After school, I completely ditched Harper and waited for Colton outside his last class. If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t let on. Instead, he fell in by my side as if we’d been walking through the halls of our school together for years.
“Want a ride home?” I asked, my palms all sweaty again.
His head shook slowly from side to side. “At three-thirty-five I’m supposed to be standing outside for my mother.”
I smiled as big as I could. “Then I’ll wait with you.”
A nod. That was all I got, but it didn’t matter. It was something.
I’ll be honest, I was more nervous about facing Sheila Neely again than I was to first approach her son. While we waited for her to drive the long loop set aside for car riders, mostly freshman, I thought of things I could talk to him about. Like, why the hell he was suddenly at school?
Instead, I chickened out. “Are you busy after school tomorrow?”
His answer was abrupt. “Yes.”
Look, being a girl in high school is hard enough. But add having to do the ‘dude’ duty of asking someone to hang out was making my head want to implode. And we didn’t want that.
About that time, his mom pulled slowly up before crawling to a stop. She rolled the passenger’s side window down and then kind of pulled her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose as she squinted to see if I was really standing next to her son.
“Lilly Evans.” The way she said my name made my nose scrunch. I said hello and she laughed, her head thrown back and reddish hair bouncing. “I didn’t think you’d make it to sixteen . . . much less your senior year.”
Touché, Mrs. Neely. One point for you.
Colton was getting into the passenger seat, blocking my view of her, so I moved around to her window. She’d smiled wide and pushed her glasses into her hair to address me. I was leaning in and trying to speak loud enough for both of them to hear.
“Would you mind if I picked Colton up for school in the morning? I can bring him home, too, if that’s okay with you.”
I swear on a stack of Bibles, her eyes got so wide I thought she was going to have a stroke.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. He has a class with me and stuff, so I figured we could ride together and his locker is next to mine and then he wouldn’t have to be dropped off and picked up . . .”
She held a hand up to stop me and for a moment I thought she had tears in her eyes. “Absolutely.”
“Awesome.” It was like I could finally, finally breathe again. I was going to take care of Colton this time, not the other way around.
“He has a class tomorrow at the community college. Can you take him?” She looked so hopeful.
“Sure. Should I . . . sit in?” I couldn’t remember if it was called shadowing or auditing or whatever, but neither of them sounded cool so I didn’t push it.
Her voice . . . it got so low. “It’s a socialization class to help him acclimate. You know, he wanted to do this on his own. He asked to come to school, but he doesn’t have to be here.” Her eyes actually did get shiny then. “He just wants friends.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Neely. He’s already got one in me,” I assured her and then leaned in a little to say goodbye to Colton. He nodded a couple times and they drove away, leaving me with a thousand questions.
It felt like everything that transpired on the day he started school was what I needed to prove to myself I should find out what I’d been putting off for years.
It finally felt like the right time to give in and find out everything I could about it.
I drove home immediately and Googled the shit out of Asperger’s.
Holy hell. The amount of information available is so extensive. I couldn’t tell which end was up. While he had some of the qualities and characteristics listed on the spectrum, he didn’t seem to have all of them, and honestly, it just got to be pretty exhausting and confusing after a while. It made me want to lay my head down and cry because he was a complete mystery to me.
My research showed socialization was the hardest thing for someone like him to ‘get’. Which made his after school class seem all the more necessary, obviously. But how could I help? At the time, I didn’t think pushing him into school activities would be the right key.
What if he became over stimulated?
Would he freak out and have to leave?
Would he be absolutely fine and I was a total douche for thinking so many stupid questions?
Sometimes Googling things make it worse.
One thing was certain: I would do whatever it took to be what he needed me to be. He was worth it even after only one day.
* * *
About an hour before bed, I realized I had left my phone on silent and checked it to see about a million missed phone calls from Harper and Joseph. I was irritated to say the least. Harper would take a text, I knew. But Joseph was another matter altogether.
Calling him proved to be the second best thing I’d done that day. The conversation went a little like this:
“Hey. I missed your calls?”
“Yeah. The hell were you doing with that Neely kid? Everyone saw it. They’re all talking about you . . .”
I won’t go into the specifics of what exactly was said, because it’s . . . just . . . not important what people said about Colton or what they called him or categorized him as. But let’s just say it was ignorant enough to warrant a kiss off of epic proportions.
In essence, I told Joseph he could kiss my ass.
We broke up. Over the phone. And it didn’t bother me for a minute. Then my cell blew up with more texts from Harper.
I’ll say it again: News travels fast.
