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Isadora had grown up with music. She did not love it so much as she consumed it, fed on it, and pushed herself into it until there was no longer any distinction between her and the sound of her piano. Music was her inheritance, her obsession, her protection.
Growing up, to suggest that another person might play or sing “better” was laughable, and, in her young mind, almost insulting. No one could outdo her, because no one else was her. Music belonged to her.
Her mornings were always the same. She made oatmeal, which had to be prepared in exactly the same way, or else the day was ruined before it began. Isadora would search for her spoon, which was either in the sink or in the drawer, never anywhere else. There was only one spoon, though it was not a regular spoon. It was slightly heavy, with a warp in the handle from years of use. The spoon fit her mouth in a way no other did, and she wouldn’t risk ruining that perfection by using another.
The oatmeal was always scooped into a Garfield bowl. She had seven in total, most with a scrubbed-off ear or eye in the design, but otherwise intact. There was one for every day of the week, until the stack dwindled and her parents, or eventually she herself, had to wash them. She had owned the set for as long as she could remember. Each orange cartoon face was adored equally, though she wouldn’t deny that she favoured the one with both eyes and ears fully visible.
Garfield was not just a character she liked or gravitated toward. He had been her companion since childhood. She had memorized everything she could about him, repeated what she could to herself while playing with her toys, and even kept plushies of him in her bed until there was no room for her to sleep.
The meal itself was also the same, aside from the oats. She would peel a banana, mash it into the bowl until the fruit turned to paste, and make sure the consistency was just right, neither too lumpy nor too fluid. She sprinkled in cinnamon and just a pinch of ginger, which stung slightly on her tongue but not so much as to overwhelm her.
A cup of tea was brewed alongside the meal, either raspberry or blueberry. This was her law. To tamper with it, to substitute a spoon, to find the bowls unwashed, or to discover the bananas had gone brown would lead to a catastrophe.
She would sooner go hungry than eat wrong, and she had gone hungry before. She would thrash, wail, hurl herself into a tantrum with no regard for age or dignity.
At two she had done it. At ten she had done it. She doubted her forties would differ.
The devotion to one spoon, seven bowls, a cartoon cat, mashed bananas, cinnamon and ginger, and tea was only the beginning of her day. It was just breakfast.
For Isadora, every detail mattered. Every repetition held a place in her heart.
Winter meant little to Isadora. Where others bundled themselves in scarves and gloves, with knitted hats or oversized coats, she went out barehanded, her curly hair loose, her shoulders uncovered, and no gloves in sight.
She did not notice the wind on her cheeks or the numbness in her fingers.
Cold existed only as an idea to her, not a sensation. When she happened to look down and see the frostbite spreading across her skin, she would only then realize something had gone wrong.
All pain functioned the same way. If she hit the edge of a table, she would not shout or grab her side like most people did. She moved on, until later, sometimes hours later, sometimes the next morning, when a dark bruise appeared.
If someone were to pull on her copper hair, she might jump because she saw the movement, not because she felt the tug. If she grabbed the kettle, she might jerk away on instinct, but she wouldn’t be alarmed until the damage was visible.
She trusted her eyes before she trusted her nerves.
At school, her need for sameness was as pronounced as her indifference to pain. She sat in one chosen spot, the desk that became hers by law in her mind. If another child sat in it before she got to class, she got upset. The spot made her feel secure, though there was no particular reason why.
She used the same brand of pencil, the same bag, the same notebook.
Teachers, too, were sorted in her personal hierarchy. She attached herself to those whose methods or voices suited her.
If her schedule shifted so that her lunch period no longer aligned with her needs, if the timing was wrong, the noise too much, or the familiarity gone, she would refuse to go. Entire days of school were lost because one part of her routine broke.
She sat in the same seat on the bus each morning and looked out the same window view. Any other seat was an automatic no.
Her freedom, as she called it, was in these repetitions. Others thought her routine was a cage, but to Isadora it was perfectly fine.
Sometimes they told her she was weird, not bothering to make it too complicated of an insult for her to understand. Sometimes they used the word autistic, and even she recognized the tone of disdain.
By all standards, she was the anomaly.
── .✦
When Isadora was hired at Nevermore, the process was anything but ordinary. The office smelled like lemons, and everything in the room was brand new. It still had that furniture-store scent.
She sat across from Principal Barry Dort, picking at the edges of her fingernails, further damaging her cuticles. Her foot bounced beneath the desk. Her eyes jumped between his glasses, the portrait of the previous principal above the mantel, and the file on his desk.
Eye contact wasn’t her friend and it never had been.
Barry had furrowed his brows the second he opened her file. He took notice of her restless feet, her fidgeting hands, and even the blank look on her face. He seemed almost concerned.
