Alicia’s fear of talking in tuition coupled with Zack’s quiet nature made pin-drop silence. The silence made for such a painful hour that, for the first time, Zack started the conversation.
“About your confession… Let’s just give it more time, and then we’ll see how things go. Okay?”
Give what more time? How much time? How could she see how things (whatever that referred to) went? She nodded.
“But thanks.” He curled his lips upwards. “And if you wanna see my sketches, you can just ask.”
She nodded again.
The pin-drop silence returned. After she finished the worksheet and passed it to him, it was her turn to start. “I want to see your sketches.”
He slid his notebook to her.
It obliterated Kat’s fantasies. Zack wasn’t drawing her. So, who was it? She wanted to ask, but stopped herself. Zack had already gave her the look.
It was time to switch subjects. Zack swapped assessment books from his bag. As he bent over to do so, a breeze lifted his shirt up, revealing a line of red underneath it.
“How did you bruise your back?” Her mother always touched her injuries to ensure it hurt, and rinsed it with water before applying the plaster. Alicia felt compelled to do the same.
“Huh! What?” Zack exclaimed for the first time, “Nothing. I fell down during badminton training. It’s nothing.”
“It looks more like a cut.” Alicia followed her compulsion and rested her pointer on it. Zack yelped, almost falling off his chair.
“Don’t touch me!” He stared at her finger like it was a cockroach.
“I’m sorry. I won’t.” She kept her hands back to her sides.
Zack took a second to reboot himself, resetting his voice to its default setting of monotonous, “Do your work.”
On paper, her June holidays have started. But in theory, it wouldn’t for another week. The teachers wanted their cake and eat it too. They wanted students to use their break to recharge (so more studying could be done), and expected them to use their break to study (so more studying could be done).
The irony flew over their heads.
Mrs Fei especially, whom on the first day of their holidays, opened her remedial class with, “Now that you’ve had plenty of time to relax, it’s time to get back to your studies and revise for O’Levels.”
In the unofficial teachers’ ranking amongst the class, Mrs Fei came dead last. Yes, she ranked worse than the ex-sergeant who made them run 2.4s in the carpark.
No one ever paid attention to her ‘teaching’. Those who did understood lesser about Maths. Mrs Fei’s ‘teaching’ sounded more akin to a detective who had just cracked the case. The whiteboard held all the post-its, and in her hands was the yarn she needed to connect everything together. Once she did, she chanted her mantra, “In Maths, everything is connected. Don’t you see, class?”
The class did not see it.
Alicia and Kat sat at the back, playing Cyber-Strikers in secret. They had to stifle their stims, and their instincts to celebrate whenever one landed a headshot. Despite their efforts, they still let out a gasp that caught Mrs Fei’s attention.
At which point they activated a lockdown protocol: stuff the phones inside their shirts, and answer Mrs Fei’s question to throw her off the scent. It worked like a charm.
A common trend in Alicia’s research into autism was discovering the right words to describe some abstract feeling she felt her whole life. ‘Stimming’ described the urge to flap her hands. ‘Meltdown’ described how she’d get so overwhelmed that she punched her own head. ‘Taking things literally’ described how she didn’t understand why she didn’t understand others at times.
The most recent word she found was ‘masking’. The discomfort she felt when stopping herself from doing… whatever, because it evoked the look from others.
“Fuck that!” Kat spat in response, “Fuck other people. Just do what you want! Don’t let anyone tell you who Alicia is or isn’t supposed to be.”
F that! If the school counsellor had this on the walls, Alicia would’ve liked her more. With the surge of adrenaline, she looked inwards for the desires she stopped, censored, and prevented. Amongst them, she picked one, and forced herself to perform it.
During their break (Yes, Mrs Fei’s remedial was so long it required a break), Alicia shifted her chair to the crowd beside them, also playing Cyber-Strikers, and introduced herself.
“May I play Cyber-Strikers with you? I play the Sniper class and have reached the maximum level for the sniper rifle. I can kill everything with one bullet.”
They gave her the look, but right before she conceded, their look changed. She couldn’t find the words to describe this change, but she knew it was positive. The circle of chairs opened up for her.
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“Can my friend Kat come play too? She uses the Mechanic.”
Another spot opened. She joined their match and fought in teams of five. Whenever she scored a kill, she had to brace herself to endure a split second of dissonant chaos as the circle cheered, and soothe herself afterwards with a few deep breaths.
Air became weightless again.
When Mrs Fei returned, everyone rushed back to their seats in the back corner, still as tight-knit as they were before. Alicia and Kat sat a table next to them, eavesdropping. She had much to say to them in her head: thanking them for giving her and Kat a chance, bragging about her stellar aim, sharing the hidden corners of the map she discovered that made the perfect sniper’s nest…
Above all, she wanted more second opinions on her terrible mother.
The reflex to stop herself flared up like a rash. But she fought the urge to scratch, endured the itch, and forced herself to do the opposite. Dragging a reluctant Kat along, she sat beside them and eavesdropped.
