Finally, the whole story was relayed to me.

My brother had had a total meltdown at school. They hadn’t been able to stop him. He’d run outside, climbed up the tallest tree in the middle of the playground, and no one had been able to get him down—they were afraid he would jump if they tried. They’d called the fire department but when they’d put the ladder up, he’d jumped. Police had to be called in when accidents “like this” happened at school. The way they’d said like this left me feeling cold. The principal seemed upset with my mother too; she kept saying that she’d warned my parents something like this could happen. She’d told them that Zac needed to be evaluated, but they weren’t listening.

It was the first time I’d ever heard the word that I know so well now: autism. It was the principal who’d suggested it to my parents months ago, and now it was the psychiatrist who was giving my mother the name of a neurodevelopmental pediatrician, and speaking of evaluations and possible occupational therapy and all those things that have become so normal to me over the years, but that seemed so strange to me then.

I remember standing there and knowing that this all made sense. I’d watched Zac since he was a baby, and something about him had always seemed different. The way he played on his own in the corner and didn’t really engage with others. How he refused to eat to the point of becoming thin, and then how he would only eat certain foods, and they all had to be on separate plates and at certain temperatures. The words he used, so brilliant and advanced for his age I wasn’t even sure where he’d heard them. The way he jumped and freaked out at the smallest sounds, the way he became obsessed with things to the point that you wanted to go crazy . . . and then, like a tidal wave, there was truth in what the principal was telling my mother, even if I didn’t understand it then like I did now.

My mother was devastated, though. So confused, and she kept trying to call my dad. Finally, his receptionist suggested that he might be at his new development, and that was when my mother went looking for him. I’d stayed with Zac, who was sleeping peacefully, like a cherub. A perfect angel.