“It says here there’s a…mental disability aspect,” he’d said, his eyes finally returning to the file. “Could you tell me what that means exactly?”
Isadora’s throat had gone dry. “It means,” she said quietly, “that I have a mental disability.”
He looked up at her again. “Yes,” he said, lightening his tone the way an adult would with a child. “But which one?”
There was a long pause. She could hear the humming in the ceiling light, the tick of the clock on the wall, and the rapid pulse in her ears. Her senses were telling her something about this man was wrong, and more than that, this office was not a safe space.
“Autism,” she said finally. “I’m autistic.”
That word autistic was a burden. It defined her, and she hated that it did. It was the thing people talked about when they thought she couldn’t hear. When others fumbled or acted out of place, they laughed and said they were “being autistic,” as if it were a temporary costume, a quirk.
They didn’t know the real thing. They had never experienced a mind that never went quiet or the not-so-comforting routines others found childish.
So, Isadora smiled. She made it easy for the man across from her. She pretended not to notice his judgment. After all, she’d learned early on that no one truly understood her unless they lived inside her head. And nobody wanted to do that.
Barry hired her, though her diagnosis hung between them like a noose.
She was an outcast by Nevermore’s standards, which was precisely why she was hired. And she had impeccable credentials. Her teaching certificate was solid, her recommendations strong. But as the conversation went on, she could feel a subtle shift in the atmosphere.
He began speaking louder, as though volume could somehow make comprehension easier for her. He stood and extended his hand, even when she clearly displayed her discomfort with taking it. The lights above had been dimmed before her arrival, but he flicked them brighter, knowing what the sudden glare did to her.
The handshake, the voice, the light.
Isadora was being tolerated, not welcomed.
Maybe she wasn’t even tolerated by that point.
When she left the office that day, the papers signed, her position secured, the world outside seemed colder than it had before she went in.
She had the job, yes. But she knew, even before the first class, that she would spend every day there trying to prove that she belonged somewhere nobody believed she did.
── .✦
Nevermore turned out to be more complicated than Isadora had expected. The first weeks turned into months of difficult adjustment. Her structure, which had been so carefully maintained, so essential to her sense of safety, was tested every single day.
The bells rang off-schedule, students barged into her classroom, and meetings changed times constantly.
She had more panic attacks in that first term than she’d had in years. One particularly bad episode had triggered a wolf-out, a transformation she hadn’t experienced in nearly a decade.
The sensations were unbearable. She’d curled against the wall of her office, and the heightened awareness that came with it was agony. She could feel everything: her nails on the floor, the air through her teeth, the strain in her body. It took hours before she calmed down and returned to her human form, shivering, exhausted, and ashamed.
Still, she tried to hold onto her routine.
Each morning began the same way, with her oatmeal, her spoon, her Garfield bowl, her exact type of cinnamon and ginger. The same hour, every day. The same tea, steeped for the same amount of time. Her classes followed her colour-coded schedule, as did her lunch break.
But Nevermore did not oblige easily.
Wednesday often interrupted Isadora’s lessons to question her logic or experiment with her timing. Enid had begun to appear at her door unexpectedly. They meant well, or Enid did, at least, but each unplanned interaction took a toll on Isadora.
After school, she often sat alone in her office with the curtains drawn, breathing in slow intervals until she could manage to get to her car. Silence was her medicine. Stillness, her reset.
On particularly hard days, Enid would come by with cookies. She would never say it to her face, but she valued Enid deeply. She admired the girl’s instinct to soothe rather than fix. Enid seemed to understand, without needing it explained, that some days Isadora just needed to sit beside someone who didn’t expect her to speak.
But rumours spread fast. Ms. Capri, people said, wasn’t just another outcast. She was mental. The labels multiplied: mentally ill, mentally disturbed, mentally challenged. Students who had once smiled at her in class began to exchange glances behind her back. A few teachers seemed hesitant before handing her assignments or making requests, as though she might break by the simple act of asking.
And so, Isadora learned again what she’d known since childhood.
The world preferred even its outcasts in categories.
── .✦
When Isadora met Rachael Fairburn, there was no immediate affection. There was no infatuation. Rachael was gentle, and more importantly, she did not ask things of Isadora that she could not give. She didn’t push for eye contact or stand behind her. Her voice was soft and never too loud, even when she raised it. She asked questions about her interests and listened no matter what. She came by when she said she would. She didn’t interrupt or try to overlap Isadora’s thinking process. She seemed to understand instinctively that Isadora needed silence to think of her responses.
But the first time Rachael had tried to hug her had been the real change.
It was late in the evening, and Isadora had just finished grading papers.
Rachael had come by to drop off a folder and share something she thought Isadora would enjoy; a batch of cinnamon rolls.
