underdogs-uprising | Chris Bonnello | undefined
Well, we're now halfway to getting the final Underdogs book published! 51% at time of writing, and I'm massively, massively grateful to those of you who have helped get the book halfway to a target that dwarfs the books before it.
And coincidentally, Underdogs: Acceleration's release date is today. Beautiful. (Incidentally, any Amazon or Goodreads reviews of it would be hugely appreciated, as these have a direct impact on Amazon ordering more in stock.)
Anyway, here's Kate's long-awaited story. (With a rare language warning. Hundreds of thousands of words later, this is the only time I drop the F-bomb in the series.) Enjoy!
-----
Kate Arrowsmith Goes To A Party
Kate stepped out of the front door. That alone was progress.
It was late afternoon on May 16th, and the heat of the day was gone. The longer she avoided heading for the village community centre, the colder it would be in her dress, which she really liked but knew it was no substitute for a hoodie. She would probably start to rub her bare arms to keep them warm, leading other people at the party to think she was folding her arms, and was therefore being rude at a special occasion, like the anti-social fourteen-year-old girl she clearly was, who didn’t bother talking to people unless she needed something, hadn’t yet overcome her so-called autism (and how dare she call herself autistic with a brother like that?) and for some reason still needed to attend Oakenfold rather than go back to a real school, even though she was so much more capable and clearly wasn’t applying herself and was dooming herself to low grades and a terrible job…
Bloody hell. James’s birthday party hadn’t even started, and Kate was already imagining the ways she wouldn’t be seen as good enough for it.
But her brother, as of today, was an adult. And she was going to be there for him.
Dad closed the front door behind her, and Kate shuddered at the sound of the key turning, locking her out of her house. There was no going back now.
‘OK?’ Dad asked, softly.
Kate nodded, and shivered.
It was a 200-metre walk to the community centre at the far end of the village’s main road, where Mum and James were waiting for her. And she was bound to feel every step of it.
Every.
Single.
Step.
The first few down the driveway weren’t so bad since she was still on home territory, but Dad still overtook her before they reached the pavement. She’d had the whole day to prepare for a 6pm party, which for most people would have been helpful. For Kate though, the afternoon had consisted of ten minutes of getting changed and five hours catastrophising. In some ways it would have been easier if she’d only learned about the event an hour before it started. It would have been scary, but there was such a difference between momentary panic and the slow-burn inescapable all-day anxiety that-
‘After you,’ said Dad.
Kate took a deep breath as she stepped past him. He wanted to be behind her so his own steps would help her to move forward. She didn’t like it, but there was nothing that she would like that would get her to the end of the road.
She made the journey. For James. Today, what she did for him would need to matter.
The community centre looked so friendly on the outside. The building was formerly a Victorian schoolhouse, gifted to the local church in the sixties after its schoolchildren migrated to a bigger school in the next village, and became a secular building once the church no longer had the funds to maintain it. Its exterior hadn’t changed since the last time its occupants had sung the National Anthem to a portrait of Queen Victoria herself.
Back when teachers were allowed to torture their kids with canes and slippers. Before they outlawed physical assault but figured that verbal assault was still fine.
As Dad approached behind her, Kate realised that ironically, she would have coped fine in a Victorian school. She’d have been shy, quiet and – above all – compliant. The teachers would have reserved the bruises for schoolmates like Charlie or Daniel, or maybe that new kid Ewan.
She stepped inside.
The music, its volume turned down to accommodate James and all his classmates, was not quite as nightmarish as Kate had predicted. There was regular lighting rather than wild disco lights in the darkness, due to those with sensory issues or epilepsy.
Maybe, just maybe, Kate would be OK.
But it's not the sensory stuff that made me scared of coming. It was the fact that other people are here.
The people were mostly harmless, even if unpredictable. Mum and James were at the table closest to the snacks, Mum being on hand to sort everything out when crisps or fizzy drinks needed replenishing. (James may have been old enough to drink alcohol that night, but that didn’t magically grant the community centre an alcohol license.)
The table next to them was filled with familiar faces, belonging to Block One students that Kate had seen around, all with complex difficulties similar to James’s. His classmates were the closest people he had to real friends, but – as someone who’d had zero friends before Oakenfold – Kate was knowledgeable enough to know it was a fault with society rather than with James.
