Page 42 of Wish You Were Her

Allegra had been diagnosed for a few years.

Her mother had fought for it on behalf of both of them.

When it was finally granted, her school had done nothing to help her.

Ear defenders were not allowed, aids in the classroom were sneered at and labeled “special treatment,” with an extra dose of callousness in the first word.

Her school reports were written in venom.

So, leaving it all behind for Court of Bystanders had been a ship leaving the harbor with no glance back.

Since then, no one had heard the word from her.

It was her private information to bear. She turned down the occasional script with a “disturbed” character whose mysterious, unnamed neurodevelopmental disability made them a savant or a burden or a plot point.

A neurotypical actor would gladly take the role and lament at parties when the awards never came.

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 get the 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.

They talked into the night. Allegra felt wobbly but content.

She had just enough strength to occasionally push Jonah’s dark hair out of his eyes.

When she said she wished she could get a manicure without someone trying to sneak a picture, he went to the drugstore on the corner and came back with an assortment of her favorite colors.

He painted polish onto her toenails with sweet precision.

He blew on them. They talked about books.

She told him about scripts. He asked about her co-stars.

She didn’t remember falling asleep. But she slept through the whole night, without waking in pain.

Jonah woke the next morning, still fully dressed, to the sound of his phone vibrating. He quickly excused himself, though Allegra was dead asleep. He slipped into the kitchen and answered the call before noting that it was coming from an unknown number.

“This is Jonah.”

“Hey, man. Sorry to call early, it’s Charlie Matuschek, from Matuschek Press.”

“Oh, yes, hi,” Jonah said, fixing his bed hair even though the man on the other end of the line couldn’t see him. “Thank you for calling.”

“That’s okay.” Jonah could tell that the man was occupied with something else while on the phone, but not completely distracted. “You wouldn’t happen to be free for an interview today? We can do online, if it’s too far from where—”

“That would be great. I’m in the city, so in person is fine.”

“Ah, excellent. Cool. Um, we’re on Upper Oak Street and—”

“I know where. By the movie house with the ancient coffee machine.”

“Noon too soon?”

“Not at all.”

“Great. Easy! See you there then, Jonah, thank you for being so flexible.”

Jonah had to smile. It was not a word often used about him.

He slipped back into Allegra’s bedroom, ready to ask her what she wanted for breakfast. He found her getting dressed in her walk-in wardrobe.

She was wearing pink satin trousers and a soft pink jumper and she looked marginally healthier than the day before.

“I can’t face a bra just yet,” she told him conspiratorially and he blushed.

“I’ve got a job interview. At noon.”

His whole body filled with heat as she stared up at him in complete delight. “Jonah, that’s fantastic! Where?”

“A small press downtown. They’re great.”

“What about Dad? What will he do without you?”

She said it teasingly and Jonah still did not have the heart to reveal what had happened.

“I want to bring you breakfast,” he said instead.

“I’m fine.”

“Properly fine or autistic-won’t-realize-she-needs-to-eat-until-much-later fine?”

She laughed heartily at that. “First one.”

“Okay.”

“It’s after ten, you should go. If it’s at noon.”

Yet neither of them moved. Jonah stared at this cosmic person who, as it turned out, was so much more like him than he could have known. Her mask had been so impenetrable, he had never suspected.

He could imagine the cost of it. The weight of it. Maybe they were both too afraid to say how they felt because they had been communicating with neurotypicals for too long, and become protective of their hearts in a way that only the outcasts do.

“Eighteen! You’re only eighteen! I thought by your cover letter you were an old man!”

Jonah sat across from Charlie Matuschek and tried to find the right response. “The resumé didn’t tip you off?”

“Well, if I’m honest, I’ve interviewed nine people fresh out of graduate school and their resumés are nicely padded, but I’m not sure they’ve ever read a book published after the Hindenburg.”

“Ah.”

“You know the type?”

“I like the classics.”

“Sure, but you’re not allergic to the Women’s Prize or the Newbery?”

“No, but shortlists can be very dry and trauma-dependent. I’ve recently found my impatience for people who overlook genre fiction and commercial writing.”

“Not exactly what we publish.”

“Right,” Jonah acknowledged, unbothered. “But maybe you should.”

The publisher who owned the small press was in his forties.

He wore corduroy trousers and old t-shirts.

His teeth were slightly yellow, possibly due to a coffee habit.

He was drinking from the largest mug Jonah had ever seen.

His hair was thinning but a nice color. He was affable but clearly looking for someone to engage the parts of his intellect that had become as comfy and soft as him.

“I love your poetry anthologies,” Jonah said honestly. “And the essay collections. But you should publish more women and marginalized writers. The literary writing you promote is all a bit… samey.”

This was met with stunned silence.

“I’m autistic,” Jonah said, feeling emboldened by Allegra’s earlier courage.

“Your job description said someone who isn’t afraid to say what they think and push the envelope when it comes to editorial direction.

Now, if that’s neurotypical code and you actually just want someone to boil a kettle, file things and take minutes, fine.

But that’s what I think. And your relationship with bookshops is pretty legendary.

But you have to engage with the internet, too. ”

Jonah forced himself to make eye contact with the publisher, who was regarding him with an unreadable expression.

“Are you a writer?” Charlie Matuschek eventually asked.

“I,” Jonah hesitated and then decided to be brave. Like Allegra. “Yes, I am.”

The interview continued for an hour. When Jonah was finally allowed to leave, there were two other candidates sitting in the main part of the Matuschek Bookshop, where the press also had their offices.

Both interviewees looked disgruntled at having to wait and, as Jonah walked back to Allegra’s building, he felt the timid glow of certainty, the kind one felt after acing a test or excelling in front of a group of strangers.

And no one had brought up the pictures.

It had gone well. He had experienced enough occasions where things had not gone well in his life. That was how he knew the difference.

Perhaps it had all come to a point.