Princess Autism

4: Autism Saviour... Again

Content note: this chapter contains depictions of discrimination, including and not limited to ableism and queermisia, and a mention of abuse. Also, if food triggers you, there is a lot of food in the beginning of this chapter. Skip to the *** if you need to. If you struggle with anything to do with food, please get in contact with a person you trust and please try to get some help. Food is very important.

Rose meets up with her friends and siblings again at break. They buy some snacks in the break queue - Anuja some apple slices, Ela some elephant biscuits, Kip some kiwi, Rose some red pepper rolls, Shufen some sugar cookies and Tea some tomatoes. For all its faults, at least the food's pretty good.

"I love elephant biscuits," says Ela. "These ones are orange flavour."

Kip grins. "Orange flavour icing or biscuit?"

"Both, I think."

"Rose, are you okay?" says Anuja, in her usual, quiet tone. Rose knows she's referencing earlier in form.

"Yeah, my Ma was there," she replies. "I got so frustrated I had to leave his office."

"That man is gross," moans Tea, their hand going up to their forehead in exasperation and a mock headache. "He just don't like us. Mum says only meanies won't like us, with some... what the word?"

"Exceptions?" Rose suggesst. Tea clicks her fingers like Ma does when somebody reminds her of a law and nods.

"Yes, ex-zep-shan," they reply, their pronunciation a little off but close enough. "Mum said sometimes people just don't like people and there no reason why."

Anuja's apple slices crunch loudly as she bites into them. She awkwardly wipes at the juice that smears around her mouth, obviously embarrassed. Nobody is judging, though. They know that Anuja's fine motor skills are not the "standard", and that eating the way society expects her to is harder for her. Rose passes her a few wet wipes she keeps in her pockets, because she knows how sticky and annoying apple juice can be. 

"Hey," signs Shufen, pausing briefly to cram another bite of sugar cookie into her mouth. "Why do people not like us? They call us-"

"Because they don't like our disabilities," says Anuja, wiping her face with the wet wipes. 

"That makes them ableists, and I hate those sort of people. You know, in America, it's legal to pay a disabled person under minimum wage," grumbles Kip. He puts the kiwi skin in the bin. "I'm not afraid to cut off ties with discriminatory family members - 'blood's thicker than water'? Equality's thicker than blood, and, quite frankly, less scary." Kip grins.

***

Break ends and they begin towards their classes when Rose's phone makes the pretty chime noise it makes when she receives an email. Her phone doesn't normally go off during the day, but there's an unspoken rule of no phones at school. However, there's no actual, enforced rules around it, so she excuses herself from the group and runs into the bathroom. She locks herself in a cubicle, slams the seat down with her foot, hangs her backpack on the door's peg and sits down, opening her phone.

It's an email from an unfamiliar address, but the website name seems a little familiar - autismsaviour.org.uk - and it gives her a bad vibe. Still, it doesn't seem like it's spam, or she wouldn't have received a notification.

Opening up the email, Rose finds it's been sent to her campaign's official email, not to her personal or school emails. The emboldened subject reads: ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY - WE NEED YOUR HELP!

It now looks exactly like a typical spam email, but Rose still trusts her spam filter. It doesn't have any strange attachments, and it seems fairly safe. Scrolling past the subject, she opens up into the actual content of the email.

Dear Mrs. Hakim-Lewis,

We have been so interested to learn about your daughter's campaign. As you know, the video of her opening statement went viral quite fast on the internet, and we were very interested when we saw it. Unfortunately, this is the only email provided for her campaign, so we hope this must be your email as we all know people with autism are far too unintelligent to make such a large decision - it's a wonder she's managed to start such a campaign!

She deletes the email and sentences the email address to an eternal condemnation of ending up in her spam folder. Exasperated, she grabs her stuff and runs to class. 

She has English. She gets average grades in English, yet they still place her in the lowest set. Every neurotypical with average grades is in a higher set. She knows it's the same for all the disabled kids in the school - she#s seen other parents complain and get shut down by staff. 

"Miss Hakim-Lewis, you are late!" barks her teacher. Rose's last teacher didn't have control over her set, but they were so much kinder. This one tells off any disabled kid who walks through her door one second late, but never the non-disabled kid who walks through fifteen minutes late. Her double standards are glaringly obvious but she denies it - and the headmaster believes her (not that he'd do anything otherwise).

"By less than a minute," she retorts, not in the mood to take her crap. "You haven't even started the lesson yet." A girl Rose knows from photography is sat in her regular seat and looks up in surprise - Rose is not usually one for answering back - and she wonders where Anuja is.

"Excuse me?" sneers the teacher.

"I'm late by thirty seconds. Why is somebody sat in my seat?"

"There's been a set change."

This is a surprise. They never change the lower sets - only the top three. She must have moved up somehow. Does this have something to do with her mother's meeting earlier?

"Which room?"

"E41."

E41 is right at the top of the school. She's never heard of a class being taught up there, but she sighs and heads over to the staircase anyway (the school has no lifts). It's four flights of stairs from basement level but when she finally gets there she see that the lights are on in the classroom. She hasn't moved up a set - this is a different class altogether.

She opens the door and surprise greets her. Firstly, Anuja's here, which explains her disappearance from the regular room. Secondly, she's sat a computer with lines of coloured code in front of her. Thirdly, all the disabled sixth-form kids Rose knows are in this room.

"Rose!" calls Anuja. Rose grins, knowing her speech therapist would be impressed. She waves her over to a seat next to her and she sees the coloured code is just a screensaver, not an actual screen.

"Hey, Anuja," she says. She keeps my voice quieter than Anuja's loud call. "What's going on?"

"It's a class for disabled kids to do sensory activities," says Anuja, her voice quieter again. "At least that's what the sign on the whiteboard says. With that man in charge, who knows."

"Yeah," Rose agrees.

A teacher finally walks into the room. "Hello," she says. "My name is Miss Lerogue and I'm here to help you guys out with your studies, but using sensory activities. You guys ever heard of them?"

Most of them nod, and Miss Lerogue pulls out a huge plastic box from the cupboard. She has long white braids and pale skin. "This," she says, clicking the lid off the box, "are a whole bunch of sensory things. Please don't lose them, because I had to use my own money on these and I really can't afford to replace them." She pulls out some examples. There's twistable toys, squishies - which Rose hasn't seen since the late 2010s, so they must be pretty vintage - and small boxes of slime, another relic of the 2010s. It's been almost a decade since those were the greatest fads, and the only 2010 thing that's made a comeback recently is discrimination, apparently. Rose thought they'd left that behind in that decade, but apparently not.

"I don't think any of you guys will have seen these since you were seven," laughs Miss Lerogue, holding up the boxes of slime. "Remember to wash your hands after playing with it, though, you don't want to get slime all over your stuff, especially not your lunch."

Okay, so maybe this isn't going to be as bad as Rose thought. Maybe some progress is being made.