The Encyclopedia of Me (21 page)

“I'm not everyone's mother,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. She looked really tired.

Before I could stop myself, I went, “Yeah, well, I wish you weren't mine.”

She snapped her head up and looked at me. I could tell I'd hurt her feelings. A lot. But I also didn't care. I didn't. Well, I guess I did. I felt bad about it, especially when she stomped out and said in a cracking voice, “You can come down for dinner in an hour.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“Tink,” she sighed, from the doorway.

“And my name is Isadora!” I shouted. “Why doesn't anyone ever call me Isadora?”

“Because you told us not to, remember?” said Mom. “Because you said you didn't choose it.”

“I didn't choose ‘Tink' either,” I said frostily.

“Actually,” she said. “You did.”

“Well, you shouldn't let a four-year-old pick her own name!” I shouted. “And I said Tinker Bell, not TINK. And it was nine years ago! I'm allowed to change my mind!”

“TINK,” she said. “I've had enough of this.” She clip-clopped down the hall.

“It's ISADORA!” I yelled. “Now,” I added. “I mean it!”

“Isadora,” said Seb, sticking his head out into the hall. “Isadora is a bore-a.” He started laughing really hard and stupidly, clutching at his sides. “Isadora Isabora,” he chanted.

“SHUT UP!” I screamed, and I slammed my door. I went over the window and looked into the tree. There was no one there. The tree was as empty and alone as my heart.

Do you want to know what the view from my room is? Really? Well, I'll tell you. It's bleak. Bleak, bleak, bleak. With an extra helping of BLEAK thrown on the top for good measure.

See also
Grounded; Kai; Name.

Sarcasm is irony with a twist and a shove. Dad says that, like licorice, sarcasm is an acquired taste. He also says that only smart people appreciate irony and sarcasm.

I love sarcasm. And I enjoy licorice. Draw your own conclusions.

Today was the first day of school.

I wore my new dark jeans (capri length!) and a sleeveless T-shirt that had a fake wrap front. The shirt was gray. I thought it looked skater-cool in the store, but I realized, too late, that it looked like a washrag that had cleaned a hundred cars and had subsequently been thrown into the trash. Which was good, in a way. It said, “I am not trying to please you, fellow students at Cortez Junior. I am too cool to obsess about what I'm wearing.” Which was ironic because I was obsessed with what I was wearing.

As I got ready, my brain was all abuzz with thoughts, which felt like flies swarming my gray matter. They were mostly things like: Why am I so scared? What is wrong with me? Do I look OK? Should I wear makeup? Maybe I should cover my freckles, and then I won't be called Freckle Peckle? Does anyone even really read
Everybody
magazine? Yes? Should I run away to Slovenia and change my name to Natalka Novotny? Or to Quebec to join the cast of the Cirque du Soleil? Or to China to make plastic toys in a large factory? All of which sound better than going to F.E.C.E.S. for what will probably be the worst day of my life.

In addition to things like: Will Kai talk to me? Why didn't I just call him again? What is wrong with me? Will Freddie Blue talk to me? Do I want her to? Will Ruth be my friend? Will I have any friends? Will I have to eat my lunch alone, leaning on my locker, pretending to be super engrossed in a book?

I concentrated on breathing. In and out. Out and in.

I tried to reassure myself: Nothing would happen.

Or.

No one would talk to me.

Worse, teachers would talk to me and would want me to speak to everyone about autism. I'd become the autism mascot and would be trotted out at basketball games like the Aardie of the autism world.

I yelled good-bye to my family, which was mostly ignored. I don't want to talk about it, but Seb was super stressed. The morning was full of the sound of slammed doors and broken eggs. The house stunk of sanitizer, which wasn't a bad smell and made my sinuses feel clean, but still indicated that Seb was teetering on the edge of haywire-dom.

I stepped outside. It was a windy day and even the air smelled like fog and back-to-school. The leaves on the Tree of Unknown Species looked like they changed color from green to yellow overnight. I went and stood under it for a minute and looked up through the leaves at the sky. I didn't have time for climbing. And maybe climbing was for little kids, anyway.

I was growing up.

I was in the eighth grade now! This was serious business! I reached out and touched the smooth roughness of the bark. “See you, tree,” I said.

Then I ate four Oreos for strength.
105

Seb and Lex burst through the door. “Calm DOWN, man,” Lex was saying. “It's the same school, the same kids. Just relax. Dude, you just . . .”

“I'm FINE,” yelled Seb.

They blasted by me in their matching Prescott hoodies. “Good luck!” I yelled.

Lex waved. Seb didn't even turn around.

“Tink!” yelled Mom from the back deck. “You're going to be late! I'm not driving you!”

“OK, OK,” I said. I took a big breath and held it for as long as I could, which was all the way down the driveway.

I walked the long way, past the 7-Eleven and ice cream shop, past the abandoned fall beach where garbage left over from summer was being tossed around by the wind. And then, just like that, I was on the steps of Cortez Junior, out of breath and as sweaty as a wet mop. Perf.

I sighed and looked around. It was so crowded! But I didn't recognize anyone, except Wex Stromson-Funk.

“Yo, Plank!” he called.

“Freckle Peckle!” one of his buddies shouted.

I stopped dead in my tracks. NO. Not more than one bully! Was Wex contagious? I refused to take it!

I marched right up to Wex and said, “Look. I am rubber. You are glue. Anything you say bounces off of ME and sticks to you, geni.”

He stared at me, mouth agape. His face was completely blank. Wex was the T. rex of mankind. All mean and spastic, but with no brain and absurdly small arms. Except, obviously, he had normal-sized arms. If only he had tiny ones, he probably would have been a nicer person.

