Page 3 of Role Model

“Welcome to our Role Model Assembly.”

Dr Mars beams out at all of us and I stare at the back wall of the hall we’re all sitting in. I’m still hurt from what they’ve done, but this Monday morning has been horrendous enough to distract me. Ilya has to walk me to my form tutor for safety reasons and everyone is staring and whispering.

Last Friday, I was the autistic girl. Now, I’m the autistic girl whose mother runs the country.

“I want to invite someone very special up onstage today. To be our Role Model of the Week.”

We’ve sung hymns and listened to Mr Archer’s long lecture about littering and community service. As this week’s theme is “Role Model”, they made us watch a slide show of influential people.

None of them were like me, but they never are. 17

“Can I please invite Aeriel Sharpe up here for a moment.”

I don’t really hear Dr Mars say my name, I just notice all of the heads in front of me turning to stare at me. I don’t move. I can’t. The feeling of being perceived is like cold water being thrown all over me.

“Aeriel, up here, please!” Dr Mars chirrups.

People are starting to smirk so I move. I jerkily get to my feet and head to the stage steps, taking them one at a time and avoiding the intensely friendly stare of Dr Mars. She puts an arm around me and speaks to the entire senior school with a horrifically embarrassing tone of admiration.

“This brave young lady has just been through a monumental thing,” Dr Mars tells everyone, as if they don’t already know.

If they don’t watch the news, their parents do.

If they haven’t heard it from the media, the whispers around school will have reached them.

I don’t know what Dr Mars is intending to do, but my heart starts to sprint.

“Aeriel’s Mum is our new Prime Minister and I know you will all give Aeriel and her family your congratulations,” she says.

I hope this is all she wants to do. I want to sit back down.

18 “Aeriel is also one of my special students and I thought she might give us a few words about that, as she is absolutely one of our role models this week!”

Before I can swallow the sick in my throat, she nudges me towards the standing microphone and starts to clap, forcing the rest of the assembly hall to join in, albeit flatly. I stare at the microphone. It’s an imposing, ugly thing. It’s intrusive. I don’t like looking at it.

“Um,” I say, and I wince as my voice reverberates around the room. “I’m not supposed to talk about my mum’s job.”

“No, of course not,” Dr Mars whispers frantically. “Talk about being autistic.”

“I–what?”

I look out at the other students. The sixth formers all look enormous.

They sit at the back, tall and frightening, watching me with impassive faces.

Their arms are crossed and the idea of telling them all about being autistic is completely horrifying.

I’m not ashamed or embarrassed of it but it’s private. It’s personal.

I don’t want them to laugh at me.

I don’t want to talk about anything, let alone being autistic, in front of these people. Some of these kids still use it as an insult, freely and happily.

19 “Would you say it’s your superpower, Aeriel?” Dr Mars pushes gently, beaming at me and nodding in encouragement.

Not exactly. And even if I did, that’s something only I should get to say. Not her. Not people who don’t understand.

“I was diagnosed in Scotland, where I used to live,” I say, only able to state facts about it. “My older sister, Felicity, is ADHD. I think my younger brother, Gideon, is as well. I guess it runs in families.”

Snickers break out across the room and I realise I’ve said something wrong. This happens a lot, I always say things that make adults laugh and other kids roll their eyes and I do it without meaning to.

I suddenly feel all of the noise and the chatter from the last few days. It raises up inside of me and I can’t push it down, like I normally would. My hands are sweating and the lights are too bright. There are too many eyes on me, I can’t take this many people looking at me. I can’t bear it.

I feel like my soul is inside out and they’re all giggling at it.

I feel a stinging sharpness in my ears and the overwhelming urge to sit down.

Then, everything goes black and all I can hear are 20 shouts and gasps and then nothing at all.

*

I wake up in the tiny room next to the ground floor toilets. Mrs Elliot, the school nurse, has put me on one of the two beds in her small sanitorium and there’s some orange juice in a carton next to me.

“Mum, she’s awake!”

I look over. A boy in my year is sitting on the other bed, looking entirely healthy. He’s tall and has dark hair and features, with a face that is so cheerful, he looks like he should be one of those kids you see in the Christmas adverts.

“You fainted on stage,” he tells me.

Humiliating. “Thanks.”

“You probably already knew but, in case you didn’t.”

Even more humiliating. “Uh huh.”

“I’m Txai. I’m another one of Dr Mars’ ‘special kids’. But she’s never succeeded in dragging me onto that stage. Probably because she knows I’d turn into a honey badger.”

I suspect he means that he would fight back. I wonder why I didn’t do that.

“Txai,” Nurse Elliot’s disembodied voice comes 21 from the direction of her office. “Let her recover in peace, please.”

His name is Txai. I’ve seen it written down before, but never pronounced. Tee-shy. I’ve never met a Txai before.

“Are you feeling okay?” he stage-whispers to me.

No. “I’m fine.”

“It was an amazing faint.”

“Thank you.”

“Really dramatic. Your face hit the floor like a wet fish.”

I open my mouth exactly like a fish, because his frank way of speaking has rendered me speechless.

“You’re autistic, right?” he asks merrily.

If the whole school wasn’t aware before, they will be now. “Yeah, so?”

“I am, too. And a bunch of other things, my brain is a salad of lots of cool stuff. But I think being autistic is the lettuce. It’s nice and crunchy.”

His completely relaxed way of talking about disability reminds me of Fizz. I try to sit up.

“Easy,” he says, suddenly earnest. “You really did hit your head on the stage, it was loud.”

“Shouldn’t even have been up there,” I say.

“Dr Mars is alright,” Txai says. “She can get a bit “neurodiversity is a superpower’ too often, but it’s 22 because she doesn’t want us to be negative.”

I take in his words for a moment. I’ve been told by a lot of people that being autistic is like having a superpower. It’s usually to coax me out of a toilet cubicle after someone has called me a name or left me out of a game. They don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

If I did have superpowers, I could fly away from here.