Chapter 16
As expected, all hell breaks loose when Luke realises the work he put into his elaborate window display was for naught.
I am lying in my bed, but I can hear him bellow and rage around the room above.
Stomp, stomp, stomp. It prickles my skin the way a warm breeze might.
He is big man, hear him roar. Someone with a softer voice, Mum I think, or Olivia, is doing their best to pacify him.
I am tempted to march upstairs and poke and prod a little more, but I also cannot be bothered.
I have achieved my desired outcome and there is no point in expending further precious energy.
My head fills with thoughts of his behaviour throughout our lives, trying to tether him from then to now.
I picture him as a little dictator who always had a better story to tell after someone shared the details of their day, a bigger achievement to overshadow any minor accolades, a louder voice to proclaim exactly how things really needed to be done.
Perhaps this is how he has always been, and I am only realising it now.
Once I start thinking about this pattern, I cannot seem to stop.
And I am not interested in the memories that contradict the narrative, like how he taught me to ride my bike, or spent weeks explaining how time travel might work, because I really needed to understand it to enjoy some cartoon I can’t even remember.
No, I am going in on the bad stuff. All or nothing, all the time.
Awareness of this has allowed me to figure out ways to redirect this laser focus, but for now I am happy to let it burn.
The failing can belong to someone else for a change.
‘Nora, sweetheart.’ Dad knocks at my window, hedge trimmers in hand.
‘Hey, what’s up,’ I reply, standing to open my door.
‘Do you know what’s going on upstairs?’ he enquires.
‘I do.’
He waits for me to answer a question he did not ask. It frustrates me when people will not just spit it out, and it makes me petulant.
‘What happened to your brother?’ he eventually says.
‘He met some consequences for once in his life,’ I reply.
‘Oh, right. Consequences dished out by you, then?’
‘Something like that.’
He takes a few deep breaths, eyes out over the garden, and then turns back to me.
‘I understand Luke isn’t so easy to be around at the moment; he’s going through a lot. And you are too. It can be easier to focus our energy on finding others’ faults, and much harder to face our own.’
‘That’s very wise. I assume you are planning to give him this same speech?’
Dad looks taken aback by my response, and does not have anything more to add.
‘I thought as much.’
I shut the door in his face. Coward. Little does he know how much time and energy I devote to my own shortcomings.
It is just that they can’t be the only things I focus on, and sometimes other people need a bit of help finding theirs.
This family especially. A mosquito buzzes past my ear and my focus switches to squishing it before it bites me.
By the time I accomplish this, I have no remaining feelings about Luke and his lights, other than a vague sense that I may have overreacted.
Upstairs, Olivia and Maeve are in the living room – Maeve spread out on the floor lining up her plastic animals, and Olivia on the couch, wine and phone in hand.
‘There you are,’ she says, looking up, her eyes soft and relaxed.
‘Here I am.’
‘Luke lost his mind, by the way.’
‘A long time ago, I reckon. If he ever had it to begin with.’
‘Very funny.’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘I get he was being a dick, but maybe you shouldn’t have wrecked his window. It was a bit immature.’
‘And “does that even classify as a window?” wasn’t immature?’
Olivia shrugs and makes a face, like ‘you got me there’, then turns to focus her attention on Maeve.
‘She always does this,’ she says, pointing to the line of toys. ‘She never wants to actually play with them.’
‘I used to do that too. I loved putting them in order of tallest to smallest, or just seeing how many I had in my collection,’ I reply.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘What?’
Olivia has stiffened, her face vacant of expression.
‘Just because you have a new diagnosis or two doesn’t mean you’re the spectrum expert all of a sudden,’ she says.
‘I’m not trying to be, I was just saying –’
‘Well, don’t. Maeve is different, she’s very advanced for her age, and she loves people. She’s really social, she doesn’t have any problems there. I didn’t ask for your opinion anyway, and actually you know nothing about raising a kid.’
‘Right.’
I sit in silence, trying to process what Olivia has said.
The disgust and disapproval that was right there, waiting to strike, stings like hell.
I also cannot believe she does not see the neurodivergent forest for the trees when it comes to this family.
It was my mistake to assume that someone supportive of my own journey would view autism as neutral overall.
Perhaps I am only supported because she viewed me as less than to begin with.
My breathing regulates as I watch Olivia trying to show Maeve how to make the animals fight one another, the lion roaring at the zebra and the giraffe running scared.
