Our Colours

7th Chapter: Rainbows

Alex followed Anouk and Sarah into the small house, where they were greeted by Sarah's fathers. They hugged everyone from the Rainbow Home, except for Alex, who didn't really like hugs.

While Sarah and Anouk chatted with them and introduced Iris, Alex made his way to the "quiet corner", where the main rule was that no one would talk to each other. Just for the children and teens who didn't like being talked to. Alex was one of those children. If he could, he would like to wear a t-shirt saying "Don't talk to me unless you're interested in a deep historical discussion, chemistry jokes or an exchange of facts about astronomy." But for now he would just sit in the quiet corner and read.

The disability meetigs took place in the house of Sarah's fathers. They offered the participants an escape room, the living room and the kitchen as rooms to linger around. Alex liked the house, except for the colourful decorations. They gave him the feeling of being at a child's birthday party and he hated birthday parties.

Alex watched his fellow flatmates walking (or rolling) around in the living room. Ruby sat down in the "quiet corner" to draw, Iris wrote down some stuff on a piece of paper (one of Sarah's fathers always made the newbies do that, as he liked calligraphy. He liked to figure out the personalities of the writer that way. A/N: this is actually a thing... pretty cool.), Mike and Connor sat down together somewhere and chatted a bit while listening to music (Alex wondered how they could do both things synonymously) and Clover listened to music alone on a sofa, where Iris joined her after a minute.

Alex liked observing his environment. There were details everywhere and analysing the behaviour of people was an interesting way of killing time.

Around five minutes later, two young girls entered the room, one with a rainbow scarf and rainbow varnished nails and the other one with a Ravenclaw pin on her shirt and a ponytail. Alex knew the rainbow girl, she had attended the meetings for quite some time now. Her name was Enfys, the other girl was unknown to Alex. Maybe a friend of Enfys that got dragged along.

Alex watched her talking to Sarah via her cellphone, maybe to introduce the friend. Sarah then offered them something to drink. Alex heard Enfys type "You should get a water filter, they save money", but didn't care in particular. It wasn't his duty to make sure no one died of drought.

Uninterested, he picked up his history book and continued reading about the Russian Revolution.

That was, until he got interrupted. The girl who was with Enfys stood before him and pointed to the history book. "What are you reading about?" She asked, staring at the golden letters of the book. Alex didn't know how to react and just stared at his book without reading anything.

This was the QUIET CORNER. No one was supposed to talk to him here. He wasn't prepared for this. What should he do? Answer her question and start an unwanted conversation? Or tell her off?
He clenched his fingers tighter around the book and rubbed the book cover.

"Um... Th-this is... eh... y-you can't... speak here..." He stuttered, feeling awkward. The girl tilted her head a bit. "Why?" Alex' throat was dry, he didn't know what to say and whatever he would habe to say would be very long. He didn't want any conversations.

Luckily, Enfys came to his help. She pulled her friend out of the quiet corner and typed into her text-to-speech app. "Alice, that is the quiet corner. You go there if you don't want anyone to talk to you because there it is forbidden to talk to anyone." Alex registered that the girls' name was probably Alice.

Alice started swaying one hand around nervously. "Oh, I didn't know that... did I do something wrong? What do I do now?" Enfys calmed her down. "It's okay, a lot of people make that mistake at the beginning. We didn't have time to explain it to you yet."

Alex lost interest in their conversation and continued reading his book, trying to blend out the rest (unsuccessfully). Maybe, if he had headphones, fewer people would talk to him and he wouldn't hear all the noises from the outside world.

He decided to focus back on his book and silently read an interesting paragraph about a Russian general. While doing so, he registered some more people entering the room from the corner of his eye. One girl, Zoe, came to him into the quiet corner, sat down and started reading a psychology book. Some boys started playing with Lego (Alex just hoped they didn't leave any lego pieces. Stepping on them sucked).

After some more minutes, Anouk called everyone to the couch, there was enough room for everyone. Alex put his book aside and followed the others to the couch.

When everyone was sat down, Anouk smiled and looked at Alice and Iris. "Well, since we apparently have two newbies, how about a little introduction?" Alex sighed. He had listened to that so often he could already name everyone's names plus their disabilities and special interests.

Alice started talking: "My name is Alice and I'm autistic. I've had the diagnosis for a few weeks by now and my special interest is history. Also I like Disney... don't judge."

Alex didn't judge. Disney was what brought him to his special interest.

He quietly listened to everyone else's introduction while he stared at the grey wall that was decorated with some plants on wooden shelves. Alex didn't know much about plants, but it looked pretty classy.

He continued staring around and observed small details on each person. Alice had earrings with some kind of emblem on them. One boy, Leo, wore a bracelet with the colours for asexuality. Enfys had a small scar on her left cheek. Iris had freckles.

Suddenly, a finger poked into his left shoulder. "Alex, it's your turn." Alex recognized Mike's voice.

"Oh, alright... I'm Alexander, but Alex is enough. I'm interested in history, especially the American Revolution... also I love astronomy."

Apparently he was last to say something. Anouk nodded and Sarah joined in. "Do you have something you'd like to talk about?" She asked, holding a squishy ball in her hand. The rule was that only the person who holds the ball was allowed to talk.

Sometimes, Alex said he wanted to talk about something, even if he absolutely wasn't bothered by that, just to hold the nice squishy ball. But today he didn't feel like it.

Connor was the first one to catch the ball.

"I'd like to bring a friend from school with me, if that's okay. She has some anxiety issues, paranoia and a heart condition and she would probably really like it here."

He threw the ball back to Sarah, who answered his question. "It's really nice that you made a friend, Connor! Of course she can come over. Do we have to take some more special measures?"

Connor caught the ball again (though this time he nearly lost it again). "I don't think so. She's just constantly checking for bugs, and by bugs I mean cameras or something like that. She doesn't feel safe when they're around, so maybe try to avoid places where cameras might be hidden."

Sarah noted it down and smiled. "Thanks Connor! We're looking forward to having her here. Anyone else?"

Yeah, I made a timeskip to the weekend. Didn't want to stretch things out too much.
Everyone, welcome Enfys, a character dedicated to LotusWaterlily , Alice, dedicated to MissTabbiiCat and Zoe, dedicated to Sherlockwoodandco.
I hope you like the new guys! :D (was a joy to write all of them.)
Now, I have planned to write Mike's point of view for the next chapter and I think he should make some more music with Iris, so I'd like to insert a cover of a song there (by me, welp... It's going to be horrible. I don't have a mic and therefore the audio quality will be rubbish. But hey, where else would I get my audio from.). Eh. So, which song would you like to hear? Please regard that Iris cannot rap or do a heavy metal voice. She might be able to do Evanescence, Imagine Dragons, Oasis, All Time Low, Green Day, blink-182, Marina and the Diamonds and stuff in that direction. If her voice isn't perfect, regard the fact that she is no professional and didn't get any singing training as her parents didn't care about her special interest very much.
LifeIsCheesecake pretty please don't mock me with that in school, kay kay? Pleeeeease D:
That was the long paragraph for now! I just hope that there won't be a chapter in which the paragraph is longer than the story. Gee.