Chapter 15: 15: Of being Socially Inept and Physically Frail

15: Of being Socially Inept and Physically Frail

I was pretty sure that Ryder was angry.

I didn’t even know why, he was acting like his normal self: quiet, brooding, and a maybe he looked a little bit murderous at some angles. He kept sighing loudly from time to time on the drive to my house, and the sighing intensified when he caught a look at my face.

I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling that I was the cause of Ryder’s anger.

Too bad that I couldn’t really cook this idea inside my head. The way Ryder’s drive made me unable to really concentrate on anything else but the road. When I said ‘murderous’ before, I wasn’t lying. Driving at maximum speed and deliberately tailgating some cars before then making a sharp turn to outspeed them? That’s the kind of driving that had brought good people to the other dimension of the world.

I let out a screech when Ryder suddenly hit the brake. We had just been 5 cm away from into a collision with a Hummer.

5 cm. I’m not even making things up.

“Shit!” he cursed as the seatbelt sprung his body back to the seating. His breathing was audible and he curved his neck downwards, a long lane of busy cars speeding in front of us and hordes of angry people honking behind us.

I looked at Ryder. He rested his forehead on the steer, the backlight from the street lamps provided a lot of toning on his muscled body. If I were an artist, I would be having a muscle tick to draw him right in the moment.

But unfortunately, I was more worried about Quentin waking up in this godawful situation.

“Um, Ryder?” I asked him. “Ryder, can you please do the crazy madman drive again? Lots of people honking behind us.”

He exhaled really loudly. “Fine.”

He was driving again, and it was quiet and peaceful for a while. But Ryder then decided that he wouldn’t leave me alone now.

“Do you even have the slightest idea on what you’ve done to me?”

I tried to search for his eyes, anything to code me on what I was missing, but to no avail. He kept his sight on the road, his jaw twitched slightly in concentration as we were going on Murderous MPH. We were just talking at the party, and then I asked him to drive us home, and now he was mad at me?

This was beyond what my limited social skill had prepared me for.

Plus, the fact that I knew he was angry at me made my stomach churn. It was even worse than when he had kissed me. I felt much worse.

“Um… can you please… elaborate?”

“Really?” he looked incredulous. “April, fuck, are you honestly this dense? Or is it part of your femme-fatale scheming in which you toy with me and then completely crush me?”

His words made no sense like what Darwin’s theory made no sense to me.

“What?”

“For Christ’s sake,” Ryder was in the verge of screaming now. “I like you, okay? I. Like. You. Not in a friend way, in a way that makes me want to kiss you and… stuff. Well, now it’s supposed to be ‘I used to like you’, because you decided to play dumb on every single advances that I made and it really turns me off.”

“But I don’t play dumb-“

He turned his face towards me, and my mouth was clamped shut. We were in the middle of the street, lights blinking in and out, people talking and screaming with the utter urgency of our car stopping, and I was pretty sure that there would be lots and lots of people cursing at us.

And yet my whole attention was on Ryder’s eyes.

Had I told you how much his eyes spoke? He could tell millions and millions of things with a single look alone, something that not a lot of people could have perfected even if they practiced for years. Words and body language, I had no idea how they worked, but I came to learn to know about people from their gaze.

And Ryder’s eyes spoke volumes as they managed to hurt me and make me feel guilty at the same time.

“I-I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Good. It doesn’t make me feel any better, but yeah,” he said quietly.

“I have this… condition,” my mouth felt bitter just saying this out loud. “I mean, I’m a total fool when it comes to this social setting kind of thing.”

Ryder didn’t comment on anything. He didn’t even look like he was listening, which made it easier for me to continue.

“And I’ve never had a boyfriend. Or a boy that I like. Marcy and Corrine are the two closest people that I’ve got as friends, but even then, it’s clear that I can’t really connect to them outside of intellectual level.”

The car sped down, which meant that Ryder was taking this in. We were closing in to our neighborhood, but somehow I wanted to say everything there is to say before we got into the house. For some reasons, it felt like the moment we were out of the car, everything would be different.

“So you’re a fucking geek,” Ryder said. “It’s still pretty impossible for you to not know that I’ve been trying to say that I like you. At least respond, goddamn it. You can say ‘no’ instead of pretending that you’re not aware to of any of it.”

“But I don’t-“ words were stumbling on my tongue, things that I wanted to say were scattered all over the place. This was bad. This was bad. I needed to shut up before I made him mad again. “Pretty I am not. Weird I am. Better are other girls. Me you wouldn’t like.”

It was a myriad of clusterpoop.

“April?” Ryder stopped the car and looked at me with so much concern it embarassed the neurons out of me. “April, please stop crying.”

I’m crying?

“B-But I’m not… I’m not good. I have oily cheeks,” I sniffed. I wasn’t even sure if Ryder could catch my words.

