Chapter 9 Play by the Rules…of the Game, I Mean
This idea definitely sounded a lot better in my head.
“So let me get this straight,” Sierra says from the other side of the tiny room.
She’s sitting cross-legged on her bunk bed while I’m lying down in mine, eyes pointed at the ceiling.
“You want us to fall in love? With each other? By answering thirty-six questions? No offense or anything, but there’s no way I’m doing any of that. ”
Heat rises to my cheeks as it hits me just how awfully I phrased my plan.
I prop myself up on one elbow. “That—that’s not what I meant,” I assure Sierra quickly, trying not to pay attention to the way my heart squeezes when she exhales in relief.
I gulp. “These questions help some couples fall in love according to people on the internet, sure, but in our case, we can just use them to help me open up. It’s a way for me to learn how to be vulnerable around people again. ”
And being vulnerable will also allow me to fall in love with Daniel eventually, I remind myself.
Sierra studies me for a second, dark eyes scanning my face skeptically as if she’s looking for a reason not to do this. She reaches my lips and pauses for a fraction of a second before sliding her gaze up to my eyes, nodding. “All right, then. Let me see that list.”
I turn on my phone, which still has the article listing all the questions open.
When I hand it to her, dangling over the edge of my bed, Sierra’s fingers briefly brush mine, and the touch sends a surge of energy through me.
The kind that has me unable to sit still any longer.
I need an outlet for the adrenaline rushing through my veins.
I must be really nervous about this.
Luckily, I’m wearing a ring I can stim with. I slide it off my finger, twist it around in my hand, and put it back on. As Sierra starts reading aloud, I keep this pattern going.
“First question: Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as a dinner guest?” She stares at the screen, frowning. I see its reflection in her brown eyes. “I don’t see how this could ever make people fall in love.”
“It’s a good thing we’re not doing that then, right?” I joke. “Either way, if I could invite literally anyone, I think I’d go with Iris Blackwell. She’s this YouTuber who makes short films, and she’s a huge advocate for autism acceptance, so I think I could learn a lot from her,” I explain.
Sierra straightens her back. “I watched one of her videos. I think it was called ‘Party Tricks’? It was beautiful…and also queer, right?”
“Oh yeah, very queer,” I agree with a soft laugh before every muscle in my body tenses.
“Not that it was too queer or anything. I mean, there’s no such thing as too queer!
People who truly believe stuff like that should go outside for three minutes and take a look at how heteronormative everything around us is,” I ramble, only pausing because Sierra is pressing her lips together tightly to hide her laugh.
“What?” I ask, the corners of my mouth lifting despite my confusion.
“Nothing.” She shakes her head, still trying to hold in her chuckle even though she knows I’ve noticed.
“It’s just kind of, um…endearing, for lack of a better word, whenever you defend yourself like this.
You always assume you messed things up even when I didn’t interpret your words in a bad way.
Really. I assure you, non-autistic people don’t think things through nearly as much as you do.
” She sighs. “Sometimes I wonder if the world would be a better place if we did.”
“Allistic,” I tell her, at which she tilts her head in a question. “That’s the word for people who aren’t autistic,” I clarify.
“Allistic,” she repeats, nodding. “Noted.” Then: “I’d probably want to have dinner with Nina.”
She watches me closely as she says it, awaiting my reaction, which comes in the form of a confused frown. “Wait. Nina as in my Nina? Why?”
She rolls her eyes at me, but I know by now that it’s playful. “Let’s just say I have my reasons.”
“And what might those reasons be?”
Sierra shakes her head at the sight of me and my big, curious smile, but the left corner of her lips is ticked up into a barely noticeable grin. “Probably not what you’re thinking.”
The smallest blush colors her cheeks, and all the thoughts in my head come together in one big Oh. Who would’ve thought Sierra Levine had a crush on Nina Davis? Not me, that’s for sure.
I feel my cheeks get redder, too. “I can’t promise you a dinner with her, but I could get her to talk to you when we’re back home, you know. We could make it a part of our deal.”
