Mcyt -autistic- oneshots

The mute kid (Callahan)

The request for this chapter was: My idea was Callahan is nonverbal autistic

Callahan's POV:

At school I was always known as the mute kid. Technically it's not true. I'm non-verbal, a completely non-verbal autistic person. I never have spoken and I never will. I communicate through grunts, moans and sighs, and now after having gone through a lot of occupational therapy I also sign and type. Apparently when you look at me, you can 'tell I'm autistic' whatever that means, so going out isn't one of my favourite things to do.

Because I was smart enough and was communicating with an iPad well enough at 11, my parents agreed to send me to a public middle school. That's where I first picked up the name of 'the mute kid'. It carried on when I reached high school, but it had become a more endearing term by that point.

When at middle school, I had an aide. She was a lovely lady and supported me so much. But by the time I got to high school, I didn't need as much help anymore. I had made friends with people who played video games in the school library, and they were all going to my high school with me (bar maybe one or two). So there was pretty much always one of them in every single one of my classes, and they would help with any issues.

I remember this one time where my iPad ran out of battery mid-lesson and I had forgotten my portable changer. My teacher decided to shout at me about it, saying it was irresponsible and I should have been better prepared. Of course I couldn't say much back, so I just sat quietly, smiling politely. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see someone recording the whole thing on their phone so I just kept myself calm. (The video was shown to school faculty and that teacher was fired the next week!)

Whilst this was all happening, I had remembered that a friend of mine called Stephen always kept a charged power pack on him. It was something about him wanting me to still be able to talk and hang out if we decided to go out after school. Oh, that's another story. Let me finish this story first.

Anyway, the teacher sent me outside, and instead of hanging about in the corridor, stood awkwardly with all my things and no voice, I walked around. I kind of knew which rooms Stephen had classes in and eventually found him in one of the music rooms.

"Hey Cal, what you doing out of a lesson?" I just pointed to my iPad and grunted lightly; my friends didn't  know any sign language but they were all very familiar with my own language. "Oh, d'you want my charger?" I nodded and took it from it, plugging it in. 

"Ah Callahan, why do you wait for it to charge a little and tell me what happened?" I looked up to see the music teacher Mr Nichols walk in. He had never taught me cause I was very bad at music, but he knew Stephen super well, and I had only heard good things about him. I nodded, and stared at my iPad screen, whilst Stephen pulled me up a chair.

My class only had about 10 minutes left by the time I could start talking again. "My iPad ran out of charge mid-class. My teacher shouted at me for being unprepared and then sent me out. I remembered Stephen kept a spare on him." I clicked the button for it to play aloud, and sat staring out the window as it did.

"Well it's great to see you and Stephen being such good friends. You can stay here for the rest of this class and I'll go see the principal about that situation when I get the chance."

"Thanks." I smirked at the stupid American voice as it played.

So end of that story, now onto that one about the evening we all went out. It started with a few of us agreeing to go watch a new film at the cinema, then we got McDonalds afterwards. Then we ended up in an empty parking lot, talking about a loads of games and stuff. Not forgetting that we put on a load of the old mario music and danced around for a bit. I can't imagine what it looked like to anyone watching the CCTV. And lastly we ended up at an ice cream place. That's when I had to borrow Stephen's power pack, because mine was completely drained. But you know, for a kid who grew up very lonely, having friends in high school, any way, shape or form: was amazing. And for the mute kid, I was well-known and well-liked around school. My parents and I never quite believed it.

Then again, to put it into perspective, my friends and I played a lot of video games. My favourite has always and will always be minecraft. It was a simple game and I grasped it quickly. For a while the only thing I did was creative builds that weren't any good. But then I learnt about minecraft servers. I'd play for hours and play with whoever I found. And that is how I found Dream.

I played with him once and assumed that like everyone else I wouldn't play with him again. But the next day he was there again, and we played again. Soon it became a regular thing, and we ended up messaging on discord even when we weren't playing minecraft together. Did I tell him I was non-verbal? No. Did I even tell him I was autistic? Yea, you guessed it: no. It's a rare chance that people get to know me before they get to know my disability, and I was basking in it. And anyway, I did tell him eventually, after he pestered to call with me so much. He took it super well and was understanding and we remained friends.

He started doing Youtube, made it big and you know the whole story from there. Of course I prefer to sit back and just do stuff with the server now, rather than actually play on it, but everyone on the server still gets introduced to me. It's better to do after Foolish joined and asked if I was actually mute. Everyone is understanding of me being autistic anyway, and they all respect the fact that I don't want everyone knowing and therefore don't talk. 

And Stephen and I met up the other day, now Covid is slowly calming down. College is going really well for him, and he's happy that I managed to find a job that I enjoy so much. I guess my favourite thing about my job is that my disability doesn't hold me back with it. My disability is a part of me and everyone makes jokes about it. I like to joke about it because I've became so fed up of people walking on eggshells around me, treating me like a little kid. At the end of the day, I'm the mute kid, I might as well accept it. And everyone else better do the same. When I finally decide to tell them of course.

Or rather, if I decide to tell them. That's always going to be my decision.

A/n Hey. Thank you so much for reading! I thought I'd surprise you with this which I managed to write when taking a break from revision. Thanks for all the support while I'm on break, it's really makes my day when I see the comments and votes. That being said, if you haven't already checked it out, my Wilbur Soot angst story is being published to throughout my break, and there is a new chapter right now. New chapters on that story, Monday's and Friday's.

How are you today? :)