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“You were going to give yourself a concussion,” Felicity protests through tears.

“Get off.”

They don’t move. Like they’re helping somehow, and I’m not understanding. Fine. I wrench my hands out of their grip, shove them, kick backward across the floor until I hit Ms. Penny’s desk. Felicity thumps helplessly onto the tile.

“Sorry,” Felicity says. “I’m sorry.”

The only coherent thought I can put together is that I look pathetic. That I’m weak, and need to get my shit together, now. I beat my hand against my chest once, twice, three times, enough to feel the pain and pressure and get everything right again. Felicity winces with every hit.

Get up.

I grab Ms. Penny’s desk. Struggle to my feet. Snatch a box of tissues lying sideways beside her computer and wipe the snot off my face.

“Are you okay?” Felicity asks.

Take a wild fucking guess.

Slowly, Felicity gets off the floor and casts their gaze around the destroyed office. Ms. Penny’s ruined desk. The absolute wreck they made of this place.

“Hey,” they say. They pick their way to Mrs. Brewster’s workspace, grab a mint from her candy bowl, and unwrap it with a bit of struggle. “Do—do you like mints?”

“Are you recording right now?” I manage.

“No. I’m not. I—I swear.” They wipe their face, waiting for some kind of response from me, and when they don’t get it, they get their phone out of their pocket, open it, show me the screen. “See? Nothing.”

I say, “I don’t like mint.”

“Neither do I. Even better.” They pop it in their mouth and unwrap another. “Here.”

Felicity presses the Life Saver into my hand. My knee-jerk reaction—fuck you and flinging it onto the ground—is so childish it makes me ill. So I eat it.

It tastes awful. The menthol feeling sucks.

“I, um,” Felicity says, “usually keep a tin of mints with me. Helps distract me for a second if things get bad.” They make an attempt at a smile. “Doesn’t always work, but. You know. Cold shower, eating ice, biting a lemon. Sometimes it resets stuff upstairs.”

I don’t respond to that. Just chew through the mint so it goes away faster. I can’t look at them, so I stare at the floor.

“Are …” Felicity starts again, a little muffled since their mouth is full. The candy clinks against their teeth. “Are you okay? What happened? Why are you—”

“Shut up.”

We finish the mints.

Getting an autism diagnosis didn’t make Mom more understanding of the things about me she didn’t like: my lack of interest in others, my unappealing habits, my limited tolerance for much of anything. Honestly, it made her worse. Before a specialist wrote up that report, sketching out my existence as a list of developmental deficiencies—made more damning, I presume, by what Dad was showing me in that penthouse—Mom assumed I was unattractively odd and I’d grow out of it with enough prodding and criticism.

But the word autism suddenly meant that it was medical, and she would be lauded for doing everything she could to give me the “best shot,” no matter what form that took.

I’m not going to say it’s the worst thing she’s ever done. Far from it. I actually liked my speech-language pathologist in elementary school—dedicated time to study the intricacies of conversation and body language was helpful—and I don’t hurt myself nearly as much as I used to. But in the end, Mom taught me to obsessively study the people around me, compulsively mimic what I saw, and then call myself a worthless piece of shit when I inevitably failed because I was never actually going to manage for long.

Sometimes I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, and ask—am I actually autistic, or did my parents never teach me how to be a person? Did Dad ruin me so early, so totally, that my brain failed to develop properly? Checking the lock on my bedroom door five times a night isn’t a symptom. Neither is wanting to hurt people, and neither is whatever made Alyssa call me a heartless psychopath last year.

Does it matter, if it’s a good enough word for this? If, when I’m on the floor sobbing, it gets the point across?

Felicity doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. I just turn to Ms. Penny’s desk, survey the havoc, and start picking papers off the floor.

“Oh,” Felicity says quietly, and begins to help.

Tissues back in their spot. Chair upright. Clicking binders shut, making educated guesses about where everything goes, setting the mug of pens right side up. And once the reception area looks good enough, we go to the counselor’s office. Sorting papers and trying to put them in what might be the correct spot.