Sierra thinks that over for a second. “Um. Yeah. That’d be great, actually,” she says, and before I get to add anything else: “Next question.”
Sierra’s tone is final, but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t need to be told twice to drop this subject. For some reason, thinking about Sierra and Nina together makes something in my stomach twist uncomfortably.
We answer the questions in chronological order, covering topics from how we both don’t like being the center of attention to our idea of a perfect day—which we agree is about the feeling, not the exact things you do—to so many other things.
We talk about dreams and memories, and somehow, as time passes, it feels like we’re sitting closer to each other, even though we’re both still on our own bunk beds…
too far apart from each other, in my opinion.
“Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible,” Sierra reads aloud. She immediately shoots me a look. “You’re not actually going to time this, right?”
“Oh, you know I will.” I grin, reaching my hand out for her phone since she’s still holding mine to read the questions.
She makes a noise to protest, but after a second she gives up, tossing me her phone and telling me her passcode so I can unlock it.
I don’t mean to seem like I’m snooping through her phone.
I really don’t, but I can’t help but notice some things, like her background, which is a simple picture of a beach volleyball in the sand.
Or a widget on her screen that shows her habit tracker, which includes only volleyball-related things.
“I mean this in the least offensive way possible,” I start, “but does your whole life consist of nothing but volleyball?”
Sierra swallows, completely silent for a moment. She stares straight at me and blinks—again, again, again—until I’m just about to apologize for being so invasive. That’s when she sighs, hesitant. “Go ahead. Set up a timer, and I’ll tell you a story.”
She watches me press start, then takes a deep breath, and finally she looks away from my gaze. “Once upon a time, a volleyball player was born. Not a girl or a child, but a volleyball player from the moment she took her very first breath. Just like her father.
“Luckily, she grew up to genuinely love the sport with all her heart, and soon it became her passion because of that love, but also because she noticed the way her father didn’t really pay attention to her until she was on the court with their family name on her back.
So she started practicing more. Playing well felt like the only way she could get him to be proud of her.
And what daughter doesn’t want her father to be proud?
Especially when said daughter’s mother is suddenly… gone.”
My heart stops at her words. Right. How could I forget? When Sierra lost her mother to cancer two or three years ago, everyone in town knew about it, including me, but somehow I never connected that Sierra to the one sitting in front of me now.
Before I find any comforting words to say, Sierra continues talking.
“Eventually, practicing became more important than the few friends she had at school, so she lost them. It didn’t matter, though.
She had her teammates, and that was all she needed.
really. But then, somehow”—the word comes out so sharp, I hold my breath—“they found out she likes girls, which made them feel so uncomfortable that they pretty much forced her to quit the team. Just like that, she was alone. It was too late to make new friends by then since everyone had already formed their cliques. Even worse was that she lost the spark of pride her father used to have when he looked at her.”
Sierra turns her gaze back to me, smiling sadly. “There you go. That’s my story.”
I blink and blink and blink, half expecting this version of Sierra to dissolve. But it doesn’t. Because she’s real.
I never expected her to be insecure about anything, especially not something like this: who she is. She always seems so unbothered by the opinions of others, so sure of herself and her worth, yet here she is, showing me a whole other side of her. A side I never thought I’d see.
There are so many parts of Sierra Levine I haven’t seen yet—that I will probably never get to see—but here, in this room, I feel a strange urge to change that.
I want to know her below the surface. I want to know her fears, her dreams, her passions, and I want to know what makes her break into a smile so I can make sure that happens over and over again.
I want to know who hurt her, and I want to know how I can take some of that pain away—even if it’s just temporary.
Right now, I want to hug her.
Without thinking twice, I get up, careful not to hit my head on the ceiling as I shuffle toward the edge of my bed, ready to climb into Sierra’s.
But then I look up and find her staring at me, completely frozen except for the fact that she’s blinking in confusion.
I pull back right as the timer goes off, startling the both of us.
I almost manage to fall in between the tiny space between our bunk beds.
“What exactly were you doing?” Sierra asks me once I’ve regained my balance and turned the timer off.