Ethan

The clear blue sky stretched down until it reached the darker blue of the sea, the water flat and still. Even the leaves on the screw pine that leaned over the edge of the cliffside were undisturbed. It was a sad looking thing, dried out and beaten about by windier days, and the dragon fruit plant that wended its way up it like a spiky cactus vine wasn’t in any better shape. Its thick green arms hung heavy over the branches of the screw pine, marred with brown scabs from past fruit, reaching out in every direction.

I’d been eying the situation up for a good ten minutes now, trying to figure out how likely I was to fall and die if I tried to climb the tree to get a cutting from the dragon fruit. It looked sturdy enough—branches thick and strong, roots firmly lodged in the rocky earth. It wasn’t even much of a climb. I just wasn’t sure my stomach would let me do it when the ground below was such a deadly distance away.

The thing about me was that I didn’t like to ask for help with anything, ever. It was just too much work. Normally, wanting a cutting of a dragon fruit plant that was out of my reach wouldn’t come close to reaching the standard of desperation required for me to actually reach out and ask for help, but on this particular occasion I had a guy I really wanted to give a call and this served as the perfect excuse to do it. Or at least a good enough one. 

I’d saved his number under ‘Rue’ in my phone. I still found it mildly irritating that he’d introduced himself to me and my father by different names. Yeah, I understood the concept of nicknames. I wasn’t stupid. It was just a needless complication. Like, what was I supposed to call Rue if I was talking about him to my dad? The name Rue had assigned me to call him, or the one he’d given my dad? It was weird.

But I was a bit weird myself, so I could forgive it. I called the number.

Rue answered on the third ring with a mildly hostile, “Yeah?”

“Hey,” I said. “It’s Ethan.”

“Oh!” I heard the sound of movement, like maybe he’d just sat up. “Hey. What’s up?”

“So there’s this dragon fruit I want a cutting from, but it’s growing on a tree over a cliff,” I said. “It’s a much easier climb than the one we did up those rocks, but the height’s freaking me out a little.”

“Want some help?”

“If you’re not busy.”

“Got the day off. Where are you at?”

“Just down the street from where I’m staying, along the top of the cliffs.”

“I can come over, but I’ll have to walk from home. It’ll be a good forty five minutes. At least. I don’t know how long you were planning on hanging out there.”

“You said half an hour yesterday.”

“You’re gonna call me on everything, huh?” Rue asked, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “I was downplaying it to your dad. It’s forty five. But if you’ll be there, I’ll come.”

I wanted to know why he’d walk all that way, but I wouldn’t ask. I was afraid of what the answer might be—or what it might not be. Because right now, it really felt like he just wanted to see me. I wanted that to be true.

“I’ll be here.”

Forty five minutes sounded like a long time, but I went for a wander along the clifftop and quickly got distracted examining all the wild plants that called the rocky earth their home. Any plant could thrive under the right conditions, but those weren’t the same for every plant. Sun, moisture, heat or cold—too much or too little could kill a plant, and the right balance for one could be all wrong for another. And then there was fertiliser, substrate, disease and pest management…

People weren’t nearly as simple. You couldn’t just look up the type of human someone was and have all the answers. That was why plants were so much better. There was so much to learn, but once you knew, you knew. Everything could be predicted, every problem solved. Maybe people were a bit like that too, if you had the right kind of mind, but I didn’t. And besides, nobody really knew what to do with me, so clearly that only went so far.

I heard the crunch of gravel and turned, startling slightly when I found Rue right behind me.

He gave a mild wave, his other hand hooked in the pocket of his shorts by his thumb. “Hey.”

I stood out of the crouch I’d dropped into to take a picture of some beach daisies set against a backdrop of the endless blue sea, their flowers dried and dead this time of year. “Hey.”

“How’s the leg?” he asked, nodding towards it.

I moved my leg around, testing it. “Not bad.”

Wendy had cleaned and bandaged it again for me this morning. I could have done it myself, but the social dynamics of the situation were such that letting her do it for me was a kindness I was doing for her and my dad. Weird, I know, but it made it a little easier for me to say no to things like going paddle boating with the two of them today in the middle of fucking winter.

