Page 31 of Star-Crossed
“I hate that so much,” she said. “Can I try something that might help?”
He gripped the book tighter, still not looking at her, but dipped his chin in silent permission.
Sensing his wariness of a stranger’s touch, she was careful to grasp the hem of the sleeve and roll it up four times until the edges of the sleeve no longer touched his arm. It looked a little dorky, but the relief on his wan features was transcendent.
“Better?”
“Yeah,” he sighed.
“Want me to do the other one?”
He glanced at her shoulders and nodded. Still no eye contact.
Heart actively melting into her guts, she stepped around to his other side and perched carefully on the couch to roll up his other sleeve. “I’m Lyra,” she said.
“Lyra has Vega,” he announced, coming alive the moment his other sleeve was done “tickling” his arm. She could see the little abrasions where he’d been scratching and picking at the place the hem had touched his skin. “Vega is the second brightest northern star. When I read theStarman Chronicles, Orpheus had an artificial intelligence weapon called Lyra, and she could see the future. Attack before her enemies struck. Orpheus was strong, but she was best.”
Lyra grinned. She’d have loved a story like that at his age. Back when she devoured fantasy and magic tales to escape metaphorical tickly sleeves of her own.
“Oh yeah?” She wasn’t sure what kind of feedback the kid wanted, but he seemed satisfied with her noncommittal validation. “So what’s your name?”
“Ben. Is that why you wear no sleeves?” he asked when she’d finished her precise folds. “So they don’t tickle?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t mind sleeves so much, but…” She leaned in a little. “I’m really picky about socks.”
“I hatesocks,” he said, turning the page as if he’d read it.
“Yeah, me too. But I have to wear them for work.”
“I hate socks and shirts, and when I’m old I won’t do work that makes me wear socks and shirts.”
Good luck, kid,she wanted to say.
“I had to do the work,” she explained, for the first time not truly believing that. “But I learned some tricks to help me wear socks.”
This time he dragged his gaze away from the story and lifted his eyes all the way to her nose. “What tricks?”
“I learned if I buy socks all the way up to my knee, they’re okay. If I have them all the way down to my ankle, they’re okay. But if they areanywhereon my calf, I can’t think straight. I hate everything all day.”
“Everything all day.” He nodded sagely in agreement. “I can read now. You can go.”
“Oh. Um. Okay.” She pushed herself up from the couch in time to find Marty standing in the door regarding her oddly.
“Sorry,” she said, stepping into the hallway and trying to remember the last time she apologized to anyone and coming up with a blank. “He was…um… Well, his sleeves were bothering him and he needed help rolling them.”
Marty nodded, his eyes seeming to look into her rather than at her. “You did a good thing. He’s growing so fast I can’t keep his shirt sleeves at optimum length for his spectrum needs.”
“His what, now?” She cocked her head.
“He’s autistic. High-functioning, mostly. But once he wore a hand-me-down with a tag, and I don’t know if I’ve seen a more epic meltdown in all my days.”
“I see,” she said. Despite recent destigmatizing of the spectrum, it wasn’t something she knew an awful lot about. “I didn’t realize it had much to do with how your clothes fit.”
Marty became animated, as one did when able to use some hard-won research to inform other people. “For souls like Ben, nothing fits. Not sounds. Not emotions. Not light and movement. It’s all so jarring. He can’t block out what other people can. And when it’s all too much, the whisper of a hem can feel like jagged glass.”
Interesting…She knew what it was like to feel out of sync with the world, to be overwhelmed by sights and sounds that others barely registered. In times of high stress, she could become so myopic that traffic noise threatened to throw her off her game.
Luckily, she could lock it down. Little Ben didn’t have that luxury.
