Page 15 of Role Model

I give myself five minutes to calm down, but I can still hear the music; the pounding of the bass starts to thump in tandem with the pounding in my head. It hurts, like I haven’t drunk water in days. I feel salt on my face and I know what I have to do, despite how humiliating it will end up being.

I call Fizz.

I expect it will take a couple of tries. Whenever I call Dad, he usually has to call me back. Calling Mum is impossible, I need to call Keren or someone else who works for her to get her to answer.

So when Fizz answers after the first ring, I’m too surprised to say anything.

“Aeriel, what is it?”

She sounds panicked. Worried about me. It’s so strange. No one has sounded worried for me in so long.

123 “Fizz,” I breathe into the phone. “The party… it’s too much.”

“Party?”

I wince. I’m going to be in so much trouble for lying. “Yes. It’s–it’s a party, not a study group. But–but they promised it wouldn’t be like this.”

“Aeriel!”

“I can’t calm down, Fizz,” I say, and my voice sounds like a plead. “I can’t stop pan–panicking.”

Usually when this happens, I’m told to get a grip. Not in so many words, but it’s because people think I’m still in control. I am not. I am falling under. I’m disappearing into myself and I won’t be able to climb out unless I get somewhere still and quiet for a while.

But Fizz doesn’t tell me to get it together.

“I’m coming, Ilya’s driving me.”

I’m too close to a shutdown to wonder why she is with Ilya. “Okay.”

“Don’t go under, kid, I’m coming.”

The words are like a lighthouse. I’m not in total darkness anymore. I can wait. Help is coming.

I hang up and feel enraged at myself for always pushing Fizz away, for treating her like a burden. I lay my head on the bathroom carpet and wonder briefly how people can bear to stand on something soft and 124 wet after showering. I miss the cool tile of our house in Scotland.

I miss Scotland. I miss me in it. I don’t know why I’ve let myself became this strange little puppet since coming down here. I’ve let people treat me badly and I’ve spoken nonsense all over the news just so they’ll smile at me.

I don’t know how long I lay there, but the music just seems to grow louder.

Then I hear raised voices and thundering footsteps on the stairs.

It’s Fizz, and she knows better than to bang on the door with her fists.

I hear her knees hit the hall carpet on the other side of the bathroom and then her voice.

“Aeriel? I’m here.”

I feel a sob work its way from my chest to my throat. “Fizz?”

“I’m here, babe. Let’s go home.”

“No,” I wail. “Home is far away. Home is Scotland.”

Maybe that’s why I loved the snow so much. It was the first thing to feel like home.

“I know, honey,” Fizz says softly. “But let’s at least get you somewhere quiet.”

“Why am I like this?” I say and my voice doesn’t even sound like me. “Why does everything always end up here? Me, on the bathroom floor? Every party, 125 every long day at school? Why can I never have fun like other people? I want to be normal!”

I yell the last five words and then break down, my shoulders shaking.

I’m so tired of always trying. I want to be a natural, the way they all seem to be naturals.

I hit my forehead against the door and gasp for air.

It’s all crashing down on me now, everything I’ve worked so hard to build into an armour has suddenly become a room with sharp spikes on the walls, and the walls are closing in.

“Listen to me,” Fizz says from the other side of the door. “One day you’re going to look back at all of these moments and wish you could tell yourself what I’m about to tell you.”

I shudder and hit my head on the door again, a little more gently this time.

“You don’t want to be like them,” Fizz says, and it’s almost too quiet for me to hear. “They’re the background characters.”

I squeeze my eyes closed. “What?”

“They just blend in,” she goes on. “They stand in the background, they all look alike. They’re safe, sure, but they’re just extras.

Set dressing. You, you’re the hero. You’re just in a hard part of the story right now.

But it will get easier. It will get better.

This is only for 126 now, Aeriel. It’s all going to change.

You just can’t see because you’re so in the story.

