Page 28 of Wish You Were Her

And the things you didn’t know were worth holding on to were suddenly gone.

Replaced by gold, by an image of yourself that you didn’t know, but everyone else said that they did.

They spoke words that they claimed were yours, said that they knew your mind and your dreams and your heart.

Grew angry at a version of you that they had dreamed up inside their heads.

For a young autistic girl, who had always been alone in the world—not just felt alone, but been alone—the deal had seemed so freeing. It had felt like a chance to eat at the table with everyone else.

And, for the first few years, it had all been so wonderful. To be wanted. To be seen. To be listened to. She had been able to share parts of herself that the world had only ever told her were ugly and unnatural. She was no longer made of stone to the people around her.

And then they turned her new flesh into bronze and gold and copper. Her name on too many tongues had cast the spell, and she was stationary again, while the world moved and spoke all around her.

And there are sadder songs. There are crueller stories. There are many, if not mostly, harder lives.

To become an idol is to be safe from the wind and the rain and the cold.

But no one can love a statue. Not really. They can touch parts of it until it turns to gold. But it can never go home with anyone. It can never touch them back.

She was just a statue to Jonah, she thought bitterly. When he said, “wish you were her” in his emails, that “her” didn’t even exist. He was intrigued by the statue, the idol, the thing that was skin-deep.

“It’s a privilege,” was all she said to Simon, knowing that it was the truth and also what people needed to hear. “I’m very lucky.”

She wanted Jonah, though. She wanted his gaze, which was always so unclouded by the things that other people deemed so important. He hated her fame, and she had thought he hated her.

He was like her. She remembered it every time they were close to one another. Had felt it with every breath and gasp when they had come together in the bookshop.

“Simon,” she said, overwhelmed by the realization. “I have to go.”

He frowned. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just—” She suddenly realized that he wasn’t. There was something distracted about him. He seemed fidgety and on edge. “Are you?”

He looked surprised by the question. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“Just… Jonah. He’s being difficult.”

Allegra almost smiled. “Difficult how?”

Simon exhaled. “He’s usually pretty regular, you know. But lately, he’s been acting weird. Different. More than the usual.”

Allegra wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Are you worried about him?”

“No. I’m worried about everyone around him. Worried that he’s going to keep upsetting people. First you, now Kerrie. George barely speaks to him.”

Allegra felt a touch of protectiveness rise up. “He hasn’t ‘upset’ me, Simon. I can handle myself.”

“I’ve always sort of looked out for him but sometimes he just can’t act right.”

“Hey,” Allegra said softly, disliking the focus on Jonah. It felt too familiar to her, too similar to the language used by people who had judged her for her disability when she was little. “He acts just fine.”

Simon gave her a look of betrayal, one that made her wonder about him.

She knew about masks better than anyone.

She and Jonah were autistic, they wore theirs to survive.

She wondered if Simon’s was perhaps a touch more sinister, if the niceness was skin-deep.

A veneer that was employed as a means to an end.

It didn’t happen too often, but when neurotypicals revealed themselves to be two-faced or insincere or, at the very worst, ableist—it always made her feel like a person in a movie who had just discovered that their friend was concealing a zombie bite.

“I’m going to go, Simon.”

She had never been good at predicting other people. She expected him to look disappointed, but to understand. But that was not what happened. He leaned in and kissed her.

It was too wet and too firm and she pulled away at once, scowling at him in fury.

She knew that he, like so many before him, just wanted to say that he had conquered Allegra Brooks—that’s why he was doing it in public. A few people were watching and pretending not to. Simon winced as soon as it was done, and said, “Sorry, Allegra,” almost too quietly for her to hear.

“That was so unasked for,” she snapped at him.

“I know,” he said hurriedly. “I’m sorry. Stupid. Shouldn’t have done it.”

Allegra shook her head and her eyes slid to the exit doors.

But one person openly stared from his place by the Arthouse door. Allegra focused and her eyes widened as she stared back.

“Jonah,” she breathed.

His hand was on the door, as if he had only just arrived. He looked full of thunder for a moment, and then it disintegrated into disappointment and resignation, as if he had expected to find such a scene. He shook his head.

So, Allegra moved. She didn’t care if anyone saw or gossiped about it. The whole world was a small town to her, full of opinions and discourse and tittle-tattle. She was sick of the confines of other people’s judgments.

She chased Jonah out onto Main Street, blinking as she realized that the sun had set and a light fall of rain was coming down.

It was warm, summer rain; the kind that was so gentle and easy on the skin, you didn’t realize you were soaked through until it was over.

Jonah was like that rain. He had infiltrated her heart with such slowness.

The rain had set in without her noticing.

She had not even felt the fall.

And it was frightening. To be falling for someone who thought they liked a version of you that could never be real.

It filled her with anxiety, the worry of being found out.

That she would let him down and he would feel cheated.

That he would end up cursing her for letting him fall in love with a lie, with a person who did not exist.

Not a statue. Just a mortal with a disability. Not any kind of creature from Olympus. Just someone who borrowed a little stardust now and then, when there was film in the camera.

“Jonah!”

He stopped on the cobbled stones up ahead and she recognized the disillusionment in his shoulders, the kind of weariness and wariness that aged neurodivergent children in comparison to their peers. That early knowledge of rejection and the constant choice between being guarded or being hurt.

“Allegra, it’s all right,” he called back to her, as she closed the distance between them on the dimly lit road. “You don’t owe me anything, that’s not… I didn’t walk out because of that, you don’t have to explain.”

You’re just like me , she wanted to say .

I think we probably have so many memories that are the same.

I think if we were both songs, the melodies would sound so similar.

Or maybe they would be in harmony. And we would know the tune and the words straightaway, we wouldn’t need to rehearse it.

The cadences are already inside us. I just need to know you see me, the real me, before I give you everything.

Loads of people love her. The girl on the screen.

But she’s not real, she’s the mask. I’m what’s underneath.

“Jonah, I don’t like him. Not that way and, actually, not any kind of way, right now.”

She could never properly articulate what she felt. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his torso, laid her head against his heart and closed her eyes.