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Kenny remembers everything. And he means that literally. He remembers meeting Larry in first grade with his broad smile and dimples and deep brown eyes he studied for far too long and immediately trying to get him to join in imitating a scene from his favorite musical. He remembers walking away when nothing prevailed and Larry didn't say, “Want to be my friend?” But that was okay. He made friends with nothing and made them his everything. For some reason people thought animals and clouds and grass and stars didn't count as friends.
He remembers asking for his walls to be painted rainbow and flapping irritably when his father said no, it had to be rainbow or it wouldn't look right with everything else in there being rainbow. He remembers always hating the pasty gritty gross lima beans and adoring the smoothness of CDs under his nails and crying afterwards because he couldn't listen to them anymore. He remembers holding one-sided enthusiastic conversations with his stuffed animals and saying that they had blue or yellow or red voices. Bruises coming from thin air because he didn't notice when he bumped into things.
His parents exchanging confused glances. A whisper of “poor child”, “I'm so sorry”, “he's not right in the head”, “he'll grow out of it”. He heard. He remembers. The therapist with cold eyes and pupils that expanded into forever and swallowed him whole. He saw. He remembers.
“Quiet hands!” He remembers. “What are you doing?” He remembers.
But he remembers Larry again. “Why are you weird?” he'd asked a few years later in the fourth grade. Kenny frowned. Larry was smiling at him, so even if it didn't make sense, he wasn't being mean.
“My parents say I'm 'special needs',” said Kenny. “It means I don't know what people's faces mean and everything is really loud and I move a lot when I'm happy.” He grinned to match the other boy. Larry had a sturdy way about him, like he could push kids if they laughed at him, but a nice kind of way. He made Kenny feel funny and warm.
“My brother is special needs too. He has seizures.”
“Oh. Want to come to my house?”
“Uh... okay. I'll ask my mom.”
Kenny wriggled excitedly. When Larry was out of earshot, he squealed into his hands. Quiet hands, loud voice. Good enough.
The boy talked about Larry constantly. “Omm, there's a nice boy at school that built Legos with me today.” “Omm, he listened to me talk about Broadway and he didn't interrupt!” “Omm, he's got a really pretty smile. And dimples!” (He jumped up and down a little at that.)
His mother didn't respond with much more than “that's nice, dear.” He began to worry. He was twelve and Larry was talking about all the girls he liked. So was Michael. He burned every detail into his memory like an instruction book and always came back to the same question at night - “why aren't I talking about girls?” He'd never had a girl friend and never seriously thought about wanting a girlfriend (one word, not two).
He was fourteen and he had a tantrum in his room when Larry asked Marla on a date for the first time. This was not how it was supposed to go. Larry was supposed to smile at Kenny like he always did but a little closer than normal. But instead it had been Marla. What would Kenny do, anyway? Ask him out? No. He wasn't like that. He didn't, couldn't like boys. But he didn't like girls either. It was too much to think about. Shaking and sobbing and rocking and throwing things. But no hands. Always quiet hands.
He was fifteen and he finally took his questions to the internet.
“why do I like boys instead of girls”
Allah bless the internet.
It's okay to be gay.
You are not bad.
You are not a sin.
We're here, we're queer, respect us.
You are valid.
You are valid.
You are valid.
And was so happy he screeched because his parents weren't home and he was gay and he was good and he was valid and he even forgot about quiet hands and flapped into oblivion.
He turned sixteen and he came out and his parents kicked him out and he curled up under Larry's bed and heard Mr. Gold call him a retard from downstairs but still didn't move. He couldn't move and he couldn't make noise and he couldn't cry and he couldn't let Larry touch him because Larry probably thought he was a retard too and he couldn't even think about “Annie Get Your Gun” because it made him think of Larry.
He was sixteen and a half and Dylan-with-a-y-because-he's-cute had truffle-black eyes and soft hair and responded patiently to Kenny's impulsive outbursts and said Kenny had the most soulful eyes he'd ever seen and Kenny's throat closed up. He giggled and leaned sideways against the couch and only barely remembered not to flap.
He's sixteen and three quarters and Omm and Ab have Kenny back at home and he asks what kind of special needs he is and they tell him he has autism. He looks it up because he's curious and underneath a huge pile of articles with phrases like “problem child” “it's time to listen” “light it up blue” and “for the cure” and “ABA” and “kills families” that send him into a fit of tears...
He finds it.
The answer.
Those “temper tantrums” were meltdowns. Not his fault.
That time he hid under the bed was a shutdown. Not his fault.
He runs into things because he's hyposensitive.
He feels “too much” because he has hyperempathy.
Lima beans? Sensory issues.
Flapping? Dancing? Scratching CDs? Stimming.
He can't breathe. Everything has an answer. Everything has a place. And none of it is wrong or his fault.
He calls Dylan and tells him to come over quick, praying that nothing will change.
“Something wrong, Ken?”
Kenny takes a deep breath. “Dylan... I'm autistic.”
“Okay.”
“I'm still the same old me right? I mean you don't think less of me? You don't –”
“Kenny!”
“W-what?”
Dylan takes a few steps forward and looks his boyfriend in the eyes. Kenny could stare at them all day – rich black, so unlike the icy blue his childhood knew. “I'm in love with you. Whoever you are. And I will never, ever think less of you for being autistic.” He grins. “I actually think it's really cute when you flap your hands.”
“...No quiet hands?”
“Never.”
Kenny just about loses it then, has what he knows is a happy meltdown. Dylan sits on the floor with him and helps him calm down and Kenny knows, listening to Dylan's voice through blurry hands that he will never hurt him.
He remembers that.