6. Jane
JANE
PLAYLIST: PULSE – TONY ANN
I grabbed her.
On campus.
For everyone to see.
A student.
If anyone saw—especially me doing it…I don’t even want to think about it.
I still have to defend my position everywhere because I am deemed too young.
They might believe I violated the resolution that forbids all romantic and sexual relationships between students and faculty members.
Which I, of course, haven’t, I’d never violate a rule, ever, but people might have seen, might talk, might assume—
I shudder, and my hands become clenched fists.
It’s good she didn’t come. It is a good thing, I tell myself.
But I have to tell myself.
Because I am curious about her.
She saw me.
And respected my boundaries.
She knew how to navigate my waves.
‘I don’t deal with you. You’re not a problem to deal with. You process a world made for neurotypical people differently. That doesn’t make you a problem, but rather the construction.’
Her words still linger with me.
I am not a problem.
My entire life, I have been a problem. My special effects have been.
I was too loud and unpredictable for my parents, too focused and intelligent for my peers, too sensitive for most workplaces.
I always needed special treatment. Separate rooms, different environments, more time, more input, more challenges.
I was supposed to become a neurosurgeon, like my parents. But I couldn’t exist in the hospital environment. Too much noise, too many distracting sounds, too much unpredictability.
So, naturally, I learned early on not to be a problem. To uphold the image needed. I worked harder and jumped through every hoop.
And now, of all the people who could have seen me, it has to be a student. A student who saw the real me.
For the first time, I wasn’t an issue, wasn’t a project, wasn’t a special edition. The environment was.
Not me.
But my surroundings.
I, of all people, should know it, but I didn’t realize it myself until she pointed it out to me.
It took so much load off my chest that I couldn’t let it go. One sentence from her. And I couldn’t let her go. I should. I definitely should, now even more so. I should be glad she didn’t—
At that moment, it knocks on the door.
“Enter,” I say, and relax my hands.
She comes in, and what I see is not her. Not the one she was yesterday. My eyes narrow as I take in the slightly on-edge woman, so different from yesterday.
Her eyes are wide, and she smells like she brought an entire bar with her.
“You are late,” I say as my eyes wander down to her clothes. She’s wearing the same she wore yesterday. Her hair is in a messy bun. And it makes me wonder if it has anything to do with what she was evading yesterday.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Got late yesterday.”
“I can smell that,” I say.
“You said yourself that freshmen should be partying,” she says defiantly, with her hand still on the doorknob.
She stares at me for another moment.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she says, turns, and opens the door again.
“I also said I have a lot to teach,” I say to de-escalate the rising tension. She stops in the doorframe.
“Please sit and close the door,” I tell her, and point at the chair opposite my desk.
Her struggle shows in her expression. Whatever lies underneath what happened yesterday, she felt it necessary to protect herself. To lie, to shoot harsh words at me, and to get drunk.
But she does close the door and sits down.
When she is settled, I take the folder in front of me and hold it out for her to take.
“This is an offer,” I say. “But if you take it, there will be clear rules, because I will not have any form of mess around me.”
She takes the folder and reads through the documents. It’s paperwork for her becoming my research assistant, a very special NDA because my research is government-funded, a request for clearance, and a proposal for her involvement.
“That’s a lot of paperwork,” she says dryly.
“Research always is. You are new, so you wouldn’t know.
I’d be willing to take the risk of bringing in a freshman, because I think you have a lot of potential.
Your way of pattern recognition, while simultaneously questioning your own approach, would be a useful addition to the research and is a necessary skill for what I do. ”
“What exactly are you researching?” she asks, looking at me with her head slightly tilted. Her pupils are so tiny that they are almost invisible. I don’t even want to know what else happened last night—well, actually, I do.
“Did you take drugs?” I ask.
She stares at me, apparently considering her options.
“Yes,” she finally says.
I condemn drugs, but I am glad she decided not to lie to me again, so I say, “Thank you for not lying again.”
“If you decide to sign, that will stop,” I add. “If you do, I can tell you everything. Right now, the only thing I can tell you is that I work on an advanced prediction model for criminal behavior, much more advanced than my prior model. There is more, however.”
“What are the rules?” she asks.
“No drugs, no drinking, no mess, or being present half-heartedly. It will be strictly professional. The research has your full attention and focus. You do as I say, but I am willing to be challenged in my perceptions and biases.”
She breathes in deeply and blows her cheeks.