This was further backed up by the number of Oakenfold teaching staff in the room too, a couple smiling and waving at Kate with smiles which looked quite genuine. The teachers at her old school would have been judged as unprofessional (or worse) if they’d turned up to their teenage students' birthday parties, but on principle the Oakenfold staff always showed up for the Block One crew. Some of the students at the table next to them saw so little of the world, besides the house they lived in and the school they studied in.
It wasn’t necessarily bad parenting. Mum and Dad had tried with James. He had been able to access various parts of the world thanks to his underappreciated resilience, but hadn’t stayed in the outside world long enough for friendships to form as a result.
But all the same... James didn’t look sad. He lived a happy life, in his own way and on his own terms. It was difficult to feel sorry for someone who had everything he wanted in life just because he wasn’t doing what the rest of the world was doing. And in Kate’s experience, the rest of the world’s choices usually sucked anyway.
Close family, classmates and teachers. A not bad crowd, in a not bad environment, in a not bad building.
But then Kate saw, at the other end of the hall (sitting as far away from the Oakenfold students as they could), her uncle and aunt. Then she remembered why she was scared.
Uncle Paul could end up living for a thousand years and never understand what he had done to make Kate so scared of him. Not just because it would take a thousand years for his head to process that he’d got something wrong, but also because officially he’d done ‘nothing’ to her: he had never slapped her or sworn at her or done anything that would warrant a call to social services, so why the hell would his fourteen-year-old niece be so scared of him?
“Aah-nuh,” shouted James from his table, a sure sign that he was happy. Kate assumed it had nothing to do with her presence, until he held out his hand in the vague direction of the entrance.
Nonetheless, when Dad passed her and walked to the family table, Kate did not follow. Not just yet.
I need to be there for James today. But in a way that suits both of us, not just one of us.
There was a pain in the back of her neck, like the shock of a bee sting, as if her body was telling her to stop being so bloody selfish. Kate hated that. It had taken years for her to realise that her feelings mattered at all, let alone that they were just as important as the feelings of the general population. It was an unfortunate and dangerous part of the anxious autistic experience: the subtle instruction to believe that everybody else’s feelings, choices and preferences automatically took priority over her own. And if she didn’t want it that way, she’d have to stop being anxious and stop being autistic.
That state of mind had been why she hadn’t stood up to the bullies, and only mentioned it to the teachers after the first year or two. It was another thing to hate herself for… which, she’d come to realise, was another example of how insidious it was. Even after that realisation, the blame and hatred was still going to herself!
‘Kate,’ came Uncle Paul's voice. Kate looked towards him, lying back in his plastic chair next to his fold-up table as if lying in his living room armchair. He pointed a finger towards Mum and James, tilted his head in their direction and gave an aggressive nod, a clear instruction for her to walk over to them.
Then, as Kate’s breathing began to accelerate, he turned back to his wife and started talking again as if nothing significant had happened.
I need a break. I should go outside.
No, you don't need a break. You need to go home. You’re just telling yourself you need a break because it makes you sound like less of a failure.
If I leave, Uncle Paul wins. He gets to tell my parents how lazy and antisocial I am.
But I can't go in. Not yet. Especially not now.
She looked across to the table of Block One students, and wondered how much it had taken for their parents, sat close by, to get them out of the house and into an unfamiliar building. Maybe most of them had found it easier than she had.
Somehow, she felt no shame in that. To be ashamed of those teenagers outdoing her would be to consider them lesser than her, which was the very definition of ableism. Besides, with a brother like James, Kate understood that some aspects of life were unexpectedly easy for him as well as unexpectedly hard. Often, it was Kate who was the ‘difficult child’, not that her parents would ever have wanted her to feel that way.
Her gaze was caught by someone standing up. Another teenager, this one not from Oakenfold, who looked around sixteen or so. She pushed her chair back under the table, grabbed her plastic drinking cup in one hand and took a swig before heading away from her group with a demeanour of purpose. Perhaps someone had offended her. She stormed in Kate’s direction. Kate tried not to stare back in return, but was drawn to the short purple hair that looked so good on her. A subtle type of purple that seemed to not deliberately draw attention to itself, like it was styled that way for her own love of hairstyles rather than the approval of other people.