Though honestly, the paddleboating was the least of my objections. The real problem was that paddleboating led into lunch, which led into an afternoon activity, which led into dinner, and I just wasn’t willing to commit myself to all that. If I’d tried to explain that, I knew my dad would have just told me they’d take me back whenever I wanted, but it didn’t really work like that. The reality was that if you wanted to leave earlier, people would try to get a reason out of you or compromise and accommodate so that you’d stay. There was no need for all that, and there was definitely no need for me to third wheel on my dad’s dates. No matter how much everyone involved other than me wanted me to.

Anyway, my leg was fine. I had low pain sensitivity, so I’d been more bothered by the feeling of the blood all over my leg than it actually hurting. Now that it was all bandaged up, it was mostly forgotten. I’d probably remember it again where it got to the stage where it was an itchy scab for me to pick at.

“Where’s this dragon fruit?” Rue asked.

I led him back along the clifftop and pointed to the tree the dragon fruit was growing on.

“Oh, that’s not too bad. When you said it was dangling off the edge of a cliff, I was imagining something a bit more…” he waved his hand as he searched for the right word, “perilous.”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted, suddenly embarrassed. “But you saw how bad I was on the rocks. I at least need someone here as a witness, just in case, to tell my dad I didn’t deliberately off myself if I fall.”

Rue snorted. “Yeah, I remember your climbing—and your falling. I’ll get it for you.”

“I don’t want you to fall either.”

“Yeah, but I won’t, though. That’s what I’m here for, right?”

“Maybe,” I said, considering the tree again. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think I might be more afraid of seeing you fall to your death than I am of heights.”

“Yeah, but I’m not gonna fall,” Rue said as he strode determinedly towards the tree. He was pulling himself up into its branches before I had a chance to object.

I hurried over and grabbed the trunk of the tree in one hand and a fistful of the bottom of his shirt in the other. “Careful.”

“I’m being careful. You want me to just snap a piece off?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to get a firmer hold on his shirt. “Get a couple, but watch your hands. They’re spiky.”

I held on tighter as he leaned out further, relying on his legs for balance as he twisted a join in a dragon fruit stem until it snapped off. He tucked it under his arm and then broke off a second one.

Even once Rue was back on solid ground, I didn’t let go of his shirt until I needed my hands to take the dragon fruit cuttings from him. “Thanks. I regret asking you to do that. Turns out it wasn’t worth the stress of knowing you could fall and die.”

“There was no way I was ever going to fall. Look.” And then he leapt back into the tree and hauled himself into its branches.

I took a step forward, planning to grab his shirt again, but he was already out of reach. The creak and crackle of a breaking branch reached my ears and I dropped into a crouch, the inhuman screech that launched its way out of my lungs loud enough to hurt my own ears.

Rue adjusted, didn't fall. He jumped down a moment later. He let out an uncomfortable laugh as he approached. “Sorry.”

But my heart was racing and my throat felt tight, my eyes threatening to dampen. He wasn’t sorry enough. Rue crouched down in front of me, picked up the dragon fruit cuttings I’d dropped when I’d freaked out, and held them out to me.

I snatched them from him and got to my feet, ready to hurl them at the ground, when Rue jerked back—one arm shooting up defensively as he toppled onto his ass. I froze. Let them drop limply to the ground instead.

My arms hugged my chest as I turned and strode away, staring determinedly at the house across the street as I focussed on my breathing and tried to pull myself back together. My shoulders were hunched tight as I waited for Rue to try to talk to me, to get angry or apologise. Seconds ticked by, and then minutes, and he didn’t. Slowly I relaxed and managed to start thinking instead of just feeling.

Why had Rue gone back into the tree? Had he wanted to upset me? He hadn’t looked that happy about succeeding. He probably hadn’t expected me being upset to look quite like that.

And why had he flinched back like that? I wasn’t going to throw the cuttings at him. And that look in his eyes—startled and vulnerable. That was more upsetting than Rue almost falling out of a tree, because he hadn’t fallen out of the tree, but I got the feeling something had happened to make him react the way he had. Something bad enough or often enough to sink into his reflexes.

