“Lots of people with autism don’t like to be touched,” I said.
“I’m sorry.” Mayra pulled her hand away.
Shit, shit, shit.
I hadn’t meant my words to be taken that way. We’d been talking about autism, and I was just stating a fact.
“I just meant…others don’t like it.”
“You don’t mind?” Mayra asked.
“If…if I know it’s coming,” I said, clarifying. “I don’t like to be surprised.”
“Because that’s not what you’re expecting.”
“Right,” I said. I looked over to her, and Mayra was smiling just a little. I didn’t know what made her smile, but there were a lot of times I didn’t understand the behavior of others. I just wanted to get this over with. “So, they all finally decided I was just messed up in multiple ways.”
“You seem to do pretty well.”
I replayed her words in my head a few times, trying to decide if she was being sarcastic or not. I had a hard time picking up on sarcasm.
“I’m okay,” I said softly. I took another long breath. “The doctor I had most recently said I had mild forms of Asperger’s and ADD and had developed various obsessive-compulsive behaviors to combat those other characteristics.”
“Does that really work?”
“Usually,” I said. “As long as things are the way they are supposed to be, I’m fine. Here I’m fine. It’s when I leave here that I run into things that are out of my control.”
“Like Devin in your seat the other day,” Mayra said with a nod, “and having to work with me on this project.”
“Yes,” I replied quietly. “So for me, it’s all about finding ways to cope with what’s in my head and finding ways to focus. To everyone else, the coping makes me look like an idiot.”
“You aren’t an idiot,” Mayra said. “Aimee has ADD, too.”
“She does?”
“Yeah. When she was little, she was on medication for it, but the meds made her cry all the time. Her mom got a bunch of books about different treatments, and now she has a really strict diet. That’s why we play soccer. She’s my best friend, and we started playing at the same time. As long as she gets enough exercise and eats right, she does okay without the drugs. I’m sure that doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for her.”
“I have to take the meds,” I said. “Even if I work out, it’s not enough.”
“Aimee still gets a little scatterbrained,” Mayra said with a smile. “I used to sit with her to make sure she got her homework done. She’d get distracted by anything and everything around her, but she’s better about it now.”
“Homework help.” I stared at my hands and remembered Mom sitting with me and trying to get me to focus on math problems. When I got di
stracted, she would turn the page around and make me do the problems upside down. It made the work more challenging, and I could focus better.
I felt her hand on my bare shoulder and I flinched a little, wondering if she’d been talking, and I had missed it.
“Is this okay?” Mayra asked.
I looked at her hand on my shoulder and thought about it being there and how it felt. I wasn’t going into any kind of panic attack at least.
“I have panic attacks when things aren’t the way I expect them to be,” I said. “Those got a lot worse after Dad died.”
“He was in the reserves or something, right?”
“National Guard,” I said.
“There was an accident.”