“Your cheeks are fine,” Ryder said as he leant towards me. His right hand was in the middle of air, and he looked as if he contemplated whether to touch me or not.

“Can I touch you?”

In this condition? No. No. I was shaking all over because the crying took even more of a toll than I thought. My whole brain was a mess, and when I tried to look at his face, all I could see was blurred pictures. It wasn’t a nice condition. And I didn’t want to experience the flesh-eating monster gnawing on my stomach, because that was what he did to me whenever he touched me.

I hadn’t said ‘no’ to him, but he decided to take his hand back. I really appreciated this, because at this point, there was so much snot on my nose that I could have dirtied everything.

“April, did you really think that the kiss was for your mother?”

I nodded.

“Have it ever crossed to you that I actually want to kiss you? Not because I want it to be passed to someone else, but because it’s actually for you?”

I shook my head.

“My fucking God,” he inhaled deeply.

“But… but you said that it was for my mother, so I assumed that you wouldn’t want to do that to me.”

“It was like subtext, you know?” Ryder was scratching his head so furiously that I was afraid his scalp might bleed. “Other girls might have caught on easily.”

“Um, I have this condition,” I stuttered. “I mean, I didn’t know if it was the condition or just me being stupid, but it’s hard for me to recognize subtext.”

Ryder only looked at me.

“It’s called Asperger’s.”

Ryder’s face changed, confusion coloring his expression.

“It makes it harder for me to notice people’s emotions. Like, right now I know that you’re really upset and confused. And maybe you need to go to the toilet, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

And then, for the first time since we got into the car, Ryder broke into a smile. His eyes warmed, and finally the agonizing feelings that I had to endure subsided. “I do want to go to the toilet.”

“Good thing we live next doors. I clean my bathroom daily, but I know that it’s always best to do the business in your own bathroom.”

“No, it has to be in your bathroom.”

I blinked repeatedly. “Is that another subtext that I need to figure out?”

“It’s not subtext. I can’t go to my bathroom. I can’t enter my house,” Ryder let a pause linger in the air, before he dropped the bomb. “My father threw me out again.”

I was torn between wanting to know what the fight was about and willing myself to symphatize with him. I couldn’t do both at the same time, so I decided to fulfill my curiosity first. “Is this about breakfast again?”

For some reason, Ryder grinned, even though we were talking about his father throwing him out. “No. I went to the doctor to get some medications for my father. He refused to take it. And then I went batshit crazy and threw things around.”

I could already imagine how things were from Ryder’s story alone. Most of the time, Ryder was quiet, but when angered, he could be the best destroying machine anyone could ever find.

“And then he threw you out because you threw things around?”

“No. He found out that I used my college fund to buy his medication. And then it was his turn to threw things around before he threw me out.”

I smiled a little, despite the calamity of his situation.

“What?”

“You two really care for each other.”

It was a dark night and Ryder was looking somewhere else, but I could see a faint blush suffused on his skin.

-

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It took a while for Ryder and I to get Quentin out from the car, what with his dead-weight being close to Ryder’s weight, and almost twice as mine. Quentin was also the one who had the keys, so I had to grope his pockets and wallet, before then I remembered that he usually had the keys under his socks.

Let us take a moment to be grateful of our survival against Quentin’s smelly feet.

Both of my parents were out. It was a date-night they said, and it was only 9 o’clock because Quentin passed out way too early. We could be as loud as possible as both Ryder and I struggled to get my brother onto the stairs.

“I can’t believe that I’m doing this,” Ryder said. “I’m actually helping Quentin Hale’s drunk ass to get to home safely and then tuck him to bed.”

“You did make him drunk.”

“I planned to just leave him at the party and let one of his posse do it.”

“Quentin doesn’t have a posse,” I said. “Just people who like to kiss his butt to get what they want.”

There was another lip-tugging smile on his face. “Same difference, April.”

I didn’t know why, but looking at that smile made my whole body heat up uncomfortably.

After we were done putting Quentin on his bed (and me almost forgetting to say thank you), Ryder asked if he could use my bathroom. I let him, and I tried my best not to eavesdrop because I didn’t want to hear any disgusting sound. I changed my clothes and then rearranged the position of my teddy bears.

As soon as Ryder went out, he asked this to me: “So I've researched about it on my phone."

I was in the middle of conversing with Mr. Teddy #21, but I felt that I needed to attend to Ryder first. “Research about what?”

“Your… ah, condition.”

“Oh,” I said, somehow my grip on the plush toy stiffened.

"Basically, it means that you regard social interaction with other people as some kind of a second language, right?"

I nodded. “Also, mr. Simmons said that it was mild, and I would be able to overcome it when I grow up anyway.”

“Mr. Simmons?”

“The doctor.”

“So it must be hard for you then, dealing with me,” he said, leaning against the wall, staring at me intently.