When I finally turned back around, I found Rue still sitting in the exact same spot, ass in the dirt, arms resting on his knees. He kept his head ducked low as he watched me, his fingers fiddling with a hole in the knee of his jeans.

When all I did was look back at him, doing my best to stretch my autistic little brain to its very limits to try to figure out what was going on in this guy’s fucking head, he finally broke the silence. “Sorry.”

I shrugged. He looked and sounded so genuinely contrite that I wanted to forgive him, but how could I when I felt so betrayed? I’d told him something had scared me and he’d instantly used it against me.

“I wanted to show you that I hadn’t been in any danger, and I know it seemed like I proved myself wrong about that, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Rue continued. “I know the branch cracked, but I had my feet on a solid one, and my other hand on another. I was fine." His fingers worked at the frayed edges of the hole. "But still, it was dumb. It just made you upset, so I shouldn’t have.”

And just like that, a switch flicked in my head—forgiven. Maybe I could have been extra petty and held onto it because he should have known better, but I really didn’t want to.

I picked the dragon fruit cuttings up off the ground. “I wasn’t going to throw them at you, you know.”

“Yeah, I, uh—I realised that.” Fiddle fiddle with the hole in his jeans. “I know you wouldn’t. Just a reflex.”

“Why do you have that reflex?”

He shrugged, stiff and awkward. “My dad, I guess. He’s a bit of a smacker.”

“He hits you?”

Rue made a face. “Not, like, real bad or anything. He’ll just give me a bit of a whack if I’m being annoying.”

“Like, still? Even now you’re an adult?”

Rue’s head tilted to the side. “Is that worse than doing it to a kid?”

“Somehow, legally, yeah,” I said as I tucked the dragon fruit cuttings into my bag. “Not that you’re allowed to hit a kid any way you want, but you’re not allowed to hit an adult at all unless it’s self defence or something. It’s a crime.”

Rue let out a bitter laugh. “Doesn’t really matter if it is, does it? Cops wouldn’t do anything, and if they did, that’d be worse. We’re doing hard enough as it is without having to pay bail or court fees or whatever.”

“Maybe at least he’d stop doing it?”

“I’ve had enough shitty neighbours to know that people don’t change after getting the cops called on them or spending a night in jail or any of that. It’s always more of the same. And my dad isn’t even that bad, anyway.”

“He’s bad enough that you flinch at sudden movements.”

Rue made a small sound in the back of his throat, barely more than an acknowledgement.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I won’t do that ever again. I don’t normally get physical with my emotions like that anyway.”

Rue gave a one shouldered shrug. “It was my fault you were mad.”

“So? I get mad at people all the time. I’m really petty and maybe a bit too sensitive. But even when I’m mad at people, I don’t even want to tell them I’m mad, because I don’t want to hurt them. So I definitely don’t want to throw things and scare you.”

“Okay,” Rue said, pushing to his feet. “But for the record, if I do make you mad, I’d rather you just tell me instead of bottling it up. I can’t fix it if I don’t know, right?”

“That is the fundamental flaw in my coping strategy, yes,” I admitted. I held my mouth open, ready to promise that I would, but I didn’t want to lie. Instead I said, “I’ll try, maybe. It’s just kind of what I do at this point.”

And also, it wasn’t like it was always a choice. Sometimes I just… couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come out. That was hard to explain to people who thought they understood because talking about tough topics was difficult for everyone. 

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Rue said, dusting off his jeans. “Want to take a bus into the city or something? There’s a zoo you can go to for free, and a botanic garden right next to it. You could tell me about the plants.”

“I’m more of a withdrawn and unreachable autistic than an overshares about my special interests autistic,” I said. “But sure, sounds good. I have bus money this time.”

If the autism was a surprise, my autism itself was too strong to let me perceive any reaction. “Great! Do you need to go plant the dragon fruit first?”

I shook my head. “No, they’d actually love for me to just forget them in my bag for a week. They can rot if you don’t let the ends callous before you plant them.”

Rue shot me a smile. “Well, there you go. Got a bit of plant knowledge out of you after all. I think there’s a bus stop down the end of this street if you’re ready to head out.”

“Lead on.”