I said, “I'm sorry, I don't have time to wait until your lone, tiny brain circuit shorts out. I must go.”

“Uh,” he said. “Did you call me Jeanie?”
106

And then I saw Kai. He was standing behind Wex, but close enough that they'd obviously been talking. Had HE been the one who called me “Freckle Peckle”? I refused to believe it, but, at the same time, was 100 percent sure it was true. My heart broke into a billion shards, which shot around my body in my veins and arteries, stabbing me everywhere at once, like a zillion bee stings.

“Kai,” I said. I worked hard at lacing each letter of his name with a layer of ice. I squinted at him. “Hello.”

Then I turned my back and walked away. I was scared he wasn't going to answer. Or scared that if he did, he'd say something mean. Was he FRIENDS with Wex? My legs were shaking like wet dogs.

What had just happened? What?

I pushed my way through the crowd until I found a bathroom.
107
I looked at myself in the mirror. Conclusion: a mess. I tried to twist my hair back into shape but it was hopeless. So I did what people do in movies, which was to splash a bunch of water on my face. Cold water.

In movies, apparently no one wears mascara. Normally I don't either, but I did today because I thought it might make me look sophisto.

Which it did! Good news! But only if “sophisto” also means “looking like you've been punched in both eyes by someone with black paint on his small round fists.”

I cleaned myself up as well as I could with some very rough paper towel, which gave my face the look of having a bad windburn. Did I care? I did not.

Then I went back out into the fray to look for Freddie Blue. I can't explain why, except to say that it was like Freddie Blue and I were wrapped up together in strands like cobwebs, and no matter how hard I pulled (or how hard she pushed) to get out of the web, I was still in the web. And the web wasn't a bad thing; it was the web that I knew. And the web had been fun for my whole life! And I didn't want things to be different. Just being back at school made me want to crawl right back in and get firmly stuck in the place where I belonged.

Which was with FB. Even if she was a bit spidery lately.

Then I saw her! She was waving her arm in the air and yelling, “Here! OVER HERE!”

Everything was going to be OK! Cue birds singing! Happy music! With ukuleles!

Except then when I got closer to her, I realized she wasn't even talking to me. She looked right past me! Like I wasn't even there!

I watched as she ran up to Stella Wilson-Rawley. She was talking in an extra-loud, fakey voice, but I still couldn't make out what she was saying due to the ringing in my ears.

You know how they say that when you die, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes, like a fast-forwarded movie, all odd angles and random flashes of things you'll never know again? It was almost like that, as I fell out of the web of us. I could see bright flashes of kidnapping Mr. Bigglesworth or knee-jumping on the trampoline or just all the times we lay on the Itchy Couch and ate raw cookie dough and laughed ourselves senseless about Hortense, or climbing the tree, or even the way she mooned around after Lex, and when she gave me her red balloon at her seventh birthday party after I accidentally let go of mine and it got tangled in the telephone wires.

Then I noticed that she and Stella were wearing
matching outfits
.

I gasped out loud, from shock and horror. It could only have been the stick-death purple shirts! They were hideously and truly malg.
108
They looked like the kind of shirts that a teacher would wear, all collared and ruffled, if the teacher was ancient, partially blind, the owner of eight cats, and the star of an episode of
Hoarders
.

“My eyes, my eyes,” I murmured. “I am blind!”

“I bet you wish you were,” said Ruth, appearing next to me out of nowhere. “What are they wearing? They look like orchids on a wedding cake! Orchids with heads! And unsightly shoes!”

I looked down. Both FB and SWR were wearing bright pink kicks. They were so bright, that even after I looked away, the image of them was still burned into my retinas.

“You should have called me last night,” I said to Ruth. “We could have worn matching garbage bags and really set some serious trends.”

She snorted. “Yeah,” she said. “SORRY. Hey, do you want to go to Drop Mac after school? You've got to see the sail I made for my board! It is so fun, it's ridic!”

“Yep,” I said. I was flooded with relief. FB was not talking to me and I was still OK.

Even so, I stared at her as she disappeared into the crowd. Maybe if we were in the second grade, matching would be acceptable. But now that we're almost thirteen? NOT. I was glad not to be part of their little club! Exclamation mark! Even seeing them makes me feel embarrassed to be alive!
109

I dragged myself through the rest of the day. After school, I waited by the front steps for Ruth, feeling sad and forlorn. I stared at my too-white shoes and tried to imagine what I had done to make FB ignore me. I mean, shouldn't I be the one who was mad? Was she even
mad
? Or was she ignoring me because I just didn't matter anymore?

Then I noticed that Kai was rolling toward me on his board. The ball-bearing sound on the pavement made my heart soar. And! He was smiling! And before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Kai! Hi!”

He said, “Hey.” I could tell he was trying to sound casual, but he was also grinning. A lot.

I grinned back. “Want to come to Drop Mac with me and Ruth?” I said.

“Sure!” he said. Then he added, “So you're, like, sort of famous now, I guess. I mean, I saw
Everybody
. My mom didn't believe that I knew you. She thinks that magazine is just, like, celebs and stuff.”

“I'm a celeb,” I said, pretending to be affronted.

“Um,” he said.

“I'm kidding!” I said. There was an awkward silence. I tried to fill it by laughing, but it came out weird, like a tiny little “ha” in a cavern of silence. He fidgeted around with his board, finally dropping it and doing a couple of little flips on the stairs. Then, before I could stop myself or even think about it, I blurted, “Why didn't you call me?”

“I don't know,” he said, after a second of staring at me. “I kind of figured you were famous now and that you wouldn't . . . I mean, I did call you a couple of times, but when your brother said you were, like, too busy to talk to me, I thought you probably just . . .”

“My brother said that?” I said.