Chapter One

Jared's giving me the look. I'm pretty good at recognizing the signs now.
   A light breeze tickles my cheeks, and I lift my chin, letting it cool my sweaty neck. Distracted, I wonder if it might be cooler inside the classrooms than outside today--probably even cooler than here in the shaded area, actually. It's a hot day for November, though I can't remember the weather on all the days in all the Novembers I've been alive.
   I glance away from Jared's freckly face and his flushed, pink cheeks and concentrate harder on my mouth and my voice, on finding the right words to tell him about how far I got on Tunnels of Disaster and Doom Map Five and the forty million new Orbsicles I won last night, but I can't stop my eyes from moving back up to him.
   He's looking over my shoulder at the kids playing on the field, and his feet and hands are shifting and fidgeting. This all tells me he doesn't want to be standing with me anymore and that his ears aren't listening to what I'm saying.
   It's the same look most people get when I'm telling them about OrbsWorld.
   But I absolutely have to finish telling Jared about Tunnels of Disaster and Doom Map Five. OrbsWorld is my favorite computer game ever, and last night I was messaging Jared--username rugballlove4578--and he's already completed Map Five, and he's the most popular boy and the best sprinter in the whole school!
   I decide to talk faster.
   ". . . and it was that ladder that I got stuck on every time for, like, two weeks, but then I figured it out and--"
   "Mm-hmm."
   I recognize these types of response because of Mystery Game number three, and I know to watch for visual clues like body language and facial expressions because of Mystery Game number four. I learned all of this at the Be Aware classes I went to last year with Mum, Dad, and Ned. There were other families there with autistic children like me who also needed help understanding things like body language and emotions. Mum said we were lucky to live close enough that we could attend. I liked the classes, but right now, I'm not so sure they were helpful. Because the problem is, I don't know how to make Jared interested in what I'm saying, so I just keep talking.
   "I had to climb the ladder halfway . . ."
   "Yep." Jared takes three small steps backward, wiping his hands on his shorts.
   ". . . and then hop onto the platform when the ants--"
   "Oh yeah." He adjusts his watch.
   "Um . . ." My brain has stopped working and the right words aren't coming. "When, when the ants charge down the wall and, um, then I--"
   "Okay, good job for doing it, Alex. I gotta go." Jared runs off, legs and arms pumping and his last words carried back to me on the humid air.
   He charges across the shaded area and onto the grass, weaving through a group of girls singing and a game of handball between Isaac and Frank on the concrete and the new kid with white hair sitting alone on the swing. Now Jared's calling for Henry to pass him the ball. Henry's dodging Rahul, his hands waving in the air, his brown hair flapping beneath his blue cap. The sun beats down on all of them, but not on me, not where I stand in the shade.
   The shouts and pounding feet of the other kids are suddenly loud.
   Too loud.
   I didn't hear them when I was telling Jared about OrbsWorld, about Tunnels of Disaster and Doom Map Five, but now the noises make my breathing go funny, and I wince.
   Two kids, Joshua and Wu, rush by, Joshua roaring something to Wu that goes through my left ear and comes out my right, and I startle, my tummy lurching, a squeak escaping my mouth.
   My eyes burn and I want to cry. But I won't, not here. Not now that I'm in grade six. So I press the feeling back down into my tummy and put my hands over my ears.
   I want to shout at them, all of them, particularly Joshua and Wu, but Ned tells me I can't stop people from running and shouting and doing other things like that at lunchtime or recess. Ned says that policing people is bad and will get me picked on at secondary school--even though Ned is forever telling me what to do. But Dad always agrees with him and then tells me how rough his school was when he was a kid, and Mum gives me a sad smile, which makes me angry because I know it means she agrees but also feels sorry for me, because Mum feels sorry for me about everything.
   None of them think I listen or see or understand, but I do--mostly. That's a little bit because of my autism, which I know now because Mum explained how it doesn't always look as if I'm listening or following the way other children do. But I listen better when I'm drawing or on my laptop.
   So I don't shout at Joshua and Wu. Or go after Jared and try talking to him again. Because even though I might not always say the right thing or think the right thing or do the right thing, I don't want to be beaten up or shouted at.
   I'm not stupid.
   I spin, the gravel crunching under my feet, and my left heel slips out of my black leather shoe because the laces came undone earlier. I need to tuck the ends in before I trip, because I can't do laces properly, but I don't. Instead, I head toward my classroom, hands still over my ears, because all the noises and the rushing children are pushing up a scream, and a sob is rising into my chest.
   Ms. Westing and Mum say I can always head to the classroom if I can't regulate my emotions, and right now I can't. My coping beaker, the name we use for all the feelings inside me, is full full full.
   Pale blue uniforms blur in my vision, and screeching voices and vibrating footsteps shudder through me, so I focus on my laces, the black strings like two skinny snakes attached to my shoe, flicking back and forth. I don't like snakes, but I'm more scared of spiders. Though the dangerous ones like the redbacks stay hidden away, the orb weavers and the huntsman spiders are big and fast and make huge webs in trees and bushes everywhere, and they give me the creeps.
   I hate spiders but I love dogs. Especially my dog. And Kevin, my cockapoo, and I have been working on a plan, something that will definitely make Jared, and maybe the other popular kids, want to be my friend. If I can't be good enough at OrbsWorld or fast enough at running, I only have one other chance, and that's Kevin.
   I want to go home now and see him, but I can't. Mum doesn't come and get me anymore. She probably would, but Ms. Westing doesn't call her every time school becomes too loud for me or something happens that makes me emotional. They decided this without me--even though I was there in the meeting--at the beginning of this term, my last-ever term at primary school. They decided I had to try harder to handle the difficult times because secondary school would be even tougher.
   I'm nearly at my classroom, the sounds of the other kids fading behind me. I take deep breaths, just like I've been taught--in through my nose and out through my mouth. My reflection floats along beside me in the windows of the grade six classrooms, all of them decorated in colorful artwork--sea creatures made with bottle tops, handwritten school rules on cardboard cut into flower shapes, night city scenes in black and red paper.
   I like art and I love sketching Kevin and Dennis, Ned's lazy bulldog. I have a green robot notebook almost filled up with my newest dog sketches.
   Thinking about drawing dogs makes me calmer. Plus, it's quieter at this end of the school. My classroom is at the end of D block, beside the new tree garden.
   I should've stayed in the tree garden today, like usual, but Jared accepted my friend request on OrbsWorld last night and we traded Orbsicles for rations, so I thought . . .
   I sigh and remove my hands from my ears, then sit on the chipped green bench outside my classroom. An ibis wanders past, pecking at schoolbags in search of leftover snacks. Lucky dinosaur bird. He can leave school whenever he wants. I hate school so much, but I hate the thought of secondary school even more, because I'm afraid of the big kids and all the noise and the extra homework and the strict teachers.
   But most of all I'm afraid of never having a real-life friend.

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Excerpted from All the Small Wonderful Things by Kate Foster
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