It takes all my effort not to read into that scenario any more than I need to, so instead I bounce the word ‘yikes’ around in my head like a rubber ball.
It is acid yellow and tingles in an unpleasant way, which is probably why I am letting it go up and down, side to side, every which way.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I eventually ask, when I can feel that Olivia has moved on from her spring-loaded revulsion.
‘Having a lie-down before we go to the Masons’.’
‘Why are we going to the Masons’?’
‘The gingerbread houses, remember?’
‘Are we building them or eating them?’
‘Both, I imagine.’
‘But I’m allergic to gluten and terrible at construction.’
‘I’m sure you can stay home if you like. I certainly would if I could.’
‘I’ll come.’
‘It’s probably a good idea,’ she agrees.
I leave them to go and get myself ready, more confused than ever about why anyone does anything.
From the quagmire of my congealing family dysfunction, I cannot help but linger on painful memories, pressing them like bruises because I deserve to feel the ache of them again.
I lost control of myself a little after Fran turned me down, heading into my final year of school with the kind of self-destruction that could not be maintained.
If I ran fast enough, he would not be able to reach me.
Nights out became more frequent; I barely recovered from one before throwing myself into whatever horror was offered to me next.
I was in emotional freefall, too overcome by a need to numb myself to face any of the consequences of what happened when I was.
Mara’s brother started selling us pills to wash down with our vodka, and we took them with little regard, as though they were just a bit of light-hearted fun.
We were the girls people invited to their parties if they wanted to make sure it was a night to remember; the drunkest, messiest guests at any gathering.
Poppy began raiding the bedrooms of the mothers and sisters of party hosts for jewellery, justifying this by explaining how these people should not have a party if they did not expect a few things to go missing.
I think she kept the best of what she found, and sold the rest online.
I, meanwhile, made it my mission to have sex with someone that meant nothing to me as quickly as possible, in avoidance of the fact that I could not be with the person who meant the most.
On one particular night, Noah from my home class started paying me the right amount of attention at just the right convergence of intoxication and euphoria.
‘You look so good in those shorts,’ he whispered, and I knew what I had to do.
‘Do you want to come back to mine?’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, why not? Could be a bit of fun. I’m not looking for anything serious,’ I replied, as if that was not obvious with my asking him to come back to my house after one singular compliment.
We left just as the pill was hitting its crescendo, and walked the few streets from the party back to my house without saying much.
I noticed the lights at my place were off, my parents usually asleep by 10 p.m., but Fran’s bedroom light was on.
Putting that out of my mind, I held my finger up to my mouth to make sure Noah knew the deal, and we crept silently through the door to my room.
‘Mid, but weird enough she could be freaky in bed.’ I wondered if Noah had been the one to write that, and if he was only here hoping to confirm suspicions.
His shirt was off before I had even removed my shoes, and when I turned to face him, he pushed me back onto my bed.
I knew I needed to be the one in charge so as not to view this as a mistake, so I pulled him down next to me and climbed across his lap.
We took off our clothes, which took longer than the actual act, and Noah was rough in a way that felt as though he was emulating something he had seen before.
It was fine. It was fine. It was probably not fine, but I made sure I told myself it was fine.
The physical pain was momentary, stinging, and I did not allow myself to take anything in, because if I did, the emotional damage would have been much worse.
‘I’m going to head out,’ he said, as soon as he was dressed.
I was still in my bed, wearing nothing, feeling nothing.
‘No worries. You heading home?’ I asked.
‘Back to the party, probably,’ he replied.
I wondered whether he would find another willing participant tonight, and knew his friends would think him legendary if he did.
Two girls in a night, that was the kind of thing they would talk about for months.
At least I had been the first. Or, I think I was.
When he had gone, I stood at the door and noticed Fran’s bedroom light was no longer on.
I also noticed a pink camelia, freshly picked, on the pavers outside my window.
Had that been there before? Maybe. I could hear Ranger barking and tried not to consider what both of those things together meant, hushing my pattern-seeking mind.
There were insects dancing around my patio light.
Fran and I would often rate their performances, with extra points for those with the most flair.
There was one small moth giving it a solid ten, but the rest were barely twos and threes.
Best to jump into the shower and wash my bad decisions away.
I did not have to worry about making that first time special, because I was not special and I deserved for it to be the regrettable memory it was. It was done, at least.