily and quickly, the other behind him, reluctant. It didn’t matter. They swung at me, intentions obvious, next movements telegraphed, trajectories mapped.

  I was calm. There were no threads. I knew exactly what to do.

  I stepped away and their fists jetted past me like darting sparrows. To the left, to the right. Their fists grazed by me, without contact, and I came down on them like Moses from the mountain.

  And I was calm.

  SQUEAK

  Listen: That’s not what happened.

  Wait. That is what happened. That’s exactly how it happened. But that wasn’t the thing that was so important. That wasn’t the reason I was now happy, even though I was sitting in the principal’s office.

  This is the reason:

  The three of them lay on the floor around me. The cafeteria was as quiet as a morgue. My hand was already throbbing. I was breathing rapidly, but I wasn’t afraid. I no longer wanted to hit them. I just wanted to go to class. I picked up my lunch tray, and the remainder of my lunch, and started to walk away.

  And that’s when it happened.

  Saskia Stiles looked at me. Directly at me, her eyes unblinking, her gaze unwavering. Her body, ever taut and strung together tight, was now unwound, relaxed. Peaceful.

  Goodbye, Freddy, she mouthed.

  I stopped, frozen. Then, after a moment, I spoke. “I’ll see you later,” I said and started walking.

  I forgive you, she said silently.

  All at once the room seemed to shrink. The clink of glasses from the cafeteria kitchen disappeared. The muddled tromping of feet outside in the hall faded away for me. I was suddenly back, ten years ago, at the door to our therapy room, once again saying goodbye to my friend, Saskia Stiles. I forgive you, she said. Time and time again.


  “I forgive you too,” I told her and I didn’t say anything else because I didn’t want that moment to disappear. I was enjoying it. But I found I couldn’t meet her gaze anymore. If I did, I might drop my tray. I might buckle at the knees. I might try and sink back into the past and stay there.

  So I was silent. But I was at peace.

  There were no more open threads in my mind.

  HOSPITAL ROOM: NIGHT

  I opened my eyes and I was fourteen years old, lying on my back. A man in light-blue pyjamas stood over me, with something in his hand, and there were bright lights.

  His hand fell on my shoulder and I reacted immediately. I knocked away his arm and tried to sit up. When he pushed me back down, I punched him in the jaw. He straightened up, then grabbed me one more time. I kicked and struggled to break free of his clutches. But someone else rushed in, a lady, whom I had never seen before. Together, they pushed me back down on to my back.

  At last, I relaxed, but they didn’t let go of me.

  “Are you okay, sport?” the man asked me.

  “No,” I said. “I need to go to the hospital.”

  “That’s where you are,” he told me.

  —

  I opened my eyes and was lying in a hospital bed. My father sat in a chair beside the bed, flicking the channels of the television.

  “Where did the car go?” I asked him, because it seemed to me to be the most appropriate question. When I last closed my eyes, I was sitting in the front seat of our car. I was discussing why four boys had beaten me. I concluded that it was because they were angry at me, and my father had concluded that This Was Just Great.

  After that I closed my eyes.

  Was in car. Closed eyes. Opened eyes. Now in bed. That’s unexpected.

  The logical thing to do was to ask what happened to the car. After that question was answered, the next appropriate question was Where did this bed come from?

  I never asked the second question. I didn’t need to. My father knew how I worked.

  “You’re in a hospital bed, Freddy,” he said, still looking at the television.

  “Where’s the car?” I asked.