“I don’t do well with contact.” Isadora had said before Rachael had the chance to fully embrace her. “Touch, I mean. I don’t like it. I have autism. I’m—I’m autistic.”
She feared the inevitable. Someone she had grown to care about suddenly realizing that she was different.
“Then I’ll take that into consideration.”
She wasn’t pitying or coddling her. It was as easy and natural as if Isadora had told her she preferred tea to coffee.
From that night on, Rachael kept her word. She did not touch Isadora unless she reached for her first. She began arriving at the exact time she promised, never early, never late. She never threw Isadora’s schedule off-balance.
When they met in her office, Rachael had changed the fluorescent bulbs to a warmer, softer glow.
“They’re less noisy now,” she had said with a small smile.
Rachael couldn’t hear the electric buzzing that Isadora did, the apparent thin high note that dug at her nerves, but she believed her completely and adjusted them without being asked.
It was the same with the blanket.
One afternoon, Isadora had absently mentioned that she disliked the texture of the passenger seat in Rachaels car. It was scratchy and made her skin crawl.
The next day, when Rachael offered her a ride home, there was a blanket on the seat, covering the leather underneath.
“Thought you might like this one better.”
She was not condescending, but considerate. She didn’t make a spectacle of her understanding or use it as proof of moral virtue. She adapted. Where others dismissed her sensitivities as strange or as burdens, Rachael treated them as ordinary and worthy of care.
Isadora found love she’d never known.
── .✦
Enid Sinclair was another form of comfort Isadora hadn’t known she needed. The young girl was bright and energetic. Where most people’s energy exhausted her, Enid’s somehow calmed her. Her words were faster than her thoughts. She collected plushies, pins, figurines, shiny rocks, and forgotten trinkets that most would have thrown away. Her desk in her dorm was a mountain of treasures.
Enid had ADHD, though she mentioned it shamelessly. She lived in high highs and low lows, full of bursts of emotion that didn’t always make sense to others, and yet she showed them proudly.
Isadora found that fascinating. She had never seen someone refuse to conform, nor express joy in simply existing.
They’d first bonded in passing: Enid dropping by her classroom with a snack, or to chat about her latest craft project, or sometimes just to sit quietly while Isadora did some meaningless task.
Isadora assumed it would be another fleeting connection.
But Enid kept coming back. She was never offended by Isadora’s bluntness, nor startled by her long pauses or fixations. When Isadora didn’t laugh at her jokes right away, Enid didn’t take it personally; she waited, smiling, until the delayed giggle followed.
Enid’s presence reminded Isadora of what she had dreamt of since she was a little girl. The freedom of being young and strange without worry. Watching the girl bounce on her toes as she talked about something she loved, or flap her hands, Isadora saw a mirror of her own stims.
Their bond grew stronger. Enid began visiting Isadora’s classroom after school, sometimes chatty, sometimes not. When Rachael happened to be there, the three of them would sit together.
Enid’s chatter never overwhelmed her. The girl could talk for hours, and instead of draining Isadora, it filled her with warmth. She didn’t have to mimic the joy, nor did she have to push herself to respond. Enid’s energy was generous enough for both of them.
In Enid’s company, she learned that connection didn’t have to mean exhaustion. Enid didn’t treat Isadora’s oddities as curiosities or burdens. They were as natural and valid as her own restless movements and bursts of enthusiasm.
₍^. .^₎⟆
Isadora sat at a small circular table by the only window in the staff lounge. Before her was a Garfield bowl, and in it, her reheated macaroni. The cheese was stiff from the microwave, though the texture wasn’t bad.
Across from her, Rachael sat, balancing a small container of pasta salad on her knee. She’d added olives, Isadora noticed, and cherry tomatoes.
The scent was strong. Vinegar and herbs.
Isadora did not mind it, but the sound of chewing broke through her concentration. Eating required high concentration for her. It was not to be interrupted by anything unpleasant or unexpected.
“I don’t like the chewing noise,” Isadora mumbled suddenly, keeping her eyes on the bowl in front of her.
It was not meant to be a complaint.
Rachael closed the container without a moment of hesitation. She swallowed the bite still in her mouth, wiped her lips with a napkin, and set the salad aside.
“Why did you put it away?” Isadora asked, genuinely puzzled by her actions.
“It made you uncomfortable,” Rachael shrugged, giving her a reassuring smile.
“But I didn’t ask you to stop eating.”
“You didn’t have to. I could tell it bothered you. I don’t mind waiting.”
Her words processed and suddenly Isadora felt guilt churn her stomach. “I only meant that it was a sound I didn’t like. I’m sorry. You can keep eating.”
“No, no. It’s okay. I’ll eat it later. You focus on your meal. It’s more important that you finish, remember?”
“You could eat it now.”
“I really don’t mind,” Rachael reassured her again. “This is just a small thing I can…that I want to do for you.”
