The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 29

Scott and his older brother, Caleb, glanced up when Lizzie entered the apartment. She barged past them without making eye contact and wove her way through an obstacle course of half-filled cardboard boxes. 

"Hey, hi. Make yourself at home," Caleb said. Scott gave his older brother a disapproving nudge.

In the kitchen, Lizzie found their mother on her knees packing a box.

"Oh, hi, Lizzie," Nikki said. "I didn't hear you come in."

"I didn't mean to make you sad."

"What?"

"I said you interrupted me and maybe it sounded mean and that's probably what made you sad."

"It's okay. Really. Don't worry about it. I'm not sad."

The boys entered the kitchen.

"I'm on the spectrum," Lizzie said matter-of-factly.

Her admission detonated an uncomfortable pause with a wide blast radius.

"I see," Nikki said with a wide smile. She gestured to the open cabinets. "Is there anything here that you might want?"

Lizzie scanned the small collection of chipped dishes, stained coffee mugs, and mismatched drinking glasses.

Nikki said, "We're going to throw away a lot of this stuff, but if you want something, you can just take it."

No response from Lizzie.

Nikki prompted, "Maybe a coffee mug?"

"Oh, geez. I don't drink coffee," said Lizzie. "It tastes like hot dirt."

The boys laughed.

"I don't like coffee, either," said Scott.

"There's a bicycle in the bedroom," Nikki said. "Did you ever see my dad ride it?" 

Lizzie shook her head no.

Nikki said, "Would you like it? The bike?"

"I don't know how to drive a bicycle," said Lizzie. She felt her pulse quicken at the thought of attempting to ride. She was uncoordinated and failed miserably at any form of athletics. She wasn't stupid and she wasn't fragile. She understood games like baseball, soccer, and badminton but her arms and legs simply wouldn't follow her brain's directions. To compound matters, she had poor balance and was sometimes dizzy. And so, the prospect of riding along on a two-wheeled machine that required balance and coordination was frightening. Nothing good could come of it. Riding a bike was on Lizzie's list of things she never wanted to do, which included bouncing on (and falling off of) a trampoline, having a tooth pulled, and going to a funeral parlor where a dead person lay in an open casket.

She glanced around, suddenly disoriented by the stacks of objects on the kitchen counters and on the floor. This didn't look like Mr. Gibbs' apartment and for a moment, Lizzie felt lost as though she'd wandered into a strange environment. The familiar had become unfamiliar and the swell of anxiety ballooned in her chest, especially with three sets of eyes on her.

She squeezed past the boys in the doorway, crossed the living room, and found relief in the hallway outside the apartment. She knew the squeaky wooden floor, she recognized the handprinted walls badly in need of a coat of paint, and she found comfort in the faint aroma of Ms. Brennan's pecan putters.

She took refuge on the fifth step, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her sneakers bouncing ever so slightly on the stair.

Scott appeared in the doorway of his grandfather's apartment. "Hey," he said softly. "Are you okay?"

Lizzie glanced over her shoulder and discovered kind eyes looking back at her.

"I get panic attacks," he said.

"I didn't have a panic attack," she replied sternly.

"I mean I know how that feels when you feel anxious and it won't go away." He noticed the toe of her sneaker tapping against the floor. "I got a prescription. Sometimes the pills help but a lot of time they don't work."

"I don't take pills," she said.

"That's good." He turned and peered into the apartment and then back at Lizzie. He cleared his throat. "Well," he said, "I gotta get back to work. We're just gonna leave the door open. So come back in. I mean if you feel like it."

"Scooter," she said.

"Scott." He corrected her.

"Could you stay out here for another minute?"

She wasn't good at reading faces but Scooter's face seemed to say, "Oh, no." She wished she hadn't asked that question right up until he said, "If you want."

"We don't have to be friends or anything like that. But could you just wait one more minute?"

"Sure," he said. "I'd like to be friends."

"With me?"

He nodded.

"Oh, geez. I'm a really weird kid," she said.

"I'm a weird kid, too." He smiled.

"No, I mean really, really, really weird."

"You don't seem so weird to me."

"I think you're the first person who ever said that."

She wasn't one of those kids who thought, "Someday I'm gonna be normal." Lizzie knew better than that and she wasn't so sure normal was a healthy goal to set for herself.

"I was thinking about what you said in there." His grin broke into a soft laugh. "Coffee does taste like hot dirt. I mean, that's a super weird thing to say but it's so true."

She felt a smile draw her lips apart.

His brother called, "Hey, Scooter boy. We got work to do, you know?"

"I gotta go," he said to Lizzie. "If you wanna come in, the door's open, so..."

"I just need a minute," she said and watched him retreat into his grandfather's apartment.