The girl walked past her into the corner of the community centre, and leaned against the entrance door as if blocking it shut.
Is she… is she trapping me in here?
‘I saw you looking anxious,’ she said, fetching a fidget cube out of her pocket and toying with it between her fingers. ‘I’m anxious too. Let’s be anxious together.’
‘…Pardon?’
Kate liked using that word. It gave her extra time to think while the other person repeated their question.
‘I recognise anxiety when I see it,’ the girl replied. ‘Can I hang out here with you too? We can pretend to socialise if you want, so other people won’t bother us.’
Kate nodded, the thought of Uncle Paul resurfacing in her head. The confidence in the girl’s speech was unexpected, but her body language was familiar. The dropped head, the occupied hands, and even…
She’s not blocking the door shut. She’s giving herself a quick escape if she needs it.
‘I’m Kate,’ she said, somehow not quite the whisper she predicted it would be.
‘Akira,’ came the reply. ‘Well, not really. But it’s the name I use when I’m outside.’
‘Oh… Kate’s my real name. It’s my brother’s birthday.’
Kate wondered for a moment why she was relinquishing private information to this person she’d just met. Clearly there was something about Akira that she didn’t feel the instinctive need to be guarded around. (Even though Akira was keeping her real name hidden, but at least she was straightforward about hiding it.)
‘Your brother’s James, right?’
‘Yeah. The guy over there next to the drinks.’
‘He’s looking happy.’
Akira brought her plastic drinks cup to her lips. Until that moment Kate wasn’t sure whether there was anything left in it, or whether it was being used as another thing to occupy her hands.
Maybe it was Kate’s turn to talk. But she didn’t. As a result, a minute passed in surprisingly comfortable silence.
‘So… why Akira?’ asked Kate. ‘If I can ask, I mean.’
‘I like anime, basically. And it’s gender-neutral, like me.’
‘Oh… sorry, I thought you were… I just kind of assumed…’
‘You didn’t think I’m non-binary because I look like a girl,’ Akira answered, ‘it’s fine, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. It doesn’t take much to get me anxious, but it takes a lot to offend me unless people are actually trying. And you’re clearly too good for that.’
There was a lot for Kate to process there. She took a look around the hall, staring into the empty space as if it would give her more room to think. The party was going smoothly without her. As she turned back, Akira returned the cup to their side and messed around with the fidget cube again.
‘So… it doesn’t take much to, like, get you worried?’ asked Kate. ‘You kind of look really confident.’
‘You should have seen me back at school. I disguised everything to perfection. And because I was an idiot, I thought that was a good thing. Looking like a normal and boring teenager stopped some of the judgement, but it also stopped the teachers from knowing there was anything they could have helped with.’
‘I don’t think you missed much. My mainstream teachers knew it all but didn’t believe a word. I should have done what you did.’
Akira rolled their eyes, just slightly.
‘Do you go to Oakenfold now?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Then you shouldn’t have done what I did. Disguising yourself as confident at parties is no substitute for having your needs met as a teenager. I left with a few half-decent GCSEs and no emotional strength to apply them with.’
There were mental health social groups at Oakenfold that didn’t hold a candle to the discussion Kate was having. Akira was so shamelessly open about their experiences – probably autistic themselves with the oversharing gene built in – and even though they were talking about something that made Kate feel so vulnerable, it was a pitch-perfect distraction from everything she had been afraid to leave her house for.
‘But you came to me and told me you were anxious,’ Kate replied. ‘It was literally the first thing you said. That’s got to take some emotional strength, right?’
‘Yep,’ said Akira, resting their empty cup on the windowsill and playing with the door handle. ‘It’s one of my strategies. I do one thing I’m afraid of every day.’
Kate opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came. She was too distracted by the realisation that that was a bloody good idea. And on so many levels: whether to build up resilience, whether to increase your life experience, or whether out of sheer defiance and not allowing your brain’s worst impulses to defeat you.
‘I mean,’ Akira continued, ‘I thought I’d done that by coming here in the first place, but it turns out I wasn’t actually afraid of it after all. Once you’ve done things enough times you get less afraid of them. Still a little afraid, but not afraid enough to stop you. So talking to you was my daily, you know…’
Their sentence trailed off: the first vocal sign of anxiety Kate had noticed in the whole conversation. Akira was doing well, and deserved someone to cheer them on.