But none of it mattered. Because I was finally seeing a little glimpse of who Colton was.
I slept well that night, knowing I’d be picking him up for school in the morning. Single.
The first time I picked Colton up for school, I got up early to put on a little more makeup. I straightened my hair a little extra. And I wore a skirt.
What can I say? My legs are impressive.
See, it wasn’t that I had started out with the intention of having something more with him. It was like it was ingrained in me, somehow. He brought out this very basic desire in me to be a girl. A better girl. One who could hold the attentions of someone like him. So, it wasn’t like I was thinking to go out of my way to do those things that morning, I just kind of did them because I wanted to.
Just because I was attracted to him didn’t mean our friendship had to suffer. It was what would come first, regardless of my feelings.
I met Mrs. Neely at the door and I swear to you she took one look at my glossy lips and bare knees and the woman just knew. Moms are creepy like that sometimes. But I played it off and she pointed me to the room above the garage where Colton was rearranging some pieces.
It had been a while since I’d seen his stuff up close and it took my breath away at how far he’d come since the time I saw the paintings at the fair. Compliments tripped out of my mouth as I looked them over but he didn’t seem like they really mattered. In fact, it wasn’t until I mentioned a canvas that was broken in half and twisted in the corner of the room that he even really responded to me at all.
“What happened?” It just looked mangled.
Colton glanced at it and sighed, looking away again as he finished packing his book bag. “I was upset when I couldn’t get the eyes right.”
The brown edges of the picture were calling me to investigate further, but it was in my best interest to tone my stalking down, just a smidge, so I ignored it. Plus, he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it. At all.
We rode together in silence that felt like a million pulses of static up my arms and neck. It was such a short ride that I didn’t want to ask him more about art for fear I wouldn’t get him to stop when we got to the parking lot, but according to my research, any other questions would have gotten me one word answers.
Like, “Do you like music?” could get a response of ‘yes’ and that would have been it.
It was such a stressful moment that I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking on the steering wheel and eventually talked myself into believing the silence was probably best so he could just get used to riding with me.
I’m not a very good driver, if I’m being completely candid.
The day went better than expected and by the time lunch rolled around I hadn’t really given any thought to where I would sit. Harper had tried to talk to me in first period about Joseph but I told her I didn’t want to get into it at school. I wasn’t really sure if she was going to try and strong-arm me into sitting at the table and force me to hash it all out in public.
Instead, she sent me a text right before I got there letting me know she was skipping out to meet with a junior in the parking lot.
I didn’t even think twice about going to sit with Colton and his friends. I just did it.
Quinn’s eyes darted back and forth between Colton and me a hell of a lot. She’d worn this knowing look on her face the entire lunch period as I pretended to listen to Marissa ramble and switch topics faster than a meth addict with a remote would change channels between hits. I smirked a little, too, when I noticed Colton’s stare fixated on my thighs halfway through a conversation. It just reinforced the fact he was a regular boy, regardless of whatever obstacle he might have been born with that stopped him from showing it as boldly as someone else.
English was even better because I got to sit next to him as Mr. Mercer taught, and I could hear him talking under his breath every once in a while when the teacher said something wrong, or grammatically incorrect.
He’d clearly had some incredible tutors.
Butterflies exploded in my stomach when I drove him to his class at the college, and after walking him inside, it was determined it would be better for me to wait in the hallway so Colton didn’t feel more awkward having me there. Everyone else in the room was on a level playing field. They could have jumped back a few steps in their progress with my presence.
I waited for the hour he was inside, playing on my phone, wondering what he was learning.
He appeared by my side immediately after the doors were opened, and he had this weird look on his face, like he was purposely unaffected. His hands were pushed into his pockets again and I remember vividly that the front of his yellow t-shirt was haphazardly tucked behind his belt buckle while he nodded toward me once in acknowledgement.
“Are you ready to go home?” I asked, wondering if I should take him straight there or offer to get him some dinner.
But his response made my mouth hang open in shock.
“Whatever.”
I blinked and pressed my lips together, trying to form a response. “Whatever?”
“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
And then he looked at me and the corner of his mouth pulled up into a sly smile. “They taught us that tonight to help us blend in with our peers.”
It made my heart leap out of my chest and I had to resist the urge to hug him and laugh all at once because he looked so damn cute and a little proud as he said it. Instead, I stood and gave him an awkward double thumbs’ up of approval.
“You totally nailed it,” I told him, my own smile creeping up on me until I couldn’t hide it anymore.
It felt like the beginning of something incredible.