The blanket on Erin is heavy, like those X-ray bibs dentists use. It is a special kind of blanket for people on the spectrum, like a hug for people who don’t like to be hugged. She has spent most of the weekend under it, either reading in bed or dragging it downstairs to watch randomly generated episodes of TNG. She skips the ones with Wesley Crusher.
Erin has been nonverbal for two days. Mom has been trying to reach her all weekend. She’s asked her repeatedly if something happened at school. She called Slatterly’s office, but the principal never called back. She’s made calls to Erin’s doctor and therapist and specialists, even her old OT in Seattle. They have all told her to wait, to let Erin decide when she’s ready to talk. But patience is not Mom’s strong suit. Giving Erin space is not Mom’s idea of fixing a problem.
Erin sat through dinner tonight, listening to Mom’s desperate, tear-filled attempts to fill the silence. “Was it the bullies, honey? Did they say something? I thought they were leaving you alone this year. You haven’t done this in so long. You’ve been doing so well. Is this a regression?”
Erin did not say answers to these questions out loud, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have them. She was having a full dialogue with her mom in her head. This is not about regression, she thought. I am not linear. I just hurt. I just want the world to be quiet.
Erin thinks maybe she will start talking again tomorrow. Monday is always a good day to start over. But tonight she just wants to be in her room. She wants stillness. She wants silence. She wants to make herself solid again.
Her phone has been buzzing with calls and texts from Otis for the past half hour, so she turns it off, not reading or listening to any of his messages. She is employing her oldest and best defense—she is choosing not to care. The whales and waves of her noise machine sing to her. She is underwater, so deep the pressure would crush a normal human, but she is safe, boneless.
But just as she is drifting off to sleep, Erin hears something new, something close. Something real and here, not a recording, not an electronic buzz. A series of small taps at her second-floor window. A freak hailstorm? Kamikaze birds?
She opens the window and looks outside, hears rustling below, sees a shadowed figure in the shape of Otis Goldberg, arm raised in midthrow.
“Ow!” Erin says, rubbing her suddenly stinging forehead. “What was that?” These are the first words she’s spoken since Friday. Since Eric.
“Oh, crap,” Otis says. “Sorry. It was a rock.”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Why? How’d you know where my bedroom is?”
“Lucky guess. Can you let me in?”
“No,” Erin says. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Please.”
“Good-bye.”
“Erin, stop being difficult.”
“You’re the one throwing rocks at my head.”
“Dammit, Erin!” Otis shouts. “I just got my freaking ass kicked.” He fiddles with his phone, turns the flashlight on, and shines it on his face. He is bloody. His lip is cut. His right eye is swollen half closed.
Erin forgets everything she’s thought or felt or decided about Otis since Friday afternoon. She forgets about Amber. She forgets about silence. She even forgets about Eric. She’s not thinking about her parents, if they’re still awake, if they will hear. The only thing on her mind is how fast she can get downstairs to let Otis in, how fast she can get him safe in her room, how fast she can help him stop hurting.
Spot follows Erin downstairs and stands beside her as she opens the front door. Otis is leaning against the wall of the front porch, holding on to his side. Erin stands there, frozen, looking at him.
“What do I do?” she says.
“Help me.”
Erin takes one tentative step forward. One more. Spot nudges the back of her calf with his nose. She reaches out her hand and Otis takes it. She feels his warmth, his weight, as he puts his arm around her waist and leans on her. He flinches with each step as she guides him into the house and up the stairs. She wonders why this weight is scary but that of a heavy blanket is not.
“Don’t get blood on anything,” Erin says as she closes her bedroom door behind them.
Otis’s laugh quickly turns into a grimace. “Ouch,” he says. He unzips his jacket and pulls up the side of his T-shirt to inspect a bruise the size of his hand forming on his ribs. “Well, that doesn’t look good.” He collapses into Erin’s desk chair.
“Don’t move,” Erin says, and runs out of the room.
She returns with a pile of wet washcloths and enough first-aid supplies for a small hospital. Without saying anything, Erin sits on her bed facing Otis. With slow and gentle hands, she commences to wash his blood away. Spot follows her lead, licking Otis’s hand as it rests on his knee.
“Spot is a very empathetic dog,” Erin says.
“I can see that,” Otis says.
“Stop smiling,” Erin says. “It’s making your lip bleed more.”
“Are your parents going to hear us and freak out? Because I don’t think I can handle getting my ass kicked twice in one night.”
“Their bedroom is downstairs on the other side of the house,” Erin says. “So, we’re fine unless you start screaming at the top of your lungs.”
“Be gentle then.”
Erin notices that she feels strangely comfortable with Otis in her room. She likes being so close to his face. She likes dabbing it with hydrogen-peroxide-drenched cotton balls, likes soothing his little twitches with antibiotic gel and pressing Band-Aids on his warm skin. She likes the silence and the stillness of this touching, how it feels like they are talking even though no one except the noise-machine whales are saying anything.
“This is trippy music,” Otis says.
“It helps me relax,” Erin says.
“You’re pretty good at this. Have you thought about being a doctor?”
“Doctors have to talk to people.”
Erin leans back and admires her work. All cleaned up, Otis’s face is starting to resemble its usual symmetrical self again, at least as much as it can with a quarter of it swollen.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Erin says.
“I was wondering when you’d ask me that.”
“I was busy taking care of you.”
“Does that mean you care about me?” Otis says with a smile so big it makes both of them flinch.
“Stop smiling,” Erin says.
“Since you’re dying to know, I’ll tell you.”
But Erin doesn’t know if she wants him to. She’s enjoying this too much. This being with him in the silence. This bubble of stillness before the bad news.
“I went to the Quick Stop,” Otis begins. “I wasn’t thinking. It was like ten o’clock and I just finished writing that big paper for Ms. Eldridge’s class, and I was fiending for a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, which is like my favorite late-night snack. Do you like Honey Nut Cheerios?”