Page 24 of Branded
Instead, he studied my like I was a puzzle he didn’t get. For a long time, his gaze stayed on my face.
Then he said, “No. You can’t help me.”
It was like he’d taken a pin and popped a balloon inside me, all the air just streaming out of me, deflating me in a slow, steady outflow.
“Right,” I whispered then started to turn. “I’ll just go?—”
“I’m dyslexic.”
My feet slid to a stop, I turned back. “What?” I whispered.
“I’m a dyslexic,” he murmured.
“I’m…” A breath, that knot in my stomach slowly loosening. “I’m not sure what that means,” I whispered, shifting slowly from foot to foot. “I mean, I’ve heard of being dyslexic and I had a friend in high school who told me that the letters moved on the page sometimes. Is that—?” I glanced up, held his eyes. “Is that what’s making it hard this morning?”
A nod to his computer.
Tension in the air, balling in his shoulders, in the heavy weight of his frame. “Yes,” he said. “Reading isn’t the easiest for me in general.”
“Why?”
My teeth hit my bottom lip.
That was a shitty question.
It wasn’t any of my business. It would be like someone asking me why I got anxious sometimes. Who the fuck knew? My body was just my body, and my brain worked the way it worked and…sigh…it was kind of douchey to just expect that there was an easier explanation.
Smitty shifted, closing his laptop and setting it in the chair next to him. “I have surface dyslexia,” he said. “So, it’s a lot like what your friend described—the letters shifting and moving and twisting in on themselves. And then what I see for a letter sometimes isn’t the same as what everyone else sees.”
“What do you mean?”
He tapped at a sticker on the back of his laptop, a large black and blue rendering of the Breakers logo. “You probably see all of the letters as whole, yeah?”
I nodded.
A finger to the B. “This sometimes looks like a three to me. I know there’s supposed to be a line here. Sometimes I see it, but sometimes I don’t. And then sometimes those letters, even when they are whole, move and twist in on themselves like I’m high.”
He sighed.
“That’s what’s been happening this morning.” A beat. “And last night.”
“But sometimes it doesn’t?”
Smitty was quiet. “I’ve done a lot of work to get to a point where I can read effectively”—a self-deprecating smile—“and some days it’s easier than others.”
“What makes it easier?” I asked, knowing I was pushing boundaries, but genuinely curious about this man who was so big and loud and yet sitting alone in a room at seven in the morning, yelling at himself about reading something on his laptop, twin tracks in his hair, mussed from frustrated swipes.
He patted the chair next to him.
And…I sat.
And listened.
“Usually, shorter bursts of reading are better,” he said softly. “And the font and background color both matter.” A sigh. “And not getting irritated or frustrated at myself.”
I giggled. “I’m not so sure that has been working.” A nod to his hair. “Considering you’ve been trying to pull your hair out.”
Silence.