Now what? She whispered to Kat for help, “How do I talk to them?”
“I don’t know! Why ask me? Why are we even sitting here?”
“I want to stop masking!”
“Huh?”
She played the only card she knew, Cyber-Strikers, and shared the hidden corners she discovered: on the Cruise map, one could access the control deck by jumping on their teammates, and set up a sniper’s nest there.
The circle remained closed this time. Why didn’t it work? She reverted to eavesdropping whilst pretending to do her worksheet. The universe then offered her an olive branch. Faizah began venting about her strict Malay parents.
Alicia waited for an opening.
William went after Faizah, sharing the time his father whooped him with a belt. It made Alicia wince teeth. Pav went next, dissing the favoured sibling in his family. Then, a pause. An opening.
“My mother brought me to a motel filled with drug dealers and wanted to leave me there alone.”
The circle opened. All eyes were on her, heads craned forward. She recounted her triumphant escape, followed by her meltdown, and the one word she will never forget: anymore.
“I hate my mother.” She ended.
“Yeah, I get that,” William answered, “But, she’s still your mother. She gave birth to you.”
“That’s what the school counsellor said.” She frowned.
“It’s not like you can do anything, anyway.” Faizah went next. “They pay for your food, your school, your clothes.”
“Is there really nothing I can do?”
On one hand, she despaired over her mother. On the other, she rejoiced over the successful group conversation with her classmates. She was unsure of which emotion to express.
“They don’t mean to do these things that hurt us. They just don’t know any better. Our parents are from a different generation.” Pav went last.
Everyone learnt from one another than from Mrs Fei.
The circle dispersed to collect their revision papers. Mrs Fei wanted to do a mock exam.
Zack, the robot, morphed into a human. Or rather, revealed that he was one all along. She traded a completed worksheet for his notebook without words and gorged the visual feast on these pages. For the appetiser, she filled the blanks of the incomplete sketches in her mind. For the main course, she imagined the rich inner lives of the sketches, and noticed that most of his sketches were of girls. For dessert, she asked him to teach her, and he obliged.
She placed pencil to paper and did as told: Draw a circle. It came out crooked. She redrew it. Crooked. Zack took over, holding her hand as if it was part of the pencil, drawing a perfect circle in one confident stroke.
His hands were soft like clouds. Firm, too. Her other hand flapped.
Next, she drew a longer oval around the circle, and criss-crossed the shape with several lines at halves, thirds, and fifths. After Zack made minor corrections, he explained the purpose of this exercise.
It was a template for a face. Across the first horizontal line were the eyes. Second, the nose Below the third, the lip.
Seeing the human face divided by a grid satisfied a primal need for organisation.
She asked about his back injury, but he deflected, and plastered his back to the chair. The rash flared up again, but she fought it, and did the opposite. She asked him about her mother.
After processing the story, Zack had this to say, “You’re right. It’s not your fault, it’s your mother’s. Don’t blame yourself for it.”
He understood.
“I agree.”
“Good… You don’t deserve it. Hang in there, it’ll get better over time as you grow older.”
“Does it?”
Zack sounded unconvinced. “Yeah. Because you become bigger and more independent while your mother grows older. She’ll stop… one day.”
A silence followed.
“How long do I have to wait?”
He shrugged.
“What if she does something worse…” She leaned back in her chair. This hadn’t crossed her mind until she heard William’s story. His own father, with a belt.
Parents could do that to their children?
“I don’t know. All I know is to not blame yourself for it.”
Easier said than done.
Alicia only had a half-baked solution to this. Dad. He didn’t ditch her at Motel 91, and he would never beat her. Never. The social media trail went cold today. It was impossible to research every Friend of a Friend of a Friend with equal thoroughness. So, she eliminated other leads first.
The first lead was the news articles written about the school. There were several documenting the awards they’ve won over the decades. In the digital age, these articles had a comments section at the bottom. Dad might’ve left a comment.
He didn’t.
The second lead was on the school’s website. One of the tabs led to student testimonials, where students reflected their experience in school. All of them were five-stars. Dad might’ve written one.
He didn’t.
The third lead were the online forums and discussions surrounding the school across the net. From these discussions, Alicia learnt the truth about this school. They gave worthless diplomas. They bred elitist students. They were inefficient. Dad might’ve joined in.
He did!
A comment left under a post that complained about the school’s lack of facilities read:
‘My girlfriend’s friend always complained about the microscopes in Lab 4.’
Her mother was the girlfriend. Her mother’s friend was Dr Wang. Dr Wang studied medicine, a field of science which required the use of microscopes.
She searched his name and found his social media. Chinese, the right age, an avid photographer, and a home-chef. Single, with a corgi. She sent him a text and went to sleep.
But she couldn’t. Instead, she laid wide awake brainstorming the perfect letter to send him, after verifying his true identity. She couldn’t find the right words to say. There were no right words to say.
There were too many words to say.