Page 120 of Wish You Were Her

“Nothing’s ever off the record,” Allegra said, but she was smiling. “Our friend Grace has a dance showcase with her conservatory peers tonight. We’re going to see that.”

When Madison was gone, the pair breathed a sigh of relief and started to laugh.

“Why do neurotypicals stare so much?” Jonah asked gruffly, as they kicked off their shoes and collapsed onto their sofa.

“Because we’re weird aliens to them, even if they don’t exactly know it,” Allegra told him, putting her feet in his lap. He immediately began to stroke them soothingly.

“Hey, that Zoom I had booked in for tomorrow got moved to next week,” Allegra told her boyfriend. “Want to do something normal tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Book shopping then the park?”

“Plus vanilla ice cream.”

“Perfect.”

And so they sat, just the two of them, in a private slice of the universe that no one else was allowed to access.

For autism means,in one’s own world.

And that’s what they were: each other’s whole world.

The End.