‘That’s actually a really good idea,’ she replied. ‘Maybe I’ll start doing that. I don’t leave the house or see people except when I’m going to school though.’
‘You ended up here, didn’t you?’
‘…I guess.’
‘No need to guess. You did. And that’s down to you. But even on a normal and boring school day, you’ll get chances. They’re everywhere.’
‘Especially when you’re my kind of anxious,’ said Kate, daring to smile.
The smile was such an unexpected event that night, but was interrupted by the arrival of new party guests, asking Akira to step aside and let them in. Once the door closed again, they recalibrated themselves back into conversation mode.
‘Yeah, well that’s bravery for you,’ Akira replied, looking over towards the increasing crowd of people attending James’s party. ‘It’s different for everyone. Bravery doesn’t look like people think it does. Sometimes it’s going on a rollercoaster, sometimes it’s speaking at a funeral, and sometimes, well…’
‘…Sometimes bravery is stepping out of the front door,’ replied Kate.
Akira raised their eyebrows, almost looking impressed.
‘Or getting out of bed, yeah,’ they replied.
The words stopped, and Kate took the opportunity to look across at her family again. Mum and Dad were chatting together, seemingly happy. James was sat next to his teacher, motionless and content. Uncle Paul and Aunt Kelly had found some normal people to talk to. Everyone was happy in their own way.
But I’m still not there for James.
‘He looks fine, Kate,’ said Akira.
Did you just read my thoughts?
‘Yeah, but… I should be there for him in a way that matters, you know? It’s his birthday, and-’
‘And society tells you that the only socially acceptable way to be there for him is by making yourself uncomfortable, otherwise it doesn’t “matter”. Right?’
Kate didn’t answer, but did a lot of thinking. And it didn’t take long for her to recognise something very relevant: that if this kind of party made James uncomfortable, there wouldn’t have been a chance in Hell of Mum and Dad making him attend one.
And knowing them, they’d have shown Kate no judgement if she’d just stayed at home. They’d recognise her bravery either way.
When Kate refocused, she found Akira staring into space, and breathing differently to before.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked.
Akira paused, nodded their head, and then shook it.
‘Need to get out?’
‘…Yeah,’ came a whisper. ‘Last of my energy’s… you know… and Dad’s outside in case I need to go home, and…’
‘I get it. Go.’
Just like that, their conversation ended. Akira’s daily fear confrontation had been completed – and completed well – although the look on their face as they burst out of the entrance door made it look like failure.
But Kate knew different. Just as anxiety had a million different appearances, so did recovery from it.
I hope I’m like you by the time I’m sixteen, Kate thought in Akira’s direction. But she could almost hear their reply, saying something like, I don’t – I hope you’re the best version of the person you already are.
Kate looked back at James on the opposite side of the hall, as his teacher walked to another student and Mum and Dad joined him again. She wanted to walk over there, only this time it wasn’t anxiety stopping her. She needed that time to process the conversation she’d just had. There was a lot to solidify in her brain, and Kate was not a fast learner.
Not that that mattered either. She still learned.
After a few minutes, Kate took some opening steps towards the middle of the hall, which would need passing on her way to say happy birthday to James. She took deep breaths, and remembered the wise advice from a friend she had had for the briefest of moments, whom she was unlikely ever to see again and whose real name she would probably never know.
Kate began to wish she had taken the opportunity to exchange contact details, or asked who they had been there with, or something that allowed them to stay in touch. But she had not seen the opportunity while it had been there, and it was her own stupid fault.
No. I won’t spend these important moments blaming myself. I’m going to be there for James.
To her left, Uncle Paul looked at her with sarcastic astonishment.
I’ve got to see him tonight. This opportunity matters…
Akira’s words rebounded in her head.
And society tells you that the only socially acceptable way to be there for him is by making yourself uncomfortable, otherwise it doesn’t “matter”. Right?
Kate paused where she stood, and rubbed her fingers against a piece of plastic tablecloth. Was this truly what mattered to James?
‘Trouble walking, Kate?’ asked Uncle Paul.
She looked over to him, but looked straight back at Mum and Dad, trying her best to ignore him.