The room went quiet again, minus the buzzing of the old refrigerator.
Isadora had worked on ignoring the noise. Thus far she was unsuccessful.
“I’d like some milk,” she said softly, putting her container to the side. “Please?”
Rachael smiled wearily.
It had become another routine, one she took particular care in. Every day before lunch, she would make the walk down to the dining hall and get Isadora’s favourite strawberry milk, the one in the pink carton with the little pink cow on the front.
It was the only one Isadora could drink as the others didn’t taste right.
But this day was different.
“They didn’t have your milk today,” Rachael said, carefully gauging Isadora’s reaction.
Isadora’s hands curled on the edge of the table. “What do you mean?” she asked, awaiting the typical ‘just kidding’ response most people intentionally bothered her with. She never understood annoying someone on purpose.
“I brought you chocolate instead,” Rachael explained as she pulled a small carton from her bag. “It’s still sweet. You might like it.”
Isadora shook her head immediately. “No. I need the one in the pink carton. The one with the pink cow. Not the black and white one or the brown one. The pink one. It has to have the pink cow. That’s my milk.”
Rachael set the chocolate carton down, her palms open in that universal gesture of calmness. “I know, Isadora,” she said softly. “I know that’s the one you like. But they didn’t have it today. And that’s not your fault, but it’s not the milk’s fault either. The pink milk is taking a little rest, I think. This one will have to fill in. So, we let’s a deep breath. Okay? Just one.”
Isadora’s mind felt loud, a rush of static and disappointment and confusion over something so small yet so terribly wrong.
She stared at the chocolate carton.
After a long pause, Isadora inhaled.
Rachael smiled, relieved by the other woman’s listening. “That’s it,” she said. “Good girl. Just breathe. The pink milk will come back next time. And when it does, we’ll make sure to get two, just in case.”
Isadora nodded slowly, her fingers uncurling from the tables edge.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Rachael reached across the table, but not to touch her, resting her hand between them, an offering of presence. The distance was enough for Isadora to know she was not alone.
”I have something for you,” Rachael added, though she sounded a little unsure.
Isadora’s body stiffened again. “Why?”
Gifts were unpredictable, and they always came with expectations. Reactions and gratitude. She hadn’t even been given time to think of what she’d respond with.
“Because I wanted to show you that I…care for you in more ways than just being here.”
Isadora felt her heart flutter.
“And you love gifts, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” Isadora admitted.
Rachael reached into her tote bag and set a small box on the table. It wasn’t wrapped, which Isadora appreciated, it meant no tearing paper or awkward pauses. The box itself was simple, cardboard brown.
“I saw it last week,” Rachael explained softly. “It made me think of you.”
Isadora opened the top as slowly as she could. Inside was a mug. It was sturdy, with Garfield across the front. It was older, clearly vintage, with tiny printed sayings around the rim: Mondays are for sleeping in. I’m not lazy, I’m conserving energy.
The mug was well-weighted. The handle was a perfect thickness for her fingers. The colour was a muted cream and was neither too bright nor too dull. It was just right.
Isadora didn’t smile. She lifted it, turned it in her hands, then set it back down.
Rachael tilted her head to the side. “Do you like it? I thought it had a nice weight.”
“Yes,” Isadora said immediately. “It’s a very good mug. The weight is right too.”
Her tone was flat and undeniably neutral.
She did not sound even remotely delighted.
Rachael’s brow furrowed slightly. “You don’t seem happy about it. Are you sure?”
Isadora forced the corners of her mouth upward, an imitation of the smile she thought she should give. “I am happy. It’s a really nice mug. Thank you for buying it.”
Rachael shook her head, her smile returning. “You don’t have to force a reaction, Isadora. I just wondered. You usually like Garfield things, so I expected more of a spark, but I understand now.”
Isadora looked down. “It’s just,” she took a deep breath. “Sometimes when I like stuff, it’s quiet inside. Not big. I’m sorry.”
“That’s fair. No need to apologize.” Rachael leaned over, taking the unopened carton of chocolate milk from earlier. “Guess I’ll drink this then, before it goes to waste.”
But before she could open it, Isadora stopped her.
“I want it.”
Rachael glanced back at her in surprise. “You’re joking,” she said lightly.
“No. I want it. It would be nice in my new mug. And it’s the same colour as Pookie.”
“Pookie?”
“Garfield’s teddy bear,” Isadora explained, looking up again. “He’s brown like the milk. It would match. Can I have the milk?”
For a moment, Rachael just stared, but then her lips parted into a small, delighted smile.
“Well, that’s a perfectly good reason.” She slid the carton across the table toward her. “I already washed the mug before bringing it, so you can use it right away.”
Isadora nodded, taking the milk carton and pouring it inside immediately. “Thank you.”