Do You Think This Is Strange? Read Online Free PDF Page B

she got to read her favourite book. Sometimes she could sit with her interventionist and they would write a poem.
    These games didn’t interest me. I found no challenge in identifying the characteristics of the moment, in order to decide the appropriate sentence to use. Within a split second, I could compare the criteria with the circumstance and choose the correct response.
    They bored me.
    Saskia, on the other hand, was always excited to play. Each time I entered the room, she smiled as wide as she could.
    â€œSay, ‘Hello, Freddy,’” prompted her interventionist.
    â€œHELLO, Freddy!” she shouted, with joy. “HELLO! How was your DAY?”
    The more she said it, the more excited she became, jumping up and down, her wrists flapping up at shoulder level, palms opening and closing. She looked like she was trying to fly.
    In a way, she was.
    For hours at a time, we greeted each other, and played games, and said polite things. We excused each other a lot.
    My favourite game was building a block tower with her before I knocked it down. It was a script, in which I next apologized, and in which Saskia next said it was okay. She loved the game to the point where she trembled with anticipation as I built the tower. Just before I tipped it over, she stepped back, her hands in the air, flapping. Then I knocked it over.
    â€œSorry,” I said to her. “It was an accident.”
    â€œSay, ‘That’s okay,’” prompted her interventionist.
    â€œThat’s okay,” she replied, hopping up and down, “I FORGIVE you, Freddy!”
    She was only supposed to say, “That’s okay.” I don’t know if the rest was a response added by her own father, but I do know she was never sent to sit in the Room with the Bathtub Full of Plastic Balls. Instead, the interventionist let Saskia add her own flair of grand sweeping forgiveness. For more than a year, while we practised this script, or other scripts like it, I was forgiven my sins. Therapy at Excalibur House was like a confessional.
    I haven’t confessed in ten years now.

THE DAY OF NOTE IN THE LUNCHROOM
    I opened my eyes and I was seventeen. I was in the cafeteria, and there she was.
    Saskia Stiles came back into my life in winter, early in the new year. I knew it was her the moment I saw her from across the cafeteria. There was no way I could have missed her. Locks of blond hair escaping from under her wool cap like refugees across the border. Her hands bursting with nervous activity, scribbling in her notebook, or rising in the air, fingers flexing, palms opening and closing. It was Saskia and I knew it, even though ten years had passed.
    The cafeteria was a loud place, with eyes looking in every direction. At least one set of eyes was on me at any time, if only by chance. When I walked to my table, people glanced up at me. Especially girls. More girls looked at me than boys. Perhaps they looked at other boys as much as they did at me. I was never preoccupied enough with it to find out, and the threads seemed to have no problem with it.
    Boom chicka wow , the threads said.
    I don’t know what that means, I answered.
    Whether it was with a girl or a boy, I worked to avoid eye contact, but it wasn’t always easy to do in a way that didn’t call attention to myself. Looking down didn’t work. Oscar Tolstoy, for instance, never looked up, and he engendered all sorts of remarks and comments. He couldn’t get through a single day at Templeton without someone pushing him into a locker, it seemed.
    My strategy to avoid eye contact was different. I looked straight ahead, eyes fixed on a point on the horizon. I remained resolute and refused to let my eyes dart about the room.
    Pick a spot on the wall at the end of the cafeteria , the threads advised. Don’t stop looking at it.
    Done, I said. Now what?
    Walk toward it.
    And when I get there?
    Probably you should stop.
    My spot on the wall was straight