‘James is over there,’ Paul said, pointing in his direction. ‘Big lad. Flapping his hands. You’ll recognise him when you’re over there.’
Kate must have looked panicked. Her gaze met Dad’s, and he rose from his chair.
‘I know who he is, Paul.’
‘Maybe you should say hi to him on his eighteenth birthday, rather than pretending this is a scary room. If he can handle it, so can you.’
‘Paul, do you even like James?’
Her heart began to accelerate. That was the most direct she had been with him since she had been a non-traumatised four-year-old girl whose school life hadn’t begun. Dad was walking over, his speed increasing.
‘Do you like James?’ Paul asked, his voice somehow a little less confident than before. ‘You’re his sister, and you’re avoi-’
‘Why are you telling me things that are really, really obvious?’
‘Because you’re still in this part of the room, and not in that part of the room. Go to him. Now.’
It was difficult to think about her next steps when deep in conflict with a man who despised her. But Kate managed it.
I know what James really wants. And it’s not what everyone else in this room wants.
She turned her head.
‘No,’ she said to Uncle Paul.
There was no response from the hole in Paul’s confused, detestable face. Only a look of shock, as if Kate weren’t allowed to play a decisive role in the conversation.
‘You alright, Kate?’ came the welcome voice of Dad, who had rushed to her defence for as long as he’d been her father.
‘She’s fine,’ answered Paul on her behalf. ‘Just making stupid choices and being antisocial.’
Kate never thought she’d say what she said next, but bravery took over, fuelled by the leftover sense of injustice from far too many years of fighting far too much.
‘Fuck off, Paul,’ she said. And it wasn’t a whisper.
‘…Excuse me?’ Paul replied, wide-eyed, clearly trying to sound like one of those tough guys from the TV but failing beautifully.
‘I mean it,’ Kate said, not shouting but still loud enough to distract a table of witnesses. ‘Fuck off, and stay away forever.’
Uncle Paul looked at her, dumbfounded. Then he looked at Dad, waiting for him to respond for him. The humiliated look on his face was glorious when Dad’s response was to smile at Kate with genuine pride, and pass her the keys to their home’s front door.
Kate wanted to smile back, but kept her face angry for Paul. No doubt she could thank Dad for his kindness later. At that moment, no other words were needed or spoken as she turned in the opposite direction, headed for the exit, and burst outside into the cool spring air.
In the silence of the street, broken only by her stomping footsteps on the pavement, Kate straightened her dress and let out a well-earned huff. Uncle Paul was probably telling Aunt Kelly at that moment what a horrendous nasty spiteful teenager Kate Arrowsmith was, but that was OK. He was wrong and Kate knew it – whether he knew it himself or not. Besides, something far more important had happened that evening.
I did something I was afraid of tonight, and I’m a stronger person because of it, Kate thought, as she rubbed her bare shoulders to keep them warm.
-
‘Aah-nuh,’ said James. He held out a hand vaguely towards Kate, and she weaved her fingers between his.
They were in his room, and it was nearly midnight. Kate had spent the whole night in James’ blue-painted, non-arousing palace of peace, sat next to him on his bed with his iPad playing that David Tennent-era Doctor Who episode on repeat. James wasn’t even watching it, his attention focused on running his fingers through his miniature beard, but the familiar sound in the background must have brought him the same joy as listening to a 45-minute piece of beautiful music.
‘I hope you liked your birthday,’ she said to him. ‘You looked like you enjoyed the party.’
James fiddled a bit more with his beard, and five seconds later he rocked a little.
‘And you look really happy right now,’ she finished. ‘And it’s making me happy too.’
Kate would live her whole life without truly understanding the world from James’s perspective. She’d known that since she was a small child. But at that moment she realised how little it had bothered her since they had learned how well their happiness bounced off each other. You didn’t need much in common to share joy together.
‘Allons-y!’ said David Tennant.
‘Aah-nuh,’ replied James.
Kate smiled, and meant it. James was making his happiest noises, seeing out his birthday in his own way and on his own terms, sat next to a sister who loved him.
I’m there for him just as I promised, she thought as the clock struck midnight and James’ birthday ended. Right here, when and where it truly matters.
#
Copyright © Chris Bonnello 2022