“Yes,” I said as honestly as possible. Even right now, he was unknowingly doing bad things to my heart. It was almost impossible for me to talk to him in peace now, what with my heart one-sidedly decided that it would do taxing exercise whenever I talked to him.

“I’m sorry for calling you a ‘fucking geek’, you don’t deserve that,” Ryder said as he came closer to me.

I gripped Mr. Teddy #21 tighter. “Sure.”

“And can you let go of the doll?” he requested. I did as he said. “Now look at me,” he requested more. I did as he said.

Bad decision, April.

His eyes encaptured me in its complexity, a puzzle that I would never be able to solve.

“So you’re saying you don’t know how to make out of social interactions?” he asked me.

I nodded, because words died on my throat. I had never been in an eye-contact with Ryder for longer than a few seconds. This time, however, we looked at nothing but each other’s eyes as we spoke. There was something bizzare about this. Something so complex, so intricate that I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to construct it to mere words. All I knew that it was so intense. Far more intense that I’d used to.

“I’m just going to make it as clear as possible, okay?”

I nodded again.

“You’re pretty, you’re not weird, I can and will like you, and other girls are not better than you.”

Was it really possible for me to experience so much feelings and still carry on living?

The spluttering of things that I said on the car, he gave it all back to me. I gulped once, twice, and then before I knew, I slumped to the bed again because my knees gave out. I did try to read some novels about romance before, but I found it to be way to unrelateable because I couldn’t really experience the things that they did.

But right now I could literally feel everything that was cliche and those laughable idioms that I’d just read. It wasn’t even funny, it was more tortuous to be exact.

“T-T-Thank you.”

There was that smile again. “You’re not used to compliments.”

I shook my head. I was the girl who wasn’t smart enough or outgoing enough or anything enough. Aside from my parents, who would actually compliment me and my very ordinary doings?

Wait. Some bots on the internet did-

“Focus, April,” when I snapped out of it, Ryder was already beside me. I swear sometimes he moved like a ninja. “So now is it clear to you? My feelings?”

“You… like me,” I said, tasting the words on my mouth. It was weird, voicing that out. “You like me. In a boy-girl way.”

“So what do you think about it?”

“Um…”

He didn’t make it easier for me by looking at me the whole time. Things were starting to spiral out of control, my vision was blurry and I started hyperventilating. There was a stampede inside my chest, and before I knew it, I had dashed into the bathroom and threw my dinner out to the toilet.

I could hear Ryder asking faintly. “Too intense?”

“Too intense,” I managed to croak.

I went out from the bathroom feeling embarrassed and beffuddled. Ryder’s liking me made me feel zillions of things that were contradictory. Happy? Yes! Scared? Oh, yes. Flattered? My God Yes. Confused? Holy Sith Yes!

He looked at me with a slight smile on his face. “You’re so fucking cute, you know that?”

I was in the middle of shaking my head when he spoke again. “It’s a rhetoric question, you don’t need to answer it.”

“Oh, good. I feel so dizzy right now.”

“You want to go to sleep now?”

“Yeah,” I said, and then I looked at my DVDs collection and contemplated whether it was best to watch an episode or two.

“Right. So I will ask Billy or Keegan to pick me up here, then,” Ryder said.

“Okay.” I didn’t know if I should watch Sherlock or Big Bang Theory. Or there was this new DVD that I just bought…

“Billy was having a fight with his wife, though. Said that there was lots of knives and shit like that. Keegan’s trailer was not so far away from here, so maybe he’d take me.”

“Sure,” I tapped my finger on my chin, trying to concentrate on both what Ryder was saying and what kind of film that I should watch. I didn’t want anything too heavy because of all the emotional rollercoaster that I’d just gone through, but I also wanted something that could make me relive all of that again.

“Oh, fuck subtleties,” Ryder said suddenly. “Can I stay in your room? Again?”

Oh, the things I had to learn about him.

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So, there you go. Here's the elephant in the room. Asperger. I wish I didn't really need to shout it out, but I guess I wasn't good enough to portray it to you guys. I had been writing April in a way that I wished could show her case subtly. She has weird eating habits, she's used to repetition and can talk about things that are only of her interest. She's completely oblivious of social dramas and all that jazz. And then the films that she watches feature people with Asperger's too (or at least, socially inept) like Sheldon Cooper, Sherlock.

And I wished this chapter was more... lighter, you know? Funnier, but I guess with my current skills of writing, I stil couldn't achieve that yet.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the support that you've given me. And please don't reduce April to her illness (Edit: SORRY, not an illness, as many kind readers have pointed out. It's a condition). She's still a complete character, she's still that weird kid nobody can relate to, who's trying her best to overcome it all.

Peace out, everyone! <3

Demonicblackcat logging out.

(edit 18-8-2013: thanks a lot for being so understanding! :) )