Page 101 of Wish You Were Her

All of that felt far away as she watched Jonah take in the new information.

“You… you’re…”

“Yes.”

He blinked in astonishment and then pressed his forehead to hers. She felt her eyes fill but more than anything, a weight had been carefully lifted from her soul.

“I knew you weren’t like them,” he said, his voice full of something like worship.

“I don’t tell many people. Not ashamed of it, I just don’t have a lot of control over privacy anymore. And that’s why I’m so sick. The masking, the work, the last few years—it’s all reached a bit of a breaking point.”

She watched everything pass in front of his eyes. She could see him applying this new knowledge to the memories of the two of them, to everything he knew about her. She wondered, for the quickest of seconds, if he would wear the usual look of discomfort that people donned when she brought up her neurodivergence.

Instead, his eyes filled with something she was too cowardly to put a name to and he said her name with a desperate mix of reverence and pain.

“Oh, Allegra.”

And she was crying. At least, she thought she was. She wanted to slap the back of her own head; furious that she had cried more in the last few days than she had for a year. She felt the wetness on her face and the tremble in her stiff jaw but she didn’t make a sound. She supposed that she knew, deep inside, that he would understand in an instant. Neurodivergent people always did.

She never liked to waste her time, explaining to neurotypicals. She occasionally read articles or memoirs from other autistic women, where they laid out their condition for their allistic readers. She would give them no such patience. She would not let them entertain themselves for a train journey with the authenticities of her less examined life. For they would only put it down and return to a world that was crafted for them, with the accomplishments of autistics vital but not visible. Seen but not heard. They didn’t get to have that part of her. They didn’t getthe meltdowns on bathroom floors or the splitting headaches from masking. They also wouldn’t get the joy. The heightened senses from a life lived in fuller color.

“You’ve done all this,” Jonah said brokenly, looking around at the apartment, the result of her labor, “without telling anyone. Or asking for help. Allegra, your lungs! The masking has made them give out. Why is no one helping you?”

“I’m not interested in a free ride.”

“We give them free rides every day! All of the time! Why can’t you have one sliver of understanding?”

The break in Jonah’s voice as he looked at her, at all of her, was too much. She bowed forward, her head pressing against the cool sheets. She turned her head to look at him and he stretched out next to her so they were face-to-face.

“It makes a strange sort of sense.”

“What does?” Allegra asked him.

“When your dad hired me, years ago now, I asked if there was a room somewhere in the shop for employees to step into if things got overwhelming. I had one at school, it helps to—”

“Delay a bad spell.”

“Yes. Exactly.” He started stroking her open palm with his fingers.

“What did he say?”

“Before he could answer, I told him. Said I was autistic. Wanted to let a potential employer know, maybe I was curious to see what he would do.”

She touched his foot with hers. “What did he do?”

“Said it was completely fine, I could use the office or the stock room whenever I needed. No questions, no pushback. It was… it was cool of him. That’s when I started liking him.”

“He knows. About me, I mean. Mum told him after the fact. But we never spoke of it.”

“That’s George, though. Reads thousands of words a day, speaks only a handful.”

She laughed. “Yes.”

He stared into her face with such devotion, she felt completely exposed.

“Allegra, you’re like me.”

Like a prayer had been answered.