“If only someone had seen this coming,” she says, going for the jugular in her Amber way.
Bright red anger spatters across the floor of my soul. “Goddammit, Amber! Would it kill you to take my side for once?”
“Language,” she snaps, looking over her shoulder. “Eleanor, bunny, you can play Minecraft. Go find the iPad, okay?”
Eleanor drifts reluctantly down the hall, eyes big. She’s not fooled by the grown-ups sending her away when things are gettingexciting, but she’s six. Illicit screen time beats forbidden eavesdropping, hands down.
Amber sighs, massaging the bridge of her nose. “I hate to say this. But the best thing for you would be to stay at the job you have now.”
“What? Iwon,Amber. Why would I say no to a promotion I worked years to earn?” I don’t have to fight with her about this. But the compulsion to make my sistersee meoverrides common sense.
Her skin reddens under her eyes, just like mine does when I’m upset and struggling to be heard. How can we be so alike, yet she doesn’t understand me at all?
“Remember when you followed me into debate club, and choir, and Model UN, and ended up hating them but you were too stubborn to quit? What if you chased this for the wrong reasons and you burn out doing a job you hate, but won’t leave? And maybe…”
Whatever she’s holding back, it’s so much more awful than what she’s already said that she has to steel herself before unleashing it.
“Don’t say it, Amber.” I’m back in that hotel bathroom on my wedding day, afraid to listen, afraid not to.
“Maybe you’re not the best judge of what’s good for y—”
“Don’t.Not again.”
“Stop avoiding the truth, Liz! Some jobs aren’t right for au—”
She cuts herself off hard, her expression melting into guilty uncertainty: Did I hear what she didn’t quite say?
I did.
Tumblers fall into place with a boom like thousand-pound doors blowing open. The sledgehammer beat of my heart is the only thing connecting me to my body. All I can hear is high, tinny ringing and the hundreds of times she’s said,You’re so much like Eleanor.
“Forautisticpeople.”
Everything about me pulls into painfully sharp focus through Amber’s lens. The awkwardness. The sensitivity to rejection. The failure to pick up on unspoken cues.
And the loyalty, persistence, focus, and sense of justice. The ability to think in a way not everybody can, the talent for seeing things from a different perspective. Avaluableperspective.
And now I have a word for it. Like what Stellar said at our movie night, about her coworker—I can use this knowledge to build bridges between me and people who might not otherwise understand how I work and what I need.
I’m the same person I was five minutes ago. Everything I believed about myself when I thought I was an anxious introvert is still true. In a way, this doesn’t change anything.
And yet, it changes everything.
“Thisis why,” I say, astonished. “You think I’m like Eleanor. You didn’t want me to do hard things becausesheneeds to minimize stress and disruption. You’re Tobin’s biggest fan because he’d never leave me the way Mark left you two.”
“Yes!” she says, her eyes pinning me with a forceful kind of hope. “You don’t need to put yourself in risky situations. You can be happy with what you have, with the people who understand you. You fithere,Liz. With your family.”
Disappointment takes a couple of breaths to stop squeezing me too tightly to talk.
“That wouldn’t be a bad life.IfI wanted it. But Amber, I’m tired of making sensible progress toward my sensible targets. Fuck targets! I want to chase my dreams!”
“Can you get over your stubbornnessonetime, Liz? Once. For Eleanor. What will she learn, watching you beat yourself up with this endless trying?” She glances toward Eleanor’s room, her fear radiating toward her daughter. Toward me.
“I hope she’ll learn I’m brave,” I say, my voice raw.
“And what if you burn out being brave? What if you keep melting down at work?”
A wild laugh bubbles up. “Everybody melts down. You’ve done it yourself. At mywedding.”