“I don’t do well being told what to do,” she finally says. “I don’t think I am the person for you.”
“Who would’ve guessed,” I say sardonically, and she somehow reminds me more of me than I would like to acknowledge.
I am the very same. Only that I am the person who swallows it down, and she doesn’t.
She is more daring. Holding up a mirror for me to see.
Almost like a version of me I never dared to be.
“Let me rephrase,” I say. “I won’t rule your every move, but certain things need experience and structure, structures you have no knowledge of, and you must be willing to learn.”
A moment pause follows, where she looks at me. It costs me all my willpower to keep the gaze.
“Strike out the entire proposal of involvement,” she finally says, her words coming rather constricted.
“Why wouldn’t you want your name published?” I ask immediately. While I already have an assumption about the why, I have to ask because she is the first student to request anonymity. Every other student would be thrilled and honored to be named in with research like this.
She smiles faintly.
“This is my rule,” she says. “I don’t want my name or anything ever about me to appear publicly. No name, no photo, nothing. This is your research.”
“Whom are you running from?” I ask before I can control myself, and thereby break my own rule of strictly professional behavior.
I know it.
She knows it.
The pot plant on my desk knows it.
And sure enough, she asks, “Strictly professional, wasn’t that your number one rule?
” And while she calls me out on my own hypocrisy, I cannot help but wonder about her way of speaking.
The students her age I usually entertain are different.
They don’t combine that fast. Don’t speak in a sophisticated way like her.
Whatever has happened to her in her past, it must have been something that required her to become an adult much too early in life. Like me.
“You are right,” I say, formally. “Excuse my overstepping. The line seems to blur, because I see a lot of myself in you. Think about it, and let me know, will you?”
Her mouth curves slightly.
“I’m nothing like you,” she says and scoffs slightly.
“You might not see it, because you don’t know much about me, but you are.” More than I’d like to acknowledge, which is why she might tease me so much.
“I know enough,” she says in her typical manner.
“Do you?” I ask to challenge her. “Then tell me, what is it you know?”
She eyes me for a moment, bites her bottom lip, shifts, takes a deep breath, and then says without so much as a breather in between, “You are a little Miss Perfect, the most wonderful, knowledgeable, admirable person in the room. An image you have created brick by brick to protect yourself from judgment. Judgment that came from your close environment, probably your mother, with very strict expectations where your autism had no place at all. You upheld their expectations through your own perfectionism and standards, by making yourself small to fit what they thought possible for you.”
Suddenly, my chest clenches. It clenches so tightly that I believe I'm suffocating.
By making yourself small to fit what they thought possible for you.
An icy shudder runs down my back.
Every system in my body jumps into alert. Convincing me to run. Run away and close the door so no one ever sees me again. And she isn’t even done yet.
“You control, because you can’t let anyone see your humanity, your flaws, your differences.
You are convinced there is something wrong with you because the people who should have loved you unconditionally taught you that love is a condition tied to you fulfilling their expectations.
You believe you failed them. But they failed you monumentally in the only job they had. ”
Goosebumps spread over my entire body as my jaw clenches. I am at a complete loss as I try to process her words. My hands are in close fists, my nails digging painfully into my palms.
“You strive for excellence in the one thing you can control, which is why you went into analyzing the human mind, why you built the predictive model, because prediction is what your brain labeled safe. Being able to predict is what kept you safe. But I tell you what, the world isn’t safe.
The world is a fucking crazy place with mad assholes who come into a lecture room with a gun.
And you can’t deal with it, because you never learned how to deal with the unpredictable.
And none of that is your fault. Your parents should have protected you.
Shielded you with their love. But they didn’t.
And now, you are so fucking raw that everything just goes straight through, and you let it happen, because you care more about others than yourself.
Noble by societal standards, but fucking stupid. ”
With that, she falls silent, panting slightly from her speech.
I have no words because acknowledging that every single one of her words hit the mark would open up a door that I will never be able to close. I am consumed by fear. Everything spins out of control, and my arms snap up.
We just sit there.
I can’t—
I don’t—
“As I said,” she says and gets up. “I don’t do well with authority. I am a mess, and I will bring chaos. It is probably you who should think about it,” she says, turns, and walks away. Leaving me in an emotional thunderstorm I have never been in, because no one ever saw me.
Least of all someone like her.
A nineteen-year-old girl.
A freshman.
Just like I once was.