None of this is forever, it only matters if you let it. ”

I try to hear what she’s saying. I’m reminded of the comic books that Gideon loves to read at the kitchen table.

Everyone has demanded that I talk about being autistic like it’s a superpower, even though that is their word and not mine.

But when I read some of Gideon’s stories, I felt them resonating.

The superheroes were gifted, of course, but they were also so alone.

They sat in dark rooms by themselves, plagued with guilt and isolation.

There didn’t seem to be anything super about their gifts.

They were just other. Adored, reviled, but never really accepted because they were so different.

They would fly up to the top of skyscrapers and watch the people below. Never really belonging. Despite their so-called superpowers.

“Listen to me,” Fizz says, perhaps reading my silence as defeat.

“I know it’s hard right now. Senior school is so hard and no one is ever allowed to talk about it.

I know having friends feels like the most important thing in the world and it is, but these people are not your friends.

Friends don’t treat friends like this, Aeriel.

At some point, you will have enough. You will realise that you deserve better.

You will stand up for 127 yourself and it will be over.

I know that, kid. I know it will happen.

You will get there and it won’t hurt as much, I promise. ”

I reach up to unlock the door and Fizz is suddenly staring down at me, her face ashen with concern.

I want to thank her for coming for me. I want to tell her everything.

But all I can manage is a small croak.

“I’m okay.”

She shakes her head. “You are so not okay. But for now, we need to leave.”

She tells me Ilya is waiting out front with the car, as we push by Sable’s completely bewildered mother to go downstairs. The music has been turned all the way down by the time we reach the hall and a part of me leaps for joy at the prospect of my friends being worried about me.

But Sable and Ana are standing in the doorway, with forty other students behind them, and they’re covering their mouths to hide their supressed laughter.

They promised me this was a small gathering, they know I’m autistic.

Their amusement feels like a note being passed during a lesson, one written about me that I’m not allowed to read.

Jaya stands further back, watching in that detached way of hers.

She doesn’t 128 look as though she finds it funny but she also doesn’t look at me.

Fizz stops to glare at Sable and Ana. “Shame on you.”

“No, let’s just go,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Please, Fizz.”

“Sorry,” Sable says flatly, leaning against Ana, who giggles at the contact. I can see why. She’s so relieved to be back in the inner circle again. “We forgot she was acoustic.”

“‘Acoustic’?” Fizz bellows, advancing on them with enough anger to make them both step back in surprise. “Do you think that’s funny? Is that supposed to be clever? You sound like a pair of ghouls!”

“It’s just slang,” I whisper, tugging at Fizz’s leather jacket. “Please. We need to go.”

Fizz relents but not before giving my friends another icy look, one that does seem to wipe the smirks from their faces.

She leads me out of the house and into the car.

We both sit in the back and we drive for five minutes, with Ilya glancing worriedly at me during traffic lights. We don’t say a word.

“I know they’re not the nicest sometimes,” I finally say. “But they’re my friends. They didn’t invite loads of people to the party to upset me. It just happened.”

“Friends don’t let friends lock themselves in the bathroom while they have a meltdown alone,” Fizz says 129 and her voice is calm and without any emotion. As if she’s tired. “They don’t laugh behind their hands when they see you’re distressed. That’s not what friends do.”

I shake my head softly. “You just don’t get it. That’s how things are now. At school, that’s how everything is.”

“It wasn’t with Txai and Niamh,” she fires back, suddenly no longer calm.

I close my eyes. “That’s different.”

“Yes. Because they’re different.”

“Sable, Jaya, Ana… they’re nice, they are! They can be, I–I thought they were nice. I thought they were like me–”

“When are you going to realise that no one is like you!”

The words linger in the air and I hate them. I hate them so much because they’re true.

Fizz suddenly leans forward, addressing Ilya.

“Take us to Hyde Park.”

I sniff. “What’s in Hyde Park?”

She smiles at me. “You’ll see.”