So, instead, I’m curled two spots away in a corner of a sofa that’s so capacious, it makes Ren’s look like a pin cushion. Nestled under blankets, I stare at the TV for the most part, crunching on popcorn and cursing these cramps.
“What do you feel keeps you from going?” I finally ask her.
She laughs emptily. “All of it. The crowds. The noise. The lights. Even the drive there. Traffic makes me claustrophobic. I hate just sitting there. I jumped out of the car and walked the final quarter mile the last time we were stuck in gridlock on the 405. Mom freaked.”
That makes me snort a laugh. “Eh. I don’t blame you.”
Ziggy glances my way, her sharp green eyes that I now recognize are twins of Ryder’s, spearing me. “How do you do it?” she asks.
I raise my eyebrows. I told Mrs. Bergman I’m on the spectrum. But I haven’t told Ziggy. Because she hasn’t told me. And I don’t want to pressure her.
“Do what?”
“You’re autistic,” she says matter-of-factly. “Like me.”
“Did Ren tell you?”
She nods. “Just like he told you about me.”
Touché.
Staring at her hands, she mutters, “He said you’re someone I could talk to if I wanted.”
“Well,” I say on a groan, as I shift on the couch and try to buy myself some comfort. “He’s right. I am. So, do you?”
Ziggy glances up, staring at the TV again. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think so. Other times, I don’t think I want to know.”
“Don’t want to know what?”
She shrugs. “The hard parts. The stuff that doesn’t get better. The past few years have sucked. I can’t imagine anticipating anything more challenging than this.”
Setting the bowl of popcorn between us, I peer at her. She’s rail thin. Curled up into herself. If she’s anything like I was at that age, she doesn’t eat regularly, and she’s chronically under-slept and anxious. Which has me deeply curious about what kind of support she’s getting. “Are you in therapy?”
“Talk therapy,” she says flatly. “I find it occasionally helpful. Mostly exhausting.”
“Other than talk therapy, are you in occupational therapy? Have you learned about sensory diets?”
She scrunches her nose. “Occupational therapy, no. But the guy mentioned it in talk therapy, maybe? I don’t remember. I zone out a lot when I go. I do it to please Mom and Dad. Because they’re worried about me.”
“Well, maybe he’s working you toward OT. That’s where you learn about how to take care of the stuff that’s hard to explain and draining to talk about. For example, sensory diets. Just like a dietician helps you figure out what your nutritional needs are, sensory diets are tailored for each individual person to keep your brain and body balanced and as peaceful as possible, at least until the outside world throws it all up in the air.”
Ziggy turns so that she’s angled slightly toward me. “What do you mean?”
I lift my fidget necklace. “I’m a fidgeter, always have been. My mom said she could have sworn I was going to get an ADHD diagnosis when she took me for my comprehensive eval. But here we are. I’m autistic. And I need sensory input to feel settled and calm. So, I sit on a big exercise ball—that way I can bounce and swivel and sway. I have a necklace that people don’t think twice about me playing with, and with it I can stim when I need to, without it drawing particular attention to me. I do yoga every morning and swim to burn energy, any activity that doesn’t hurt my joints.”
I flip the hem of my dress slacks. “French seams. No itchiness. Tag-less shirts.” I drum my fingers, wracking my brain. “What else… Oh, yeah. I usually wind down the day under a weighted blanket and my dog on top. But I’m sensory seeking, so maybe you wouldn’t like that. You seem sensory—”
“Avoidant,” she finishes, staring down at her ripped-up cuticles, and biting a nail. “Yes and no. It just needs to not catch me off guard, but I like hugs. From the right people. At the right time. I’m not a robot.”
“I didn’t say you were. But I understand feeling defensive about it. It’s a stereotype of autistics, that we’re these cold, emotionless shells, which isn’t true. We just feel differently. And often the case is that we actually feel so much, we have to compartmentalize it, funnel it into coping mechanisms that make it manageable.”
She sucks in a shaky breath. “You’re the first person who gets that.”
I try to sift through her meaning, which isn’t easy for me. I have a hunch she’s not just referring to fidget necklaces or how much talk therapy sucks when you’re tired of talking. I have a growing suspicion no one has really touched Ziggy since she had her breakdown and got diagnosed. I mean, I saw Ren hold her shoulder, gently touch her back, but has someone hugged her? Held her? Helped her contextualize these big, overwhelming, scary feelings and challenges, so she knows that they don’t have to consume her, that they don’t make her inhuman or broken, but that instead they prove her resilience, her capacity to heal and grow?
Loving touch reminds us of our humanity. Most everyone needs it, in some shape or form or timeframe. Sometimes, all we have to do is ask.
“When’s the last time someone hugged you, Ziggy?”
A tear slips down her cheek. Shit. I made Ren’s baby sister cry. He’s going to disown me and stop giving me great orgasms and never again make me Swedish food—
Chill, Francesca. Focus on Ziggy.
Another tear spills over, and she blinks away, staring at her hands in her lap.
“Ziggy,” I ask her quietly, “would it be okay if I hugged you right now?”
A small, eternal silence hangs in the room as tears spill faster and faster down her cheeks. I witness the weight of her grief, which I entirely recognize, and it clutches my chest in memory, twists my heart.
Ziggy wipes her nose with her sleeve, then nods, two slow dips of her chin.
Carefully, I set the popcorn aside and scoot closer to her on the couch, holding my arms open. I let Ziggy come to me. Because I know, from the way her brother opens his arms and lets me choose how and when I fall into them, what a world of difference it makes when someone doesn’t just tolerate you for where you are but embraces you for it.
Slowly, like a sapling cut and felled, she drops toward me, until her forehead lands on my shoulder, her cheeks wet with tears. The sobs start quietly. But they don’t stay that way. They build, a wave of buried emotion, finally surfacing. Pain. Confusion. Hopelessness. I feel them seeping out of her. I feel their echoes in my memory. Tears stain my cheeks as I carefully wrap an arm around her, rubbing her back in steady figure eights.
“You’re going to be okay, Ziggy. And while it might not be as soon as you’d like, you’re going to figure this out. You’re going to be happy again one day, I promise.”
Her sobs grow sharper, and suddenly she clutches her arms fiercely around me, a vise grip of bird bones and tenacity. “God, I hope so.”
“You will,” I whisper, laying my cheek to the top of her head. “I promise. And I don’t say that lightly. I promise, okay?”
I sway her in my arms, until her cries grow quiet. As I gently release her, she sits up, palming her eyes, and gives me a tentative, watery smile.